Science: an Introductory Reader E-Book

Rudolf Steiner

• Herausgeber: Rudolf Steiner Press
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

From pre-science to science; The origin of mathematics; The roots of physics and chemistry, and the urge to experiment; Are there limits to what science can know?; Understanding organisms: Goethe's method; The quest for archetypal phenomena; Light, darkness and colour; The rediscovery of the elements; What is warmth?; The scale of nature; The working of the ethers in the physical; Sub-nature; What are atoms?; Natural science and spiritual science.

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RUDOLF STEINER

SCIENCE

An Introductory Reader

Compiled with an introduction, commentary and notes by Howard Smith

Sophia Books

All translations revised by Matthew Barton

Sophia Books An imprint of Rudolf Steiner Press Hillside House, The Square Forest Row, RH18 5ES

www.rudolfsteinerpress.com

Published by Rudolf Steiner Press 2012

For earlier English publications of individual selections please see Sources

The material by Rudolf Steiner was originally published in German in various volumes of the ‘GA’ (Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe or Collected Works) by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach. This authorized volume is published by permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach (for further information see Note Regarding Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures)

This selection and translation © Rudolf Steiner Press 2003

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 85584 340 0

Cover photograph by Adam Hart-Davis, courtesy DHD Photo Gallery. Cover design by Andrew Morgan Typeset by DP Photosetting, Aylesbury, Bucks.

Contents

Introduction by Andrew Welburn

1. From pre-science to Science

2. The Origin of Mathematics

Ptolemy, Copernicus and Newton: the development of astronomy

3. The Roots of Physics and Chemistry, and the Urge to Experiment

From ritual to experiment

4. Are there Limits to What Science can Know?

Where does thinking go wrong?

Goethe’s use of thinking: reading nature like a book

5. Understanding Organisms: Goethe’s Method

6. The Quest for Archetypal Phenomena

7. Light, Darkness and Colour

The primary phenomenon of colour

8. The Rediscovery of the Elements

What did the Greeks mean?

Solid, liquid and gas between earth and cosmos

First steps of a new method

9. What is Warmth?

Not just energy

Negative gravity and negative form

Warmth between the physical and the spiritual

10. The Scale of Nature

Spatial and non-spatial, pressure and suction

11. The Working of the Ethers in the Physical

The ethers in the human organism

12. Sub-nature

What is the relation of chemical forces and substances to the spiritual world?

What is electricity?

From nature to sub-nature

13. What are Atoms?

What did Democritus mean by ‘atoms’?

Atomism versus continuism

Spiritual perception of atoms

14. Natural science and Spiritual Science

Scientific concepts in social life

Science and the individual

Natural science as a foundation for spiritual science

Mathematics: origins and future possibilities

From projective geometry to Imagination

From phenomenon to Imagination

Notes

Sources

Further Reading

Note Regarding Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures

Introduction: Rudolf Steiner as Natural Scientist and Spiritual Scientist

by Howard Smith

No one today can doubt that science makes an enormous impact on the lives of all of us, irrespective of whether we ourselves happen to be scientists or not. Our civilization is saturated by the technological applications of scientific discoveries, while scientific theories and ideas about the nature of the human being percolate to every level of society, informing government policy, economics, educational methods, medical ethics, etc. But what exactly do we mean by ‘science’? How do we characterize this activity that is so much a part of the modern age? Where do the inner impulses come from which have helped create the world we now inhabit? Perhaps most importantly, to what extent does our current scientifically conditioned image of the human being and the cosmos reflect reality? Clearly, the answers to these questions concern us all.

This book, which offers a selection of texts from the published works of Rudolf Steiner, aims to throw some light on the above questions, at the same time serving as an introduction to his scientific thought. Between 1919 and 1923 Steiner gave several courses dealing directly with the nature of science and its various branches. However, practically every lecture course he gave, as well as his books and essays from as early as 1886, contain important references relevant to our study, irrespective of their particular theme. This selection is therefore an individual one, illustrative rather than comprehensive, and attempts to present the major landmarks of Steiner’s many contributions to modern thought.

