(PDF) Evolution in the Double Stream of Time - an Inner Morphology of Organic Thought

Christoph J. Hueck

Evolution in the Double Stream of Time

Christoph J. Hueck

Evolution in the

Double Stream of Time

An Inner Morphology of Organic Thought

Revised new Edition

AKANTHOS ACADEMY EDITION

Akanthos Academy for Anthroposophical

Research and Development Stuttgart

Revised new Edition

Figures can be downloaded from

https://publish.obsidian.md/evolution/Start+English

Typesetting and design: Akanthos Academy

Zur Uhlandshöhe 10, D-70188 Stuttgart

www.akanthos-akademie.de

Man knows himself only by knowing the world,

which he perceives only in himself

and himself only in it.

J.W. Goethe

 
 
 
 
CONTENTS 
Preface ............................................................................. 11 
Introduction ..................................................................... 13 
Part I  The Enigma of Life, Knowing Consciousness  
and Time ................................................................ 17 
1    The Question about Life ......................................... 18 
2    The Transition from Idealistic to Materialistic 
Biology in the 19th Century..................................... 22 
2.1   The Organism as an Interplay of Form and Function .............. 22 
2.2   Relationship of Forms – Richard Owen and the Archetype ...... 23 
2.3   The Purposeful Function –  William Paley and the  
‘Argument from Design’ ........................................................ 27 
2.4   Charles Darwin and British National Economics – Instead  
of God, the ‘Invisible Hand’ of Natural Selection.................... 29 
2.5   Understanding Through Inner Experiences –  
Anthropomorphism in the Knowledge of Nature ...................... 30 
2.6   The ‘Struggle for Existence’ in Inner Observation ................... 32 
2.7   The Question about the Organic Gestalt ................................. 34 
2.8   Consequences of Darwinism ................................................... 34 
3    The Enigma of Development of the Living Shape .. 36 
3.1   The Problem of ‘Primordial Generation’ ................................. 36 
3.2   Causation from the Future? ................................................... 38 
3.3   The Living Being as an Autonomous Whole ........................... 41 
3.4   Organism and Environment .................................................. 43 
3.5   The Fourfold Unity of Life .................................................... 44 
3.6   Outlook to an Extension of Cognition .................................... 46 
3.7   The Enigma of Evolution ...................................................... 46 
4    Goethe, Rudolf Steiner and the Knowledge of  
Living Things ......................................................... 47 
4.1   Conception and Activity in the Thinking of Metamorphoses ..... 47 
4.2   Form, Life, Consciousness, Being – Four Stages of Cognition .. 52 
4.3   Physiognomic Cognition of Shape ........................................... 56 

 
 
 
 
4   Space, Time, Wholeness, Effectiveness – Four Levels of the 
Organic ................................................................................ 58 
5   Darwinism, Goetheanism and Anthroposophy ........................ 60 
6  Consciousness as the Stage of the World.................................. 63 
  Organism, Cognition and Time .............................. 66 
1   Organic Development and Cognition....................................... 66 
2   Viktor von Weizsäcker – Form, Time and Cognition ............. 68 
3   Time as a Double Stream ...................................................... 72 
4   The General Structure of Consciousness is  the General  
Structure of the Organism ...................................................... 75 
5   The Problem of the Wholeness of the Organism ....................... 79 
6   The TIME CROSS, the Four Aristotelian ‘Causes’  and the 
Critique of Teleology ............................................................. 79 
7   Man and Nature – Together a Whole .................................... 82 
Part II  The Time Cross as Structure of Living 
Development and Evolution ................................... 87 
  The Animal Form as Expression of the Psyche ...... 88 
1   Metamerism and Shape ......................................................... 88 
2   The Animal Form as Expression of the Psyche ....................... 92 
3   The Interaction of Life and Soul as a Design Principle in the 
Development and Evolution of Animals ................................. 94 
4   Evolution of the Tripartite Organization ................................ 98 
  Molecular Genetics in the Double Stream of  
Time ..................................................................... 103 
1   Genes and Gestalt Formation .............................................. 103 
2   The TIME CROSS of Genetics and the Threefold Structure  
of the Cell........................................................................... 104 
3   What is Organic Matter? .................................................... 110 
4   Part and Whole in Biology – from Meaning to Molecule ........ 112 
5   Genes and Evolution – the Invisible Tree of Life .................. 114 
  The Evolution of Animals ...................................... 116 
1   Higher Development and Segregation .................................... 116 
1.1  Unicellular Organisms ........................................................ 120 

 
 
 
 
1.2  Multicellular Organisms and Tissue Animals ....................... 120 
1.3  Hollow Animals ................................................................. 121 
1.4  Two-sided Symmetrical Animals – Old and New Mouths ..... 122 
1.5  Echinoderms ....................................................................... 122 
1.6  Tunicates............................................................................ 123 
1.7  Chordates ........................................................................... 124 
1.8  Fishes ................................................................................ 125 
1.9  The further Evolution of Vertebrates .................................... 125 
2   Evolution of the Tripartite Type........................................... 127 
  Evolution as the Becoming of Man ...................... 129 
1   Phylogeny in Phenomenological Perspective............................. 129 
2   Phylogeny as Development of Freedom .................................. 132 
3   Phylogeny in Inner Observation ............................................ 135 
  Phylogeny as a Meta-Organism ............................ 138 
1   Ontogeny and Phylogeny ...................................................... 138 
2   Evolution as Metamorphosis ................................................ 146 
3   The Influence of the Environment ......................................... 150 
4   The TIME CROSS of Evolution ....................................... 152 
5   The Principle of Internalisation ............................................ 154 
Essence and Evolution of Man ................................. 156 
1   Man in Space – the Upright Posture and the Autonomous 
Essence of the ‘I’ ................................................................. 156 
2   The Effect of Uprightness .................................................... 159 
3   Man as a Polarized Being ................................................... 163 
4   The Opposite Directions of Evolution and Hominization ....... 165 
5   Man in Time – the Discovery of Slowness ............................. 167 
6   Summary ........................................................................... 171 
7   Freedom and Responsibility ................................................. 173 
8   The Common Structure of Life and Consciousness ................. 174 
Part III  Appendix ......................................................... 177 
On the ‘Evolutionary Theory of Knowledge’..................................... 178 
Rudolf Steiner: Extension of Natural Science by Observation of  
the Will in Thought ...................................................................... 179 

 
 
 
 
Rudolf Steiner: Goethe's Metamorphosis Thought Leads to the  
Spiritual View of the Reality of Living Things ................................ 180 
Rudolf Steiner: Perception of the Vital Force by Strengthening the  
Power of Thinking ........................................................................ 180 
The Knowing Will as the Real and Idealistic Basis of Evolutionary 
Knowledge..................................................................................... 181 
On the Inner Self-Observation of the Four Stages of Cognition ......... 182 
Francis Bacon‘s Four Fallacies ...................................................... 184 
Consciousness and Matter .............................................................. 185 
Life Histories of Humans and Apes .............................................. 188 
Seven Aspects of the Organic.......................................................... 188 
The Life Cycle of Jellyfish as an Example of the Work of Etheric  
and Astral Formative Forces ......................................................... 190 
Bibliography .................................................................. 193 
 

PREFACE

hy has evolution progressed to humans and not

stopped with the fish or elsewhere? Do we owe our

existence to a chain of coincidences stretching over

millions of years? Can life have arisen from dead matter at all?

The answers that natural science gives to these fundamental

questions cannot suffice for deeper thinking. For life and its

evolution cannot be explained in a materialistic and causal-

analytical way (which is explained in detail in this book), and

‘evolution by chance’ is not an explanation. Even a systems

biology view, which understands the living as a complex of

interdependencies

1

, cannot explain why development in the

course of evolution has proceeded in this way and not quite

differently.

In this book it is shown that any materialistic, Darwinian or

even systems biology explanation of evolution overlooks a

crucial factor, namely cognitive consciousness. Here an attempt

is made to answer the above questions by understanding

cognition not as an uninvolved bystander but as an integral part

of reality. From the perspective of cognition, it emerges that

evolution was not a random event, but an organic process that

can be seen as the becoming of man.

Again and again, there were researchers who understood

evolution as the becoming of man. Among them were Karl Snell

(1806-1886), Wilhelm Heinrich Preuß (1843-1909), Johannes

Ranke (1836-1916), Louis Bolk (1866-1930), and Edgar Dacqué

(1878-1945). Like Charles Darwin (1809-1882), they were

convinced of the common descent of all organisms, but in

contrast to Darwinian materialism, they saw human beings not

as the product of chance, but as the principle and goal of

evolution. Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) also understood evolution

in this sense, and he too referred to Darwin and in particular to

Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919). Steiner, however, believed that one

must still „add the spirit”

2

to the theory of descent to arrive at a

1

See e.g. Capra & Luisi (2016); Noble (2008); Rosslenbroich (2020).

2

Steiner, 1903-1906, GA 054, p. 18–19, 05.10.1905 Citations from Rudolf

Steiner’s lectures are presented by Collected Works (GA), page(s) and date of

lecture (in German date format).

W

realistic understanding of the position of man in evolution. This

did not mean another theory, but a view and understanding of

the real spiritual forces at work in evolution.

Steiner referred to the metamorphosis teachings of Johann

Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) and to Goethe’s method of

‘contemplative power of judgement’ [‘anschauende Urteilskraft’],

which can lead to the concrete observation of the spiritual forces

and laws at work in the development and evolution of organisms.

The addition of the spiritual Anschauung to the theory of

evolution can bridge the gap between human consciousness and

organic development that biology has always struggled with.

How this ‘addition of the spirit’ to the study of life and evolution

can be understood is presented here.

Building on Steiner’s many suggestions and using Goethe’s

method, several researchers have further elaborated the

understanding of evolution

3

and described such important

findings as the morphological

4

and developmental

5

special

position of humans, the fundamental importance of the upright

posture for human development

6

or the increase in organismic

autonomy during evolution

7

, which then also entered

‘mainstream’ science at least in part.

But even among Goethean researchers the question of the

purposefulness of evolution is controversial. Wolfgang Schad

saw evolution as “open to the future”, a “learning on Earth with an

open outcome”

8

. During the final work on this second edition,

Wolfgang Schad passed away. I owe him much.

Tübingen, autumn 2023

Christoph Hueck

3

Bosse (2002); Husemann (2015); Kranich (1989); Suchantke (2002).

4

Poppelbaum (1928); Schad (1965); Verhulst (1999).

5

Kipp (1980).

6

Schad (1985).

7

Rosslenbroich (2007, 2014).

8

Schad (2013), p. 64.

– 13 –

INTRODUCTION

n the year of the first publication of this work

9

a book by the

American philosopher Thomas Nagel appeared with the

provocative title Mind and cosmos – why the materialist, neo-

Darwinian conception of nature is almost certainly false. Nagel makes it

clear that materialism cannot explain the origin of life and

consciousness, nor the fact of knowing and understanding

(true/false), nor the reality of human value concepts (good/evil).

These higher areas of the reality cannot be understood from the

interactions of smallest material particles (nor, one might add,

from quantum mechanics). One must work with adequate facts

if one wants to understand the world, and life, consciousness,

cognition, and values belong to the whole. Nagel, however, does

not want to believe in an extra-worldly creator either, but wants

to find principles within nature that point beyond a mere physical

explanation. He is convinced “that the mind is not merely an

afterthought or accident or additional equipment, but a fundamental aspect

of nature.”

10

At the end of his treatise, Nagel predicts the dawn of a new

worldview that will centre on life and consciousness. Through a

“great cognitive shift” one will learn to view consciousness as an

objective and world-encompassing reality. And this worldview

will include teleological aspects. Darwinism would have to be

supplemented by the assumption of a purposeful force in nature:

“The teleological hypothesis states that life, consciousness, and values are

determined not only by value-free chemistry and physics, but by a cosmic

disposition that has led to their formation”

11

.

The aim here is to show a way in which Nagel’s teleological

hypothesis can be substantiated and confirmed. In doing so, I

refer to Rudolf Steiner’s theory of knowledge and his

understanding of evolution. According to Steiner, the knowing

consciousness is not simply a mere spectator of an external

reality, but the stage [‘Schauplatz’] on which reality is constituted

in each individual act of cognition. The introspective observation

of this act and the mental faculties involved in it can be carried

9

Hueck (2012).

10

Nagel (2012), p. 30.

11

Ibid., p. 123.

I

– 14 –

out just as precisely as the investigation of the external nature.

Applying the method of introspective observation to biological

cognition opens an experiential approach to the riddles of life. A

holistic view of evolution therefore does not require a turning

away from the scientific method, but rather its expansion

through the introspective self-observation of cognition. One

works with facts found through empirical research and links

them through thoughts that closely follow the phenomena, and

in addition one observes how one grasps the facts and thinks their

connections.

