Can a science endorse its antithesis? Medicine and the homeopathy paradox

The endurance of homeopathy within parts of the medical profession is not primarily an empirical puzzle but rather an epistemological fault line. While medicine, since the Enlightenment (late seventeenth century–early nineteenth century CE, when understood as a long-term cultural process), has gradually anchored itself in principles and mechanisms open to empirical scrutiny and causal explanation, homeopathy still operates on concepts formulated prior to the discovery of microbes, pharmacological receptors, or the conservation of mass.