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

In short, spiritual science leads to an organization of the formulas in this exact scientific field, which expresses exactly what takes place between ponderable matter and the ether. One comes to an understanding of the real relationship between the so-called ether and ponderable matter. One comes to realize that if one simply uses the, shall we say, confused concept of mass in such a way that one says that one has to insert the effect of this mass or matter outwards with a positive sign, then one has to insert that which corresponds to the same in the ether with a negative sign. What is a compressive force in the one is a suction force in the other. And if we regard the ponderability of ponderable matter as a pushing force, then we must regard the imponderability of the ether as a suction force in relation to this pushing force. Then we can make do with the phenomena; then we do not need to abolish the ether and set a zero for it, but we can, as we do in another area, pass from plus to minus. I have given this example to show you that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science does not shrink from the fields that are strictly speaking exact science.