The consideration of cognition is also necessary because any

theory of evolution needs a solid foundation. Nagel pointed out

that “the attempt to understand oneself in evolutionist ... terms must

eventually find its ground in something that is understood to be valid in

itself – something without which evolutionist understanding would not be

possible.”

12

Thus, one cannot call oneself and one’s own

knowledge an accidental product of evolution, for a statement, if

it is to be true, must not negate the foundations that make its

truth possible. It must therefore not be a coincidence (or, which

amounts to the same thing, be based on foundations that have

arisen by chance: brain, etc.), for otherwise something quite

different could be true with equal justification.

13

Every statement about the world presupposes the person

making the statement and their realization of it. The knowing

consciousness cannot be omitted from science. It is inescapable.

The introspective self-view of cognition therefore provides the

secure ground for understanding life and its development.

Steiner once formulated this as follows: “Nothing in the cosmos is

considered at all without having the human being in it. Everything gets

sense and at the same time ground of knowledge only by the fact that one

considers it in relation to the human being. Nowhere is the human being

excluded. Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science leads our view of

the world back again to a view of the human being.”

14

Introspective

consideration of evolutionary cognition will therefore also lead

to insight into man’s place in evolution.

12

Ibid., p. 118.

13

For a short discussion of the so-called ‘evolutionary theory of knowledge’,

which states that cognition developed because of selective adaptation, see

Appendix, p. 178.

14

Steiner, 1921, GA 338, p. 114, 15.02.1921.

– 15 –

This book builds on manifold works of biologists and

physicians who, following Steiner, have done research according

to Goethe’s method. Especially Jochen Bockemühl, Dankmar

Bosse, Armin Husemann, Friedrich Kipp, Eugen Kolisko, Ernst-

Michael Kranich, Herrmann Poppelbaum, Bernd Rosslenbroich,

Wolfgang Schad, Andreas Suchantke and Jos Verhulst are to be

thanked for essential points of view.

In the first part, life and biological cognition are examined, a

holistic concept of the organism is developed and deepened by a

phenomenological view of time. In the second part, the

knowledge gained is applied to biological development,

molecular genetics, and the evolution of man. The presentation

does not presuppose specialized knowledge of biology. The book

is addressed to all who are interested in a scientific path beyond

the one-sidedness of Darwinism. It wants to show that evolution

can be understood under full consideration of natural scientific

facts as a meaningful and purposeful, organic overall process, in

a word as becoming of man.

PART I

THE ENIGMA OF LIFE,

KNOWING CONSCIOUSNESS AND TIME

– 18 –

1 THE QUESTION ABOUT LIFE

To investigate life, one must participate in life.

15

(Viktor von Weizsäcker)

ave you ever watched a plant grow? Take an avocado,

for example. First, you must soak the egg-sized brown

pit in water for weeks until it begins to sprout roots, and

then place it in a pot of soil. After some time, the mighty

structure breaks apart and a thin, brown-purple shoot appears in

the gaping crevice. Again, a little later, the first light green leaflets

can be seen, which over the next few weeks, accompanied by the

vigorous growth of the stem, unfold more and more. Soon there

is a plant with large lanceolate leaves at the window.

What force propels this figure as if out of nowhere? Is it merely

physical and chemical interactions? No machine, no matter how

intelligently constructed, can accomplish something similar.

Nevertheless, most biologists think that living things are

machines that function according to physical and chemical laws.

But why do these ‘machines’ form shapes? Why do living cells

develop into plants, animals, and humans? And why do they

develop into these particular shapes - because completely

different ones would also be conceivable? Since Charles Darwin

(1809-1882) the answer is simply: “by (useful) chance”. During

evolution, supposedly random changes in the forms and

functions of organisms are said to have improved their chances

of survival in the ‘struggle for existence’ and were therefore

preserved.

An alternative to this ultimately gloomy picture is the religious

view that looks for the intervention of an otherworldly Creator

God in nature. Instead of Darwinian chance, one believes in a

higher wisdom and will of creation. Thus, evolution supposedly

takes on meaning, but one cannot really say how God created the

organisms. Did he create the first living cell in a kind of heavenly

laboratory and then put it in earthly conditions...? Materialism

does not know why, creationism does not know how the

organisms came into being.

15

Weizsäcker (1942).

H

– 19 –

I do not go into more detail about creationism because, as

Darwin remarked, it does not provide a real explanation for

natural phenomena: “According to the ordinary view of the independent

creation of each species, it can only be said that it is so, and that it pleased

the Creator to build all animals and plants ...; but this is no scientific

explanation.”

16

But also the attempt to explain life materialistically

falls short, because the genetic and biochemical processes taking

place in the organism always presuppose life. Genes, proteins,

and biological metabolism exist only in living beings, and they

can be understood only in a living context. Every biochemist

assumes at least a living cell when he speaks of ‘metabolism’,

every geneticist implies an organism when he thinks of ‘gene’.

Molecular biology describes the necessary conditions under

which life exists, but these conditions are far from sufficient to

explain life itself. By isolating individual components from the

living whole, one destroys the context from which they originate.

But then life is no longer present, and the biologist must

reassemble the whole in his imagination – the result of this

operation is the living organism presupposed from the

beginning. “Whoever wants to recognize and describe something living /

Seeks first to drive out the spirit / Then he has the parts in his hand /

Missing, alas! only the spiritual bond”, Goethe says.

It is not the genes that explain the organism, but the organism

that explains the genes. Unfortunately, this simple truth is rarely

seen clearly. The suggestive power of reductionist ‘explanations’

is so strong that the primacy of the living organism is often

simply forgotten. (However, so-called epigenetics has put a dent

in the view of genetic causation.

17

It shows that not only the

genes control the organism, but also the organism controls its

genes. Here, as everywhere in life, we are not dealing with simple

causality.)

Life is continuous development and transformation, a constant

invisible flow that creates visible forms and also dissolves them

again.

18

Doesn’t its flow have to be understood differently from

the parts that swim along in it? If you look only at these parts,

you miss the essence. You have to understand the living whole

to understand the essence and effect of the individual parts. One

16

Darwin (1859), p. 518.

17

Cf. e.g. Bauer (2008); Kegel (2009).

18

Overview in Nicholson & Dupré (2018).

– 20 –

must “not deal with nature separately and singly, but represent it acting

and living, striving from the whole into the parts”

19

, as Goethe

expressed it in his famous first conversation with Schiller about

the primordial plant [‘Urpflanze’].

Biologists and philosophers have repeatedly spoken of a ‘life

force’ by which living bodies differ from dead ones. Aristotle

called it ‘entelechy’ (from en-telos-echein: to have one’s goal in

oneself), Immanuel Kant a ‘natural purpose’, Henri Bergson the

‘élan vital’, Hans Driesch saw in it an immaterial factor present

in the cells of an organism, Adolf Portmann paraphrased it as

‘self-representation’, Rupert Sheldrake called it the

‘morphogenetic field’, and so on.

20

However, as long as this force

is considered as analogous to a physical force of nature, it must

prove to be scientifically elusive. Thus Ernst Mayr (1904-2005),

one of the most influential biologists of the 20th century, wrote:

“The logic of the vitalists was faultless, but all their efforts to find a

scientific answer to the so-called vitalist phenomena were failures.

Generations of vitalists laboured in vain to find a scientific explanation of

the vital force.”

21

Mayr is right insofar as life eludes observation if one looks for

it like an object. Precisely because life flows continuously, it

cannot be a single thing (or a force acting only presently). If one

wants to grasp the flow of life like its parts, one reaches into the

void. One must participate in the process of life, follow it and

grasp it, if one wants to understand it. Then one finds out that

there is an intimate connection between the organisms and

oneself, a bridge which leads to the reality of the living.

This bridge is what we are talking about here. It will be seen

that it is related to the experience of time, indeed that it is

virtually ‘made of time’. For we live in time. And the qualities of

time can only be grasped inwardly; it is not an externally visible

phenomenon (for the change in the position of the sun, the

advance of the hands of the clock are only spatial changes).

Through the inner observation of time one can recognize what

life is. Time lived and experienced is the medium that connects

life and cognition.

19

Goethe (1817), p. 867.

20

For an overview see Mayr (1998).

21

Mayr (2002).

– 21 –

We are usually not fully aware of the flow of life. We see the

small avocado plant today and the somewhat larger one

tomorrow – but we do not see the living development that lies

in between. However, it is possible to consciously ‘dive’ into this

development process. One can actively imagine the changing

organism and thus comprehend its development. Such

observation of nature, not just observing and noting, but actively

participating, opens an inner field of experience in which the

living and transforming forces of the organic can be observed

and explored. How this observation is possible, and to which

results it can lead is described here in detail.

A procedure in which the research contents only appear

through the activity of the observer seems to contradict the

conventional view of natural science, which aims precisely at the

elimination of all subjective influences. However, this objection

cannot prevent one from carrying out the inner observations

oneself. One can proceed as in an empirical science, even if one

produces the facts to be observed oneself. Of course, one must

be as conscientious in doing so as in any other science. One must

strictly adhere to the phenomena, strive for the greatest possible

freedom from contradiction in the explanations, the results must

be intersubjectively reproducible and permit predictions which

in turn can be confirmed by observation, and so on.

We do not want to presuppose theories about life and its forms,

but simply turn to biological phenomena with an open mind and

answer our own questions ourselves. We look at all biological

phenomena: from living organisms to their organs, metabolism,

and genes, to the fossils that tell of their evolution. In doing so,

we challenge common explanations, however familiar they may

be. We want to illuminate and explore the preconscious

knowledge about living things that implicitly underlies all

biological knowledge. We are interested in how life, organic

development, and evolution are thought. We want to develop

and ground a morphology of evolutionary thought through

introspective empirical observation.

– 22 –

2 THE TRANSITION FROM IDEALISTIC TO

MATERIALISTIC BIOLOGY IN THE 19TH CENTURY

It may be truly said that I am like a man who has become colour-blind.

22

(Charles Darwin)

2.1 The Organism as an Interplay of Form and Function

very living being appears as a Gestalt. A daisy, a butterfly,

a sheepdog, or a chimpanzee can be recognized at first

glance by their shapes. Many organic shapes appeal to

the aesthetic sense through wonderfully harmonious

proportions.

23

However, they are not only harmonious, but also

surprisingly functional. There is hardly a feature in the vast realm

of living things that is not useful for the life of the individual

organism or its species.

Shape and purpose, form and function are closely linked in an

organism. Different organic forms show a high degree of

similarity and at the same time differ according to their function.

Charles Darwin, amazed at this connection, wrote: “What can be

more curious than that the hand of a man, formed for grasping, that of a

mole for digging, the leg of the horse, the paddle of the porpoise, and the wing

of the bat, should all be constructed on the same pattern, and should include

the same bones, in the same relative positions?”

24

Thus the vertebrates

are formed according to a general type which is modified by the

external conditions of life of the particular species. “It is generally

acknowledged that all organic beings have been formed on two great laws:

unity of type, and the conditions of existence.” (pg. 183).

We will not discuss the primacy of one or the other law here

but ask how these two are experienced in the introspection of

cognition. How does one think the form, and how the function?

Which thoughts and thought movements are tacitly assumed and

carried out? We approach these questions by looking at two

historical figures who each represented one of the two principles

22

Darwin (1887), p. 46.

23

Doczi (1981).

24

Darwin (1861), p. 377.

E

– 23 –

in a typical way: the morphologist Richard Owen and the

Anglican clergyman William Paley.

2.2 Relationship of Forms – Richard Owen and the Archetype

Richard Owen (1804-1892), founder and first director of the

Natural History Museum in London, was an important advocate

of the typological view. He carried out extensive studies on the

structure of vertebrates. He was sent specimens of newly

discovered species from all over the world, and Darwin himself

entrusted him with the study of fossil mammal skeletons that he

had brought back from his research trip to South America.

Owen was particularly interested in the limbs of vertebrates

and wrote a famous comparative study of their structure. He

found the same construction principle everywhere: one bone in

the upper arm, two in the forearm, several small carpal bones,

five bones in the metacarpal, five fingers. In animals with fewer

than five fingers (or toes), in cows, horses, birds and others, he

and other researchers were able to show that these are only

deviations from the basic pattern in which some elements have

been lost.