Steiner himself was well qualified to write and lecture on the science of his day. In 1879 (aged 18) he entered the Technische Hochschule (Polytechnic) in Vienna, where he studied biology, chemistry, physics and mathematics. Simultaneously he also immersed himself in philosophy and German literature, and at the age of 21 was invited to edit Goethe’s scientific writings. Although Goethe was (and still is) regarded primarily as a poet and a playwright, the young Rudolf Steiner discovered in his scientific works a methodology which was to deeply influence his further work, and which he developed into a rigorous tool for natural and spiritual-scientific research.

Throughout his life Steiner showed a keen interest in all scientific developments, and often astounded colleagues with the breadth and depth of his knowledge of current research. Although science has made extremely rapid strides since Steiner’s death in 1925, most of the groundwork for these advances had emerged during his lifetime. For example, knowledge of electricity was sufficiently advanced to facilitate radio transmission. The principles of physics and mechanics had advanced to the point of enabling motor cars to be mass-produced in America, and air flight was beginning. Chemists had already learned how to synthesize useful organic compounds (previously thought impossible), such as dyes, and the first synthetic polymer (bakelite) appeared in his lifetime. The young science of atomic physics was emerging, with the discovery of sub-atomic particles and three types of radiation, although at the time no one suspected what forces would eventually be unleashed. These researches and discoveries were all known by Steiner, but one can only speculate as to what extent his prophetic vision might have glimpsed later developments: nuclear power, genetic engineering, electronics, global computer networks, lasers, manned space-flight, synthetic medicines, and so forth.

Yet the value of Steiner’s scientific insight does not depend on the extent to which specific facts at his disposal had already developed. He used his spiritual vision to shed light on science as a human activity, conditioned by our stage of evolutionary development, an activity in process of change from the earliest times, and on into the distant future. It is therefore only possible to evaluate Steiner’s scientific thought with complete integrity when it is seen as part and parcel of his spiritual science (or anthroposophy). We are justified in using the term ‘science’ for investigating both the outer world of nature and the world of spirit when both worlds are approached with a certain quality of consciousness in which the mutual relationships of all phenomena are seen with the greatest possible clarity. Natural science and spiritual science are therefore two complementary aspects of human understanding, directed either to the ‘natural’ or the ‘spiritual’ world.

The relationship between the world of matter and the world of spirit is spoken of in many of Steiner’s lectures and books. For example, in his book Theosophy, we find descriptions of how the kingdoms of nature have condensed or crystallized out of the primal spiritual world of archetypes and forces. Behind the mineral kingdom there is therefore a realm of forces and beings that provide the basic ‘template’ for the physical world. Indeed, behind all phenomena in nature there is a cosmic dimension which can be investigated, not by physical senses and instruments, but by senses adapted to the spiritual environment. Mathematics is often cited by Steiner as an example of an inner spiritual activity grasped in clear consciousness so as to become totally transparent. This mathematics is able to grasp the outer world since the substances and forces of this world originated in the same region in which the mathematics lives, i.e. the spiritual world.

... the condition of consciousness present in mathematical thinking is in fact what a person strives for who strives towards what I call imaginative knowledge. When we think mathematically, what is really the content of our soul? It is the numerical world, the spatial world, and so on... Thus we have in our soul the content of a particular field with a certain pictorial representation. To work in a similar condition of soul but towards another pictorial content is what constitutes the development of imaginative cognition.1

Rudolf Steiner possessed the spiritual senses implied above (such as ‘imaginative cognition’2), which lead to spiritual knowledge just as the physical senses lead to knowledge of the world of nature. It might therefore be assumed that ‘belief’ in spiritual science is necessary in order to understand Steiner’s interpretation of natural science. This is not the case, however. He is at pains to explain that there is an unbroken line between the two realms. A secure grounding in natural science is a wonderful foundation for developing spiritual perceptions. This can happen when the bright spotlight of consciousness is turned away from physical phenomena and inwards towards the boundaries of ordinary scientific understanding. A contemplation of the apparent limits of knowledge can lead to the means to transcend those limits through developing greater capacities of perception and understanding. The spiritual activity of mathematics can lead to these higher capacities. Conversely, spiritual knowledge can throw light on physical phenomena by making visible the cosmic aspect, often with surprising results.

One problem sometimes encountered in reading Steiner, particularly in his descriptions of physical phenomena, is realizing what particular perspective he is talking from. Because he is constrained by the limitations of earthly language in conveying subtle spiritual concepts, he tends to describe phenomena from a variety of perspectives. A physical object, when looked at with spiritual senses, would appear devoid of all substance, and might be described as pure thought or empty space or the like. This is particularly evident in his descriptions of the atom, which may seem incomprehensible unless the context is understood.

