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Author: Nigel Hoffmann
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 200
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Book Description
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
Author: Nigel Hoffmann
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 200
Get Book Here
Book Description
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
Author: David Seamon
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791436820
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 346
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Book Description
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.
Author: Rudolf Steiner
Publisher: SteinerBooks
ISBN: 0880109335
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 499
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Book Description
At the young age of twenty-one, Rudolf Steiner was chosen to edit Goethe's scientific writings for the principle Geothe edition of his time. Goethe's literary genius was universally acknowledged; it was Steiner's task to understand and comment on Goethe's scientific achievements. Steiner recognized the significance of Goethe's work with nature and his epistemology, and here began Steiner's own training in epistemology and spiritual science. 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.
Author: Henri Bortoft
Publisher: SteinerBooks
ISBN: 1584205040
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 564
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Book Description
"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.
Author: David Seamon
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438419309
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 340
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Book Description
Though best known for his superlative poetry and plays, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) also produced a sizable body of scientific work that focused on such diverse topics as plants, color, clouds, weather, and geology. Goethe's way of science is highly unusual because it seeks to draw together the intuitive awareness of art with the rigorous observation and thinking of science. Written by major scholars and practitioners of Goethean science today, this book considers the philosophical foundations of Goethe's approach and applies the method to the real world of nature, including studies of plants, animals, and the movement of water. Part I discusses the philosophical foundations of the approach and clarifies its epistemology and methodology; Part II applies the method to the real world of nature; and Part III examines the future of Goethean science and emphasizes its great value for better understanding and caring for the natural environment.
Author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262013096
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 156
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Book Description
Goethe's influential text, newly illustrated with stunning color photographs. The Metamorphosis of Plants, published in 1790, was Goethe's first major attempt to describe what he called in a letter to a friend “the truth about the how of the organism.” Inspired by the diversity of flora he found on a journey to Italy, Goethe sought a unity of form in diverse structures. He came to see in the leaf the germ of a plant's metamorphosis—“the true Proteus who can hide or reveal himself in all vegetal forms”—from the root and stem leaves to the calyx and corolla, to pistil and stamens. With this short book—123 numbered paragraphs, in the manner of the great botanist Linnaeus—Goethe aimed to tell the story of botanical forms in process, to present, in effect, a motion picture of the metamorphosis of plants. This MIT Press edition of The Metamorphosis of Plants illustrates Goethe's text (in an English translation by Douglas Miller) with a series of stunning and starkly beautiful color photographs as well as numerous line drawings. It is the most completely and colorfully illustrated edition of Goethe's book ever published. It demonstrates vividly Goethe's ideas of transformation and interdependence, as well as the systematic use of imagination in scientific research—which influenced thinkers ranging from Darwin to Thoreau and has much to teach us today about our relationship with nature.
Author: Henri Bortoft
Publisher: Floris Books
ISBN: 0863159680
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 268
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Book Description
The history of western metaphysi from Plato onwards is dominated by the dualism of being and appearance. What something really is (its true being) is believed to be hidden behind the 'mere appearances' through which it manifests. Twentieth-century European thinkers radically overturned this foundation. With Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer came a major step towards taking appearance seriously, exploring a way of seeing that draws attention back 'upstream', from what is experienced into the act of experiencing. Understood in this way, perception is a dynamic event, a 'phenomenon', in which the observer participates. Henri Bortoft guides us through this dynamic way of seeing in various areas of experience -- in distinguishing things, the finding of meaning, and the relationship between thought and words. He also explores similarities with Goethe's reflections on the coming-into-being of the living plant. Here, in another reversal of classical thinking, we find that even in their 'diversity of appeareances', living things are not separate but in relation. Diversity is the dynamic unity of life itself. Expanding the scope of his previous book, The Wholeness of Nature, the author shows how Goethean insights combine with the dynamic way of seeing in continental philosophy to offer us an actively experienced 'life of meaning'. This book will be of interest to anyone who wants to understand the contribution and wider implications of modern European thought in the world today.
Author: Astrida Orle Tantillo
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
ISBN: 0822970643
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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Book Description
Better known as a poet and dramatist, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) was also a learned philosopher and natural scientist. Astrida Orle Tantillo offers the first comprehensive analysis of his natural philosophy, which she contends is rooted in creativity.Tantillo analyzes GoetheÆs main scientific texts, including his work on physics, botany, comparative anatomy, and metereology. She critically examines his attempts to challenge the basic tenets of Newtonian and Cartesian science and to found a new natural philosophy. In individual chapters devoted to different key principles, she reveals how this natural philosophy—which questions rationalism, the quantitative approach to scientific inquiry, strict gender categories, and the possibility of scientific objectivity—illuminates GoetheÆs standing as both a precursor and critic of modernity.Tantillo does not presuppose prior knowledge of Goethe or science, and carefully avoids an overreliance on specialized jargon. This makes The Will to Create accessible to a wide audience, including philosophers, historians of science, and literary theorists, as well as general readers.
Author: John H. Zammito
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022652079X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 532
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Book Description
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.
Author: F.R. Amrine
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 940093761X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 448
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Book Description
of him in like measure within myself, that is my highest wish. This noble individual was not conscious of the fact that at that very moment the divine within him and the divine of the universe were most intimately united. So, for Goethe, the resonance with a natural rationality seems part of the genius of modern science. Einstein's 'cosmic religion', which reflects Spinoza, also echoes Goethe's remark (Ibid. , Item 575 from 1829): Man must cling to the belief that the incomprehensible is comprehensible. Else he would give up investigating. But how far will Goethe share the devotion of these cosmic rationalists to the beautiful harmonies of mathematics, so distant from any pure and 'direct observation'? Kepler, Spinoza, Einstein need not, and would not, rest with discovery of a pattern within, behind, as a source of, the phenomenal world, and they would not let even the most profound of descriptive generalities satisfy scientific curiosity. For his part, Goethe sought fundamental archetypes, as in his intuition of a Urpjlanze, basic to all plants, infinitely plastic. When such would be found, Goethe would be content, for (as he said to Eckermann, Feb. 18, 1829): . . . to seek something behind (the Urphaenomenon) is futile. Here is the limit. But as a rule men are not satisfied to behold an Urphaenomenon. They think there must be something beyond. They are like children who, having looked into a mirror, turn it around to see what is on the other side.