Richard Owen saw the explanation for this uniform blueprint

in an underlying common idea or, as he called it, a common

‘archetype’. He imagined this archetype as originating from the

spirit of God, which preceded the individual animal forms and

was realized in each of them in a particular way. At the end of his

treatise On the Nature of Limbs, published in 1849, he wrote: “The

archetypal idea was manifested in the flesh, under divers such modifications,

upon this planet, long prior to the existence of those animal species that

actually exemplify it. To what natural laws or secondary causes the orderly

succession and progression of such organic phenomena may have been

committed we as yet are ignorant. But if, without derogation of the divine

power, we may conceive the existence of such ministers, and personify them

by the term ‘nature’, we learn from the past history of our globe that she

has advanced with slow and stately steps, guided by the archetypal light,

amidst the wreck of worlds, from the first embodiment of the vertebrate idea

under its old ichthyic [fish-like, note CH] vestment, until it became

arrayed in the glorious garb of the human form.”

25

Owen (1849), p. 86.

– 24 –

In these words still lives a sense of reverence for something

that Owen saw as spiritual in nature and in the human form. Ten

years later, this feeling and view would be swept away by

Darwin’s theory of evolution.

Owen is famous for his definition of the concept of biological

homology as “the same organ in different animals under every variety of

form and function”

26

. What happens in the knowing mind when we

grasp the similarities between different forms? What you grasp

could easily be captured as an abstract schema. But how does one

grasp this schema (Fig. )? You form it while observing a single

form and keep it when you move on to the next one; it can be

changed by each new form and still retains what these forms have

in common.

Fig. 1. How does one recognize relationship of form? Limbs of

different vertebrates; homologous bones are drawn in the same grey

(after Suchantke

27

, modified).

The easiest way to approach this commonality is to let one

form slowly merge into another in the imagination. To turn a

26

Owen (1843), p. 674.

27

Suchantke (2002).

– 25 –

mole’s hand into a bat’s wing, you need to lengthen the humerus,

ulna, and radius, remove the extra digging claw, and greatly

lengthen the bones of the hand and fingers. To obtain a horse’s

leg, the entire structure must be stretched, the bones must be

made more stable, those of the forearm, metacarpal and

phalanges must be fused, and the nail of the middle finger must

be thickened as a hoof. During these metamorphoses, an inner,

morphological-plastic activity takes place. Although this activity

is subjective, it is not arbitrary, because it is guided by the

phenomena.

Such an activity underlies all recognition of similarities, as is

constantly practiced in biology. But it is hardly ever consciously

reflected upon. Biologists ask about the biological cause of the

similarities, but they do not ask how they recognize them. The

recognizing mind is only treated as a spectator, as an unreal

addition to world events. However, it is the inescapable scene of

the world.

If you follow the changes in form slowly and actively, you can

also experience how the limbs correspond with the movement in

the respective environment: the bat’s wing with the air, the

mole’s hand with the earth, etc. The inner movement that

imitates natural phenomena also leads to a vivid experience (not

just an abstract and pale idea) of the natural connections between

the phenomena.

It is also possible to observe how, during the transformation of

one form into another, one passes through a general state from

which the specialized forms are derived. In biology, this general

state is called ‘type’.

28

Some biologists consider typological

thinking to be an anti-evolutionary and potentially dangerous

idealism.

29

But even they also always work with typological

cognition, because biology always presents similarities.

For a living cognition, the type is not a rigid ‘blueprint’, but a

dynamic active principle that is just as mobile in the knowing

consciousness as it is in nature.

Richard Owen wrote that the archetypal idea must have existed

long before the appearance of man in God’s spirit: “Now, however,

the recognition of an ideal exemplar for the vertebrated animals proves that

28

Toepfer (2011), p. 537-565.

29

Mayr (2002).

– 26 –

the knowledge of such a being as man must have existed before man

appeared. For the divine mind which planned the archetype also foreknew

all its modifications.”

30

If one wants to penetrate to the reality of

this idea itself, one must seek it out where it can be experienced,

namely within the knowing consciousness. One must not

externalize it, or one will quickly arrive at something unreal.

Owen’s formulation illustrates this dilemma of idealistic biology.

On the one hand, he grasped something of the living efficacy of

the type; on the other hand, his conception of a divine mind that

planned the archetype seems shadowy and pale – a projection of

his own mental activity into an imagined beyond. This idealistic

conception of nature was too weak to resist or even prevail

against the emerging materialistic naturalism.

Charles Darwin sought a natural explanation of the similarities

of form and found the key to it in the idea of descent. For him,

organisms did not merely coexist, so that the observer could only

seek the connection between them in the mind of ‘God’. “On my

theory,” he wrote, “unity of type is explained by unity of descent.”

31

All

four-legged vertebrates, he said, were similar because they

descended from a common ancestor which was also already

organized according to the same blueprint. In the fossil finds of

primeval vertebrates this theory found a brilliant confirmation as

a matter of course.

Owen and Darwin had basically the same empirical material:

recent animals and fossil skeletons. Both recognized the unity in

diversity. One interpreted it idealistically, the other

materialistically. Darwin simply ‘folded down’ Owen’s view into

the material, so to speak. His interpretation corresponded to the

spirit of the time.

But Darwin’s conception also presupposes typological thinking

because the similarities between ancestors and descendants can

be recognized only in this way. By the conception of common

descent, however, one has hardly any more reason to reflect on

the formative thinking, which determines this similarity, by

introspective self-observation of cognition.

30

Owen (1849), p. 86.

31

Darwin (1859), p. 237.

– 27 –

2.3 The Purposeful Function –

William Paley and the ‘Argument from Design’

Now what about function? The perfect correspondence of form

and function, the purposeful design of living things, has always

fascinated naturalists. The Anglican clergyman William Paley

(1743-1805) placed functionality at the centre of his argument in

his influential book Natural theology: or evidences of the existence and

attributes of the deity, collected from the appearances of nature (1802).

Paley is an exponent of the physical theology that had been

widespread since the late 17th century, which sought to prove

from the works of nature the existence of a divine Creator.

32

The

perfection of organisms, Paley argues, suggests not only divine

creation in general, but also God’s character and goodness: “The

hinges in the wings of an earwig, and the joints of its antennas, are as

highly wrought, as if the Creator had had nothing else to finish. We see no

signs of diminution of care by multiplicity of objects, or of distraction of

thought by variety. We have no reason to fear, therefore, our being forgotten,

or overlooked, or neglected.”

33

At the heart of Paley’s argument is the famous watchmaker

analogy, with which he became one of the fathers of the concept

of ‘intelligent design’: “When we come to inspects the watch, we perceive

… that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose. (pg.

7) … Every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which

existed in the watch, exist also in the works of nature; with the difference,

on the side of nature, of being greater and more, and that in a degree which

exceeds all computation.”

34

With devotion and detail, Paley describes

the construction of the eye, the ear, the circulation of the blood,

the internal organs, the muscular and bony systems, as well as

that of insects, plants, and much else, and concludes: “The marks

of design are too strong to be got over. Design must have had a designer.

That designer must have been a person. That person is God.”

35

Was it not obvious, then, to think of purposefulness as having

a purpose, of purpose as having a plan, and of plan as having a

planning Creator? But man knows purposeful planning only

from himself. And so William Paley also projected a

32

Michel (2008).

33

Paley (1802), p. 280.

34

Ibid., p. 22.

35

Ibid., p. 229.

– 28 –

characteristic of his own consciousness onto a supposedly

otherworldly God. Charles Darwin looked for the causes of the

purposeful organization in this world, in blind and mechanically

working principles of nature.

Now we want to ask also here: How does one think a

purposeful organization? An insect wing, for example, serves the

flying, and the flying serves the survival of the species. In this

sequence of thoughts one performs a different operation than in

grasping an archetype of form. In morphological typologizing

one proceeds in a pictorial-comparative way, plastically

transferring the different forms into each other. The thinking of

functions, on the other hand, does not proceed pictorially, but

relationally. The idea of purpose is not directed at the form, but

at its meaning: Something is good for …, it serves the survival of

the species, because … etc.

It has often been pointed out that the real meaning of Darwin’s

theory lies in the idea of the change of all beings with time. In a

certain way, however, temporal understanding already lived

implicitly in the views of William Paley and Richard Owen. For

the idea of purposeful functionality refers to the future. In

thinking a purpose, the expected future result of a process is

anticipated, brought back into the present, so to speak. Functions

have a meaning for the future survival of the organism.

And as the thinking of purpose uses expectation, so thinking

of shape-variation uses memory: one sees a shape and compares

it with the previous one still present in memory. Expedient-

functional thinking is anticipatory, it actualizes the future;

archetypal-formal thinking is anamnestic, it actualizes the past.

These two principles of cognition are fundamentally important

in all biological comprehension.

The relation to the past and to the future is of course also valid

for the organisms themselves. An organic form is always the

result of a past process from which it emerged. A biological

function, in turn, always has its importance or meaning for the

future of the organism.

In a sense, then, Darwinism appears as the ingenious

combination of the two Gestalt principles of form and function.

In Darwin’s system, the time references implied by Owen and

Paley, that to the past and that to the future, are made explicit.

– 29 –

For Darwin interpreted the archetype as common descent and

thus as actual past, and the functional meaning as actual future,

namely the survival of the species.

2.4 Charles Darwin and British National Economics –

Instead of God, the ‘Invisible Hand’ of Natural Selection

Interestingly, Paley’s reasoning had a formative influence on

Charles Darwin, who wrote of his theological studies (which his

father had urged him to pursue), “In order to pass the B.A.

examination, it was also necessary to get up Paley’s ‘Evidences of

Christianity’, and his ‘Moral Philosophy’. … The logic of this book and,

as I may add, of his ‘Natural Theology’, gave me as much delight as did

Euclid. The careful study of these works … was the only part of the

academical course which, as I then felt and as I still believe, was of the least

use to me in the education of my mind. I did not at that time trouble myself

about Paley’s premises; and taking these on trust, I was charmed and

convinced by the long line of argumentation.”

36

Darwin frequently used the same examples as Paley; indeed, he

structured his arguments in a similar way, only with the sign

reversed. In place of a wise, free, and benevolent Creator, he

substituted a blind, necessary, and inexorable mechanism of

nature. The order of nature did not arise according to a divine

plan, but by the organisms acting out their innate drive to

reproduce, thereby varying at random, and then preferentially

retaining the best-adapted forms: “Thus, from the war of nature, from

famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of

conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows.”

37

Darwin drew on a line of thought that had emerged as

economic theory in England in the early 18th century. It is

known that his reading of Thomas Robert Malthus’ An essay on

the principle of population, published in 1798, gave him the idea of

natural selection. More comprehensively than Malthus’s ideas,

however, Darwinism reflects the views of the British national

economist Adam Smith.

38

The metaphor coined by Smith for the principle that should

give rise to order in economic systems is the ‘invisible hand’ of

36

Darwin (1887), p. 67.

37

Darwin (1859), p. 578.

38

Gould (2002).

– 30 –

the market. Each market participant, he argues, strives for the

greatest possible profit out of self-interest; limited demand

sustains those enterprises that best adapt to market conditions in

the struggle with competition. Thus, a complex economic order

would emerge, which would be all the more balanced the less it

was planned by the state and the more it could develop according

to the forces of the market. What for Smith was creative

entrepreneurial action and the competition of the free market,

for Darwin became the random emergence of evolutionary

innovations, the survival instinct of organisms and the ‘invisible

hand’ of natural selection. Smith wanted to replace the state

intervening from the outside in the market process, Darwin the

Paleyan Creator and his comprehensive world plan.

2.5 Understanding Through Inner Experiences –

Anthropomorphism in the Knowledge of Nature

To explain natural phenomena, one must seek out the forces by

which they are effected. For the phenomena face the observer

finished and strange; one does not know how they came into

being. It is different with the forces. Everyone has a concept of

what ‘survival instinct’ and ‘struggle for existence’ mean, because

one can comprehend them in inner experience. The phenomena

can be looked at only from the outside, but the forces causing

them can be experienced internally, namely by identifying oneself

with them, by ‘recreating’ the phenomena internally, so to speak.

In every explanation of nature, therefore, there are components

that make the becoming of the phenomena as comprehensible as

if one had created them oneself.

Concepts always contain a volitional part, originating from

inner experience. A simple example: A rolling billiard ball meets

a stationary one, the latter also comes into motion. I know that I

myself can set a thing in motion by pushing it. The terms ‘rest’,

‘motion’ and ‘push’ come from experiences I have through my

own body. By associating the perception of the balls with these

terms, I understand the external process. The same is true for

seemingly abstract concepts. For example, I can form the idea of

the three-dimensional space because I experience the three

dimensions as forces through my own corporeality: the vertical

in the uprightness, the horizontal in the left-right, the depth

– 31 –

dimension in the front-back. Even in the abstracted concept of

space an inner will part still remains alive, in that I can imagine

myself in any point of the space, always holding the zero point in

mind and referring to it from everywhere. These are all wilful

gestures, which one carries out inwardly or at least carried out

when one formed the concept for the first time. However, these

inner gestures usually escape attention. (One can observe them

when people explain concepts, since they usually show the

volitional dynamics with their hands). Finally, concepts such as

‘life’, ‘development’, ‘type’, ‘chance’, ‘meaning’, ‘consciousness’,

etc. are also deposited with inner experiences, but they are not so

easily uncovered by simple spatial volitional movements. We will

see later that such concepts are nevertheless based on inner

experiences, but on experiences in thinking.

