Scientific Thinking as an Approach to the Etheric

Wolfgang Schad

Chapter V
Toward a Phenomenology of the Etheric World

This contribution is an expanded version of the author’s essay “Biologisches Denken” (Biological Thinking) – see Schad 1966

The Modes of Scientific Thinking
That which anthroposophy terms “the etheric” is not perceptible to any bodily sense organ. Rudolf Steiner ( 1904, 1910) described this realm out of supersensible experience and drew attention to manifold phenomena as evidence of its working within the sensible realm. Perceptions of this kind arising out of earlier states of consciousness, such as, for example, the “ka” of the Egyptians or the “archaeus” of Paracelsus, become comprehensible today in this way, but not vice versa: we do not possess the ancient forms of consciousness, and where remnants of this are still present, they must be superseded by present-day consciousness. The consciousness of the present is that of modern natural science. The question is whether this attitude of consciousness bears within itself the capacity to find an empirical approach to the etheric. This question must be raised if the etheric is to be accessible to modern, rigorously self-consistent waking consciousness. This essay will attempt to describe a way in which such an approach might be developed.

As is already clear from the above, such an attempt founders on unscientific nebulousness if it seeks the etheric within the realm of bodily sense perception in the way that, for example, Kirlian photography and other modish “psi-phenomena” do (Binder and Kirschner 1975) . The safest initial assertion that can be made concerning the etheric is that it cannot take the place of physical energy, for otherwise it would reside within the physical realm, and thus be quantifiable and subject to the law of conservation of energy, into which balance it does not enter.

Yet it is precisely the sense perceptible to which natural science addresses itself. How is it, then, that despite this, science is taken here as an access to the etheric? This question makes it clear that the etheric becomes accessible not through the bodily sense organs, but rather where science proceeds beyond the activity of observation-indeed, where it first becomes a science: in thinking, in scientific thinking.

Rudolf Steiner depicts the etheric as that which brings every living being to life: an autonomous capacity to behave within matter, physical energy, space and time in a way different from that of lifeless objects. Thus our first task must be to conduct an inventory of the modes of thinking that have appeared in the biological sciences. We must therefore make the forms of our biological thinking in its various
applications themselves the object of our further investigations. Which modalities of thinking do we find within biology? In earlier times teleological thinking prevailed, a thinking that seeks final causes. Since the second half of the last century, this mode has been swept aside by causal explanation. Later we will speak of a third. What gives each its explanatory value?

Let us first turn to the causal mode of explanation. Today it is customarily held to be the only exact, scientific mode of thought. Its principle is the causal nexus. This principle states that every observed condition is the effect of a temporally prior cause, and, in addition, that every cause or every causal context can have but one kind of effect. All future events are thus necessary consequences of the present causes and these in turn the necessary effects of prior causes. The phenomena are determined in their sequence by the preceding conditions in the causal nexus. In causal explanation, the essential thing is that every phenomenon is recognized to be the product of its past.

The relationships stand differently in the case of teleological explanation. In contemporary scientific circles it is no longer considered an exact mode of explanation. Yet in countless particulars the organization of living beings appears so purposeful that, if one but looks for it, teleological interpretation in terms of purpose and goal still crops up frequently in the teaching of biology. Some kind of agency, explained no further-today “nature” for the most part-is supposed to have organized this or that in accordance with specific purposes. To be sure, such explanations are offered not in full seriousness, but rather with a trace of astonishment, and in quotation marks. Yet even if, for the most
part, this is not done in full seriousness, nevertheless in popular presentations today a wealth of questions is still answered in this way only. But what is the essential nature of this mode of thinking? A final purpose lying in the future works back upon the present relationships in such a way that they be come the means by which this final purpose is effected. The means are prior, and their future effect is the purpose. The essential factor here is that the determination works backward from the future. Teleological explanation recognizes a phenomenon only by virtue of its being conditioned by the future.

We come a step closer to the essential quality of each of these modes of explanation when we observe their applications. In which areas of science does one encounter primarily the causal mode, and in which the teleological?

The causal mode of thinking we find especially in physics and chemistry. Here this mode has been able to develop it self relatively unhindered, and surely this is connected with the way in which these areas of science, now seamlessly joined, have developed: each has evolved its method through dealing with inorganic nature. Here causal thinking has the clear advantage of presenting fewer boundary experiences than would another mode of thinking, because lifeless phenomena obviously can to a great extent be deduced from their
past states and understood in this way. There is no better schooling in causal thinking than the study of these scientific disciplines. The determination of physical events is, however, not absolutely valid, for in the microphysical realm of elementary particles, atomic events cannot be predicted exactly in terms of macroscopic, ” classical” quantities (e.g. time and energy), but rather only in terms of probabilities. It is, however, essential to macroscopic inorganic events that the statistical mean value of elemental probabilities does not exhibit variable regulation. Thus within the macroscopic dimension the causal nexus attains full validity.

Where is it that teleological modes of thinking are principally employed? This is the case especially in psychology. Teleological explanation presupposes a quality in the object that is oriented toward the future. This is actually the case in all drives, wishes, desires, longings, hopes or whatever else we call such faculties in everyday speech. Brentano ( 1911) spoke of intentionality, Craig ( 1918) and Lorenz ( 1937) of appetites. Spranger ( 1 924: 1 3) has noted that it is not at all necessary for these psychic contents always to have a fully conscious character: often they effect a teleology that remains “unconscious” even to themselves. When hunger emerges as an observable content of the soul, its objective meaning and purpose, namely to maintain the organism, does not at all need to be a content of the subjective consciousness. The desire for nourishment presses toward this goal nevertheless. It is the same with the instincts for flight, reproduction, mothering, etc . The context in which these dull psychic processes have meaning is part of an overreaching, or as Spranger says, “objective” teleology, which it is often entirely unnecessary to resolve first in the subjective consciousness.

