What's Time
My answers are inadequate
To those demanding day and date
And ever set a tiny shock
Through strangers asking what's o'clock;
Whose days are spent in whittling rhyme-
What's time to her, or she to Time?
—Dorothy Parker, “Daylight Savings”
Featured Titles
Basic Concepts of Modern Physics
Quanta, Particles, Relativity
Georg Unger
In this unique text, Georg Unger provides clear descriptions of the conceptual bases of twentieth-century physics, including quantum mechanics, particles, and relativity theory, as well as other aspects relating to key physical concepts to phenomena. An essential introduction for all those who are interested in gaining a better understanding of modern physics.
READ MORE | CONTENTS | INTRODUCTION
The Marriage of Sense and Thought
Imaginative Participation in Science
Stephen Edelglass, Georg Maier, Hans Gebert and John Davy
“In this brilliant book, the authors build a fascinating bridge between science and the world of the senses, a bridge that holds great promise for overcoming the fragmentation and alienation that is so characteristic of our time.” —Fritjof Capra, author of The Tao of Physics and The Web of Life
Anthroposophy and Science
Observation, Experiment, Mathematics
Rudolf Steiner
Rudolf Steiner examines the underlying precepts of the modern scientific approach and its current tools of observation of nature, experimentation, and the use of mathematics to establish quantitative relationships which are then framed as laws. He relates the validity of this approach for examination of the lifeless mineral realm and then describes the different cognitive states that are necessary to scientifically examine the realms of the living and of the conscious
Nature’s Open Secret
Introductions to Goethe's Scientific Writings
Rudolf Steiner
This collection of Steiner’s introductions to Goethe’s works re-visions the meaning of knowledge and how we attain it. Goethe had discovered how thinking could be applied to organic nature and that this experience requires not just rational concepts but a whole new way of perceiving.
From the Collected Works of Rudolf Steiner
Anthroposophy and the Natural Sciences
Foundations and Methods
5 public lectures and an evening discussion, various cities,
June 17, 1920 – May 11, 1922 (CW 75)
You see, we are now living in an era in which some people strive to open up a veritable chasm between knowledge and faith. Some of them consider only those sciences healthy that deal with the purely factual, with registering, systematizing, establishing laws—that is, the purely factual. In contrast, others in the sphere of religion believe they must demand faith to uphold their sphere.
Still, all this is just a characteristic of a temporary era. Just as in ear- lier ages people subdivided the soul into many different soul forces, so people in our time split it into a sphere of knowing and another one of faith. But when our soul is totally honest with itself, it cannot really bear this split. We’ll understand what we’re dealing with here when we see the reason for this split. You see, these days you can still talk with many people about life after death or about divine cosmology if you are talking on the basis of faith; that is, you can do so as long as you are not appealing in any way—and this sort of appeal is found least of all in religions—to those inner powers of persuasion that lead to proof. By talking about life after death, you naturally appeal to people’s wishes, their feelings of fear, and so on.
Things are very different when you talk about what I spoke about today—namely, about preexistence, about human life, our soul-spir- itual life, before birth or, let’s say, before conception. This is what anthroposophy talks about most extensively. In anthroposophy, we focus more on prenatal life—that is, on human life before concep- tion, on preexisting life, from which follows as a matter of course life after death.
We focus more on this life before birth because human egotism is less involved there. It is not a matter of indifference to people whether they go on living after death or not; but out of their egotism, they are less interested in whether they have already lived before they came to life on earth. Of course, once we open the sources of knowledge about that life on the other side of birth, the life we lived before we came into earthly life, then the other life, the one after death, follows logically. When you read my writings, you will find this described in detail. Indeed, in anthroposophy we consider the reality of this life before birth as more or less a matter of course.
—Rudolf Steiner, from a “Disputation Evening: On Natural-scientific Questions,” in Anthroposophy and the Natural Sciences (CW 75)
SteinerBooks / Anthroposophic Press, Inc. is an independent 501 (c) 3,
not-for-profit publishing company. Click above to make a tax-deductible donation.