We comprehend nature as it corresponds to our inner

experiences. Our understanding of nature is necessarily

anthropomorphic. Without such experiences we would have no

concepts, and without concepts we could only stare at nature,

but never understand it. Steiner wrote: “All physical explanations

are hidden anthropomorphisms. One anthropomorphizes nature when one

explains it, one puts into it the inner experiences of man. But these

subjective experiences are the inner essence of things.”

39

Similarly, Hans

Jonas (1903-1993) wrote in his book The Principle of Life: “Without

the body and its elementary self-experience, without this starting point of

our most comprehensive and general extrapolation into the whole of reality,

no conception of force and effect in the world and therefore of the effective

connection of all things, hence no concept of nature at all, could be gained.”

40

And Robert Spaemann (1927-2018) and Reinhard Löw (1949-

1994) wrote: “The only sure criterion for life is our self-fulfilment of life,

and we attribute analogies of this life thus experienced in its fullness to

other beings. … First, we live, and then we can define and abstract. But

with these operations we can by no means abolish the presupposition of our

own conscious life.”

41

These quotations make it clear once again that we must include

the observing mind in any scientifically sound theory of nature.

Any explanation of natural phenomena that does not take the

39

Steiner, 1884-1897, GA 001, p. 335 [transl. CH].

40

Jonas (1973), p. 46.

41

Spaemann & Löw (1981), p. 255.

– 32 –

observer into account stands on shaky ground and will ultimately

lead to unsatisfactory results.

In biological questions, we will therefore always look for the

inner dynamics of will and the associated experiences that

underlie the ideas. In this way, the split between the observer and

the organisms can be overcome. The vital and creative forces of

the organism can be experienced concretely in inner self-

observation.

2.6 The ‘Struggle for Existence’ in Inner Observation

Every living being has an innate ‘striving’ to preserve itself and

to reproduce. It wants to ‘be here’ and ‘stay here’. In plants this

striving is an unconscious tendency, in animals it is an inner

drive. According to Charles Darwin, the driving force of

evolution lies in the excess reproduction of organisms: “A struggle

for existence inevitably follows from the high rate at which all organic beings

tend to increase [reproduce, note CH].”

42

The offspring of an organism vary. For example, some are

slightly faster than others, some can utilize food slightly better,

etc. Organisms that are better at accessing or utilizing vital

resources survive longer and, in turn, can reproduce more

frequently than their weaker relatives. Since resources are only

available to a limited extent, the rampancy of life pushing to

reproduce is limited by external scarcity. In this way, those

organisms are preserved which are most suitable for life in a

certain environment, while the unsuitable ones are ‘selected out’.

How does one think the concepts of ‘survival instinct’,

‘reproduction’, ‘limited resources’ and ‘natural selection’?

Which movements of thought does one carry out? On which

inner experiences are these concepts based?

The thought of the survival and multiplication instinct is

experienced in the inner observation like a ‘pressure’ working

from the inside to the outside, by which living things have the

tendency to spread out further and further. This ‘drive’ is a

general principle of the living. It works also in the multiplication

by cell division, in the growth of an organ or in the proliferation

of a tumour. If we express the thought of growth and

42

Darwin (1859), S. 85.

– 33 –

multiplication by a movement, it would be a swelling,

rhythmically expanding gesture in space. – In contrast, the

thought of external conditions of life, e.g. a limited food supply,

is experienced as a given that opposes the dynamics of

multiplication and limits the expansion of the living.

Life ‘strives’ for its expansion, the external conditions set a limit

to this urge. This corresponds to the experience of one’s own

striving and the circumstances opposing it. Is Darwin not also so

well understandable because one knows this – mostly egoistic –

striving? Would Darwinism have found resonance in a society

that was entirely characterized by mutual aid, cooperation and

altruism?

That self-preservation is the driving principle in Darwin’s

theory has perhaps been most consistently presented by the

English evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. He wrote, for

example: “A mother is a machine programmed to do everything in her

power to preserve copies of the genes she contains.”

43

It is probably for

this reason that the growth and creative powers of organisms

have repeatedly been seen as the expression of an ‘inner self’

which expresses itself in a manner similar to a human, active ‘I’.

Thus Adolf Portmann (1897-1982), one of the great

morphologists of the 20th century, ascribed to organisms a

general ‘inwardness’, which, however, could not be recognized

directly, but only through its expression in form and behaviour

as ‘self-representation’: “Self-representation is the manifestation of a

self whose essence always remains hidden to us.”

44

– We will see later

how we can finally become aware of this self in inner experience.

Today, instead of ‘self-manifestation’, one prefers to speak of

the ‘self-organization’ of biological systems. It is compared with

the spontaneous emergence of patterns in cyclic chemical

reactions (Belousov-Zhabotinskii reaction). Some think to have

a model for living ‘systems’ and to be able to explain them by the

physical interactions of their parts after all. But the chemical

pattern formations are so far removed from the actions and

reactions of living organisms that for the explanation of life one

cannot do without concepts such as self-organization, self-

creation (autopoiesis

45

), self-preservation, self-determination

43

Dawkins (1976), p. 145.

44

Portmann (1965), p. 213.

45

Maturana & Varela (1984).

– 34 –

(autonomy

46

), etc., after all, which all imply – not only in the

word, but also in the inner gesture of cognition – a ‘self’ of

whatever kind.

2.7 The Question about the Organic Gestalt

Why do organisms appear in the way they do and not in a

completely different way? We can imagine completely different

forms that would have been able to survive according to

Darwin’s theory. Why, for example, do all terrestrial vertebrates

have (at most) five fingers and not four or six? Darwin’s

explanation is that the five fingers developed by chance in the

course of evolution, and they were obviously ‘good for survival’.

But what would the Darwinian explanation be if we and all four-

footed vertebrates had only four fingers on each hand? – It

would be the same! One could apply the theory to any imaginable

living form. This little thought experiment demonstrates:

Darwinian theory does not explain form. Form is chance. The

Question of form dissolves in Darwinism.

With William Paley it is ‘God’ who is held responsible for the

certain ‘being like this’ of organisms, with Darwin it is ‘chance’.

In the inner observation ‘God’ appears analogous to a human

subject who is experienced as a free creator, and from whose

ultimately ‘unfathomable counsels’ the organisms are supposed

to have emerged. This is not far from Darwin’s ‘chance’. Both

concepts could also be translated as ‘I don't know’.

We believe that there are comprehensible reasons for the being

like this of the form of the human being and that of the animals.

But it will become clear only in the further course of our

discussion in which direction a reason must be searched.

2.8 Consequences of Darwinism

Charles Darwin brilliantly captured the basic temporal structure

of life, the simultaneous existence of the whence and whither.

But with Darwinism all meaning disappeared from the world.

Darwin presupposed life as a primordial living cell (“I may here

46

Rosslenbroich (2007).

– 35 –

premise that I have nothing to do with the origin … of life itself”

47

), while

the abundance of the different forms was to be explained by

meaningless multiplication, random variations and blindly

selecting conditions. According to Darwin, we – and all living

nature with us – are but a random product of equally random

circumstances.

Owen’s and Paley’s views took meaning from outside the

world, from the will of an otherworldly creator God who,

however, is unobservable. Darwinism completely directed the

view to the material phenomena. The inner spiritual connection

of the human mind with nature was lost and became only

externally ascertainable. The fact that Darwinism got along

without supernatural causes, however, made possible its

triumphal procession in western thinking. And this gave the idea

of evolution its far-reaching significance for nature, culture and

human self-understanding, which it has acquired ever since.

»Darwin already experienced the negative effects of his

teachings on himself. In his autobiography, the great naturalist

remarked, “in my Journal I wrote that whilst standing in the midst of the

grandeur of a Brazilian forest, ‘it is not possible to give an adequate idea

of the higher feelings of wonder, admiration, and devotion, which fill and

elevate the mind.’ I well remember my conviction that there is more in man

than the mere breath of his body. But now the grandest scenes would not

cause any such convictions and feelings to rise in my mind. It may be truly

said that I am like a man who has become colour-blind.”

48

Here it is clearly expressed how the materialistic conception

desolates man’s relation to nature and affects his self-

understanding. If something divine or at least meaningful is

sensed and felt in nature, this sense elevates man to the certainty

of a higher principle which also rules in himself. If, on the other

hand, nature is perceived only as dead, material, and mechanical,

then also the flame of spiritual self-consciousness dies. Perhaps,

then, something meaningful and spiritual can be found again in

nature if man discovers something spiritual in himself, something

that carries and explains itself and, as it were, shines out of itself.

47

Darwin (1859), p. 287.

48

Darwin (1887), p. 100.

– 36 –

3 THE ENIGMA OF DEVELOPMENT

OF THE LIVING SHAPE

For our opened eyes

the universe is not a state,

but a process.

(Teilhard de Chardin)

3.1 The Problem of ‘Primordial Generation’

he most fundamental problem of biology is the origin of

life. Everyone knows that life can only come from life.

»Omne vivum ex ovo« (Francesco Redi, 1626-1697); »omne

vivum ex vivo« (Louis Pasteur, 1822-1895); »omnis cellula e cellula«

(Rudolf Virchow, 1821-1902); and even: »every gene from a pre-

existing gene« (Hermann Joseph Muller

49

, 1890-1967) – even in the

biotechnological age, these fundamental theorems remain

unchanged.

Where does life come from then? According to today’s

common opinion, first there was a material planet, on which life

arose only long after solidification of the first rocks. In spite of

the present impossibility of primal generation it is assumed that

the first organisms composed themselves spontaneously from

dead components. And because this is difficult to imagine even

with completely different physical-chemical conditions, one

gives to the act unimaginably long periods of time, in whose

darkness it is supposed to have happened then nevertheless

somehow … The chemist Hans Kricheldorf writes after detailed

analysis of usual hypotheses to the emergence of life: “The

numerous knowledge gaps, negative results and counterarguments … make

it difficult with the present state of knowledge to accept from distant,

scientific view the former existence of a chemical evolution leading to life. In

spite of numerous advances … the results available so far are far from

sufficient to substantiate a chemical evolution to living organisms.”

50

Primordial generation is a Frankenstein problem: even if all the

components had been assembled in the correct mutual

49

Nobel Prize in 1946 for the discovery that radioactive radiation can trigger

mutations.

50

Kricheldorf (2019).

T

– 37 –

proportions, the whole would still have had to be set in living

motion as if by an electric shock, so that all the constituent parts

would turn into perpetual metamorphosis and re-generation. The

structure would have had to acquire the ability to maintain and

to reproduce itself, although its components are subject to

permanent change.

The individual components of a living entity are also mutually

dependent on each other. Metabolism, for example, can only take

place within a cell. The cell wall, however, is formed from

products of metabolism. Metabolism and cell wall are mutually

dependent, one cannot exist without the other. The same is true

for genes and proteins. The genetic code, i.e. the sequence of

individual building blocks (bases) on the DNA, cannot be

formed without the help of proteins, which synthesize this DNA

in the first place. The proteins, in turn, are encoded by the

sequence of bases on the DNA. Of course, this interdependence

also applies at the level of the whole organism, whose organs are

mutually dependent on each other.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) precisely described this

interdependence of the parts of organisms in his Critique of

Judgment: “An organized product of nature is that in which everything is an

end and reciprocally also a means. Nothing in it is in vain, purposeless, or

attributable to blind natural mechanism. … An organized being, then, is

not merely a machine, for this has only motive power; but it possesses in itself

formative power that it communicates to matter (it organizes), which matter

itself does not have. Thus a reproductive formative power, which cannot be

explained by motive power alone (mechanism). … In such a product of

nature, each part, as it exists only through all the others, is also thought of

as existing for the sake of the others and of the whole, i.e., as a tool (organ):

which, however, is not enough; … but as an organ producing the other parts

(hence each mutually producing the other): … and only then, and therefore,

will such a product, as an organized and self-organizing being, be able to be

called a natural purpose.”

51

Let us try to consider the thought of primordial generation in

the light of inner experience. Let us think the transition from a

conglomerate of dead parts to the living wholeness of an

organism, and observe what we experience in the process. First

there shall be immobile parts, then a living transforming whole.

51

Kant (1790), p. 283.

– 38 –

First the interaction of the parts should be external, then the

parts together should form a wholeness working, as it were, from

within. The necessary Frankensteinian shock is a jolt that one has

to give to one’s own thinking in order to jump from one

qualitative level to the other. The vividness and coherence of

thought are lost for a moment in the process – one becomes

untrue.