With the participation of the constructive consciousness that looks to the future and premeditates, as for example in the case of a technologically creative person, the application of causal methods simultaneously reappears. Such conscious planning is, however, always set into motion by genuine drives, wishes and needs, without which the execution would not occur. Here also the actual future-oriented component is the will. To the extent that it projects into the future, its present bears the stamp of that same anticipated future. The essential quality of the will is that it always relates to the future. All phenomena that bear such a relationship to the future can be explained in teleological terms.

Now it is also clear where causal and teleological thought constructs are out of place. The parabolic path that has been traced by a stone thrown obliquely can be derived from the initial conditions, and thus in causal terms (the initial acceleration of the throw and continuing acceleration in the field of gravity) . The parabolic form does not arise because the stone would like to describe such a curve for any purpose.
On the other hand, as Spranger (1924: 21) says, Socrates did not sit in prison principally because the metabolism of his leg muscles brought him there. Even knowing that certain psychological characteristics can be influenced by hormones does not help the psychologist in any way to explain them. The chemical substance can function only as the liberator of capacities that must already be present potentially in the realm of the soul. Both teleological explanations in the inorganic realm of substance and causal explanations in the psychological realm of the will are out of place. 

Our thinking normally enters of its own accord into the time-relation of the phenomena in question when we think correctly. The dead world exists as such by virtue of its past alone. Through the inorganic the world’s past persists within the present. The instinctive-ensouled realm is likewise unable to do much with the present, since it yearns incessantly for a still unreal future. Through the realm of the soul the anticipated future is harnessed to the present. If one regards the present as something that has been effected, then its causal condition lies in the past, while its teleological condition lies in the future.

Now biology is a scientific discipline the objects of which, to the extent we are interested in them as living organisms, stand between the inanimate realm and the realm of the soul. Biology touches both realms, in that on the one hand the organism continually releases dead matter, while on the other hand the animals-particularly the higher animals-exhibit anticipatory behavior. Thus causal and teleological modes of explanation have been applied to biology in various ways. As is well known, there has been no lack of attempts to interpret the living organism from either the one or the other point of view; to reduce complicated processes, true to the principle of economy of thought, to more simple, fundamental processes. Those more intimate with the material aspect of the world used every opportunity to derive the organism mechanistically. Those closer to the side of psychological experience sought the fundamental life processes there-men like Driesch (1908), who spoke of the “psychoid”; or Strombach (1968), who seeks them in the unconscious psyche. For Rensch (1968)-as for Haeckel
(1917)-even the atoms of the inanimate world are ensouled, a totally undifferentiated monism that simply closes its eyes to the multiplicity of realms of experience.

Today we find neo-Darwinism widespread within the schools of biology. Its persuasiveness stems from its attempts to explain in causal terms what has hitherto been conceived teleologically. Automatically, i.e. without any guiding psyche, natural selection destroys the deleterious mutants from the overproduction of each population, so that those having gained an accidental advantage survive. The greater the pressure of natural selection, the greater the increase in adapted individuals. It became possible to abandon teleological explanations that assumed a purposeful anticipation of the future in favor of abundant factual data generated when the causal-i.e., future-blind-principle of natural
selection was hypothesized.

If one reviews what the Darwinian approach can and cannot explain today, one sees that it is largely accurate for the development of morphs, aberrations, varieties and races. For the evolution of genera and families, not to mention orders, classes or even phyla, Darwinian research offers only speculative constructs, by which we mean here everything that is not experimentally verifiable. No biologist has ever seen a spruce become a fir or a rose a plum tree, let  alone been able to breed them. Between race and genus stands the mediating concept of species. Whether or not natural selection (or isolation as negative selection, as a lack of selection) proves adequate depends upon the breadth of
one’s conception of the species. That which is possible in the case of species in a narrower sense (“microspecies”) cannot be fixed in the case of species in a wider sense (” macrospecies”); not to mention that a unified concept of species is not feasible (Overhage 1965 : 148- 168, Schilder 1952). One thing is certain, namely: that the whole of transspecific evolution (transspecific = “extending beyond species”) exhibits no experimental bases for a neo-Darwinistic interpretation. Peters (1972) has described this state of affairs in greater detail, and called for complementary models and constructs. In fact, it can be shown that in the realm of the higher systematic categories the evolutionary stages carry out not an increased adaptation to the environment, but rather an increased emancipation (Kipp 1949, Schad 1977:257ff.) . In addressing such questions one must realize that every organism present to the senses belongs simultaneously to each and every systematic level. To the extent that it is morph, strain and subspecies, the organism is subject to environmental adaptation in the Darwinian sense; to the extent that it is a member of its genus, family and especially its order and class, it exhibits degrees of freedom and autonomy of basic structure that remain recognizable despite all convergences: otherwise it would not have been possible since Linnaeus to construct a natural
systematics in place of his artificial one. Only when viewed in this way does one become aware of the significance of the concept of species as the vitally necessary organizational complex that mediates between the two antinomies. This is already apparent in the most frequent conceptual determination of the species: the sum of all individuals that are able to produce fertile offspring together. In mating, the mate is
always the single organism’s “environment” on the one hand; yet on the other, in terms of protein biology, it has nearly the same immanent characteristics. Suchantke (1974) has recently clarified this intermediate position of the concept of species in the case of butterflies. 

