The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity: A Modern Philosophy of Life Developed by Scientific MethodsSteiner, Rudolf
Religion
The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity: A Modern Philosophy of Life Developed by Scientific Methods
Steiner, Rudolf
Anthroposophy; Free will and determinism; Knowledge, Theory of; Life
The supporters of the concept of purpose believe that, in surrendering
it, they are forced to surrender also all unity and order in the
world. Listen, for example, to Robert Hamerling (Atomistik des Willens,
vol. ii, p. 201): "As long as there are instincts in Nature, so long
is it foolish to deny purposes in Nature. Just as the structure of a
limb of the human body is not determined and conditioned by an idea
of this limb, floating somewhere in mid-air, but by its connection
with the more inclusive whole, the body, to which the limb belongs,
so the structure of every natural object, be it plant, animal, or man,
is not determined and conditioned by an idea of it floating in mid-air,
but by the formative principle of the more inclusive whole of Nature
which unfolds and organises itself in a purposive manner." And on
page 191 of the same volume we read: "Teleology maintains only that,
in spite of the thousand misfits and miseries of this natural life,
there is a high degree of adaptation to purpose and plan unmistakable
in the formations and developments of Nature--an adaptation, however,
which is realised only within the limits of natural laws, and which
does not tend to the production of some imaginary fairy-land, in which
life would not be confronted by death, growth by decay, with all the
more or less unpleasant, but quite unavoidable, intermediary stages
between them. When the critics of Teleology oppose a laboriously
collected rubbish-heap of partial or complete, imaginary or real,
maladaptations to a world full of wonders of purposive adaptation,
such as Nature exhibits in all her domains, then I consider this just
as amusing----"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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