52

Conversely, the step from the living to the dead is very well

conceivable and – in contrast to primordial generation – is always

carried out before our eyes when a living being dies and its

material parts fall out of the stream of life. One cannot imagine

how the living originates from the dead, but the dead can

originate from the living at any time. Only this connection an

unprejudiced science may state.

Thinking comes up against a real cognitive threshold if it wants

to derive the living from its components. One may certainly get

something like ‘mental bumps and scrapes’ from it. The

perspective of a solution opens up only when reality is no longer

sought only outside of the knowing consciousness, i.e. from the

spectator’s point of view.

3.2 Causation from the Future?

Another problem is the development of organisms in time. From

the egg a caterpillar crawls, which changes after moults into a

pupa, from which finally a butterfly hatches. The complicated

processes of gestalt formation that take place in the embryo and

pupa depend on the preceding developmental steps, but also

follow the goal of becoming a butterfly. Each single step is

lawfully embedded in the whole process. Always both the past has

an effect after and the future before. An organism is not only a

spatially, but also a temporally integrated whole.

The question of the purposeful development of organisms has

occupied thinkers since time immemorial. Aristotle described it

with the term entelechy (having its goal in itself).

53

By how is

52

In a recent publication, the philosopher Christine Zunke has once again

analysed the leap from causal to teleological observation that takes place

during the transition from the dead to the living and which makes primordial

generation unthinkable. Zunke (2023).

53

Aristoteles (2017).

– 39 –

entelechy brought about? How does the chicken ‘know’ that it

must lay eggs in order to reproduce? Can purposefulness be

derived from the material constituents of the living being? Kant

devoted a lengthy discussion to this question with the result that

it would be possible only for a divine, what he called an

archetypal intellect, to see through living, planned wholeness, but

that man, to whom alone a discursive understanding, progressing

from the parts to the whole, was proper, must be content with

the mere description of organic goal-directedness, without being

able to comprehend it as a natural property of organisms: “We

place, it is said, final causes in things and do not, as it were, lift them out of

their perception.“

54

In clear terms, Nobel Prize winner Jacques Monod

55

(1910-

1976) wrote about purposeful organic development. In his book

Chance and Necessity he provided an excellent analysis of the

problem of life. He wrote about the “fundamental property which

characterizes all living things without exception: Being objects endowed with

a plan which they simultaneously represent in their structure and carry out

by their performances. … We say that these are distinguished from all other

structures of all systems existing in the universe by the property which we call

teleonomy.”

56

Similarly, evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr stated,

“Living organisms are ... programmed for teleonomic (goal-directed) activities

from embryonic development to the physiological activities and behaviour of

adult organisms.”

57

With the concept of ‘teleonomy’, biology attempts to solve the

problem of the goal-directedness of biological processes by

suggesting that they are controlled by a ‘program’ built into the

organism. This program is considered to reside in the genes. But

this notion only postpones the problem: Instead of living in the

mind of the biologist, it now lives on in the imagination of what

genes are supposed to accomplish. For how can genes ‘know’

what is to happen in the future? And how – we must ask in the

light of self-observation of biological cognition – does the

biologist know that genes are supposed to contain a program for

future development? We will discuss the role of genes at length.

Here it should only be pointed out that also for the determination

54

Kant (1790), p. 514.

55

Nobel Prize 1965 for the discovery of gene regulation.

56

Monod (1971), p. 27.

57

Mayr (1998), p. 46. See also Mayr (1979).

– 40 –

of genes as a program code the implicit knowledge of the living

wholeness and developmental capacity of the organism must be

presupposed. Without organism there could be no genes, and

without the concept of organism one cannot think the concept

of gene.

58

Every single process that takes place in the development of an

organism can be explained from its initial components and

conditions. But why does it happen just at this point? – Because

it prepares the next, and this again the next and so on. The

position of an individual structure or process in the development

of the whole can only be understood from the following steps.

Another example: In the metabolism of glucose, the sugar is

first converted to a sugar phosphate. Why? Because this is what

makes the following transformations possible in the first place.

If the first step is considered in isolation or reproduced in a test

tube, it can be explained causally from the initial components and

conditions according to chemical laws. However, the purpose of

the reaction in the whole metabolic process and in the life of the

organism can be understood only from the following reactions.

Each single step takes place in the organism only because and

insofar as it serves the living whole.

Geneticists and biochemists therefore always imply the whole

of the organism without consciously reflecting on it. If one

would consider the living whole right from the start – and would

not want to explain it par tout only from its parts – then a much

more holistic perspective would arise. The biological context, i.e.

the interaction of the organs as well as the past and future of

every single developmental step, must always be taken into

account, because it is the whole that determines the parts and

their behaviour and only makes them understandable.

The causes of biological phenomena lie in the past, their meanings

(for the development, maintenance, and survival of the

organism) in the future (see Fig. ). The role played by a present

58

Robert Spaemann and Reinhard Löw also saw this clearly: “On the basis of

which properties does one know whether a system belongs to the class of living systems or

not? … If the empirical-pragmatic answer is: ‘living systems have a genetic programme’,

then it is evident that this definition was derived from an earlier study of the class of living

objects, which obviously did not include this definition! It may indeed be a necessary condition

for the phenomenon of life, but: Necessary conditions for a phenomenon must not be confused

with the phenomenon itself!” Spaemann & Löw (1981), p. 256 [transl. CH].

– 41 –

process within a living whole is derived not only from past

conditions, but equally from the future goal of development. In

the organism, both the past and the future are equally effective;

living beings integrate them in present events.

59

Fig. 2. The integration of causation (causality) and meaning (finality)

in the organism, illustrated by the example of embryonic development

of the human arm and hand. In the palm (3rd from left), both the

processes that took place in the limb bud have an after-effect and the

goal of development, the differentiated limb, has an advance effect.

But is it possible not only to describe this fact, but also to

understand it? How can an effect happen ‘from the future’?

Goal-directed processes can be observed everywhere in the

world of organisms, but conscious planning is known only from

humans, who can anticipate the future. The involvement of a

planning consciousness cannot be observed for organic

development and thus cannot be established as a scientific fact.

– Thus again a seemingly insurmountable threshold is erected in

front of cognition.

3.3 The Living Being as an Autonomous Whole

Another fundamental property of organisms is their subjective

autonomy, that is, the fact that they form themselves and keep

themselves alive. Jacques Monod wrote that all man-made

59

On biological time integration cf. Schad (1997).

– 42 –

objects (but also the beaver dam or the honeycomb) result “results

from the application to the materials constituting it of forces exterior to the

object itself,” whereas “the structure of a living thing emerges from an

entirely different process; it owes almost nothing to the action of external

forces, but everything – from its general shape to the smallest detail – to its

internal, ‘morphogenetic’ interactions. Its structure proves a clear and

unrestricted self-determination, which includes a quasi-total ‘freedom’ from

external conditions and forces. External conditions may well impede [or

modify, note CH] the unfolding of the living object, but not direct it; they

cannot impose its organization upon it.”

60

The autonomous wholeness of the organism is shown, among

other things, by the healing of injuries. Why does a broken bone

not simply remain broken? There is a force at work which leads

to the restoration of the whole, and this force is obviously

superior to the fact that has arisen by physical impact. This

‘superior force’ is as mysterious as the living impulses of

development ‘from the future’.

Fig. 3. Changing manifestations of the organism and its constant

nature in time.

The autonomous power of formation is closely related to the

species an organism belongs to. The organismic autonomy

expresses itself in the ability to produce a species-specific form

as well as species-like individuals by reproduction. Within certain

boundaries the species forms a supra-temporal constant. The individual

organism is subject to permanent change: fertilization,

development, maturation, aging and death, but due to the

60

Monod (1971), p. 28 [transl. CH].

– 43 –

constancy of the species we can speak not only of the egg, the

chick and the hen, but of the ‘chicken’ (Fig. 3). Organisms live

out before our eyes what we otherwise accomplish only in our

minds: To grasp the individual manifestations of a thing under

their common concept (a connection between life and mind,

which shall concern us later in more detail).

3.4 Organism and Environment

Despite the autonomy that organisms possess through their

morphogenesis and species constancy, each living thing can only

exist within a particular environment. It needs the earth, water,

air, and light, as well as the biological environment of other

organisms. It is ‘organized’ into an ecological niche. Thus, the

environment is also a (co-)determining factor in the life and

design of organisms (but not their primary cause).

In an inimitable way Goethe described the closely interwoven

relationship of organism and environment: “Man, by relating all

things to himself, is thereby compelled to give all things an inner determination

outwardly; and it becomes all the more convenient for him to do this, since

everything that is to live cannot be conceived at all without a perfect

organization. Now, since this perfect organization is inwardly highly purely

determined and conditioned, it must also find outwardly equally pure

relations, since it can also exist from without only under certain conditions

and in certain relations. Thus we see on the earth, in the water, in the air

the most manifold forms of animals moving, and according to the most

common conception the organs are provided for these creatures, so that they

can produce the different movements and maintain the different existences.

But does not the elementary power of nature, the wisdom of a thinking being,

which we are accustomed to place under it, become more respectable to us

when we ourselves accept its power as conditioned and learn to see that it

forms just as well from the outside as to the outside, from the inside as to the

inside? The fish is there for the water, seems to me to say much less than: the

fish is there in the water and through the water; for this last expresses much

more clearly what lies only darkly hidden in the former, namely, that the

existence of a creature which we call fish is only possible under the condition

of an element which we call water, not only to be in it, but also to become in

it. Exactly this applies to all other creatures. This would be the first and

most general consideration from the inside to the outside and from the outside

to the inside. The definite form is, as it were, the inner core, which is formed

– 44 –

differently by the determination of the outer element. It is by this that an

animal gets its purposefulness from the outside, because it has been formed

from the outside as well as from the inside; and what is even more, but

natural, is that the outer element can form the outer shape rather than the

inner one. We can see this best in the species of seals, whose exterior assumes

so much of the fish form, when their skeleton still represents to us the perfect

quadrupedal animal.”

61

The autonomy of organisms (their formation ‘from within’)

and their determination by external circumstances (their

‘adaptation’) form a separate dimension of the organic.

Graphically, this dimension can be represented perpendicular to

the axis of past, present and future. For the biological species acts

at every moment of life, in the embryo as well as in the adult

organism, and the organism is and remains always dependent on

its environment

3.5 The Fourfold Unity of Life

Thus we can describe a living being by four aspects, which exist

and can be conceived of only in mutual connection and

interaction (Fig. 4):

Fig. 4. Four factors or effects that interact to determine the life and

development of organisms.

61

Goethe (1790), p. 228-229 [transl. CH].

– 45 –

1. Descent from another living being (or, in the case of an organ,

from its anlage; in the case of a cell, from its progenitor). No

living thing, no organ, no cell emerges from dead material;

every organism always has a living past.

2. Purposiveness of all living processes. Every living process

always develops into a next one, and the future one is already

prepared in the present one. The development continuously

strives towards a goal, which, however, is not strictly

determined (being rather a ‘target area’ instead of a ‘target

point’).

3. Autonomous agency of the organism, which is expressed,

among other things, in the time-spanning constancy of the

species (the evolutionary changeability of the species is not yet

considered, which we will deal with later).

4. Perfect adaptation of living beings, their organs and vital

functions to the external conditions of life.

This tetradic structure provides a key to the understanding of

the living organism. I would like to call it the TIME CROSS OF

LIFE. This is to express that it is the temporal extension of an

interaction of ‘form’ and ‘substance’, which is classically thought

merely in terms of ‘above’ and ‘below’. The consideration of time

makes it possible to think the classical dualism as development. The

aspects facing each other form dynamic equilibria, the horizontal

plane signifying temporal development, the vertical the relation

of organism and environment, its relative emancipation from the

influences of the environment. The weighting of each aspect is

different for each species and level of organization: Bacteria

develop very rapidly and show a high degree of environmental

dependence; mammals develop slowly and show a high degree

of autonomy. The weightings are also different at different times

in development: a child develops rapidly but is not very

emancipated, in the adult the ratios are reversed, etc.

The interrelationship of descent, purposiveness, adaptation,

and autonomous agency itself forms an organic whole. A

comprehensive theory of the living must take all four aspects into

account and illuminate them in their interrelationships. Thus it

becomes clear once again that organisms cannot be understood

in physical and chemical terms alone. The integration of time

– 46 –

goes beyond the dead, and there is no physical or chemical

phenomenon which represents a connection of all four aspects

mentioned.

3.6 Outlook to an Extension of Cognition

But how does one comprehend organismic autonomy and the

effect from the future? They cannot be explained in materialistic

terms. One must broaden and deepen cognition. So we have to

ask again how to think the four aspects of the living. We must

observe developmental thinking more closely in order to seek the

sources from which cognition of the living springs.