Since the suspected purposefulness of adaptive characteristics has often proved to be an illusory teleology, many biologists today seek signs of purposefulness only when considering all the integrated characteristics. If such characteristics are purposeful with regard to the maintenance of life, then they are deemed open to Darwinian interpretation. Countless phenomena are thus interpreted factually through
the demonstration of a teleology that is subsequently viewed as illusory, even though in the vast majority of cases the habit of determining the supposed causal nexus experimentally has yet to be acquired. Neo-Darwinism seeks teleologies and then explains them causally. Where it cannot find them, it remains unable to explain in causal terms. The result is a continual short-circuit between the two kinds of conditions, because one is working under an assumption that is eliminated again immediately thereafter. The problem of life is neither causal nor teleological, nor is it a dualistic “both-and. “

Much research has been done concerning the connection between body and soul. Most researchers have concluded that this connection does indeed exist, but that it is impossible to grasp it in a clearly demonstrable way, even in terms of brain physiology (Rein and Schneider 1964:602). This assessment is valuable, because it shows that the connection can be resolved neither upon the somatic nor upon the psychological level. Steiner was the first to make clear where it lies: between the psychological and the somatic level lies a realm unto itself, essentially different from the other two, a realm that can be apprehended neither by external sensory observation nor by psychological introspection: it is the activity of life. Its autonomy has stood the test of all the “spontaneous generation” experiments and is thus already-in
pragmatic scientific terms-among the most quantitatively secure data we have. Humans themselves experience this realm unconsciously, subconsciously. For, psychologically speaking, vital processes always run their course in a state of unconsciousness. And yet the reality of these sleep processes is indisputable. In keeping with an ancient usage, Steiner calls them the realm of the etheric. This is a realm
that exists neither physically nor in the realm of the soul, but rather effects and constitutes the connection between body and soul because it communicates with both-something that material and psychological processes can never do directly. 

Thus in every organism one is concerned not with purely lifeless and purely psychological processes, but first and foremost with processes that are predominantly vital. These have been impossible to derive in terms of causal analysis and remain so. The now widespread descriptions of the guidance of protein synthesis according to the base sequence of nucleic acids (DNA) have usually suppressed, for example, the fact that this is possible in vitro only through the removal of the nuclease enzymes that break down the nucleic acids (Matile 1973) . These proteinaceous enzymes are built up in vivo by the DNA, just as they themselves act to break down DNA. No one-dimensional causal  connections prevail here. The teleological mode of thinking remains equally unsatisfying here, because it also misses the unique quality of life. Both modes of explanation fail in the face of actual vitality, no matter how much they contribute to the investigation of the boundary conditions. With this we hit upon the central characteristic of the life-processes: as such they are determined not so much by previous or future conditions, but rather at each moment by their own present. The conditioning events are no longer separated in time from their effects; rather, condition and effect coincide temporally to a greater and greater degree and finally become equivalent in their mutual influence. Steiner once termed it a “relationship of reciprocal causality” (1922).

 

Research into ontogenetic life processes has already broadened out in this direction within biological cybernetics. This field seeks to trace the ways in which the one dimensional causal relationships in the organism are turned back upon the original conditions so that each consequence works retroactively. The causal chain is closed into a regulative loop. A step toward comprehending the relative constancy of every internal biological system, the homeostases (Cannon 1932), was made when these came to be viewed as cybernetic phenomena. Linear models were replaced by models with more complex ramifications and-what is essential-by retroactive networks of effects. 

What did this accomplish? It accomplished the dismantling of one-dimensional thinking even within the schools of biology. Since then, even the mechanistically oriented biologist now dares to tackle the problem of wholeness, the fundamental quality of the organism. Yet in principle biological cybernetics does not represent anything so entirely new in the history of science, other than a new linguistic garb. In
1796, Goethe already formulated the task of physiology in the following way: ”All that is wanting for a more rapid development of physiology as a whole, is that one never lose sight of the interaction of all the parts of a living body; for it is only by means of the concept that all the parts of an organic body work upon one part and that each part exerts its influence upon all in turn, that we can hope gradually to fill in the gaps in physiology”; the scientific endeavors that have repeatedly sought to carry Goethe’s work further long ago began to strive in this direction. One need only recall, within the context of academia, Smuts (1927), Haldane (1931), Koehler (1933) and Bertalanffy (1932, 1937) . Surprisingly-or understandably, depending how one takes it-this approach became acceptable to the “causally minded’ ‘ schools only when it became possible to express the unavoidable facts in technomorphic language. Control engineering provided the conceptual structures with a verbal garb such as “feedback,” “regulating unit” and “manipulated variable, ” “actual value” and “set point, ” ” redundancy” and “signal, ” “transfer characteristic, ” “channel capacity, ” and “error algorithms” -words that become technologically graphic when imagined as a circuit diagram. This would be unobjectionable if such language did not after all convey more than its mere denotation: adoption of such verbal forms supplies to a large extent the longed-for subliminal gratification that cannot be gained from the facts themselves, namely, that the organism is only a mechanism after all (see also Fromm 1974, and Schad 1975) . 

Our self-analysis of scientific thinking must still face the question: to which of the three modes of thinking we have described does cybernetics belong? In answering, let us disregard completely mere word-usage and examine instead the tendency ·of the thinking itself. Then it becomes clear that thinking in terms of operational loops will, in the final analysis, proceed causally as well. Only when cause and effect are conceived as simultaneous can thinking gain direct access to the living organism, but in cybernetic thinking cause and effect remain temporally disjunct. The cybernetic model’s rapid succession of causal steps approximates the simultaneity of the living, but does not capture it. Naturally one must not overlook the fact that such temporally-extended operational loops also exist within the organism where the
organism effects its modus vivendi by interacting with the unaltered physical world. But conversely, the cybernetic model is unable to demonstrate how, without technicians and entirely on its own, it would steadily evolve, metamorphose and develop further. How can the control function as such modify itself in an ordered way through time [in geordneter Zeitgestalt] ? No technological operational loop
metamorphoses itself without human intervention; it creates extended, invariable homeostases for as long as corosion allows. The organism alters its homeostases continually, and in a way that is both characteristic of the species and temporally ordered (Gut 1971 : 78-79) .

