Rethinking the Nature of Substance

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Preface: The Book Begins V0.3

This website is under reconstruction! Please be patient. The book is in the process of being researched, reviewed and written.
– The Table of Contents contains ^is due to contain links to the latest versions of the chapters of this book.
– The Home page – links via either the image or the title at the top of the page – contain all my current and previous drafts, thoughts and notes.

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Why I want to write this book and why you might want to read it, and my gratitude to those who helped me along the way.

In 1981 Professor L.W.J. Holleman privately circulated the preliminary results of experiments in which the element potassium, in a series of closed cultures of algae, was observed first to disappear, then later to reappear. Inspired by the Agriculture Lecture of Rudolf Steiner, he believed that a Goethean scientific approach was required.

I was asked to write this book by the Professor Dr. L.W.J. Holleman Study Group – a small group of friends whose purpose was to promote Holleman’s research interests in such phenomena and ideas. The original title proposed was Rethinking the Nature of Substance. For further information on our small group and our previous work, see http://www.holleman.ch

To be included in this Preface (though not necessarily in this order):

  • More information on my personal background and personal motivation;
  • My introduction and personal thoughts;
  • The Importance of the Ancient Greek philosophers;
  • Mainstream academic science, pseudo-science, spiritual-science, philosophy and theology;
  • Rudolf Steiner or George Adams (can’t recall who or where) proposed instead of aim of biology becoming a branch of mathematical physics, the opposite should be true – what I like to think of as Goethean physics;
  • Provide something of an answer to Glen Atkinson’s ‘The Problem of the Etheric Formative Forces‘ – what he called the basic theology;
  • Structure the book following Rudolf Steiner’s Human and Cosmic Thought (Der menschliche und der kosmische Gedanke), GA 151. They are summarised on the excellent AnthroWiki page: Worldview;
  • During the course of researching the depth and breadth of this book the emphasis has changed many times;
    • Where did Rudolf Steiner get his ideas from?
    • If true (in whole or part), has anyone else independently of him had similar ideas?
      • The answer is that his underlying holistic philosophical worldview is to be found (in whole or part) in Plato, Aristotle and Goethe, the phenomenology of Martin Heidegger, the hermeneutics of Hans Georg Gadamer and have been discussed in detail more recently by Henri Bortoft;
    • A projective geometrical understanding of the four ideal ethers and the consequences of such an understanding;
    • A consideration of the other formative forces and their roles in biology;
      • Physical – point centred, centripetal forces typically defined by the example of gravity (the reality may be more complex – gravity may be a consequence of density not the other way round – see Chapter 19);
      • Etheric – suctional, peripheral, centrifugal forces;
      • Astral – associated with the seven classical planets;
      • Ego – associated with the twelve zodiacal constellations;
        • According to Glen Atkinson Steiner described the etheric as the ‘functional‘, the astral as the ‘functioning‘, and the ego as the ‘pulsating with the functioning‘;
    • The evidence for the new-forming of matter by life;
    • The evidence for the transmutation of chemical elements by living organisms;
    • The book needs grounding – biodynamics, medicine – or just plants (hence the emphasis on the etheric) – plants would be easiest, but biodynamics more important – whilst the underlying principles may be the same for people as for farming, I have not studied an Anthroposophical medical text;
      • To do! Complete my reading of Steiner’s Multidisciplinary Astronomy course on the connections between astronomy, mathematics and embryology – more or less essential reading for me for this book;
    • My original intention some decades ago was to build a bridge between material and spiritual science in relation to the biological transmutation of chemical elements – I hoped my audience would be open-minded mainstream scientists as well as Anthroposophists. I failed to interest the former audience, so open-minded anthroposophists are now my main audience – though I hope to engage the interest of any interested reader regardless of whether or not they have heard of Rudolf Steiner, spiritual science or anthroposophy;
    • More people in the English speaking world have heard of Biodynamics than of the other ideas of Rudolf Steiner, so I am provisionally grounding the book with the theory and practice of biodynamics;
    • List the key authors from whom I have benefitted;
    • List the people I have met who have supported me and to whom I express my most sincere thanks;

[The following text is from an older version]

Rudolf Steiner wrote and lectured on many scientific themes which gave indications for the further development of Goethe’s scientific methods and worldview. He encouraged mathematicians such as George Adams (Kaufmann) to develop ‘synthetic’, projective geometry to produce a Goethean mathematical physics. Nick Thomas further developed this work, but sadly died shortly after informing the Holleman Study Group that he was working on a new understanding of nuclear transmutation.

This blog is a personal sandpit for me to play in – a place for me to explore some of these ideas – and to develop the course of my book, and to share my ideas along the way.