It seems obvious that one can understand life because one is

alive. But how does one experience one’s own aliveness? From

which inner experiences do the concepts arise with which one

grasps the organic phenomena? We have to find the realm in

which we experience life inwardly and consciously.

This is also justified from a scientific point of view, because in

any comprehensive concept of a science, the observer must be

included. It is precisely through this that the expansion of

scientific knowledge becomes possible, that one not only

observes nature, but also oneself in the process of observing

nature. One then also pays attention to the gestures of cognition

that one performs internally, according to the respective external

object of observation. Both belong together, because without the

inner movement one could not grasp the outer object at all. –

This marks out the further course of our investigation.

3.7 The Enigma of Evolution

The previous remarks refer to individual organisms or to species,

but not yet to their evolutionary history. The evolution of species

goes beyond the aspects mentioned so far. It is the quinta essentia

of life, its real enigma. How and why does something new arise

in evolution? Was there a direction? Why are animals and

humans not designed quite differently? Are we an accident? –

Before these questions can be discussed, evolutionary thinking

must first be closely observed.

– 47 –

4 GOETHE, RUDOLF STEINER AND THE

KNOWLEDGE OF LIVING THINGS

Where object and subject

touch each other, there is life.

62

(Goethe)

4.1 Conception and Activity in the Thinking of Metamorphoses

ichard Owen, William Paley and Charles Darwin gave

very different answers to the question about the enigma

of life. What they have in common, however, is that they

sought the causes in an objective reality outside the subject –

Paley and Owen in a creator God, Darwin in natural processes.

Towards this external ‘reality’ they behaved like spectators.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe approached the living in a

different way. Instead of merely observing the growth of plants

and the forms of animals and thinking about what he observed,

he ‘slipped’ into the organisms and their transformations in an

inner, imaginative activity. Goethe thus initiated a method of life

research which, even though he developed it only in its

beginnings, can rightly be called revolutionary.

In 1790 Goethe wrote in his Attempt to explain the metamorphosis

of plants: “Anyone who only observes the growth of plants to some extent

will easily notice that certain external parts of them sometimes change and

pass over into the form of the nearest parts either completely or more or less.”

This metamorphosis “is what can always be effectively noticed by stages

from the first seed leaves to the last formation of the fruit. The transformation

of one form into another ascends, as it were, on a spiritual ladder to that

summit of nature, reproduction by two sexes.”

63

Later he also summed up his insight in poetic terms:

All figures are similar, and none resembles the other;

And so the chorus points to a secret law,

62

Quoted by Gustav F. K. Parthey after a conversation with Goethe on

August 28, 1827. Goethe (1827), p. 183.

63

Goethe (1790, 1817, 1831), p. 22-23 [transl. CH].

R

– 48 –

To a sacred enigma. Oh, could I to thee, dear friend,

The solving word at once happy deliver!

Becoming consider it now, how little by little the plant,

Gradually guided, forms to blossoms and fruit.

64

The law according to which the transformation takes place

consists in a threefold alternation of expansion and contraction:

“The same organ which has expanded on the stem as a leaf and assumed a

most manifold form, now contracts in the calyx, expands again in the petal,

contracts in the sexual organs, in order to expand for the last time as fruit”

65

,

and you could add: finally contracts in the seeds, closing the circle

of growth and opening a new one. The first round of expansion

and contraction takes place from the cotyledons to the foliage to

the sepals. Then, in the flower, the expanded petals stand next to

the contracted stamens and pistils, and finally the circle closes in

the interlocking of the expanded fruit and the contracted seeds,

one after the other, side by side, inside each other.

66

The spatiotemporal

logic of these successive stages allows for no further change, and

the cycle begins anew.

Finally, the same organ always appeared to Goethe in the various

forms of transformation of the developing plant: “Just as we have

now sought to explain the various seeming organs of the sprouting and

flowering plant all from one, namely the leaf, which usually develops at each

node: so we have also dared to derive those fruits, which tend to close their

seeds tightly within themselves, from the leaf form. – It is self-evident here

that we should have a general word by which we could designate this organ,

which has metamorphosed into so many different forms, and compare all the

phenomena of its form with it: at present we must be content with getting used

to holding the phenomena forwards and backwards against each other. For

we can just as well say: a stamen is a contracted petal, as we can say of the

petal: it is a stamen in a state of extension: a sepal is a contracted stem-leaf

approaching a certain degree of refinement, as we can say of a stem-leaf that

it is an ... extended sepal.”

67

Pointedly, Goethe wrote from Italy,

“Forwards and backwards, the plant is always only leaf.”

68

64

Goethe (1790, 1817, 1831), p. 90-93 [transl. CH].

65

Goethe (1790, 1817, 1831), p. 56 [transl. CH].

66

First formulated in this way by the botanist appointed by Goethe to Jena

Friedrich Siegmund Voigt (1817), p. 440-441.

67

Goethe (1790, 1817, 1831), p. 57 [transl. CH].

68

Goethe (1816-1817), p. 561 [transl. CH].

– 49 –

Goethe’s method thus captures four aspects of the developing

plant:

1. the individual, concrete forms of the leaves, flowers, fruits, etc.,

2. the transformative movement (metamorphosis) of the forms out

of and into each other,

3. the law according to which this metamorphosis occurs

(expansion and contraction), and finally

4. the essence of the thing which remains the same in its different

manifestations, namely the ‘leaf’.

We now want to ask here as well: How does Goethe think the

metamorphosis of the plant? From the contemplation of the

details he swung up to the inner comprehension of their

transformations and thereby ‘liquefied’ his own imagination:

“The formed is immediately transformed again, and we have to keep

ourselves, if we want to reach the living contemplation of nature to some

extent, so mobile and pictorial, according to the example with which it

presents itself to us.”

69

Fig. 5. Developmental stages of a leaf of ragweed (Lapsana communis,

from Bockemühl

70

, not to scale).

To observe developmental thinking, let us consider the growth

of a plant leaf from the first bud to the fully grown shape (Fig.

5). The first form shows itself as an almost point-like contracted

structure, which then increases in size by stretching and

69

Goethe (1807, 1817), p. 14 [transl. CH].

70

Bockemühl (1966).

– 50 –

expanding its surface. The edge of the leaf appears slightly

articulated from the beginning. The third form (from the left)

already differentiates into the leaf blade, which continues to

expand, and the petiole, which remains contracted. With the

subsequent elongation of the petiole and the growth of the blade,

this difference becomes more pronounced, with a rhythmically

structured zone of differentiation forming at the transition

between the rounding blade and the linearly contracted petiole.

Through sensory perception, we observe individual stages

different from each other. However, we know that they represent

a continuous line of development, in which various

interpenetrating tendencies of formation are operative:

Stretching, spreading of the blade, division of the leaf margin,

and elongation of the petiole. These ‘formative gestures’ are real,

and yet one cannot see them with one’s eyes; one experiences

them inwardly by tracing them. Also the connection of the

individual forms results only by actively connecting them

forwards and backwards. The individual forms can be viewed as

solidified moments in a process of lawfully intermingled

movements.

71

Goethe is often said to have disliked the introspection of

cognition. The following notation, however, gives a precise

description of his cognitive activity in thinking metamorphoses:

“When I see an originated thing before me, ask about its origin, and measure

back the course as far as I can trace it, I become aware of a series of stages

which, although I cannot see them side by side, I must imagine in my

recollection to a certain ideal whole. At first I am inclined to think of certain

stages; but because nature does not make a leap, I am at last compelled to

look at the succession of uninterrupted activity as a whole, cancelling out the

particular without destroying the impression.”

72

There is a distinct difference between looking at the forms and

experiencing the movement that connects them. The individual

forms lie before me, I can observe them, the relationship

between them and me is a representational one. In the

connecting movement this representationality is lost, the

separation between me and the objects is suspended for

71

Jochen Bockemühl (1928-2020) described these form movements in the

leaf area of higher plants in detail and vividly in a classic essay. Bockemühl

(1966).

72

Goethe (ohne Datum), p. 193 [transl. CH].

– 51 –

moments. I am then no longer a passive observer, but an active

co-creator who lives, as it were, in and between the forms.

The ordinary consciousness always needs a counterpart to

which it can hold on. It is ‘object consciousness’. The possibility

for exact observation of the creative movement between similar

objects is therefore limited at first. For object consciousness the

inner movement is hardly perceptible, actually a nothing. One

must try to bring light into this darkness if one wants to come

closer to the enigma of life. The more often one consciously

practices such formative movements in the living imagination,

the clearer the experience becomes.

73



With this we have arrived at a decisive point in the cognition of

organic life. For as long as one seeks the living only through the

object-oriented, representational consciousness, one will

necessarily miss it. The object-oriented consciousness can only

grasp the details that have fallen out of the flow and coherence

of the living. All the above-mentioned riddles of life – the

interdependence of the parts of an organism, the lawful

development through the integration of past, present and future,

the inner autonomous creative power and the temporal

permanence of the species – will remain unsolvable for the

object-oriented consciousness. One cannot deduce organic life

from its constituent parts. Any attempt at a materialistic

explanation of the phenomena of life must inevitably fail.

But also an ‘idealistic’ biology will poke in the fog, as long as it

looks for the ‘spiritual bond’ of the life phenomena outside of

consciousness and does not take into account the concrete

cognitive activity, by which the single phenomena are connected.

The ‘spiritual bond’ becomes observable through the inner

activity of the observer. In the inner observation of one’s own activity of

transformation lies the possibility of an empirical access to the essence and

forces of the living.

74

73

Cf. in the appendix Rudolf Steiner: Extension of Natural Science by Observation

of the Will in Thought, p. 179, as well as Rudolf Steiner: Goethe’s Metamorphosis

Thought Leads to the Spiritual View of the Reality of Living Things, p. 180.

74

Cf. in the appendix Rudolf Steiner: Perception of the Vital Force by Strengthening

the Power of Thinking, p. 180. The Knowing Will as the Real and Idealistic Basis of

Evolutionary Knowledge, p. 181.

– 52 –

Most scientifically thinking people shy away from seeking an

inner access to the living, because the observation of one’s own

inner life is under the almost insurmountable prejudice of

subjectivity. In the inner pursuit of organic metamorphoses,

however, no subjective process takes place at all. For on the

scene of consciousness nothing else happens than what also

happens ‘outside’ in nature. We do internally the same thing that

nature does, and we experience the same forces that are at work

in nature. This will be described in more detail below.

4.2 Form, Life, Consciousness, Being – Four Stages of Cognition

Observing single organic forms and connecting them by inner

activity are two clearly distinguishable stages or levels of the

cognition of the living. At the first level, which can be called

‘objective’ or ‘representational consciousness’, one faces the

objects as an observer. They appear as prefabricated, distinct

parts. At the next stage, one must develop an inner, productive

activity through which one participates in the transformations of

form. At this stage of metamorphosis activity, the boundary

between subject and object can no longer be drawn as sharply as

in representational cognition; the two oscillate, as it were, within

each other. The following figure is meant to illustrate these

relations (Fig. 6).

Fig. 6. The relationship between subject and object at the first two

levels of cognition of the living.

The ‘metamorphosis activity’ oscillates between the inner,

volitional generation and the inner observation of the generated

results (Fig. 7, left). One can call these imagined results ‘external’

to the subject (it places them, even if within its consciousness, in

front of itself). Fig. 7, right shows how individual organic shapes

– 53 –

are interwoven by the activity of the subject into a coherent series

of development.

In the thinking of metamorphosis, the subject is active in two

ways: It generates the inner representations, and it looks at what

is generated. The source from which the conceptions are

produced by inner activity is within the subject. We must

therefore look deeper into this activity of the subject. We can ask,

for example, how one knows in which direction and with which

aim one has to carry out a transformative movement? Obviously,

one must know the law according to which the transformation

takes place. If one does not know what is to become of the leaf

bud (Fig. 5, left), one could not do anything further with it. The

formative movement is therefore guided by a superordinate

knowledge that spans the entire developmental series.

Fig. 7. Left: The metamorphosis activity between bringing forth and

looking at what is brought forth. Right: How the metamorphosis

activity connects the perceptions of individual stages of development

to a continuum.

Goethe meant this knowledge of the law of metamorphosis of

flowering plants when he wrote from Naples in 1787: “With this

model and the key to it, one can then still invent plants into infinity, which

must be consistent, that is: which, even if they do not exist, could exist.”

75

And finally the three levels are combined into a unity by a

fourth, namely, by the thing itself. For it is, after all, always a ‘leaf’

that is transformed here. Goethe also grasped this stage of

cognition in intuitive insight: “Everything is leaf, and through this

75

Goethe (1816-1817), p. 503 [transl. CH].