An example from the physiology of plasma-growth may clarify what has been said. The conceptual distinction drawn in the past between building-blocks (e.g. simple proteins) and active agents (vitamins, enzymes, hormones) can no longer be uniformly preserved. In the living organism there exist widely distributed substances that fall beneath neither rubric, because they are both building blocks (viewed as mass) and active agents (in their function). What this means is that conditioned and conditioner cannot be sharply distinguished, and thus remain inaccessible to causal analysis: if I change the conditions experimentally, then at the same time I change part of that which is to condition, if not entirely that which is at the same time conditioned. Here cause and effect are as indistinguishable as means and ends. The more the processes tend away from the inorganic and the psychological, and toward the vital, the more each building block becomes an agent and vice versa.

Here an alternative mode of explanation must be sought. One must look beyond causal and teleological relationships; one must seek above all the simultaneous relationships between phenomena. If one phenomenon occurs, then another related phenomenon necessarily occurs simultaneously. That two phenomena condition and promote one another in turn; that both occur together and by virtue of this are mutually explanatory, is the biological process fundamental to all organisms. The explanations support one another. Yet this mutual illumination does not in any way constitute a circular argument, since circularity is possible only in a situation where an unambiguous temporal distinction can be made, and then overlooked . In the case of living phenomena it is never possible to determine that one phenomenon alone exerts an effect and the other then merely exhibits the consequences. At most it is a matter of relative predominance in the mutual influence. In the ideal case the interaction is so balanced that condition and consequence become identical. The differentiation of the two concepts then becomes irrelevant: now one has to do only with genuine correlates. By virtue of this there consists among all parts of an organism an ongoing interrelationship, the visible evidence of which we term life. It is only through this simultaneous interrelationship that every organism appears to us at all times as a whole. Applied to such wholes, the causal and teleological nexus are over-extended conceptual frameworks because they obscure the simultaneous correlation. Thus the word “correlation” is not employed here, as it often is, to signify a relationship not yet submitted to causal analysis, but rather for a relationship that is simultaneously and mutually conditioning.

The relationship between living phenomena is, however, not merely simultaneous-in that case it could also be accidental. It is also a necessary one. What criterion do we employ to decide whether this simultaneous interrelationship is necessary? Contemporary thinking requires that each of two criteria be met. One is “inner consistency throughout the whole,” as Goethe called it ( 1784) : “The inner consistency throughout the whole makes every creature what it is, and man is man as much through the form and nature of his upper maxilla as he is man through the form and nature of the last part of his little toe. ‘ 

What is meant here is a correspondence and consistency of structure and form that can be clearly described (Schad 1965), and for which one senses an abundance of evidence. We agree with Bischof (1970), however, that the interpretation of particular cases is not infallible. Thus let us add a second criterion: fruitfulness in the further application of the perceived relationships. Transparency and clarity of internal evidence on the one hand, and on the other, abundant confirmation through being able to solve otherwise insoluble problems are the two truth criteria for the explanatory mode appropriate to the living realm. As long as we are unable to observe the unconscious world of the etheric directly, we experience it at its two boundaries: from the psychological aspect in the experience of evidence, and from the physical aspect in the measure of fruitful application.

We can summarize what has been described up to now in the following way. In considering the various modes of thinking we encountered three different kinds, each of which is preferable in one characeristic scientific realm:

causal
physics, chemistry
mineral-lifeless
determined by the past

correlative
biology
living
the present

teleological thinking
psychology
psychological realm
the future

In scientific thinking we discover an order similar to that obtaining within the three realms of nature themselves. We think differently depending upon the object of our thinking in the world-if we grasp that object correctly. In this way threefold nature demands of our thinking a threefold variety. Thus the natural world is not explicable in terms of one way of thinking; in that case it would be schematic. But at
the same time it is not merely dualistic; in that case it would consist only of contradictions. Besides the processes that unfold causally and those that are psychological-teleological there is in nature a realm that stands between these, mediates nature’s duality through its active presence, and binds the others together without eliminating them: this is the realm of the etheric. It acts as a mediator between the dead
and the ensouled aspects of nature.

It is noteworthy in this regard that each realm has a different relationship to time. For lifeless processes time exists only as a “hollow” time segment, e.g. the elapsed time of movement in physics or the speeds of reactions in chemistry. Such segments can for the most part be halted at will and continued again just as well after an interruption of any duration. Time is equally uninteresting in the case of psychological processes because everything is bent upon future goals, the attainment of which is more important than the interim period of time. A life process, however, always proceeds for the sake of its own present. Here time is no longer a mere time segment; rather it is individualized
time, time made autonomous in each organism’s own life rhythm that cannot be lengthened or shortened at will. Steiner termed this capacity of time the “time body”; this body builds up a species’ characteristic form partly in accordance with, and partly in opposition to “external time, ” just as the spatial body partly opens itself to, and partly isolates itself from the environment.

