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
Our considerations, starting from certain statements made by some
leading scientific thinkers of our time, have helped us not only to
confirm the truth inherent in these statements, but to recognize the
facts stated by them as being the outcome of certain laws of evolution
and thereby having an historic necessity. This, however, does not mean
that man's scientific labours, carried out under the historically given
restrictions, great and successful as these labours were and are, have
not led to calamitous effects such as we found indicated by Professor
Carrel. The sciences of matter have led man into a country that is not
his, and the world which he has created by means of scientific research
is not only one in which he is a stranger but one which threatens
to-day to deprive him of his own existence. The reason is that this
world is essentially a world of active forces, and the true nature of
these is something which modern man, restricted to his
onlooker-consciousness, is positively unable to conceive.
We have taken a first step in diagnosing man's present spiritual
condition. A few more steps are required to lead us to the point where
we can conceive the therapy he needs.
1 This address and another by the same author are published together
under the common title, Wandlungen in den Grundlagen der
Naturwissenschaft ('Changes in the foundations of Natural Science').
Heisenberg's name has become known above all by his formulation of the
so-called Principle of Indeterminacy.
2 See, in this respect, Faust's dispute with Mephistopheles on the
causes responsible for the geological changes of the earth. (Faust II,
Act 4)
3 See also Eddington's more elaborate description of this fact in his
New Pathways in Science. The above statement, like others of
Eddington's, has been Contested from the side of professional
philosophy as logically untenable. Our own further discussion will show
that it accords with the facts.
4 Both words, kinematics and kinetics, are derivatives of the Greek
word kinein, to move. The term 'kinematic' is used when motion is
considered abstractly without reference to force or mass. Kinetics is
applied kinematics, or, as pointed out above, dynamics treated with
kinematic concepts.
5 These last statements will find further illustration in the next two
chapters.
6 First published in 1917 in his book Von Seelenrätseln.
7 Homer's men still think with the diaphragm (phrenes). Similarly, the
ancient practice of Yoga, as a means of acquiring knowledge, shows that
at the time When it flourished man's conceptual activity was felt to be
seated elsewhere than in the head.
8 This must not be confused with the fact that a smell may evoke other
memories by way of association.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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