Scientific Disciplines and Anthroposophy

GA 73a — 30 March 1920, Dornach

6. Questions following a lecture by Eugen Kolisko on “Anthroposophy and Chemistry”

Preliminary remark: Eugen Kolisko's lecture was not written down. However, Rudolf Steiner said the following about it the next day in his lecture for physicians (March 31, 1920, in GA 312): “It was very interesting how Dr. Kolisko pointed out in yesterday's evening lecture that the chemistry of the future must actually become something completely different, and how the word 'physiology' was mentioned again and again, which testifies that a bridge should be built between the chemical and the physiological. I was always reminded of various things that, of course, cannot be fully expressed where public lectures are concerned, because the prerequisites for understanding are actually completely lacking. We do, of course, find carbon in nature outside of the human being, in what I would like to call seemingly extra-human nature. For what in nature is actually extra-human? Nothing, really, because everything that is extra-human in the extra-human world around us has been removed from the human being in the course of human development. Man had to enter into stages of development, which he could only enter into by certain processes taking place in the external world, opposite to him, and by which he was given the possibility of taking certain other processes into his inner being, so that there is actually always an opposition and also a relationship between certain outer processes and certain inner processes."

After Eugen Kolisko's lecture, a question was asked about the effects of allopathic and homeopathic remedies. The stenographer did not record the wording of the question.

Rudolf Steiner: It is more or less assumed today - because of atomistic thinking - that the process that takes place within a substance is, to a certain extent, the same process that takes place within the human organization, or I could also say the animal organization. But it is a very naturalistic assumption to indulge in the idea that the substance borrowed from the dead organism, so to speak, shows the same properties as the same substance, say for example blood, when it is still within the living human or animal organism. Once we realize what bundles of completely unscientific assumptions and postulates are in the sciences in use, only then will we truly feel what is necessary to put today's scientific view on a healthy basis. And so this healthy basis is also not available for those processes that are brought about when certain remedies are introduced into the human organism. For example, the question of how any substance that we supply to the human organism in this or that form, allopathic or homeopathic, is now dissolved in this human organism, how it behaves in the human organism itself, has not been investigated. For example, no consideration is given to the question of what the human organism actually does with this substance. And here we find – I can only hint at this, as it would take many hours to explain in full detail – that spiritual science shows that those substances which we supply to the human organism all , are in a sense, homoeopathized by it, if I may use the term. This means that they undergo internally the same process that the homoeopathic pharmacist causes to occur with his substances in his experiments. It is the case that the mode of action of the allopathically administered healing substances is also not based on the properties that are chemically ascribed to them today, but rather on properties that they only acquire as a result of the human organism processing them with the help of its own powers.

The question of allopathy and homeopathy, really considered in relation to the human being, is therefore not whether large or fragmented small amounts have an effect on the human organism when they produce healing effects, because the substances also do that when they are administered in allopathic amounts. The question is not this at all, but the question is whether it is permissible to expose the human organism to the side effects that arise from what is added with the allopathic substance and what is not homeopathized by the human organism itself, that is, is not used for healing. The question is whether this method is really permissible in order not to burden the human organism with what must be left over. Whether one supplies a very large quantity, while the organism needs only a small quantity, and whether the dispersion of the substances has the same effect as remedies that otherwise also have an effect in small quantities – that has been explained by Dr. Kolisko. If substances are dispersed in the human organism itself and only a small quantity is necessary for this, why should large quantities be introduced? It seems to me that the question is therefore not based on what is usually stated [in relation to homeopathic and allopathic remedies], but that something essential is actually [unspoken]; the questions should actually arise in other areas or, let us say, in other forms. For example, it should be clear whether the whole view and way of thinking about the clinical picture is healthier in the field of homeopathy or in that of allopathy. By this I mean whether, for example, those doctors who profess homeopathy or those who profess allopathy are more likely to focus on the complexity of the human organism. And here it must indeed be said that the doctors who work on a homeopathic basis are much more willing – experience simply shows this – to move away from the materialistic, atomistic idea and to adapt to certain views that I would say are more in line with the nature of the human organism.

As I said, I do not want to go into the actual discussion here, because it could be misunderstood if you have to explain it so briefly. I just wanted to suggest how our scientific views usually pose the questions in such a way that they cannot be answered at all as they are posed; the points of view are completely shifted, the questions are completely shifted to the point of view of materialism.

Then I was asked to speak about the relationship between Leadbeater's book and “occult chemistry”. Now, dear attendees, I do not want to dwell on the word “occult” here, because it is so misunderstood; it shocks the public, so to speak, when the word “occult” is used. But one can also stop at the word “spiritual scientific” or the like. You see, the occult is only occult as long as it is not known, and with those who know it, it is no longer occult. There are very many people who have every reason to call mathematics an occult science, and some sciences are occult for some people. So this is actually something that is quite relative in this respect. You will not find such a concoction as this so-called “occult chemistry” justified or recognized by anyone who is truly capable of spiritual thinking. This “occult chemistry” of Leadbeater's is modeled entirely on the usual materialistic atomism in the way it is presented. This “occult chemistry” is the best proof of what certain conceptions calling themselves spiritual have already come to in our materialistic time. I need only remind you that in certain theosophical circles the following idea once even emerged: they thought about what could be present in successive earthly lives so that it would remain from one earthly life to the next, and they came up with the grotesquely foolish idea of the so-called permanent atom. A single atom was supposed to be saved from one life from so many hundred years ago to the next life and thereby maintain the continuity of these two lives. That is, these spiritualists had fortunately managed to think along the lines of the materialistic-atomistic view. And Leadbeater has now put together his “occult chemistry” according to the pattern of ordinary atomistic chemistry, in a completely arbitrary way - but he has stated that it is a product of clairvoyance - but it is a completely arbitrary construction and cannot be recognized by any truly serious spiritual researcher in the world.