The three kingdoms of nature do not exist side-by-side, for in the final analysis past, present and future also constitute a continuum. Yet an example of the way in which they relate to one another stands before us in every ensouled creature. This is the reason why the organism is so ambiguous. But we may say that its ambiguity is an ordered one and can thus be surveyed in an orderly manner: insofar as the organism is physically present, it can be analyzed in causal terms. Insofar as it lives, it is explicable only in correlative terms. And insofar as it manifests psychological capacities, these are comprehensible teleologically. If we wish to understand the world of living creatures, then our task is to recognize where one can explain causally, where in terms of simultaneous interrelation, and where teleologically. 

In their theistic world view, earlier ages plainly had the possibility of experiencing nature, just as it is, as willed by higher worlds. The last centuries, especially the last 150 years, have taught us to exhaust the possibilities of the mechanistic interpretation. Goethe was in a particularly strong position to develop the mode of thinking that does justice to living processes. The essential quality of his scientific thinking is precisely his ability to seek out the interrelations within the present. That is the sense of his words of 1829: ” Seek nothing behind the phenomena; they are themselves the theory. In the type of the mammalian skeleton he saw the nexus of parts that simultaneously require one another. In his morphological studies he sought to comprehend the forms in time [Zeitgestalten]. Before this “Goethean” mode of thinking there stands today a rich field of possibilities, one cultivated already in many places, but virgin land in many more (see also Hassenstein 1950 and Heisenberg 1967). We speak here frequently of a “Goetheanistic” way of thinking. Yet in the end, Goethean research in
the broad sense exists wherever methods adequate to their respective object in nature are employed.

Scientific Thinking in Process

In our consideration of the three modes of scientific thinking, we have thus far sketched each as equally valuable and, as it were, synchronic. Yet in so doing the various areas of research, the dead, the living and the sentient levels of nature are made to appear synchronic as well. Yet we know that all of nature, including man, has arisen out of a common temporal process of development: evolution. Is this temporal dimension not lost in our typological method? The opposite is the case, if we now seek to trace the temporal procedure and course of scientific thinking as well. 

Everyone who finds solutions to problems, however trivial, can afterwards observe his train of thought in retrospect. In scientific endeavors such a procedure is often many-faceted and thus capable of being examined in great detail. This requires a certain exertion, for in science much more than in the arts we are inclined to seize upon the result only and to regard the way in which it was obtained as of no consequence, or at least of less consequence than the result. But only when this procedure is also subjected to an inventory and investigation can the scientific attitude of thinking make itself understood and understand itself-the goals we set ourselves at the outset.

In Copei (1960), whose worthwhile collection was undertaken out of pedagogical interest, one finds a series of self portraits by well-known researchers. Helmholtz reports as follows concerning his “sudden insights” [glilckliche Einfiille] : “Often enough they sneak into the circle of one’s thinking without one’s recognizing their importance at first; then occasionally yet another chance circumstance helps one later on to recognize when and under what circumstances they have come-otherwise they are there without one’s knowing their origin. In other cases they emerge suddenly, without exertion, like an inspiration. In my experience, they have never come to a tired brain, and never at the desk.
I always needed first to have turned all sides of my problem this way and that until I surveyed all its turns and tangles in my mind and could run through them freely, without writing. To get that far without extensive previous work is usually impossible. Then, after the resulting fatigue had passed, an hour of perfect bodily freshness and a quiet feeling of well-being was necessary before the good insights came. Often . . . they were there in the morning upon awakening, as Gauss has also noted. But they were especially wont to come . . . during leisurely climbs upon wooded mountains in sunny weather. . . . The descent was less beautiful when the redeeming insights did not come. Then I could bite into such a question for weeks and months at a time. . . . ” (from Copei, following Ostwald 1910: 302ff.). Helmholtz described his train of thought, working backwards from the result. How did his thinking transpire going forwards? The process of cognition swings into action
through searching and pressing for a solution to a problem that no longer leaves him “cold”. Weeks, even months of work are invested, and all known and surmisable ways of solving the problem are run through. This process, is in its whole psychological habitus, teleological, directed intentionally toward a goal–the goal of the solution. It can to a large extent be made methodical by means of the “extensive previous work.”

Not, however, the process that follows so very differently: the sudden insight. It often comes precisely when one does not force or even expect it; not at one’s desk, but rather during a hike in the woods that relaxes, unburdens and calms the soul, or out of sleep. Whence it comes, and
how it arises directly out of the work that has gone before, remains mostly obscure. Nevertheless, everything depends upon it; nothing is more welcome. Goethe termed such promptings “apercus, ” and described their characteristic features: “It comes over the thinker like an illumination, and the fullness of the particular orders itself before the mind’s eye as though of itself, lawfully and interpenetrating” (see Copei 1960:30) . Even that which is least expected suddenly closes together in the consciousness of the thinker in a simultaneous order, like a tableau. This process is brought to life by the self-structuring of the genuine correlative relationship. For this reason it can be acquired only
through practice and not by means of recipe-like instructions. For this reason it can be acquired only through practice and not by means of recipe-like instructions.

After a discovery in number theory, Gauss writes: “But all brooding, all seeking was in vain; finally, a few days ago, I succeeded . . . . Just like lightning striking, the riddle solved itself. I myself would not be capable of tracing the thread leading from that which I knew previously, according to which I made my last attempts, and that which enabled me to succeed” (from Copei, following Knapp 1928). And then very characteristically: he would already have the result, if only he knew how to get there.