In the selections chosen for this book, we shall see how Steiner elucidates the wellsprings of the scientific impulse, that is, the sources of scientific striving which arise from spiritual necessity. What underlies the striving for ‘objectivity’? What is the nature of scientific curiosity? Why do we do experiments? Why do we try to understand the world through mathematics? Steiner does not consider these as self-evident or beyond question.

We shall also see how Steiner rescued ‘Goetheanism’ from obscurity, how his lucid descriptions of Goethe’s method can help us towards a new science of the future.

We shall then consider Steiner’s application and extension of Goethe’s approach to the realm where spiritual facts can be included in a scientific understanding of the world. This includes selections from the ‘Light Course’ (in Chapters 6 and 7) and from the groundbreaking ‘Warmth Course’ (in Chapters 8—11), which attempts to build a framework for the states of matter and the different forces of nature.

The concluding chapter contains material in which Steiner relates natural science to spiritual science from several points of view. Although some of his comments are critical, for example in surveying the effects of dubious scientific concepts on social conditions, we also find valuable indications that can help us towards a new orientation in natural science.

In working through these selections, the reader will notice marked variations in the character of different texts. This arises from the fact that some passages were much more carefully stenographed than others, whilst other texts were intrinsically very difficult to record. The Warmth Course in particular was a demonstration/lecture course for teachers, with Steiner setting up experiments, talking, and drawing on a blackboard, with frequent references to earlier sessions of the course. The style is therefore more ‘chatty’ than most of the other material, yet nonetheless breathtaking in its scope. We also have to reckon with the fact that some of the material is intrinsically more difficult to understand, and will need more study and rereading, whilst other sections are relatively straightforward.

As we proceed through the chapters it should become evident that Rudolf Steiner had enormous respect and admiration for what science had to offer. Yet he was all too aware of the dead-end that erroneous and incomplete interpretations of experimental results could lead to. A purely material science has led to a technology that has become dehumanized and fails to meet human needs for spiritual understanding. A true understanding of the natural world will some day enable natural science to blossom into a more spiritualized form, resulting in a technology which serves the true needs of human beings. Then natural science will contribute towards the same goal that Rudolf Steiner had set for spiritual science-to bring about a renewal of culture.

1. From Pre-science to Science

It is generally believed that human consciousness itself is pretty much the same now as it was in ancient times, and that only its content has changed. Humans are believed to have evolved their ideas through their experience of the everyday world, from earlier states of superstition and ignorance to an increasingly sophisticated science which offers true insight. Rudolf Steiner, on the other hand, insists that the fabric of consciousness itself has changed dramatically over the millennia, and will continue to do so. A fundamental, purely inward development occurred in the fifteenth century, resulting in intensified intellectual activities in a recognizably modern sense. This laid the groundwork for the explosion of knowledge up to the present day, which appears to dwarf the achievements of previous long ages. Before this time, consciousness was significantly different, and the further back we go the more we find other faculties taking the place of science. Indeed, if we go far enough back, science becomes inconsequential. Here, Steiner traces the gradual emergence of the modern ‘objective’ mode of thinking, which confronts the world with questions, out of earlier forms in which there was far less distinction between object and subject.

To sages of old, the universe was not the machine, the mechanical contraption that it is for human beings today when they look out into space. The cosmic spaces were like living beings, permeating everything with spirit and speaking to them in cosmic language. These sages experienced themselves within the spirit of world being. They felt how this cosmos in which they lived and moved spoke to them, how they could direct their questions about the riddles of the universe to the universe itself and how, out of the breadths of space, cosmic phenomena replied to them. This is how they experienced what we, in a weak and abstract way, call ‘spirit’ in our language. Spirit was experienced as the element that is everywhere and can be perceived from anywhere. Then human beings perceived things that even the Greeks no longer beheld with the eye of the soul, things that had faded into a nothingness for the Greeks.

This nothingness of the Greeks, which had been filled with living content for the earliest wise people of the post-Atlantean3 age, was named in words customary for that time. Translated into our language, though weakened and abstract, those words would signify ‘spirit’. What later became the unknown, the hidden God, was called spirit in those ages when he was known. This is the first thing to know about those ancient times.

