{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 170/1916-08-28/p017","lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"In the course of our studies in Spiritual Science it has often been necessary for me to draw attention to this canker that has made its appearance in the more modern phase of evolution. Think of the way in which men write and of *what* they write about the achievements of the human race. Think of what can be read in school-books or in other works about the genius of discovery, about the invention, let us say, of paper. Paper is something that may well be a cause of regret when we think of the kind of stuff that is printed on it nowadays! Much has been said in praise of that capacity in man which has reached such a zenith of achievement! But as I have said before, a wasp's nest is composed of a substance that is the same as paper. Millions of years ago, the elemental Beings who stand behind the preparation of a wasp's nest, had already forestalled man in this discovery. And the same could be said in a thousand other instances. Take the telescope which can be turned in two directions, upwards-downwards, backwards-forwards. *Schmieg*, a man who tried in many ways to draw attention to such things, pointed to this very example of the telescope. Just think what it is that man has really achieved here. The twofold movement of the telescope—upwards-downwards, backwards-forwards—is made possible by a double apparatus for rotation: an upper apparatus known in mechanics as a hinge-joint, and a lower apparatus known as a pivot-joint. In this way, provision is made for the double rotatory movement. Now it would be absurd, as can easily be proved in the case of the telescope, to construct it the other way round, putting the pivot in place of the hinge or the hinge below the pivot. This would be quite useless. That such an adjustment of movement has been achieved may be lauded as a deeply significant discovery on the part of man. But in a much more ingenious way—and I use the word ‘ingenious’ in the objective and not in the subjective sense—you all possess this apparatus in your own bodies at the place where the head is poised upon the cervical vertebrae: above—a hinge joint; below—a pivot joint. And because of this you are able to move your heads upwards and downwards and from side to side. You see, therefore, that in the human organism itself we have exactly the same thing.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"Lecture III","site_heading":"Cosmic Metamorphosis: The Body's Incarnational Transformation","site_heading_note":"A heading the site wrote for this unit from a summary of it; not in the edition, and not the words of Rudolf Steiner or of the translator. Cite the unit by its title and locus, never by this heading, and do not quote it.","date":"1916-08-28","location":null,"word_count":410,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/170/1916-08-28/p017","alignment_confidence":"low","alignment_reason":"count_diverges","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":{"scope":"unit","status":"not_established","translator":null,"identified_edition":"APC1948","book_title":"Memory and Habit","publisher":"Anthroposophical Publishing Co.","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA170/English/APC1948/19160828p02.html","evidence":null,"reason":"source_says_translator_unknown","note":"The source page itself says the translator is unknown. No translator is established for this lecture: nothing at the level of the lecture names one. Do not attribute this English to a translator, and do not borrow a credit from another lecture of the volume. Cite the German for anything load-bearing."},"edition_coverage":{"de":["original"],"en":["English"]},"available_versions":[{"lang":"de","edition":"original","edition_basis":null,"is_original":true,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/170/1916-08-28/p017"},{"lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/170/1916-08-28/p017"}],"record":{"record_type":"unknown","scope":"volume","note":"How this text was taken down (shorthand transcript, listeners' notes or manuscript) is not on record here. Unknown is not an assurance of a stenogram: check the edition's own notes before resting an argument on one word.","evidence":null,"evidence_translation":null,"evidence_source":null},"other_renderings":{"loci":[{"locus":"GA 170/1916-08-28_02","ga":"170","lecture":"1916-08-28_02","kind":"renderings","relation":"another translation or transcription of the same lecture"}],"note":"The same lecture is also served at the loci listed, each with how it relates to this one. They are ONE witness, not independent attestations: quote the rendering you fetched, and do not cite another as corroborating it. Wording differs between translations, so a quotation found in one need not occur in the other."},"paired_german":{"status":"no_paragraph_pairing","note":"No paragraph pairing exists for this paragraph, so no German text is given. The German paragraph of the same number is a different passage or an unestablished one. Read the German unit (german_unit.fetch_unit) and find the place by its content.","german_unit":{"lang":"de","edition":"original","unit_locus":"GA 170/1916-08-28","paragraph_count":33,"fetch_unit":{"ga":"170","lecture":"1916-08-28","lang":"de","edition":"original"},"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/170/1916-08-28","json_url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/ga/170/1916-08-28?lang=de"},"pairing_state":"proposed","verified":false,"nearest_pairs":{"before":{"de":[10],"en":[13,14,15,16]},"after":{"de":[13],"en":[19]}}},"witness_completeness":{"ratio":0.95,"band":"comparable","note":null,"word_count":4953,"original_word_count":5217,"may_be_abridged":false},"witness_quality":{"translator":{"scope":"unit","status":"not_established","translator":null,"identified_edition":"APC1948","book_title":"Memory and Habit","publisher":"Anthroposophical Publishing Co.","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA170/English/APC1948/19160828p02.html","evidence":null,"reason":"source_says_translator_unknown","note":"The source page itself says the translator is unknown. No translator is established for this lecture: nothing at the level of the lecture names one. Do not attribute this English to a translator, and do not borrow a credit from another lecture of the volume. Cite the German for anything load-bearing.","warning":"No translator is recorded for this edition. An unattributed translation cannot be weighed as a witness: you cannot tell which hand made the choices in it. Cite the German for anything load-bearing."},"entity_parity":{"status":"not_checkable","note":"No verified paragraph alignment covers this passage, so its names cannot be compared with the German."},"note":"quote_safe certifies the bytes of this text. This block is about the translation as a WITNESS: who made it, and whether it carries the same names as the original. See witness_completeness for how much of the original this witness holds."}}