After having arrived at the conception of the saving insight, we continue on into the beginning of the third process: despite all the work that has gone before, the freshly conceived idea seems premature. Often the appropriate words must first be found. Here begins the work of incorporating the idea into discursive, linear thinking. What were the presuppositions, and what logical chain of thought can be found that afterwards, and indeed every time, reaches the already recognized goal again? Thinkers love to find the most “elegant” (i.e. the shortest) way, but thereby the path originally traversed is usually obscured by the new consciousness. The advantage, however, is that the proof worked
out in retrospect is formulated and ensured once and for all, and can as a result be reproduced and employed at will. Thus in this final step the establishment of the causal mode of thinking reveals itself to be predominant. Even if this is not necessarily true of the content, it certainly is of the form, since the syntax of a verbal formulation already requires that one thought follow from another in the succession of words.

The process underlying every scientific discovery, however small, exhibits these three steps at least, even if individual researchers place the one or the other in the foreground of consciousness according to their own psychological disposition. One finds further descriptions aplenty in recent research on creativity (Revesz 1952 as well as Krech and Crutchfield 1962) . As has already been noted, in contemporary scientific thinking the causally formulated end result is universally held to be of the utmost importance. Knowing can easily seem more important than thinking. In the mere transmission of knowledge, [Wissensvennittlung] the student often experiences in place of the sufferings and joys of
discovery only the spiritually anonymous result. Thus the name “science” [Wissenschaft] . A better term for it would be “cognition” [Erkenntnisschaft] , if it were not so clumsy in German (see also Gegenbaur 1 874: 2-3). For this reason the above presentation is all the more valuable for fruitful research and teaching. Clearly there are several different organizational levels of the human constitution active in the
thinking human being. These we must now distinguish.

For a long enough time, neither materialistic monism nor the most varied dualisms (body/soul or matter/spirit) have helped us advance. In accordance with our experience we can recognize at least four forms of reality. Since 1921 Nicolai Hartmann ( 1921 , 1932, 1940, 1964) has worked out a four-level theory that one still encounters in, e.g. , Max Hartmann ( 1 936, 1948), Waiter Heitler ( 1970b, 1974), Konrad Lorenz ( 1 97 1) , Wilhelm Troll ( 1951) and many of their students. However, we prefer the work of Rudolf Steiner ( 1904, 1910), because in Hartmann’s case the gradations are merely conceptually deduced, while Steiner’s rest upon an empiricism both sensory and supersensory.

For the enlightened adult consciousness of today the physically weighable, materially differentiated human body can be clearly perceived by the senses and described in words. The physically quantifiable forms of energy belong to this level as well. Humans share this level with all other natural forms of existence. They have the quality of life in common with the plants. Strangely enough, this latter cannot be reconstructed by the senses directly, but only indirectly in terms of the spatial and temporal ordering that we call an organism. In that we live, we are given from the outset at least unconscious evidence of life within ourselves. The third part of our human nature that we encounter is again more accessible to our waking consciousness: the emotional life of the soul that experiences wishes, pleasure, aversion, aggression, etc. The animals have this in common with us to varying degrees. A characteristic unique to the human being is that which he summons up as consciousness of self and capacity for independent action-even in the face of just those mere feelings of pleasure and aversion. Here one has spoken ever and again of the human personality, the human individuality or spiritual kernel. Steiner named this entity with the simplest German word, one that the individual uses to signify him or herself in every self-identification, however small: the “I.” The following terms are commonly employed in anthroposophy for these four parts of the human constitution:

the I-organization
the astral organization or sentient body
the etheric organization, life-body, time-body, or formative-forces-body
the physical organization or material body

One is struck that the “I” retains its designation in modern language, while the word “astral” stems from medieval and Latin culture, and “etheric” and “physical” are taken over from Greek antiquity-evidently in conjunction with the time period in which a clear consciousness of each developed during cultural history.

The human being alone is capable of scientific thinking. Thus it proceeds from the human “I ” and only the “I” can advance it. Only if an “I” steps back in consciousness from everything that it is not itself, is it able to objectify everything else as “the world. ” What became apparent in
the levels of thinking already described was that this separation from the world unleashes the psychic drive to regain but now consciously-full participation therein. Cognitional striving and curiousity are entirely emotional components (Bischof 1970), which show that work now commences upon the astral level. The longer it lasts, the more it is accentuated by displeasure. The next phase passes over into the unconscious life of the etheric organization. Just as this etheric organization creates corporeal order in sleep without our knowledge, so here it creates order within cognitional activity, if the problems have previously been posed in a fundamental fashion and one can wait. Here in the time-body the affair “takes its time”-as we note and say quite correctly. A scientist of the previous century who has remained unknown, Peter Heuser, writes in his essay of 1858 ” On Sensory and Spiritual Cognition in the Realm of Nature”:

“A matter is obscure to me, incomprehensible. I engage my powers of thinking, compare, distinguish; still I do not find the truth. Only after several days of further thinking does the truth stand out clearly in my mind. How did it arise within me? Is it perhaps also a spiritual-organic product that requires time to develop, just like the stalk of wheat in the material-organic creation of the wheat kernel? ” Thus Heuser cloaks in the form of a question his experience that there are manifestations of life within thinking as well.

But the result is translated into a form that can be retained in memory or learned only when we engage the faculty that thinks as much as possible in causal terms. This latter process is irrevocably dependent upon an intact brain organization, and is thus a function of the physical body. When many brain physiologists say that thinking is a function of the brain, they are right insofar as by thinking they usually mean causal thinking. Yet this is only one of several possible modes of thinking. In the case of the other modes, the organs of thinking become those higher parts of the human constitution whose processes are in retrospect much more difficult to recall, but are primarily those that make thinking possible. It is only because they are harder to retain in memory that we often do not know the extent and intensity to which we engage in brain-free thinking (see Steiner 1917:63f.). The brain-bound activities of storage and logical combination can, conversely, be simulated by physical means-if only partially, for the brain is also a living organ. But it is an unscientific begging of the question to proclaim
that computers can think, and that the brain is likewise a computer. In the last chapter of Hassenstein’s book Information and Control in the Living Organism (1 965) one finds an enlightening discussion of this point (see also Hassenstein 1966) . 

