8. The Harmony Between Spiritual Science and Natural Science and the Misconceptions about the Former and the Building Dedicated to it in Dornach

The spiritual researcher does not say this directly. Rather, the spiritual researcher is fully aware that, although science has not yet fathomed every mystery in its field, and that much remains to be done before the scientific approach has reached its ideal, the spiritual researcher is also aware that the scientific methods as such have developed, at least up to a certain scientific attitude, in such a way that natural science itself has provided information about what can be deduced from nature, and that further reflection, following on from natural science with the same means of thought that natural science also applies, can lead to nothing more. Natural science is, as it were, something that is so constituted that, as it develops, it leads to a totality, not to something that could be taken and philosophically expounded upon. It is not by taking the results of natural science, combining them and speculating on them that spiritual research intends to proceed, but spiritual research stands in a different relation to natural science. Spiritual research says to itself: Because of the fact that the transition has been made, we say, through Copernicus, through Kepler, through Galileo, with a special way of looking at nature, the soul forces have also entered into a special relationship with natural events. Under the influence of this newer natural science, the human spirit had to relate to nature in a completely different way than it did before. This has given rise to completely different methods of thinking. A completely different kind of relationship to nature has arisen. In the last three to four centuries, people have thought and felt differently about nature than they did before. And by directing the powers of the soul towards nature in a different way, humanity has, so to speak, inwardly exercised these soul powers. The soul forces themselves have thereby carried out a different inner activity than they did before.