Scientific Disciplines and Anthroposophy
GA 73a — 13 March 1920, Stuttgart
16. Questions following a lecture by Eugen Kolisko on “Hypothesis-free Chemistry”
Preliminary note: Eugen Kolisko's lecture was not written down. However, Kolisko later gave further lectures on the same topic during the first college course in the fall of 1920. These were printed in a revised form by him in the anthology “Aenigmatisches aus Kunst und Wissenschaft” (Enigmas from Art and Science), Stuttgart 1922.
First question: How do the various qualities of heat, light, electricity and the different states actually relate to the periodic system and how did the periodic system come about? Second question: In the alchemical literature, chemical substances are classified in such a way as to indicate how the individual metals are assigned to the planets. How does this sevenfold classification of the assignment of metals to planets relate to that found in the periodic system?
Rudolf Steiner: Well, Dr. Kolisko has spoken very beautifully about important aspects of how we might strive to free chemistry from those habits of thought that led from the outset to this atomistic hypothesis or, let us say, to the building of chemistry out of the atomistic hypothesis. In view of the questions that have been asked, I would like to draw attention to one thing first. To me, the discovery of the periodic system does not appear to be something absolutely new. Of course, it is not possible to go into the great diversity that exists between our chemical interpretation of phenomena and older views of the constitution of matter in a short consideration. What makes the periodic system particularly interesting is the attempt – an attempt that has been made, I believe, on several occasions – to arrange the periodic system in such a way that the seven elements are plotted on a curve, and then the next seven elements are plotted on a curve passing over it, and so on, so that when intermediate states are created, the correct structure is obtained in a spiral. We can draw this: Here, for example, is lithium, sodium is, as it were, above it, and above that would be potassium. The point is that with the old Mercury rod you really have to connect something like the idea of a universal remedy of nature to bring about the facts of nature. If we can imagine that the elements are superimposed in the way I have arranged them in the periodic system, and I then connect these elements with lines that represent a spiral, then the emergence of each element would only be possible under certain force relationships that are related to a certain motion of these states.
Now, in an interesting way, Crookes pointed out in a Cambridge lecture at the Royal Society that if you want to get the superimposed spiral, you would do well to imagine that a progression of the heat condition takes place in the direction of the axis of the spiral, that thus, so to speak, the series of the next seven elements compared to the series of the previous seven elements came about in a similar way to a higher temperature degree compared to a lower temperature degree. But it is not a progression merely in an expansion, but in a genesis. We would have something similar in a complicated natural system, as we have it in the elementary case of a simple expansion through temperature. And now it is, of course, extraordinarily suggestive to think not at all of a spiral that has a straight line axis, but perhaps to think of something that has a circular axis, then we would get a solenoid line. But again, we can think of this as a spiral. Then we would get a triple spiral progressing in space.
While Crookes initially assumes only a decrease in heat as an analogy for the progression here on this axis, we would - by expanding on Crookes's idea - already get a progression in the axis towards light and chemical effects, which are, of course, different from the chemical forces that act in the substances. We would thus, as it were, obtain entities in heat, light and chemical effects, that is, in what underlies chemical activity, which are not present in the individual bodies, but which are present in the inner workings of, for example, our earthly nature or otherwise.
What I am drawing here are only spatial sensualizations; there are no things in space, but the spatial images are spatial sensualizations.
We would be given the opportunity to think that these successive elements and then, as it were, the next potencies of the same and the counter-potencies of the same are connected with a confused interaction of heat, light and precisely chemical effects, so that this triple helical structure of the elements would actually be nothing more than a certain kind of interaction of the various ether potencies. But then we would have to assume that these ether potencies are radically different from each other, that they cannot be transformed into each other in their essential nature, but that they act on each other in their own essential nature and that the results arise, not transformation products.
This is just a brief answer to the first question. This question covers so much that it is not possible to answer it exhaustively in a short time.
Now the second question. Here one would have to go back to very ancient principles. You see, you must be clear about the fact that what is active in any substance today, forming shapes, potassium or sodium for example, does not necessarily have to arise in the universe today. It may be something that originated at some time, may have been active a very long time ago, and has been preserved, so that the original forms, the original crystal forms of our elements - whether they are distinct crystal forms or something else - were formed from the cosmos in prehistoric times, let us assume during the lunar period, and that in these elements the tendency remained to preserve these forms. We must therefore be clear about the following: on the one hand, we are dealing with today's forms, which appear as if in an imprint, having formed in a very early period of cosmic development; on the other hand, we are dealing with the effects of what has now become of the factors located around the earth. We are therefore not dealing directly with our elemental forms, so that we could speak of a cosmic effect.