In summarizing what has been achieved thus far we might say: In teleological thinking the researcher is active primarily in his or her own astral body; at the correlative level in his or her own etheric body; and in causal thinking with his or her own nervous system. The first level can easily be observed and made methodical through introspection; the last through “extraspection. ” All the more attractive is the intermediate phase, which, despite being less operable, nevertheless proves especially fruitful if one surveys the process as a whole. The essential characteristic of the etheric body is to unfold its activity, also in thinking, not as linear one-dimensionality, but rather as a two dimensional, tableau-like picture. Allow me to reach for a poetic image to which an unknown epigone of Morgenstern’s humoresques turned
for help:

Das Augenuh
Palmstrom hat private Tiere sich erfunden
zu besonderem Umgang in besonderen Stunden.
Von dem Augenuh erfand er gleich ein Parchen;
sieht wie Reh aus, grau mit Silberharchen,
und ist etwas unanriihrbar Zartes.
Niemand ausser ihm, das weiss er schon, gewahrt es.
Selbst er selbst erlaubt sich selten das Geniessen,
sie im blossen Geist vorsichtig zu begriissen.
Denn bei zu viel Anbeguck-womoglich gar mit
Zweckwerden diese Tiere scheu und laufen weg.

The Augenooh
Palmstrom has invented private creatures of his own
To occupy himself in quiet hours sitting home.
Of Augenooh he straightway made himself a little pair;
They look like deer a little, only gray with silver hair,
And really are quite delicate and pure.
Nobody else can see them, he is sure.
But he knows he can’t indulge himself too often
In mental greetings to them-e’en with precaution.
For when they sense intent in lingering stares,
They run and hide themselves like timid hares.

The wag often captures better than the essayist what cannot be delivered over to the intellect, what is properly the object of that “gentle empiricism” (Goethe)-more a “receiving” than a “grasping”-which demands genuine reverence for the object of thought.

We now gain insight into the internal necessity of the fact that the mode of thinking best suited to the investigation of the physical-inorganic world is the mode that we are most wont to carry out with our own physical nervous sys tern. Upon this rests the success of causal analysis in the cognitional and practical mastery of the physical world in physics, chemistry and their technology. It becomes equally clear that correlative thinking is necessary to an understanding of living objects, because life processes always consist in total interrelationship. In other words: organisms live because they have an etheric organization, and thus they can be grasped only by a thinking that employs its own
etheric organization. Where the etheric organization is not employed as an instrument, the living object is missed entirely. The destruction of the environment on a global scale today results from the inability of physical-chemical thinking to make comprehensible the everlasting interaction, the regulative variability of biological equilibria. The phenomena of the psyche, especially those that humans and animals
have in common, become comprehensible by means of teleological conceptualization, where, in observing, I transcend the physical and etheric organizations of the animal and am confronted with the immediate workings of the astral. To that end thinking will employ its own astral body, because everything of the nature of desire-whether in the object or in the subject-is always similarly future-oriented.

Result and Prospect
In the approaches to the natural world that have arisen historically, we have identified three forms of thinking that correspond to the manifest order of this existing world. We found moreover that in the full course of the process of cognition the features characteristic to all three capacities for thinking come to light. The first, second or third will step into the foreground, depending on the object. Knowledge
of the single human being in his or her unique individuality, however, cannot yet be attained in this way. Our theme is scientific cognition in its entirety, and this science comprehends the human being only insofar as the human is also subsumed beneath unindividuated typologies. This must be expressly emphasized. In conclusion, we turn to address the question of the genetic connections between the three manners of thinking.

Many researchers are irritated by the question whether human thinking can transcend its subjective, alienated character at all. We saw that the incitement to thinking rests upon the separation of the human ego from the world, i.e. upon the separation of subject and object. Attempts at thinking are always subjective at the outset-even if they were already factually in accord with their object, one could not yet decide this conclusively. The process of fruitful cognition consists in overcoming this division. The closer the process of cognition approaches to its goal, the more the sharp division between subject and object disappears. The very possibility of insight into the truth rests precisely upon the experience of the fact that the lawfulness of that which lies outside the “I” emerges within one’s own “I” and then no longer remains an alien object. One can say just as well that the “I” rediscovers itself as present within the content of the world (Steiner 191 1). True cognition is neither subjective nor objective; rather, it accomplishes precisely the task it has set itself: reaching out to overcome the division. It is universal (Steiner 1 894) . Thinking heals the wounds that the alienation of humanity from the world has inflicted upon both. That this is possible is not to be wondered at in the end, seeing that humanity had its origin in the same evolutionary process as every other realm of nature. For this reason alone they can never be totally alienated from humanity. Thus cognition is an actively accomplished, conscious reentry into existential, evolutionary union with the content of the world.

The way in which this unification unfolds when accomplished can, in turn, nowhere be experienced more realistically than within the many levels of human nature itself. As nature’s most fully developed creature, the human being bears the results of all the previously achieved tableaus of nature’s existence within its own organization. More precise observation now shows that division into inorganic, living and sensate realms does not represent a spatial stratification; rather, these are engaged in a reciprocal process whereby one develops out of another, in an “inner” evolution

Everything we find in the human body by way of lifeless matter such as hair, nails, bone crystalloids, urine, etc . , was previously alive; all these originated in metabolism, and display numerous characteristics of their origins, apart from which they cannot be comprehended. Nor is the sphere of life comprehensible in insolation. It is precisely in the human being that one can observe how biological development and health are not givens, but rather depend to a great extent upon psychological disposition and fundamental wellbeing. One only need recall those organic disturbances the psychological causes of which have been uncovered by depth psychology and psychosomatics. Recent studies of psycho-hygiene in childhood have made it entirely clear that growth, development and health cannot be ensured through mere care of the body: these biological processes unfold properly only when loving attention, bonding and feelings of security remain intact within the soul (Spitz in Schmalohr 1968) .

