13. The Relationships Between Spiritual Science and Individual Academic Subjects III

But, my dear attendees, there is another division of labor in more recent times. And this other division of labor – even if it is less often emphasized, yes, even if it happens that its advantages are even praised when it is mentioned – this other division of labor, it basically intervenes much more deeply in the individual human being and thus in the whole of human life. And this division of labor, which is of course justified to a certain extent – that is not to be doubted – which above all had to arise necessarily in the historical development of mankind, but this division of labor, because it has not been sufficiently counterbalanced, has in the long run an even more damaging effect on human life as a whole than the one mentioned before. The division of labor has occurred in the field of knowledge and in everything connected with knowledge: it is the division of labor in the field of science. Today, if you go through the usual training as a scientist, you can become absorbed in a specialized science. You then absorb precisely the way of thinking, of imagining certain things, that has come about through the division into individual scientific disciplines and sub-disciplines and sub-sub-disciplines and so on. You don't just externalize, you externalize the soul. You condemn yourself, for example, to take in certain forms of ideas, to immerse yourself in the context of such ideas, and then you say that what fits into this context can be proven with strict exactness; but what is born out of a different context, you say you are not competent to judge.