Man or Matter: Introduction to a Spiritual Understanding of Nature on the Basis of Goethe's Method of Training Observation and ThoughtLehrs, Ernst
Religion
Man or Matter: Introduction to a Spiritual Understanding of Nature on the Basis of Goethe's Method of Training Observation and Thought
Lehrs, Ernst
Anthroposophy; Cosmology; Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1749-1832
In the sense of Euclidean geometry, a plane is the sum-total of
innumerable single points. To take up a position in a plane, therefore,
means to imagine oneself at one point of the plane, with the latter
extending around in all directions to infinity. Hence the journey from
any point in space to a plane is along a straight line from one point
to another. In the case of the plane being at infinity, it would be a
journey along a radius of the infinitely large sphere from its centre
to a point at its circumference.
In projective geometry the operation is of a different character. Just
as we arrived at the infinitely large sphere by letting a finite sphere
grow, so must we consider any finite sphere as having grown from a
sphere with infinitely small extension; that is, from a point. To
travel from the point to the infinitely distant plane in the sense of
projective geometry, therefore, means that we have first to identify
ourselves with the point and 'become' the plane by a process of uniform
expansion in all directions.
As a result of this we do not arrive at one point in the plane, with
the latter extending round us on all sides, but we are present in the
plane as a whole everywhere. No point in it can be characterized as
having any distance, whether finite or infinite, from us. Nor is there
any sense in speaking of the plane itself as being at infinity. For any
plane will allow us to identify ourselves with it in this way. And any
such plane can be given the character of a plane at infinity by
relating it to a point infinitely far away from it (i.e. from us).
Having thus dropped the one-sided conception of infinity, we must look
for another characterization of the relationship between a point and a
plane which are infinitely distant from one another. This requires,
first of all, a proper characterization of Point and Plane in
themselves.
Conceived dynamically, as projective geometry requires, Point and Plane
represent a pair of opposites, the Point standing for utmost
contraction, the Plane for utmost expansion. As such, they form a
polarity of the first order. Both together constitute Space. Which sort
of space this is, depends on the relationship in which they are
envisaged. By positing the point as the unit from which to start, and
deriving our conception of the plane from the point, we constitute
Euclidean space. By starting in the manner described above, with the
plane as the unit, and conceiving the point from it, we constitute
polar-Euclidean space.
The realization of the reversibility of the relationship between Point
and Plane leads to a conception of Space still free from any specific
character. By G. Adams this space has been appositely called archetypal
space, or ur-space. Both Euclidean and polar-Euclidean space are
particular manifestations of it, their mutual relationship being one of
metamorphosis in the Goethean sense.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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