3. Natural Science and Anthroposophy

Natural science and the philosophy dependent on it – today's dependent philosophy – cannot but start from what is so interwoven in things that we have to speak of necessity. It is impossible for us to start from anything other than necessity with the spirit that prevails in natural science today. And it is virtually the ideal of science to see through what confronts us in the external world as a system of internally necessary, interrelated entities and facts. When you engage in scientific research in this way, you do not come close to what confronts you in the inner fact of human freedom as an immediate experience. You do not come close to it. And so we are confronted with the significant question that leads us to a cognitive abyss: freedom as an immediate experience is given to you! Why then, by stretching out your mathematical web of knowledge over scientific facts and in this way creating a world view, cannot you approach what cannot be denied as an immediate experience: freedom!