– 54 –

simplicity the greatest diversity becomes possible.”

76

It is the essence of the

thing itself that lives in the contemplation of the forms, the

pictorial movement connecting them, and in the superordinate

knowledge.

Now what is the relation between subject and object at the

third and fourth level? With the superordinate knowledge, I can

no longer speak of this knowledge being external to me, nor do

I present it as an image. I can express the lawfulness in words,

but only because it lives in me, because I have recognized it,

because I know what is meant by it. But the law is also not yet the

essential being itself, which is at stake here, but a knowledge of

the transforming being. At the fourth level, the (active!) subject

and the (living!) essence of the thing now coincide into one.

Fig. 8. The relations between subject and object at the four levels of

cognition.

We thus obtain a symbolic representation of the relations of

subject and object on the four levels of cognition of living

developmental processes (Fig. 8). Only at the lowest,

representational level does one face things; only at this level can

a real distinction be made between the inner and the outer world.

In the activity of metamorphosis, oneself (the active producer)

and the objects (the imagined representations) alternately merge

into each other. Each time one actively carries out the movement

to the next object to be held, one merges with the imagined

object for a short time; then one separates again and looks at the

76

Goethe (ohne Datum), p. 189.

– 55 –

object imaginatively, etc. At the third level of superordinate

knowledge, the content no longer lives outside the subject. It is

found in him and yet it is not a merely subjective matter, for it

comes from a world of objective laws. Nevertheless, the knowing

subject can still be distinguished from what it knows. Only at the

fourth level do the I and the object coincide into one, for the

(spiritual) object appears through the spiritual activity of the I.

This creative actualization is an entirely active and yet entirely

selfless devotion of the I to the essence or being.

77

The four levels or aspects of cognition can also be

characterized by distinguishing the abilities of the soul which are

preferably involved at the different levels. Indeed, we can

distinguish (1) the sensuous perception and inner representation of

fixed external objects, (2) the active and pictorial thinking or

imagining of their metamorphoses, (3) the knowing and

understanding, which on closer inspection has a character akin

to feeling (“if you do not feel it, you will not capture it” [Goethe]), and

(4) the willing, i.e., the active production of contents and actions.

On the level of objective representation, perception is the mainly

involved ability. Metamorphosis activity requires thinking

representation. The superordinate knowledge is characterized by

a felt understanding, and at the highest level, the spiritual world

content is brought forth and experienced through one’s own

volition.

We have thus characterized four important concepts, four

levels or aspects of the knowledge of living development:

1. sensual perception and representation of the objective forms,

2. actively transforming, thinking imagination that connects the

individual forms,

3. experienced or felt knowledge of the superordinate, content-

related context and

77

This level of realisation is referred to as ‘intuition’: “Intuition is the life of things

in the soul. It is to be taken quite literally when one says of intuition: one creeps through it

into all things.” Steiner, 1905-08, GA 012, p. 22. For a detailed examination of

the anthroposophical concept of intuition, see Hueck (2016).

– 56 –

4. intuitive actualization of the essence itself, living in the wilful

activity of the subject, transforming itself and yet remaining

the same in the transformation.

78

4.3 Physiognomic Cognition of Shape

The third stage of cognition of organic forms, the knowledge of

the superordinate context, has still another peculiarity. Organic

forms (‘gestalts’) have an overall expression, a ‘physiognomic

character’. The metamorphosis thinking of the second stage does

not yet give any information about the nature of the forms.

Questions like: ‘Why does the oak bear acorns and not

chestnuts?’, ‘Why do only (some) hoofed animals have horns?’,

‘Why does the human being have five fingers and not four or

six?’ cannot be answered by the metamorphosis knowledge

alone. For this it is necessary to grasp the holistic gestalt motifs

which are superordinate to the details.

79

Let us, for example,

compare the Norway Maple (Acer platanoides) and the Sessile Oak

(Quercus petraea) (Fig. 9).

Fig. 9. Different gestalt expression of maple (left) and oak (right).

The maple bears a crown of branches that extend far outward

and curve slightly upward. In spring, it blooms a conspicuous

bright yellowish-green before the leaves emerge. It has long-

stalked, symmetrically pointed leaves that turn brilliant yellow in

78

For the inner observation of these four stages of cognition in the self-

experiment, cf. Appendix On the Inner Self-Observation of the Four Stages of

Cognition, p. 182.

79

Cf. Kranich (1996).

– 57 –

the fall. Its propeller fruits hang in loose clusters below the

leaves, and at ripening time in late spring, they whirl into the

surrounding area with a rotating motion. Its wood is light-

coloured, not too heavy, hard yet resilient. It grows quickly and

easily in almost any location and holds tenaciously in the soil even

as a sapling. In all these characteristics, as varied as they are, there

is a consistent formative gesture. It could be described as

powerful, generous, yet light and free, radiating into its

surroundings. The oak, on the other hand, is gnarled, bears short-

stemmed, irregularly lobed leaves that turn dull brown in the fall.

The flowering is inconspicuous. The late-ripening fruits sit tightly

clustered on the branches; thudding to the ground. Oak wood is

brownish and hard, but not very elastic; it has a high density

compared to other woods. Oak bark contains astringent (!)

tannins with anti-inflammatory effect. The formative gesture of

the oak, from the whole figure to individual substances, appears

defiant, idiosyncratically contracted, as if clenched in on itself or

backed up. – These gestalt motifs can be described just as clearly

as the scientific fact that both trees belong to the seed plants. But

they only open up to a holistic view, to an artistic sense. They are

not to be understood also from Darwin’s theory, and school

biology has neither view nor explanation for them.

One could call the gestalt motifs the character, expression of

the essence of a species. They appear as an overall impression,

akin to the experience of art, which is not easily put into words.

However they are as lawful as the laws of metamorphosis (e.g.

expansion and contraction), and like these laws, they are

experienced through ‘knowing feeling’.

While one grasps the changes in form of the organisms through

increased inner activity, one can experience the motifs of form

by standing back and listening, as it were, to the language of

nature. How does an oak express itself, how does a maple? How

does a budding plant speak, how a flowering and how a wilting

one? What impressions do we get from a tadpole in a pond, from

a snail by the wayside, from a frog in the reeds? How does a deer

at dusk speak to our inner understanding, a lark high above a

summer field, a mouse scurrying by …? Every look into nature

creates subtle inner experiences through which nature speaks to

us.

– 58 –

4.4 Space, Time, Wholeness, Effectiveness – Four Levels of the Organic

We can now describe the whole of a living being – at least on a

macroscopic level:

1. individual forms in their respective state of development,

2. their transformations, growth and metamorphosis,

3. superordinate laws and motifs permeating the details of the

living beings, according to which the species are formed,

4. an autonomously acting, species-maintaining formative force,

which produces the forms, transforms them and keeps them

alive.

The forms are spatial phenomena. Growth and metamorphosis

are temporal events in which past, present and future are

integrated and which can only be grasped by remembering past

forms and anticipating future ones. The overarching motifs of

gestalt, while found through the study of forms and

developmental processes, are themselves neither spatial nor

temporal; they can only be consciously grasped through an inner

holistic gestalt view. Finally, the autonomous formative power is

pure efficacy.

Organism

Cognitive activity

Realm

Spatial forms

Observation through sensual

perception and conscious

representation

Physical

Temporal

metamorphosis

Imaginative transformation

Living

Laws of development,

holistic shape motifs

Experiencing and understanding

through feeling

Psychic /

Mental

Autonomous agency

Actualization through wilful

activity

Spiritual

Tab. 1. Four levels of the organic, their perception by four cognitive

activities and their correspondences with four realms of being.

80

The living organism also includes its interactions with the environment in

which it lives [ecology], the variations of its family [microevolution] and its

position in the series of organisms [macroevolution], i.e. not four, but seven

aspects in total. Cf. appendix Seven Aspects of the Organic, p. 188.

– 59 –

We identify ourselves with the autonomous formative power

by experiencing it in our will and through it. We know nothing

of it, because we cannot observe the will at its origin (at first), but

always only at what is brought forth by it. Rudolf Steiner, on

whose ideas the fourfoldness developed here goes back, called

this objectively creative will ‘spirit’ (Tab. 1).

The gestalt motifs are a species-specific, holistic expression of

the spiritual life force shaping the organism from within. They

are not experienced wilfully-creatively, but rather artistically-

perceptively and express a content related to feeling. Plants,

animals, landscapes, all sensual perceptions in general can also be

felt and understood as soulful expression of a spiritual essence.

In feeling them we live with the living beings as it were in a

common inner world. This is not a matter of vague

sentimentalism, but of distinct experiences differentiated in

manifold ways.

Gestalt transformation is the actual realm of the living, its

growth and metamorphoses. This level is experienced in the

image-forming activity of consciousness (‘imagination’). Finally,

on the lowest level, the gestalt is sensually looked at and

consciously represented as a physical appearance.

The four levels can thus be described for both the reality

(ontology) and the cognition (epistemology) of living

development. None of these stages can be neglected, for only

through their totality is an organism what it is.

The four stages are not experienced with the same alertness in

ordinary consciousness. Only in the confrontation to the

objective world fully awake consciousness prevails. The level of

the actualizing will, on the other hand, is wrapped in deep sleep

within ordinary consciousness. The level of felt understanding is

experienced, if at all, only as if dreaming, while the imaginative

activity, which represents a transition from ‘inside’ to ‘outside’,

could be called ‘awakening’. Rudolf Steiner described these

important relations in great detail.

81

The different degrees of consciousness lead to the fact that

natural science only accepts as real that which can be perceived

by the senses. The higher levels appear to it either as non-existent

81

See e.g. Steiner, 1905-08, GA 012, p. 16-18; Steiner, 1919, GA 293, p. 91-

104, 27.08.1919.

– 60 –

or as relevant only in the subjective human mind. Thus natural

science overlooks the essence of organic development, because

growth and development cannot be sensually perceived, but can

only be grasped in the interplay of inside and outside. The living

expresses itself in sensually perceptible phenomena, but life itself

is not a material process. If one follows – like Goethe – the

transformation processes of the organisms inwardly, then one

becomes aware of the fact that they cannot be grasped spatially-

materially, but only temporally, and that still higher levels of the

organic express themselves in them. If one would be aware also

of the feeling-knowing and the producing-actualizing mental

activities, then one would not even come to the idea to regard

organisms as only material.

4.5 Darwinism, Goetheanism and Anthroposophy

Darwin sought a natural explanation of evolution. He did not

attribute to the living any design principles of its own; according

to his view, all higher development is brought about by external

conditions of life. The living appears in Darwin’s view merely like

a kind of self-reproducing jelly, an unformed but formable

substance, which ‘wiggles out’ randomly in any direction and is

then held in purposefully adapted forms by external

circumstances. This view is entirely consistent with the stage of

sensual observation and representational cognition. Darwin’s

theory of evolution resulted from a pure spectator standpoint.

Goethe looked deeper, and paradoxically by stopping at the

phenomena. He did not conceive a ‘theory’ of living evolution:

“Just do not look for anything behind the phenomena, they themselves are the

teaching!” The ‘theoretical’ part of his cognition consisted in his

inner identification with the phenomena, he ‘slipped’ into them

82

,

as it were, and penetrated the forms with an attentive, inner

process of will, especially by actively recreating the transitions

between them. In this way he experienced the power of living

transformation and could therefore rightly speak of a “law of inner

82

“I therefore had to remain with my old way, which compels me to observe all natural

phenomena in a certain sequence of development and to attentively accompany the transitions

forwards and backwards. For in this way I arrived all by myself at a living overview, from

which a concept is formed that will then meet the idea in an ascending line.” Goethe

(1825), p. 649 [transl. CH].

– 61 –

nature, by which plants are constituted”, which interacts with a “law of

outer circumstances, by which they are modified”

83

. Goethe practiced a

participatory view of nature, his observation meandered around

the borderline between objectivity and activity: “The form is a

moving, a becoming, a passing away. Theory of gestalt is theory of

transformation.“

84

Goethe’s view corresponds to the

metamorphosis stage of cognition.

Rudolf Steiner, as a young editor, dealt intensively with

Goethe’s view of nature for almost 16 years and wrote several

expositions on it.

85

About Goethe’s doctrine of metamorphosis

he wrote: “The greatness of this thought … becomes apparent to one only

when one tries to bring it to life in one’s mind, when one undertakes to

reproduce it. One then becomes aware that it is the nature of the plant itself

translated into the idea, which is just as alive in our spirit as it is in the

object; one also notices that one imagines an organism animated down to its

smallest parts, not as a dead, closed object, but as developing, becoming, as

the constant restlessness within itself.”

86

Through one’s own activity –

which has nothing arbitrary about it, because it is guided by the

phenomena – a new, spiritual field of experience is opened up.