Here, somewhere, would be the earth, here the planets, and the planets bring about something through their constellation. If, for the sake of argument, we have Venus, Mars and Mercury here, the constellation of Venus, Mars and Mercury will not directly cause a tetrahedrally shaped body to appear today, as they act on the earth through their mutual forces. Instead, Venus, Mars and Mercury will have endowed the tetrahedron during the lunar period, and the reason it appears today is because the moon's effect has been preserved. Whereas when Mercury and so forth act from the cosmos today, they act, as it were, according to the laws of the imponderables; they actually counteract the ponderables. Thus, the formation already has its cosmic origin, but every formation that occurs on earth is, so to speak, deformed by that which today emanates from the same cosmic planets that previously caused the formations; so that, for example, we have to understand a volatilization as a cosmic effect that exists today, but a crystallization as one in which the earlier is again produced against the present. Here we have temporal effects that diverge.
Now, you do not have to think of what I have now presented in a somewhat schematic way, of course, as if there were only a few constellations, but there are many constellations. If you imagine this, you naturally get a complicated system, something like a complicated system of curves that you can imagine in the cosmos and in the earth.
If you summarize the original sites where the metal forms is formed in the earth using curves – these curves must be imagined in the interior of the earth because that is where the center is; the metals do indeed come to the surface in later epochs , but it is actually in the interior of the earth that the forces by which the preservation takes place are located – and outside in the cosmos the forces that lead to the crystal forms. And if you now visualize this, we have a sphere and spherical shells intertwining in the most diverse ways and the resultant that would arise from it if I imagine the difference in strength between what is conserved and what is in the cosmos today. If I now imagine the differences in the forces in these two force systems, I actually get what represents the present state of the cosmic effect on earth. And everything that appears in the periodic system must be contained in this. The periodic system is nothing more than the interaction of a pre-earthly state with a present cosmic state that plays around the earth. These are only hints in answer, but I believe one can understand it.
Eugen Kolisko: So what we assign as metals to the individual planets has nothing to do directly with the substances we have in the periodic system?
Rudolf Steiner: No. Why iron is assigned to Mars, silver to the moon and so on, these are things that can no longer be understood by external science, quite impossible, because this assignment was obtained in a completely different way than is believed today, even by occultists. The older occultism, which was still based on atavistic clairvoyance, knew that our earth itself is internally structured, but only latently structured, and that we have to distinguish seven spheres in the earth sphere as a remnant of the pre-earthly cosmic effect on the earth, which were not quite regular, but different. So here there are seven spheres inside, that is the inner cosmos of the earth, that is the mirror image of the outer cosmos. And earthly iron is associated with this part of the earth, that is the Martian part of the earth, and mercury is associated with the Mercury sphere of the earth, and so on. So these substances of ours, as we have them today, would actually ultimately have to be traced back to the seven metals; they would have to. But we have to imagine that all these substances are actually quite complicated things.
We are talking about the atomic weights of these substances, aren't we? But these atomic weights don't really exist. You have to find the atomic weight of lead: 207. It is true that the atomic weight of lead is 207, but when you look for it, you don't actually find 207 in reality, but you actually find a number: 207 + x in an indeterminate way. What you actually find fluctuates back and forth, and the atomic weight for our elements is such that you can say: If you wanted to capture the state that represents the atomic weight, you would have to show an oscillating movement here, not a point. And we would not be allowed to describe the periodic system as it is, but we would have to have it in quivering movements, in inner quivering movement. It is the case that we cannot say at all that the atomic weight shows that we are now really dealing with solid elements. This idea of a rigid atom - think of what it means, what Dr. Kolisko just said: water is no longer water at a certain temperature. But the atomist of today is obliged to imagine hydrogen and oxygen, which are in the water, when the water is no longer there, unchanged, if he imagines atoms correctly. So one comes to regard such a property of matter as the actual determining factor: this rigidity, which is not present even at the point where the element is created. The element is not yet present, but the element is something that already escapes you when you want to grasp it. Because to determine atomic weights strictly is an absurdity. There is no atomic weight, but there are intermediate states around which the atomic weight varies, and one says: in the intermediate state, the atomic weight is such and such. There are just as few atomic weights as there is a certain size to a grain of wheat. Of course there is a mean size for the wheat grain, but the size fluctuates back and forth. It is the same with the atomic weight; there is only a mean state.
These considerations, which Dr. Kolisko has presented today, are extraordinarily fruitful and should be further developed, especially for chemistry. Then one would see that the course of development is such that in alchemical concepts, including the staff of Mercury, which was particularly cultivated there, certain concepts were generated that were appropriate to reality. We must work our way through to a way of looking at things that is appropriate to reality. But to do that, we need to — and this is what I would like to link to Dr. Kolisko's lecture, namely to answer these two questions very precisely — we need to come to that, and I would like to say this to Mr. Blümel as well, we need to learn to understand the extension as a function of the intensive, and vice versa, the intensive as a function of the extensive, so that these two things, which are so parallel to each other, can really be derived from each other. If it is possible to bring the intensive and the extensive into a functional context, it will also be possible to develop the symbolism needed to fully understand this periodic system, otherwise there will always be an ununderstood remainder.
Please forgive me, but these things are so unclear because they cover such a large area that one can say nothing else but just make out the outlines with the concepts. The concepts cannot be sharply contoured.