Classification

Classification of PlantsNaturalClassification lies at the heart of science. Every science starts with classifying the phenomena it investigates. Classification is so natural that we often forget that it exists. It is good to realise that language is based on classification. Words describe classes, abstractions from reality. Language is impossible without classification. Language is at the heart of science, it is common sense science.Plant KingdomThe classification of the Plant kingdom has shown to be more difficult. Families and orders have already been known for a few centuries. But it is only since halfway the 19the century that attempts have been made for general classification. Well known classifications are Crohnquist, Takhtajan and Stebbins. They show many overlaps and similarities, but also many differences. These classifications were at first built on the form and behaviour of the plants. Later the chemical constituents of the plants were used too. A new step was the introduction of DNA analyses around 2000. The result of these phylogenetic analyses gave many new insights. But they also gave problems by contradicting well established insights. The main classification has become the APG classification, which is in its fourth version.Different classificationsThe classification of the Plant theory used the APG classification as a starting point, but gradually it started to differ in several aspects. This rises the question which classification is the best. Or if there are several classifications, each adapted to the field where it is used.
It is my point of view that there will be one main classification that covers all fields and aspects of the plants. And that classification covers the form, behaviour, chemical constituents, and the DNA of the plants. The arguments for this position can be found in the Periodic table, the classification of the Mineral kingdom.Mineral kingdomThe basic classification in the Mineral kingdom is the Periodic table of Elements, first fully described by Dmitri Mendeleev in 1869. Before that could be done one had to find out which substances were composite and which were elemental and could not be split further. This could be done for the first time in history by the application of electricity. The elementary building blocks of all physical things were named Elements. They are, or were, also called atoms, as one had the idea that these Elements could not be further split, a-tomos, not-fissionable. Laster it turned out that they could be split, not chemically, but in radioactive processes.
Typical for the Periodic table of Elements is that it consists of rows and columns. The Elements of each row and each column have qualities in common. That is how the table was originally constructed, by sorting elements according to their qualities.
The strength of the Periodic table of Elements was shown by its predictive quality. There were "holes" in the table, which were later filled in by newly discovered elements. These elements were often discovered because they were predicted and thus could be searched for in a guided manner, guided by the qualities predicted by the Periodic table.
The next step was the discovery of the atomic number of each element around 1900, describing the amount of protons in the nucleus of the atom. The atomic number made sense of the Periodic table, substantiating the sequence of the elements.
The Periodic table of elements has been firmly established. There is hardly anyone questioning it. I have seen hundreds of graphs of the Periodic table of elements. They look different, but in essence they all express the same underlying structure. It is only that each of them highlights a specific aspect of the table.
In the beginning of the 20th century an even deeper understanding of the Periodic table came with quantum mechanics and the Schrödinger equation. This mathematical formula, using energy states, describes or predicts the sequence of rows and columns. This is strange, the more so because it uses the imaginary number, which is an impossible number.
The Periodic table shows several qualities. There exists only one classification, the Periodic table. The amount of elements is limited, fixed. Elements could be predicted from a “hole" in the structure. The amount of groups is limited, fixed, and they have qualities. There is a short, unique description of each element, in a way the essence of the element, in the form of the atomic number. The mathematical formula that described the Periodic table is "impossible", by using the "impossible" imaginary number.HomeopathyIn my book “Homeopathy and the Elements” I described the discovery that the elements of each row and column not only have physical and chemical qualities in common, but are also similar on the level of living beings with their psychology and diseases. This links medicine to physics and chemistry. And it links the Periodic system to psychology. At a first glance it seems strange that a physical classification like the Periodic table can be used for psychological and disease classifications.
The elements of each row have a theme in common, a theme of where the problem is, which level in life is affected. These levels of life can also be found in psychology, like the needs of Maslow. But there are many variants of these levels like in the levels of cognition, faith, the psychological development of Kegan, and so on.
The columns describe developments: how far is one in reaching or losing ones goal. That is why I called them stages. In the Periodic table there are 18 columns: 18 stages of phases of development. But looking more closely at the Periodic table it becomes clear that the count of columns depend on the row of the table. The first row has only 2 columns, Hydrogen and Helium. The second row has 8 columns, from Lithium to Neon. The third row also has 8 columns. But looking more closely, especially with the Schrödinger equation, it has 18 columns. But they are "delayed" for energetic reasons. There is a nice mathematical formula that says how many electrons can go into an energy level: 2 * square the level/row. For the third row that means 2 * 3 * 3 = 18 columns.Plant theory
Gradually it became clear that certain families had special qualities in common with elements. For instance Lamiaceae have a quality similar to Phosphorus, Solanaceae have a quality similar to Fluor. Asteraceae have a quality of Lanthanides. At first sight this is strange as plants are very different form minerals. At second sight it is to be expected as plants are using minerals for their existence.
