12. The Relationships Between Spiritual Science and Individual Academic Subjects II

In physics, it is quite common and perhaps even taken for granted – we will see in later lectures to what extent – that the human being is excluded. One then comes to the more organic sciences via chemistry, which should then culminate in biology and in special anthropology. But it is precisely here that the 19th-century approach has increasingly endeavored to investigate, using all sorts of methods that are very commendable in this field, how one animal form develops from another evolves from another animal form, how the simplest animal forms perfect themselves – if the term is used in a relative sense, it may well be used – how then, at the top of the animal forms, man can be observed.