The particular ideas which I wish to explore are:

  • Goethe’s scientific world view, which Steiner further developed;
  • Steiner’s fifth agriculture lecture, in which he spoke of the biological transmutation of chemical elements (alchemy);
  • Nick Thomas used the projective geometry indications of Steiner – as developed by George Adams and others – to propose a mathematical framework for a linked space and counterspace world view. This may enable a new Goethean mathematical physics to be developed – George Adams’ first English language publication on the subject (Space and the Light of the Creation: A New Essay in Cosmic Theory, 1933) was originally titled Synthetic Geometry, Goethe’s Theory of Metamorphosis and Mathematical Physics.
  • It was based on a person centred linking of the realms of physical matter and ideal forms – something that quantum physics and relativity have failed to do (they are only good at making impersonal predictions – mathematical models – about the behaviour of material objects);
  • Of importance is Thomas’s linkage of the classical, material four elements (whose behaviour is constrained by Euclidean space) with the archetypal, ideal forms of Goethe, whose behaviour was indicated by Steiner to be determined by his four ethers (constrained by the dual opposite of Euclidean space, known by Alfred North Whitehead as anti-space, otherwise known as counterspace).

Since writing this, I realise that I was only considering here some of the means towards an end. I did not include:

  • Biodynamics;
  • The nature of the atom as just one manifestation of sub-nature;
  • The consequences of realism – physical matter and ideal spiritual form as two aspects of a unified whole;
  • The nature of chemical substance and its ability to change or transmutate;
  • The difference between high and low energy nuclear transmutation;
  • My proposal that Rudolf Steiner’s life ether is – at least in part – responsible for the low energy transmutation of substance, such as may be enabled by living organisms;
  • The consequences for future research.

This blog is entirely my own – I take full personal responsibility for anything that I may write – the ideas expressed here are not necessarily those of the Holleman Study Group. Also, I do not claim to have been the originator of most of the concepts that are shared here – that credit goes to the many others who have gone before me. What I have done is to bring together a wide variety of concepts from many different disciplines in the hopes of developing and testing the philosophical and scientific ideas of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Rudolf Steiner. I hope to demonstrate that their ideas compliment those of mainstream academic science and form a coherent worldview. Along the way some of Rudolf Steiner’s ideas may be left behind. However, I would not be writing this book if I did not feel that his core philosophical concepts were likely to be correct.

The ideas to be explored here are often difficult to understand, for they transcend our everyday experiences. If they were easy there would be no need for me to be writing this!

[Since I wrote the material below my attitude towards this work has changed. Since then I have discovered what was missing – my shared humanity. I have given my reasons for writing it, not a reason why others might want to read it!]

The atom as sub-sensible entity

The English word sensible has a double meaning;

  • That which we can experience using our physical senses;
  • And that which we can understand using our common sense.

A complete scientific world view requires exploring non-material processes and phenomena. These transcend our everyday experiences. Broadly speaking these include;

  • Super-sensible entities – such as ideas – which can only be ‘seen’ with the mind;
  • Sub-sensible entities – such as electricity, magnetism and even atoms – which only indirectly make their presence known through their interactions with physical matter.

The sub-natural realm is, very broadly speaking, for mainstream, academic science, the concern of quantum physics – and it is a very strange realm indeed! It transcends common sense. Steiner agreed that such realms are indeed very strange for us. We are only normally consciously aware of the physical realm. Entities inhabiting these other realms – including the atom – obey entirely different rules to those of our physical realm. The many paradoxes of quantum physics demonstrate the challenges of developing a meaningful understanding very well indeed.

Perhaps Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual scientific world view may enable an understanding of these alien realms. Quantum physics is difficult to comprehend, but its mathematical formulations are fundamental to the workings of every microchip in just about every electronic gadget used today. Nick Thomas’ mathematical descriptions of atomic behaviour are no less challenging to the non-mathematician than those of Albert Einstein or Erwin Schrödinger. But it is my hope in this blog to show how Thomas, basing his work on the ideas of Steiner, may have enabled a deeper understanding of our relationship with the processes of nature – and in particular – the nature of substance itself.

By way of navigating through this website:

  • The latest draft chapters or sub-chapters are presented as web-pages and may be accessed via the Table of Contents page, and via the navigation links to previous and next pages;
  • And blog posts, where I have recorded my research notes, written and archived old draft chapters and explore my ideas. These are ordered by my most recent posts first, categorised by book and chapter, tagged by key subjects, or accessed via the search facility.

This is very much a work in progress – please be patient – however, (positive) feedback is always welcome.

References

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