This is precisely the best example of how certain atomistic ideas have taken hold of humanity today, that one was able to carry these atomistic ideas into the fields of a certain sectarian theosophical direction. This is something that has nothing whatsoever to do with what is being striven for here. And it is precisely this introduction of the atomistic-materialistic way of thinking into spiritual scientific investigations that shows how deeply the present is corroded by atomistic basic ideas. Consider that particularly in certain circles of English scientific thinkers, where one strives for an external visualization, attempts have been made to construct models for those structures that have been presented to you today, so that one could see outwardly that atoms are arranged in such a way in various complicated forms that it is possible to show so beautifully why there is a left-turning and a right-turning acid. You just need to have the atoms arrange themselves symmetrically and then you can say: Because the atoms always arrange their forces in this way in symmetry, there is a left and a right. It is just not understandable, if you can really think logically, why you should attribute the necessity that the shapes occur symmetrically to a configuration of the smallest parts. Please do not take this as a protest. Because if it is really true that only through the forces of the smallest parts the acid appears as right-polarizing, rotating and the other as left-rotating, then it should also be true that the left hand could fit on the right, because the smallest parts are formed in this direction.

These things have emerged in so-called “occult chemistry”, and these things have now been transferred to the views in so-called occult books. There you will also find quite terrible views and constructions of molecules or atoms. All this has also been imitated in the field of spiritual science; the materialistic theory has even been imitated in the spiritual view. I experienced it once at a congress held by so-called Theosophists, in Paris it was. There they talked about this and that, and afterwards I asked someone what impression this congress had made on him. The person in question said: “Oh, there were such good fluids in the whole hall.” So the person concerned saw nothing of all the concrete thoughts and so on that were expressed there, except for a materialistic translation of what people said to each other into material fluid effects between the individual personalities. You have to look at these things in terms of the way of thinking. You are not a follower of a spiritual world view just because you talk about spiritual beings, but only if you can talk about spiritual qualities. What you find, for example, in the theosophical literature today is that the physical body is described, then the etheric body, which is a bit thinner, possibly more nebulous, but still material, then the astral body, again a bit thinner, but just thinner matter, and so on. This continues up to the highest spiritual realms, Manas, Kama-Manas and so on, and actually everything is nothing but rarefied matter, only that in the end it really becomes very <“homeopathic”>. These are the things that show that it does not matter whether one speaks of the spirit today, but whether one is able to show something that really leads into the spiritual realm.

Question: How can chemistry be further developed in line with anthroposophy?

If we undertake the kind of phenomenology that Dr. Kolisko has in mind, then it must be said that this question is so all-embracing that it can only be answered in the most general terms. Above all, it is necessary to realize that one would first have to arrive at a corresponding phenomenology. A phenomenology is not a compilation of mere phenomena in an arbitrary way, or in the way they are obtained by scientific experiments, but a real phenomenology is a systematization of phenomena, as was attempted by Goethe in his Theory of Colors. It is a tracing back of the complicated to the simple, to the fundamental principles, where the basic elements, the basic phenomena, confront us.

Now, of course, I know very well that very clever people will say: Yes, but if one gains such a list in relation to the connection between qualitative phenomena and archetypal phenomena, then such a structure cannot be compared at all with how, for example, complicated geometric connections can be traced back mathematically to axioms; because the geometric connections are, so to speak, built from pure inner construction. The further development of mathematics, [starting from] these axioms, is in turn experienced as a mathematical process seen in inner necessity, while in the development of phenomena and archetypal phenomena we have to rely on observing the external facts.

But this is not the case, even if it is simply asserted – it is asserted more or less clearly and distinctly in the broadest context. The fact that this is asserted is only the result of an incorrect theory of knowledge, and in particular it is the result of a confused muddling of the concept of experience with other concepts. And this confused muddling of the concept of experience with other concepts leads, for example, to the following.

It is not considered that the way in which experience is present is thoroughly formed in relation to the human subject. I cannot form the concept of experience at all without thinking the relationship from the object to the human subject. And now it is merely a matter of whether there is a fundamental distinction between the way in which, for example, I have a Goethean urphenomenon before me and complicate this urphenomenon into a derived phenomenon, where I seem to be dependent on external experience confirming what I express in judgment? Is there a difference in this whole behavior of the subject in relation to the object with regard to experience, when I state in mathematics that the sum of the three angles of a triangle is 180°, or when I state the correctness of the Pythagorean theorem? Is there in fact a difference?

That there is no difference in this respect has already been pointed out by quite ingenious mathematicians of the nineteenth century and up to the present day, who, because they saw that ultimately mathematics is also based on an experience - in a sense, as one speaks of experience in the so-called empirical natural sciences - that have constructed, albeit initially only constructed, a non-Euclidean geometry to the Euclidean geometry. And here one must say: Theoretically it is, of course, perfectly possible to think geometrically that the three angles of a triangle are 380°. However, one must assume that space has a different degree of curvature. In our ordinary space we have a regular [Euclidean] measure, which has a curvature of zero. Simply by imagining that space is more curved [that is, that the curvature of space is greater than 1], one arrives at a sentence like: the sum of the three angles of a triangle is greater than 180°.

Interesting experiments have been carried out in relation to this, for example by Oskar Simony, who examined this. These endeavors show that from a certain point of view it was considered necessary to say: what we express as judgments in mathematical or geometric sentences also requires empirical verification in the same way as what we express in phenomenology.