In Wonderful Plants I describe the discovery how plants can be described with the series and columns of the Periodic system. At first this was strange for me, as plants are so different from minerals. Then I realised that the classification of the Mineral kingdom was described best by the Schrödinger equation, a mathematical formula independent of any kingdom. The prediction of rows and columns,Series and Stages, does not depend on the kingdom. The rows and columns are a universal way to describe classes and differences.
The first division in the Plant kingdom is that of phyla, division. The divisions fit very well with the rows of the Periodic system, especially when one looks at them in a symbolic way. For example the 4th row, the iron series, has as a new development of traffic, physical exchange. In the plant kingdom this is expressed as the introduction of vessels, traffic systems. As a sideline, this can also be found in the 4th division of the Animal kingdom, the Ecdysozoa, which developed vessels as the first group.
The Plant kingdom though, is more complex than the Periodic table with its Phyla, Classes, Subclasses, Orders, families and species. This led to the development of the classification of the Plant kingdom and it became expressed in the Remedy code. The remedy code can be looked as a code for the classification of the Plant kingdom. At the same time it can be read as a description of the state of being of a patient, his state of development and problem.DNAThe use of DNA to establish the phylogeny, the evolutionary tree, has become widespread. This arises from the axiom that the DNA is the essence of life. But many inherent problems have arisen. A well-known fact it that DNA is often insufficient to explain the complexity of living beings. For instance humans have only 25% of what is needed (Sheldrake).
Phylogenetic studies, DNA-studies, often look very precise, like in mathematics. But the results of those studies can vary quite a lot, for instance depending on which part of the DNA is used for analysis. The results can deviate from the original tree as Shavit has shown in his experiments: "We found that maximum likelihood, corrected and uncorrected neighbour-joining, and corrected and uncorrected parsimony, all suffer from biases toward specific tree topologies". Also the normal use of out-group plants can affect the right outcome: "We found that using a single-taxon out-group to root a tree frequently disrupts an otherwise correct in-group phylogeny" and "For all the cases tested here, tree estimation using a two taxon out-group was more accurate than when using a single-taxon out-group. However, the in-group was most accurately recovered when no out-group was used".
The DNA of plants of the same species can differ greatly. For example, Valente writes: “In mesembs, an AFLP study of Argyroderma by Ellis et al. (2006) found low support for the monophyly of individuals of the same species in many cases”.
Similar plants can have very different DNA, even leading to placements in different families. Chase gives an example: Trachyandra, in Xanthorrhoeaceae, and Chlorophytum, in Agavaceae, are impossible to distinguish”.
Species not closely related can have very similar DNA, much more than to be expected, for instance the DNA of dolphins and bats (Parker).
More in general, DNA is not fixed. Living creature can change their DNA as Barbara MccClintock has shown.
The fact viruses and exosomes can transfer DNA from one species to another, makes DNA unreliable for establishing evolutionary trees. This phenomenon can produce "noise" in the DNA.DiscussionPhylogenetic analyses have helped to develop the classification of the Plant kingdom enormously. But they are not the end results. They lack an explanation, understanding, structure and meaning. They don't give insight, something like an atom number as in quantum mechanics.
The classification of the Plant theory has advantages in the structure that it gives, which is expressed in the Remedy code. It is similar to the atomic number in the sense of giving the position of each species in a structure. But it is difficult to show in a graph as it has seven dimensions instead of two in the Periodic table. There are also serious developmental problems with the Plant theory as many parts of the Plant kingdom have not been well researched in homeopathy.
There are also strengths. A recent study showed Santalales to be closer to Saxifragales and Rosids than to Asteranae (Zhang). This confirms the placement of Santalales in the Plant theory, in Malvanae, together with Saxifragales.LiteratureChase, Mark & others; A subfamilial classification for the expanded asparagalean families Amaryllidaceae, Asparagaceae and Xanthorrhoeaceae; Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, 2009, 161, 132–136; 2009.
McClintock, Barbara; The origin and behaviour of mumble loci in maize; PNAS 36: 344; 1950.
McClintock, Barbara; The significance of responses of the genome to challenges; www.nobelprize.org; 1983.
Liat Shavit & others; The Problem of Rooting Rapid Radiations; Mol. Biol. Evol. 24(11): 2400–2411. 2007; doi:10.1093/molbev/msm178.
