V. Can a method of gaining insight into spheres beyond the sense-perceptible world be given a scientific basis?

In our present enquiry into the life which we live in mind and spirit it should also be possible to look at things differently from the way one would from certain natural scientific points of view. We should be under no illusion in this respect. The situation is that everything newly discovered, or of which people think that it might be found in the great philosophical questions, is considered from the natural scientific point of view by the world at large, at least at the sentient level. Even the things that well forth from the deepest depths of humanity’s ethical and religious life have to have their own justification, as it were, before the natural scientific way of thinking today. In a philosophy where insights are sought beyond the sphere of the senses we must therefore above all always consider the scientific requirements of natural science as it is today. But it is exactly here that confusion and misunderstanding arise only too easily, we might even say naturally, with regard to what is meant here by a science of the spirit with anthroposophical orientation.