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The Light Course: First Course in Natural Science: Light, Color, Sound―Mass, Electricity, Magnetism (CW 320) (Volume 22)
11 lectures, Stuttgart and Dornach, Dec. 23, 1919 - Aug. 8, 1921 (CW 320) “Now the time has actually arrived when...we have a subconscious glimmering of the impossibility of the modern approach to nature and some sense that things have to change.”― Rudolf Steiner This course on light―also exploring color, sound, mass, electricity and magnetism―presages the dawn of a new worldview in the natural sciences that will stand our notion of the physical world on its head. This "first course" in natural science, given to the teachers of the new Stuttgart Waldorf school as an inspiration for developing the physics curriculum, is based on Goethe's phenomenological approach to the study of nature. Acknowledging that modern physicists had come to regard Goethe's ideas on physics as a "kind of nonsense." Rudolf Steiner contrasts the traditional scientific approach, which treats phenomena as evidence of "natural laws," with Goethean science, which rejects the idea of an abstract law behind natural phenomena and instead seeks to be a "rational description of nature." Steiner then corrects the mechanistic reductionism practiced by scientific positivists, emphasizing instead the validity of human experience and pointing toward a revolution in scientific paradigms that would reclaim ground for the subject―the human being―in the study of nature. German Geisteswissenschaftliche impulse zur Entwikkelung der Physik, Erster Naturwissenschaftlicher Licht, Farbe, Ton-Masse, Elektrizität , Magnetismus (GA 320).
224 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2001
27 people want to read
About the author
Rudolf Steiner
4,345 books1,100 followersAuthor also wrote under the name Rudolph Steiner.
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner was an Austrian occultist, social reformer, architect, esotericist, and claimed clairvoyant. Steiner gained initial recognition at the end of the nineteenth century as a literary critic and published works including The Philosophy of Freedom. At the beginning of the twentieth century he founded an esoteric spiritual movement, anthroposophy, with roots in German idealist philosophy and theosophy. His teachings are influenced by Christian Gnosticism or neognosticism. Many of his ideas are pseudoscientific. He was also prone to pseudohistory.
In the first, more philosophically oriented phase of this movement, Steiner attempted to find a synthesis between science and spirituality. His philosophical work of these years, which he termed "spiritual science", sought to apply what he saw as the clarity of thinking characteristic of Western philosophy to spiritual questions, differentiating this approach from what he considered to be vaguer approaches to mysticism. In a second phase, beginning around 1907, he began working collaboratively in a variety of artistic media, including drama, dance and architecture, culminating in the building of the Goetheanum, a cultural centre to house all the arts. In the third phase of his work, beginning after World War I, Steiner worked on various ostensibly applied projects, including Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture, and anthroposophical medicine.
Steiner advocated a form of ethical individualism, to which he later brought a more explicitly spiritual approach. He based his epistemology on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's world view in which "thinking…is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colours and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas." A consistent thread that runs through his work is the goal of demonstrating that there are no limits to human knowledge.
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner was an Austrian occultist, social reformer, architect, esotericist, and claimed clairvoyant. Steiner gained initial recognition at the end of the nineteenth century as a literary critic and published works including The Philosophy of Freedom. At the beginning of the twentieth century he founded an esoteric spiritual movement, anthroposophy, with roots in German idealist philosophy and theosophy. His teachings are influenced by Christian Gnosticism or neognosticism. Many of his ideas are pseudoscientific. He was also prone to pseudohistory.
In the first, more philosophically oriented phase of this movement, Steiner attempted to find a synthesis between science and spirituality. His philosophical work of these years, which he termed "spiritual science", sought to apply what he saw as the clarity of thinking characteristic of Western philosophy to spiritual questions, differentiating this approach from what he considered to be vaguer approaches to mysticism. In a second phase, beginning around 1907, he began working collaboratively in a variety of artistic media, including drama, dance and architecture, culminating in the building of the Goetheanum, a cultural centre to house all the arts. In the third phase of his work, beginning after World War I, Steiner worked on various ostensibly applied projects, including Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture, and anthroposophical medicine.
Steiner advocated a form of ethical individualism, to which he later brought a more explicitly spiritual approach. He based his epistemology on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's world view in which "thinking…is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colours and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas." A consistent thread that runs through his work is the goal of demonstrating that there are no limits to human knowledge.
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December 27, 2008
The Light Course is heavy reading. It is an intersection between education, science and spirituality.
In a nutshell, Steiner narrates basic experiments to his audience of parents and uses the scientific method mixed in with his own views on spirituality to convince them that although materialism is necessary people ought to cultivate their astral bodies as well.
Keep in mind that the series of lectures in this book took place 10 years before the "golden years" of physics so Steiner seems to be anticipating a change however he keeps leaning towards the Goethe comprehension of light. Readers may find his constant anti-Newtonian bias to be annoying but at the very least there are some great lines in this book.
In a nutshell, Steiner narrates basic experiments to his audience of parents and uses the scientific method mixed in with his own views on spirituality to convince them that although materialism is necessary people ought to cultivate their astral bodies as well.
Keep in mind that the series of lectures in this book took place 10 years before the "golden years" of physics so Steiner seems to be anticipating a change however he keeps leaning towards the Goethe comprehension of light. Readers may find his constant anti-Newtonian bias to be annoying but at the very least there are some great lines in this book.
Displaying 1 of 1 review