The second thing to know is that when a human being looked into himself with his soul and spirit vision, he beheld his soul. He experienced it as originating from the spirit that later on became the unknown God. The experience of the ancient sage was such that he designated the human soul by a term that would translate in our language into ‘spirit messenger’ or simply ‘messenger’.

If we put into a diagram what was actually seen in those earliest times, we can say: The spirit was considered the world-embracing element, apart from which there was nothing, and by which everything was permeated. This spirit, directly perceptible in its archetypal form, was sought and found in the human soul, inasmuch as the latter recognized itself as the messenger of this spirit. Thus the soul was referred to as the ‘messenger’.

A third aspect was external nature with all that today is called the world of physical matter, of corporeality. I said above that apart from spirit there was nothing, because spirit was perceived by direct vision everywhere in its archetypal form. It was seen in the soul, which realized the spirit’s message in its own life. But the spirit was likewise perceived in what we now call nature, the world of corporeal things. Even this bodily world was looked upon as an image of the spirit.

Spirit: archetypal form Soul: messenger Body: image

In those ancient times, people did not have the conceptions that we have today of the physical world. Wherever they looked, at whatever thing or form of nature, they beheld an image of the spirit, because they were still capable of seeing the spirit. The image nearest to man was the human body, a fragment of nature. Inasmuch as all other phenomena of nature were images of the spirit, the body of man too was an image of the spirit. So when this ancient human looked at himself, he recognized himself as a threefold being. In the first place, the spirit lived in him as in one of its many mansions. Man knew himself as spirit. Secondly, man experienced himself within the world as a messenger of this spirit, hence as a soul being. Thirdly, man experienced his corporeality; and by means of this body he felt himself to be an image of the spirit. Hence, when man looked upon his own being, he perceived himself as a threefold entity of spirit, soul and body: as spirit in his archetypal form; as soul, the messenger of God; as body, the image of the spirit.

This ancient wisdom contained no contradiction between body and soul or between nature and spirit, because people knew that spirit was within man in its archetypal form. The soul was none other than the message transmitted by spirit; the body was image of spirit. Likewise, no contrast was felt between man and surrounding nature because one bore an image of spirit in one’s own body, and the same was true of each body in outer nature. Hence an inner kinship was experienced between one’s own body and those in outer nature, and nature was not felt to be different from oneself. Man felt himself at one with the whole world. He could feel this because he could behold the archetype of spirit and because the cosmic expanses spoke to him. In consequence of the universe speaking to man, science simply could not exist. Just as we today cannot build a science of external nature out of what lives in our memory, ancient man could not develop one because, whether he looked into himself or outwards at nature, he beheld the same image of spirit. No contrast existed between man himself and nature, and there was none between soul and body. The correspondence of soul and body was such that, in a manner of speaking, the body was only the vessel, the artistic reproduction, of the spiritual archetype, while the soul was the mediating messenger between the two. Everything was in a state of intimate union. There could be no question of comprehending anything. We grasp and comprehend what is outside our own life. Anything that we carry within ourselves is directly experienced and need not be first comprehended.

Prior to Roman and Greek times, this wisdom born of direct perception still lived in the mysteries. The pupils learned them from the teachers, but the teachers could no longer see them, at least not in the vividness of ancient times. Indeed, in former times souls had the inner resilience needed to say to themselves: In the inward perception of the spirit indwelling me, I myself am something divine. But then it gradually happened that, for direct perception, the spirit no longer inhabited the soul. No longer did the soul experience itself as the spirit’s messenger, for to be a messenger one must fully know the one from whom the message comes. Now the soul only felt itself as the bearer of the Logos, the spirit image, though this spirit image was vivid in the soul. This expressed itself in love for this God whose image still lived in the soul. But the soul no longer felt like the messenger, only the carrier, of an image of the divine spirit. One can say that a different form of knowledge arose when man looked into his inner being. The soul declined from messenger to bearer.

Soul: bearer Body: force

Since the living spirit had been lost to human perception, the body no longer appeared as the image of spirit. To recognize it as such an image, one would have had to perceive the archetype. Therefore, for this later age, the body changed into something that I would like to call ‘force’. The concept of force emerged. The body was pictured as a complex of forces, no longer as a reproduction, an image, that bore within itself the essence of what it reproduced. The human body became a force which no longer bore the substance of the source from which it originated.