Parker, Joe; Genome-wide signatures of convergent evolution in echolocating mammals; Nature; 2013; doi:10.1038/nature12511.
Sheldrake, Rupert; The Science Delusion; VCPI Group, Croydon; 2013; Isbn 978144727944.
Valente, Luis& others: Correlates of hyperdiversity in southern African ice plants (Aizoaceae); Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, 2014, 174, 110–129
Zhang, Lin & others; Nuclear Phylogenomics of Angiosperms and Evolutionary Implications; Diversity 2025, 17, 136; https://doi.org/10.3390/d17020136.
NomenclatureIntroductionThe nomenclature, the naming of a group, is an expression of the taxonomy. Groups of the same rank are given the same ending. The rank of the group is then evident from the name.
In botany families have names ending in "aceae". Orders have a name ending in "ales". Subclasses mostly have a name ending in "idae". For classes this is less straightforward, they sometimes end in "opsida", sometimes in "anae", or even in "phyta". The ending "phyta" though is generally used for divisions. The confusion becomes evident for the class Lycopodiopsida. They are known as Lycopsids, Lycopods, or Lycophytes. It also arises from the confusion of the rank of the group: is it a class or division, or something in between, or some other rank?Plant theoryIn the Plant theory the ranks are limited to 7. And each rank has a specific quality. The ranks are species, family, order, subclass, class, division and kingdom.
In the Plant theory the ending are generally the same as in botany. The main exclusion is for classes, which have the ending of "anae". The ending "phyta" was excluded because that ending was also used for divisions. The ending "opsida" was put aside because several genera have such and ending and because it is quite awkward.
In the Plant theory ranks and name endings are thus as follows:
Family: aceae.
Order: ales.
Subclass: idae.
Class: anae.
Division: phyta.The insanity of normality Arno GruenSummary by Maria Davits.Good and evil are not determined by the intercourse of people with one another, but entirely by a man’s relations with himself. — Jacob Wasserman.To become responsible for one’s own self, to become autonomous, is a paradoxical process. The complexity of this interplay is apparent when we consider, on the one hand, that it is needed for the child to bond with the parents, to attach, and on the other hand to become autonomous, learn to take responsibility.
Basically, responsibility can develop in two directions: the evolving psyche either directs- openly and freely, answerable only to itself- the formation of its own self or it passively submits to the formative influences of others. In the latter case, it evades the burdens of true responsibility.
It is an act of self-betrayal when children begin to lose consciousness of their own self.
Such adaptation to the power needs of parents, obedience, and formative behaviour , leads to a split in children’s psychic structure, separating their interior world from its interaction with the environment. In this way, the connection and interplay between actions and motivations disappear. If we lose the connection to our own interior world, to dissociate, then we can relate only to a false self, to an image-oriented self attuned to behaviour and feelings pleasing to our surrounding world. The need and perhaps also the compulsion to preserve this image-orientation take precedence over all one’s potential perceptions, feelings, and empathy. The resulting inability to be rooted in oneself is what engenders destructive and evil behaviour .
Escape from responsibility is always repressed from consciousness. Necessarily so, since the surrender of autonomy by submission to the will of others initiates a fundamental power game:
“I will become the way you want me to be so that you will take care of me. My submissiveness ensures my power over you from now on; With it I force you to take care of me.”
In this way, dependency becomes revenge for submissiveness.
Destructive behaviour and self-hatred, dissociation and neurotic behaviour and worldliness is rooted in the betrayal human beings commit against themselves in order to share in a hallucinated sense of power. If we reject ourselves because it might endanger our position of power, vengeful feelings begin to determine our lives.
If such an outer-directed development recognises only obedience and adaptation, and no longer acknowledges pain, the ‘natural’ end product is destructive behaviour . The bifurcation between outer or inner-directed courses of development leads to two realities: that of power or that of love.
Our civilisation, our power-based culture, with its demand for obedience is at the root of self-hatred. The way a person appears is still prized above inner substance, and adaptation is still rewarded above inner independence.
I refer to the type of insanity that disguises itself by hiding behind the mask of mental health. This insanity can easily conceal itself in a world in which deception and trickery are approved methods of adapting reality. Horrible intentions and acts are concealed more and more frequently behind smiling faces and masquerades as friendliness and seemingly considerate behaviour . This is why it is especially difficult to recognise the actual pathology of our times. Whereas people who can no longer bear the absence of human values in the real world are considered ‘crazy’, those who have severed themselves from their human roots are certified ‘normal’.
The pathology of normality: it is not only the flight from emotional pain but also the fear of falling apart, that constantly threatens the cohesion in ourselves. For example: anxiety must be covered up. This constant covering up of our actual state of illness characterises present-day life to a degree scarcely known before.
