In this groundbreaking book, Nigel Hoffmann shows that understanding the dynamic, living qualities of nature requires artistic capacities. He distinguishes four stages of scientific inquiry that correspond to the four classical elements of Earth, Water, Air, and Fire. Modern analytical science with its causal thinking can be characterized as an Earth mode of cognition. A dynamic approach that follows transformation over time requires a sculptural sense of form and corresponds to the element of Water. The stages of Air and Fire engage yet more vital aspects of nature through musical and poetic capacities. Combining scholarly-scientific acuity with artistic insight, Hoffmann first characterizes these four different ways of knowing. He then applies them, leading us ever more deeply into the dynamic qualities of specific plants, animals, and the landscape they live in. In doing so, he demonstrates how this four-step methodology provides a comprehensive framework for the life sciences. This beautifully illustrated book will appeal to all who are interested in gaining deeper insights into nature. "I put my hopes for the future in such practice because it plants seeds of a life-attuned thinking into the world that can help us to act in more life-engendering ways." --Craig Holdrege (in his foreword) Contents: Art and the Emergence of an Authentic Organic Science Goethe and the Phenomenological Method Toward an Authentic Method in the Life Sciences A Goethean Methodology through the Elemental Modes Earth Cognition--Physical Thinking--the Mechanical Water Cognition -- Imagination -- the Sculptural Air Cognition -- Inspiration -- the Musical Fire Cognition -- Intuition -- the Poetical Evolution as Creative Process The Landscape and its Organs The Human Being and the Evolution of Landscape The Yabby Ponds: A Goethean Study of Place

Examines Goethe's neglected but sizable body of scientific work, considers the philosophical foundations of his approach, and applies his method to the real world of nature.

‘Concern for the world today provides the impetus to ask of ourselves a profound question… how can our way of knowing, the very style of our thinking which informs our research and our teaching, come to express care, to reveal itself to be a deed and duty of care?’ Basing this practical study on the human quality of care for the world around us, Nigel Hoffmann takes us to a threshold beyond which lies a true science of living form. Care, he says, springs from the whole human being – the thinking, heart and will – and is implicit in the sci­entific method of conscious inner participation in nature that derives from the work of the poet and scientist Goethe. The Goethean approach – a living form that unites science and art – is not an alternative to contemporary science but complements it. Artistic practice, says Hoffmann, is a guide across the threshold and into the sphere of the living whole. But artistic sensibility can be raised to a higher possibility of itself, allowing us to discover the faculties of cognitive feeling and cognitive will. The author calls for a grounding in Goethean science for all students as a preliminary to their specialist and professional studies. He introduces us to the concept of the metamorphosis of the university – from the doctoral ideal to the ideal of the whole human being – and concludes with a case study of the economic sphere and capital using Goethean methodology. This profound book indicates a transformative path for human culture and civilization in the 21st century.

This collection of Steiner's introductions to Goethe's works re-visions the meaning of knowledge and how we attain it. Goethe had discovered how thinking could be applied to organic nature and that this experience requires not just rational concepts but a whole new way of perceiving. In an age when science and technology have been linked to great catastrophes, many are looking for new ways to interact with nature. With a fundamental declaration of the interpenetration of our consciousness and the world around us, Steiner shows how Goethe's approach points the way to a more compassionate and intimate involvement with nature.

"In the course of every human life, moments come -- often so quietly as to be almost unrecognized -- that are so subtle and unobtrusive, they pass without one being fully aware of them. These moments are like the gentle tones of birds singing in their sleep, the faint sound of a bell ringing far away, or the gentle touch of an invisible hand. "Nevertheless, all these moments, perceived or unperceived, are manifestations of destiny in each human life, 'the evidence of things not seen.' They express the secret language of the heart and invite one to begin a journey. They involve taking important steps on a life path, which one senses instinctively will ultimately lead to the light of one's own higher self and into the world of spiritual reality, the 'land' where the real foundations of life purposes are to be found. Thus, one sets out on a path that can lead to the unfolding of the unique mystery of each individual life story. Such is the substance of the journey described in these pages." --Paul Marshall Allen Paul Allen was born into a Quaker family on June 26, 1913, in the small upstate New York village of Conquest. The life that followed was as varied outwardly as it was deeply committed inwardly to following a path of knowledge. He was a teacher, actor, writer, and publisher, each role connecting him with the world as a "Rosicrucian soul." For Paul, the most important event of destiny occurred when he encountered Rudolf Steiner's spiritual science through the actor Michael Chekhov, leading Paul to dedicate his life to Anthroposophy as a path of inner knowledge and activity in the world. In A Rosicrucian Soul, Russell Pooler takes the reader on a journey through the life of a man who profoundly affected everyone he encountered. During the early days of Anthroposophy in North America, Paul delved deeply into Rudolf Steiner's works and became the "first American-born anthroposophic lecturer," traveling across the continent and bringing the few, far-flung Anthroposophic Society members in North America a greater sense of unity and purpose. In New York City, with Bernie Garber, he began publishing the works of Rudolf Steiner and, with Carlo Pietzner, compiled A Christian Rosenkreutz Anthology. Paul Allen eventually started his own publishing company, St. George Book Service, a mail-order book business in western Massachusetts. Later, destiny took Paul and his wife, architect Joan deRis Allen, to Camphill villages in the British Isles and Norway, where they lived, as Paul produced numerous plays, the most significant of which were Rudolf Steiner's Four Mystery Dramas. Throughout this life story, as outer events unfold, the reader is guided to a sense of the inner activities of this very Rosicrucian soul and, perhaps more important, to glimpses of how each of us affects each other through our inner struggles and consequent actions.

An introduction to Goethe's natural scientific writings, this book provides an alternative approach to "a science of living nature," one that goes beyond simple numbers and measurements. Goethe's development of morphological thought is a disciplined methodology that provides such an alternative. Through such observation, we can being to see the essence of living nature. Rudolf Steiner derived his theory of knowledge from Goethe's practice of natural science - and hence our understanding of biodynamic agriculture is tied to Goethe's approach. This book contains five writings by Goethe, as well as two by Rudolf Steiner.

This book explores how and when biology emerged as a science in Germany. Beginning with the debate about organism between Georg Ernst Stahl and Gottfried Leibniz at the start of the eighteenth century, John Zammito traces the development of a new research program, culminating in 1800, in the formulation of developmental morphology. He shows how over the course of the century, naturalists undertook to transform some domains of natural history into a distinct branch of natural philosophy, which attempted not only to describe but to explain the natural world and became, ultimately, the science of biology.