This is incomplete and very much a work in progress. All of these entries are provisional and will be worked on and improved during the writing of the book. Feedback on them would be especially welcome.
People
The people whose ideas collectively formed this book.
- Adams, George
- “George Adams von Kaufmann was born in 1894 and lived until 1963. He read chemistry at Cambridge and came into contact with Steiner‘s work while a student. He was active as a pacifist in the First World War and did social work with the Quakers, in particular with the Friends’ War Relief organisation in Poland. He worked for the rest of his life for Anthroposophy with a special interest in the scientific side as well as developing the social aspects. He interpreted Steiner’s lectures in England and later translated many of them into English. He discovered how to describe Steiner’s findings about negative space (see space, negative) (counterspace) in geometric terms. He worked particularly with projective geometry (see geometry, projective) and the application of path curves.” [https://nct.goetheanum.org/people.htm, website no longer available] See Chapter …
Anaxagoras[To be removed?]Anaxagoras of Clazomenae lived perhaps 500 – 428 BC. He introduced the concept of nous, or cosmic mind, as an ordering force for an infinite number of homomeomeries – whose aggregations and dispersals enable the sense perceptible physical matter of the material world and its non-material processes and qualities. Later philosophers have stated that this was an early ‘atomic’ (or corpuscular) conception, developed as a response to the ideas of Parmenides. See Chapter 1.
Anaximander[To be removed?]Anaximander lived perhaps c. 610 – c. 546 BC. He is famous for stating that the infinite is the origin of all things. See Chapter 1.
Anaximenes[To be removed?];Anaximenes lived perhaps 585 – 528 BC. He is most famous for stating that air is the origin of all things. See Chapter 1.
- Aristotle
- Aristotle (384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Lyceum, a school of philosophy, and the Aristotelian tradition. His writings cover many subjects including physics, biology, zoology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, poetry, theatre, music, rhetoric, psychology, linguistics, economics, politics, and government. Aristotle provided a complex synthesis of the various philosophies existing prior to him. It was above all from his teachings that the West inherited its intellectual lexicon, as well as problems and methods of inquiry. As a result, his philosophy has exerted a unique influence on almost every form of knowledge in the West and it continues to be a subject of contemporary philosophical discussion. His insights into the nature of reality influenced (directly or indirectly) the philosophical insights of Goethe.
- Baranger
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- Baumgartner
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- Biberian
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- Diogenes Laërtius
- Nietzsche called him “the night watchman of the history of Greek philosophy: no one can enter into it unless he has given him the key.” Diogenes defined philosophy as “the pursuit of wisdom” (i, 13). It “has three parts, physics, ethics, and dialectic or logic. Physics is the part concerned with the universe and all that it contains; ethics that concerned with life and all that has to do with us; while the processes of reasoning employed by both form the province of dialectic.” (i, 18).
- Goethe
- [Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) was Germany’s most famous literary writer. However, it was his scientific achievements…] His scientific writings… See Science, Goethean, and Chapters … for details.
- Ostwald, Wilhelm
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- Perrin, Jean Baptiste
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- Steiner, Rudolf
- “Rudolf Steiner was born in 1861 and lived until 1925. He developed spiritual science by applying the scientific method to his remarkable powers of clairvoyant perception. When observing subtler aspects of existence he could change his consciousness so that instead of experiencing the world from a central point of view his consciousness moved to the cosmic periphery. He described his findings in over 50 written works and nearly 6,000 lectures. He founded the Anthroposophical Society in 1912 and gave impulses for new more spiritual approaches to agriculture (biodynamic), architecture, the arts, education, care of the handicapped, medicine, science and social science, as well as the path of individual spiritual development. He was born in Kraljevic in Austria (now in Croatia), he read chemistry (see science, chemistry), natural science and mathematics for his degree and obtained his doctorate in philosophy.” https://nct.goetheanum.org/people.htm
Rethinking the Nature of Substance 