Not only the human body, but in all of nature, too, forces had to be pictured everywhere. Whereas formerly nature in all its aspects had been an image of spirit, now it had become forces flowing out of spirit. This, however, implied that nature began to be something more or less foreign to man. One could say that the soul had lost something since it no longer contained direct spirit awareness. Speaking crudely, I would have to say that the soul had inwardly become more tenuous, while the body, the external corporeal world, had gained in robustness. Earlier, as an image, it still possessed some resemblance to the spirit. Now it became permeated by the element of force. The complex of forces is more robust than the image in which the spiritual element is still recognizable. Hence, again speaking crudely, the corporeal world became denser while the soul became more tenuous. Now, a contrast that had not existed before arose between the soul, grown more tenuous, and the increased density of the corporeal world. Previously, the unity of spirit had been perceived in all things. Now, there arose the contrast between body and soul, man and nature. Man now felt himself divided as well from nature, something that also had not been the case in the ancient times. Human beings now struggle to comprehend the connection between, on the one hand, the soul, that lacks spirit reality, and, on the other hand, the body that has become dense, has turned into force, into a complex of forces.

And human beings struggle to feel and experience the relationship between man and nature. But everywhere nature is force. At that time no conception at all existed as yet of what we call today ‘the laws of nature’. People did not think in terms of natural laws; everywhere and in everything they felt the forces of nature. When a person looked into his own being, he did not experience a soul that—as was the case later on—bore within itself a dim will, an almost equally dim feeling, and an abstract thinking. Instead, he experienced the soul as bearer of the living Logos, something that was not abstract and dead, but a divine living image of God.

There came a time when even awareness of the Logos indwelling the soul was lost. Only then, at that point, did the modern era of thinking begin. The soul now no longer contains the living Logos. Instead, when it looks into itself, it finds ideas and concepts, which finally lead to abstractions. The soul has become even more tenuous. A third phase begins. Once upon a time, in the first phase, the soul experienced the spirit’s archetype within itself. It saw itself as the messenger of spirit. In the second phase, the soul inwardly experienced the living image of God in the Logos; it became the bearer of the Logos.

Now, in the third phase, the soul becomes, as it were, a vessel for ideas and concepts. These may have the certainty of mathematics, but they are only ideas and concepts. The soul experiences itself at its most tenuous, if I may put it so. Again the corporeal world increases in robustness. This is the third way in which man experiences himself. He cannot as yet give up his soul element completely, but he experiences it as the vessel for the realm of ideas. He experiences his body, on the other hand, not only as a force but as a spatial body.

Soul: realm of ideas Body: spatial corporeality

The body has become still more robust. Man now denies the spirit altogether. Here we come to the ‘body’ that Hobbes, Bacon, and Locke spoke of. Here, we meet ‘body’ at its densest. The soul no longer feels a kinship to it, only an abstract connection that degenerates over the course of time.

In place of the earlier concrete contrast of soul and body, man and nature, another contrast arises that leads further and further into abstraction. The soul that formerly appeared to itself as something concrete—because it experienced in itself the Logos-image of the divine—gradually transforms itself to a mere vessel of ideas. Whereas before, in the ancient spiritual age, it had felt akin to everything, it now sees itself as subject and regards everything else as object, feeling no further kinship with anything.

The earlier contrast of soul and body, man and nature, increasingly became the merely theoretical epistemological contrast between the subject that is within a person and the object without. Nature changed into the object of knowledge. It is not surprising that out of its own needs knowledge henceforth strove for the ‘purely objective’.

But what is this purely objective aspect? It is no longer what nature was to the Greeks. The objective is external corporeality in which no spirit is any longer perceived. It is nature devoid of spirit, to be comprehended from without by the subject.

The striving to develop science must therefore be pictured as emerging from earlier faculties of mankind. A time had to come when this science would appear. It had to develop the way it did. We can follow this if we focus clearly on the three phases of development that I have just described.

We see how the first phase extends to the eighth century BC. The second extends from then to Nicholas Cusanus.4 We find ourselves in the third phase now. The first is pneumatological, directed to the spirit in its primeval form. The second is mystical, in the broadest possible sense. The third is mathematical. Considering these significant characteristics, therefore, we trace the first phase—ancient pneumatology—as far as the ancient wise men. Magical mysticism extends from there to Meister Eckhart and Nicholas Cusanus. The age of mathematics-based natural science proceeds from Cusanus into our own time and continues further.