{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 172/1916-11-26_02/p031","lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"Many things, and here again I make a somewhat paradoxical statement, become manifest when we learn rightly to read what is often considered least significant. After all, this (here the letter *i* was first written on the blackboard without a dot, and later a dot was placed over it) is the principal part even of the material substance of this letter, but only the dot makes it the letter i. Consider how much less this dot contains than the other part even though it is the dot that makes the letter. The person who clings only to the material element in the evolution of humanity will also frequently see even in the material only what contains a hundred times as much as the dot and will fail entirely to see the dot. But one who observes more closely, who does not merely stare at the phenomena but reads them, will often learn to read things in the right way when a delicate suggestion is made. It is astonishing that in a biography of James Watt you will find mention of the following fact; I shall refer to it in a way that will seem utterly insane to every modern and intelligent person. But of course, you yourselves must first understand the interpretation of this fact. Watt could not at first accomplish what he intended through his invention, his steam engine. You see, its development stretched from 1712 to 1769. When once a man has invented something, others, of course, imitate it again and again. Thus much was constructed between these two dates. When Watt had finally made his machine really workable by means of other improvements, he had used a contrivance in it for which someone else held a patent; because of this, he could not proceed until he had thought out something different to replace it. He then discovered what he needed in a strange way. He was living, of course, in an age in which the Copernican view of the world had long been held, which I have characterized as something suitable for the spirit of our age alone. It actually occurred to him to construct his mobile apparatus in such a way that he could call it the “movement of the sun and the planets.” He spoke of it thus because he was really guided by what is conceived in the Copernican system as the revolution of the planets around the sun. He had actually brought down and concealed within the steam engine what had been learned in the modern age as the movement of the heavenly bodies.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"Lecture IX","site_heading":"Spiritual Hierarchies, False Gods, and Cosmic Consequences","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":"1916-11-26","location":null,"word_count":431,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/172/1916-11-26_02/p031","alignment_confidence":"high","alignment_reason":"beads:length","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":{"scope":"unit","status":"established","translator":"Gilbert Church, Frédéric Kozlik and Stewart C. Easton","identified_edition":"AP1984","book_title":"The Karma of Vocation","publisher":"Anthroposophic Press","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA172/English/AP1984/19161126p02.html","evidence":"lecture_page_line","publisher_note":"The publisher is inferred from the edition code in this lecture's source URL, not stated by the source page. The translator IS verified for this lecture: its own source names the translator (evidence: the lecture's page, rsarchive's lecture list, or the cover of the book it was published in), and that page's text was matched against this unit (see match_score and source_url). Cite the translator with confidence; attribute the publisher only as probable."},"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/172/1916-11-26_02/p031"},{"lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/172/1916-11-26_02/p031","paragraph_aligned":true}],"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 172/1916-11-26","ga":"172","lecture":"1916-11-26","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."},"unit_kind":{"kind":"second_translation","base_unit":"GA 172/1916-11-26","note":"A second English translation of the same lecture as 1916-11-26. The German served under this id repeats the German of 1916-11-26: one German text, to be cited at 1916-11-26.","same_lecture_as":"GA 172/1916-11-26","german_repeats":"GA 172/1916-11-26"},"german_anchor":{"de_prefix":"1916-11-26_02","de_passages":[{"locus":"GA 172/1916-11-26_02/p030","url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/172/1916-11-26_02/p030"}],"bead_confidence":"high","length_check":{"de_words":417,"en_words":431,"ratio":1.03,"partial":false},"correspondence":"established","note":"English passage numbering is edition-relative, so the same number need not name the same paragraph in the German. The German original passage(s) above are the edition-invariant anchor — fetch them (lang='de') to verify wording before quoting across editions."},"witness_completeness":{"ratio":1.03,"band":"comparable","note":null,"word_count":7277,"original_word_count":7091,"may_be_abridged":false},"witness_quality":{"translator":{"scope":"unit","status":"recorded","translator":"Gilbert Church, Frédéric Kozlik and Stewart C. Easton","identified_edition":"AP1984","book_title":"The Karma of Vocation","publisher":"Anthroposophic Press","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA172/English/AP1984/19161126p02.html","evidence":"lecture_page_line","publisher_note":"The publisher is inferred from the edition code in this lecture's source URL, not stated by the source page. The translator IS verified for this lecture: its own source names the translator (evidence: the lecture's page, rsarchive's lecture list, or the cover of the book it was published in), and that page's text was matched against this unit (see match_score and source_url). Cite the translator with confidence; attribute the publisher only as probable."},"entity_parity":{"status":"ok","checked_against":["GA 172/1916-11-26_02/p030"],"missing_from_translation":[],"present_only_in_translation":[],"bead_confidence":"high","note":"Every load-bearing name in the German counterpart appears in this English passage. That is a check on NAMES only: a translation can keep every name and still reverse who acts on whom, change a number, or soften a claim. Read the German for anything you intend to rest an argument on."},"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."}}