Abstract:
Paradigm shifts often require a black swan event in order to reach a tipping point. This article describes several ways in which the materialist paradigm of medicine has been approaching such an inflection point, one that would require acceptance of the existence of such intangible factors as energy and consciousness. Interventions like yoga, meditation and acupuncture derive from vitalist traditions, but many, if not most, of their clinical effects can be explained without invoking those factors. However, the phenomenon of post-amputation phantom limbs is not readily reducible to the materialist, brain-based paradigm of neuroscience. Several aspects of phantoms are discussed, as well as the related phenomenon of the phantom leaf effect, wherein an electromagnetic field surrounding the cut-off tip of a leaf has been imaged via Kirlian photography. Its relevance to human phantom limbs, and to an energy-based model of human beings, is discussed, and directions for future research are suggested.