The accepted view of evolution: lifeless matter-life sensation, which originated in the theoretical need to simplify the undertaking as much as possible, must be complemented by the evolutionary sequence gained through observation: sensation-living order-lifeless matter. If one
compares both aspects of temporal dependence, one sees that influence is exerted in both directions. One can intervene in life processes and sensations for limited periods of time with the help of psycho-chemicals and anabolic drugs, just as, conversely, psychological encouragement and the will to live can have long-term physiological effects.

However, more careful experimental and conceptual analysis brings to light an essential difference. The effect of substances upon psychological and physiological processes always consists in the releasing of faculties latent at a higher level; in no way do these faculties originate from the lower level. One only need recall Spemann’s unsuccessful attempt at explanation; irrespective of the specific material, his
“organizer” always triggers only those reactions that the salamander embryo has built up during its sensitive periods (Danzer 1 966:69-70) . And it is well known that psychochemicals, hormones and psychedelic drugs only bring to the surface that has long since been present in the soul.

Yet in the other direction one can trace the way in which psychological attitudes, engrained through social practices, pass over into unconscious habits of life and organic well- or ill-being. Everything psychological loses its intentionality when it attains the order it has sought and passes out of the emotional realm into the unconscious realm of the etheric. Similarly, at the next deeper level, excretions of the body arise without exception out of the life context. Thereby the latter evolutionary direction must be valued as decidedly more real.

The main obstacle to the recognition of the three modes  of being lay and still lies in their not sharing any single time quality: rather, as has already been shown, each stands in a different relationship to time, and thus their evolution cannot be imagined simply in terms of the linear succession of physical time. Yet considered in terms of the phenomenology of thinking, this difficulty opens the way to the solution
of the problem posed at the outset; we need only weave together all of the motifs we have already elaborated.

Scientific thinking is the search for and reestablishment of the evolved order that has been disintegrated through our having become “I”s and our attendant alienation from the world. This reestablishment is experienced chiefly where we rediscover the correlative life-orders. In the psychological emotional realm, we do not discover it immediately; within all pleasure and displeasure, all sympathy and antipathy, we
find only the wish, the drive, the striving for a satisfying order which is never that of the moment. Everything astral becomes etheric order only in the future, because only there will it have attained the order it has sought and which alone satisfies thinking. On the other hand, we think of the dying or dead matter within us in causal terms, as proceeding from conditions lying in the past, because the living order in
which it originated always lies in the past. In retracing the chain of causes and effects, causal thinking seeks in the final analysis nothing other than the living order out of which the dead has meanwhile fallen, and that alone satisfies thinking here as well.

Anthroposophy demonstrates that the human being is the alphabet whose language the world speaks to us. That which takes place in the day-to-day life of every human being as a kind of microcosmic evolution, stands as an archetypal image of the evolution of the cosmos. Humanity’s origins lay in the cosmos of spirit, and in the subsequent stages of evolution humanity allowed the ensouled, living and material worlds to precipitate out of itself. The Middle Ages held worms and flies to be the spontaneous products of dead mud until in 1668 Francesco Redi demonstrated his “omnevivum ex vivo” (“everything living out of the living”). The sixteenth century viewed fossils as “ludi naturae” (“games of nature”) until Leonardo Gessner and others recognized in these stones the remnants of real living creatures. Even the last century held the earth’s vast quantities of oil to be of inorganic origin until it could be demonstrated that chlorophyll and hemoglobin were contained therein. It has been established only recently that all chalk sediments are biogenic. Traces of life in the form of organic compounds have been established all the way back into the earliest period of rock formation. Russian geologists hold that organic life was the main factor determining the evolution of the mineral composition of sedimentary strata” (Universitas 1974) . Modern natural science has but a short history: future centuries will find further evidence for this emerging trend of finding the origins of the mineral world within the living. Similar relationships between psychological attitudes and living capabilities will likewise be researched more fully as the growing exploitation of the earth’s ecosystem transforms the interrelationship between nature and culture from a theoretical problem into a practical one of survival. For today it must be admitted: the decisive impulse has been bequeathed to us by the exclusive and one-sided overvaluation
of causal-logical thinking. We must radically rethink science in more productive and differentiated ways if we wish to heal the biosphere of the earth.

Thus, even though the lifeless part of the world is that which has died away, its determinants have their origins in the living order of that world’s past. Thus causal thinking can best be applied to this part of the world because, by establishing the backward orientation already out of itself, it seeks unconsciously the past order from which everything stems: the etheric. Since on the other hand everything psychological-astral strives for future wholeness, every teleology indicates already in its very attitude of thought that an order comprehensible to thinking can be attained only from the perspective of the future etheric state which is still in the making. In the face of life itself, causal and teleological thinking prove blunt instruments. The phenomena of life “are themselves the theory . ” What thinking seeks in the realm of the etheric, it finds just in the immediate, active present, and it is only here that thinking finds it in full. Looking back upon both the other modes of thinking we can say: not only correlative thinking, but all three modes of thinking in science are concerned with the etheric and are
themselves the paths to the etheric, to the etheric of the past, of the present, and to that which will become active etherically in the future. This is the life of all thinking.

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