For those who slip into the disguise of ‘normal’ behaviour because they cannot tolerate the tension caused by the contradiction between the reality impressed on them and their inner world, real feelings soon cease to consist. Instead, these people operate with ‘ideas’ about their feelings, not with experiencing them. They display their own feelings that have been imposed on them and renounce their true feelings. The ‘saner’ the image of the identity they have adopted, the more successfully they will be able to perform this manipulation. And manipulation it is, for their goal is not self-expression, instead they want to convince others that they act, think, and feel appropriately. This are the people I want to expose as the truly insane ones among us.
They endanger us all because they cannot face the chaos, the rage, and the emptiness inside them. To have to accept this inner emptiness as their own, they produce destruction and emptiness around them. To avoid knowledge about their inner self, they impose their ‘order’ on their fellow men and women and thus their way of dealing with themselves.
They diminish not themselves but reality by denying its contradictions and the fear this causes.
Their lives turn into a defence of this diminishment and a denial of their inner fears. They cling to their diminished reality and insist that it represents the ‘whole’ of experience. The self then willingly subscribes to a priori ideas about the nature of being, instead of basing itself on the interactions between the actual being and the surrounding world of which it is a part. Their consciousness thus does not reflect the integration of individual beings and outer reality but the need to conquer this reality.
This is why a self obedient only to ideas rather than to the free play of feelings grounded in the experience of both joy and pain enslaves itself and becomes destructive. ( protocols).
To the same extent we abandon ourselves to ideas, we mistake for feelings what are actually only notions of what we think we ‘should’ feel.
If we are prone to dissociate thought and feeling,- that is to distance ourselves from the roots of our feelings- the problem is that we will no longer be capable of an awareness of doing so. We will strive to see ourselves not as we are but as we think we ought to appear. Our image and our reality will not be isomorphic; they will not correspond to each other. If they do not correspond, this contradiction within our inner reality will be a constant source of fear, and the fear, in turn, will reinforce our dissociation.The notion that domination equals strength and helplessness equals weakness exists to different degrees, but it is present in all of us. The feelings we have about domination and helplessness are not in accord with those perfectly natural feelings we had during the initial period of our development when we were nourished and held in our mother’s protective arms.
If we later identify helplessness with weakness and domination with strength such feelings are basically mere functions of thought processes, not of our intrinsic nature and experience. These thought processes are part of an already diminished form of reality, one marked by the inability to tolerate feelings. Thus, we encounter again a process involving dissociation. It is primarily the inability to tolerate feelings that bring about dissociation between thought and feeling.
The central issue in individual psychological growth is the choice between two basic directions: toward the inner or the outer world. It is directed toward the inner world if children receive the kind of love that enables them to experience helplessness without feeling all alone. If this is the case helplessness will not be perceived as total abandonment or condemnation but as a state leading through pain and sorrow to a new strength rather than to destruction. This sort of experience will produce a self that does not perceive helplessness as a deadly threat but as a possibility for new integration and new beginnings.
The other direction, the outer one, involves the dissociation of the experience of helplessness and the denial of the inner world in favour of acquiescence in an extern imposed order in which one’s needs and perceptions are performed, first by parents, later by school, society, and state.
The horror of helplessness that must be denied because it is experienced as a mortal danger continues in force, however, and one of the motivating, although unconscious factors in life. The extent of this dichotomy determines whether or not we will lead a fully responsible life, whether we will affirm ourselves and life, or whether we will devote ourselves to the destructiveness and hatred of life, always placing responsibility on others.
We cannot live without trust and we attain trust by experiencing a supportive affection. Without this affection infants and small children can become apathetic and waste away or even die.Every power play is hypocritical about its motives and is based on a lie of one’s self.
Our fragmentation must be overcome, not by acquiescing in the logic of an alleged reality, but by insisting on our own ability to feel compassion, to experience sorrow and joy.
Patients change only when they accept responsibility for the decision they once made to submit to the power of others. For it is this submission that has crippled their potential for autonomy and initiated their psychic maldevelopment.
Many therapists have to recognise they made their patients dependent on them. In this way, the eternal game is repeated. This internalisation of the therapist- which is the opposite of finding one’s own identity- is mistakenly considered grown-up.
The only way to find true liberation and to meet the challenge of change is by confronting the pain caused by self-betrayal. We must confront the surrender that first made us hate ourselves because it reminds us of what we have done. Evil destruction in humanity has its roots in our inability to take responsibility for the early decision that made us relinquish our birthright to be ourselves.