In 1916 Steiner described this active devotion to the

phenomena in the way “that one contemplates life in nature in a more

intimate way. One seeks, for example, to look at a plant in such a way that

one not only takes up its form in thought, but in a sense feels with it the inner

life that stretches upward in the stem, unfolds in width in the leaves, opens

the inside to the outside in the blossom, and so on. In such thinking the will

quietly resonates; and it is there a will developed in devotion which directs the

soul; which does not take its origin from it, but directs its effect upon it. One

will naturally believe at first that it has its origin in the soul. In the experience

of the process itself, however, one recognizes that through this reversal of the

will an extra-mental spiritual is seized by the soul.”

87

This is Steiner’s method of cognition: to identify oneself with

things in a Goethean way, to let them live in oneself, and then to

observe what one experiences in the process. He deepened

Darwin’s and Goethe’s way of science through the inner self-

observation of cognition (“I observe myself what I accomplish

83

Goethe (1795), p. 111.

84

Goethe (ohne Datum), p. 415 [transl. CH].

85

Steiner, 1884-1897, GA 001; Steiner, 1897, GA 006.

86

Steiner, 1884-1897, GA 001, p. 12-13 [transl. CH].

87

Steiner, 1916, GA 020, p. 162-164 [transl. CH].

– 62 –

myself.”

88

). Steiner wrote about Goethe’s worldview: “Seeing with

the eyes of the body conveys the knowledge of the sensuous and the material;

seeing with the eyes of the spirit leads to the view of the processes in the human

consciousness, to the observation of the world of thought, feeling, and will; the

living union between the spiritual and the bodily eye enables the knowledge

of the organic, which lies in the middle as a sensuous-supersensuous element

between the purely sensuous and the purely spiritual.”

89

Steiner thus made

fully conscious all the stages involved in metamorphosis

cognition. He experienced the laws guiding the metamorphic

movement through volitional union with the spiritual living

being (Fig. 10).

Fig. 10. The epistemological connection between Darwinism,

Goetheanism and Anthroposophy.

As long as one understands evolution like Darwin only as

relationship of representational forms, it remains something

external. One must regard oneself as the result of this process,

but thus cannot gain a meaningful relationship to it. Was

evolution accidental? Why did it proceed as it did? – But if one

follows the processes of transformation with Goethe, then one

‘liquefies’ the representationality of the forms and dives into the

stream of living becoming. In this way one can already connect

oneself more closely with the evolutionary development. One

experiences it as a lawful metamorphosis. If one finally awakens

through Rudolf Steiner’s stimulation to the fully conscious

experience of what one does in this living-in, then one

88

Steiner, 1894, GA 004, p. 50.

89

Steiner, 1897, GA 006, p. 155-156 [transl. CH].

– 63 –

experiences the spiritual being that works in the organisms and

their evolutionary development. Evolution then appears as a

meaningful organic process, which can and must be read and

understood from its end, the self-conscious human mind.

Anthroposophy sees itself as an extension of natural science,

not as an alternative or counter position. Rudolf Steiner

repeatedly emphasized that the results (not the theories) of

natural science could be seamlessly united with the results of

spiritual research, but that the former could only be truly

understood in the light of spiritual science. He used for this the

image of a printed book page: While natural science was

occupied with the investigation of the letter forms,

Anthroposophy would correspond to the reading of the printed,

thus grasping the meaningful connections standing behind the

sensually perceptible appearances.

4.6 Consciousness as the Stage of the World

Richard Owen, William Paley and Charles Darwin sought reality

outside of cognition. They presumed that reality exists quite

independently of the observer. If they would not be there, the

world would exist exactly as it appears to them. If the evolution

had not produced humans, the other organisms would exist

nevertheless.

But the perceptions, from which they started, occurred only on

the scene of their consciousnesses. And so it is with all

perceptions. These convey, purely by themselves, no full reality.

Only through thinking the part missing to them, namely their

connections, are added. To recognize means to reconcile the two

elements of world reality, the perceptions and the ideas, which

appear separately on the scene of consciousness. The ideas, like

the perceptions, are world-contents. “We give only the opportunity

that the content of thought may unfold according to its own nature. … Our

mind accomplishes the composition of the masses of thoughts only according

to their content.”

90

The form of perceptions and concepts depends

on my consciousness and activity, but their content is 'objective',

it does not belong to me but to the world. “Perception is … nothing

finished, completed, but one side of total reality. The other side is the concept.

90

Steiner, 1886, GA 002, p. 48 [transl. CH].

– 64 –

The act of cognition is the synthesis of perception and concept. Perception and

concept of a thing, however, first make up the whole thing.”

91

According to this view, then, reality is neither what I perceive,

to the exclusion of my subject, ‘out there’ in the world (naive

realism), nor a mere subjective construction that I spin out of

myself (constructivism). Rather, reality emerges again and again

as a living encounter between the (objectively given) contents of

perception and thought on the scene of the individual

consciousness (Fig. 11).

Fig. 11. Experienced reality arises on the scene of consciousness by

the union of perceptions and concepts.

The knowing consciousness of man is the stage of world events. Our

conscious inner life does not face the world as an alien,

uninvolved spectator, but belongs to it! In my consciousness

world events live; I live in my consciousness within world events,

not outside. This conception also fulfils Thomas Nagel’s quest

mentioned in the introduction. The ‘great cognitive shift’ he

predicted, by which cognizant consciousness will be given a

91

Steiner, 1894, GA 004, p. 92 [transl. CH].

– 65 –

central role in understanding the world, is realized in Rudolf

Steiner’s epistemology and spiritual science.

This thought has also a fundamental implication for the

understanding of the living. If I observe the growth of a plant,

then I see at different times individual forms, which appear

successively as perceptions without connection. They are

unfinished and represent therefore no full reality. They become

real only if they are connected by the concept of ‘development’

to a continuous and lawful connection. The plant grows, of

course, even if I do not recognize it. But which force is it that

makes it grow? Can I find this force in the perceived, that is, the

material side of the world? Or is there another way to recognize

it? – It must become ever clearer: The actual force of growth and

development of organisms is of the same kind as the force which in my

consciousness connects the perceptions of the individual stages into a lawful

developmental connection. In Rudolf Steiner’s sense, the spiritual side

of the world’s reality lives in an experienced thought as its sensual

side lives in perception. The forces of development of the living

are not of sensual-material, but of spiritual nature. They are really

experienced in the inner identification with and comprehension of

organic development.

92

Cf. Appendix Rudolf Steiner: Perception of the Vital Force by Strengthening the

Power of Thinking, p. 180.

– 66 –

5 ORGANISM, COGNITION AND TIME

My inheritance how glorious, far and wide!

Time is my possession, my field is time!

93

(Goethe)

5.1 Organic Development and Cognition

n the search for the solution of the enigma of living

organisms we have followed a path which has led us to an

intimate observation of the cognition of living development

and form. We have seen that organic development cannot be

perceived externally, but can be comprehended only in inner

activity. Therefore, no material parts can be found to explain life,

for material parts are known only through sensory perception.

The limits of cognition towards the living, explained in the

second chapter, result from the fact that the developmental and

organismic connections between the organic phenomena, which

can be grasped only inwardly, are transferred unnoticed into the

material world of perception and cannot be found there again

because they do not originate from this realm.

The living forces of growth and development must be

experienced and contemplated in inner comprehension. Thus we

have also met Thomas Nagel’s quest, mentioned in the

introduction, that knowledge of nature can only be sustainable if

knowledge itself is taken into account.

We have described that every organism has emerged from past

stages of development through shaping and reshaping and carries

its future, its development goal like a kind of ‘plan’ within itself.

From a simple initial form (seed, egg, etc.) it differentiates into a

complex shape and expresses its species-typical design motifs

more and more clearly. The physically perceptible form

represents only a current excerpt from development and appears

embedded in specific environmental conditions. Finally, the

organism is permeated by an autonomously acting formative

force. These four aspects of living organisms are perceived by

the discerning observer in different ways (Fig. 12).

93

Goethe (1819), p. 71.

I

– 67 –

Fig. 12. Four aspects of living organism and their relation to different

stages of cognition.

With this now a solution of the ancient question about the

entelechy of the living beings appears. How can the organism

know about its own future if it has no consciousness itself? How

can its own future development exist as a ‘plan’ if plans exist only

in the human mind? And what is the inner autonomous force

that makes organisms grow and keep them alive against external

adversities? It is the supersensible essential layers of the organic

that the viewer can experience in his imaginative metamorphosis

activity, his superordinate knowledge, his intuition that willingly

actualizes the essence of the being. What the human being

recognizes and experiences on the physical, living, mental and

spiritual level is effective in the organism in a physical, living,

mental or soul (physiognomic) and spiritual (autonomous) way.

The higher one rises above the level of physical appearances, the

more intimately one is connected with the supersensible aspects

of the organisms, and in intuition one grasps their productive life

force as if in one. To recognize means to experience life from within.

Some thinkers likewise come to the conclusion that the living

can be comprehended only if one ascribes to it an inwardness, a

form of consciousness, an autonomous subjecthood.

94

But only

in the ‘exceptional state’ (Rudolf Steiner) of first-person self-

94

Cf. e.g. Kummer (1987), p. 65; Weber (2007), p. 85.

– 68 –

perception of cognition, in which one’s hitherto unnoticed own

cognitive (and the emotional and volitional) activity at work in it

is awakened to fully conscious experience, does a basis arise on

which such thoughts can be elevated to an empirical science. The

soul and the spirit, which work in the world, must not be thought

as object-like in the same sense as we otherwise conceive the

objective world. They are to be observed only on the scene of

human consciousness; but there they actually appear. And this

observation can be achieved by everyone who is willing to

advance from the passive, abstract and merely combining

intellect to the living and contemplative activity of cognition.

This opens the possibility to look behind the limits of life and

evolution. The field on which answers can be searched is our

knowing consciousness itself. Much can become lightful and

understandable, if one only becomes clearer and clearer about

how one understands the phenomena of the world. The forces,

which are active in living nature are of the same kind as the forces

which are active in cognition. Only an active cognition is meant

by this.

95

He who undertakes to lift the veil of nature sees –

wonder of all wonders – himself.

5.2 Viktor von Weizsäcker – Form, Time and Cognition

Organic development happens in time. But what is time? A mere

medium? Would there be time if there were no change, no

development? Can we better understand gestalt formation if we

understand time?

Organisms have a different time structure than dead objects.

They integrate their past and future in present events. A thinker

who clearly recognized this was Viktor von Weizsäcker (1886-

1957). In his little book Gestalt und Zeit

96

he provided an ingenious

analysis of the importance of the conception of time for the

cognition of organic Gestalt formation. Von Weizsäcker wrote:

"Life is always ‘time-transcending present’, actuality binding past to future“

(p. 23) and contrasted this ‘biological’ time with ‘mechanical’

time: “Mechanical time is successive, biological time is proleptic

[anticipatory] with respect to the resulting movement” (p. 18), – and it is

95

Cf. Appendix Rudolf Steiner: Perception of the Vital Force by Strengthening the

Power of Thinking, p. 180.

96

Weizsäcker (1942) [transl. CH].

– 69 –

also, as we have shown, anamnestic, i.e., ‘remembering’. Von

Weizsäcker concluded “that life is not in time, but time is in life, or

more precisely becomes through its self-setting” (p. 19).

Von Weizsäcker examined the connection between biological

time and gestalt. First he analysed the conditions of gestalt

perception, because “a shaped real being wants to be sensually perceived.

So the senses show us shapes, and should they, the senses, be uninvolved in

how the shape appears to us? … Thus, one cannot think out the gestalt

problem without self-contemplation” (p. 4). Ingeniously, he started

from moving figures. He described, for example, an experiment

in which a circular shape is seen consisting of light points lighting

up successively at different positions on a screen. At any given

moment, only one point of light lights up at a particular position.

The spectator, however, ‘sees’ a shape, a movement that forms a

circle. To do this, the preceding positions must be remembered

and related to the current one: “The figure of a movement is

simultaneous representation of successive pasts - is actually an act of memory”

(p. 32). “The performance which perception accomplishes in the path of

movement-seeing … implies the faculty of anamnesis” (p. 33). But

expectation is also involved. Namely, from the previously

perceived movement, its further course is anticipated as a

complement to a meaningful overall form. “Experimental

experience has now shown that also … the direction of the movement is an

essential feature of all figure-perception. E.g., in many cases the eye makes

comprehensible additions to the figure only from this ‘there-to’, which are not

founded at all in the stimulus (the object presented). We call this the prolepsis

of perception and thus come to the statement of the anamnestic-proleptic

character of the perceptual figures. … It is the structure of a biological time

which alone proves capable of uniting the transitoriness of gestalt and the

directionality of gestalt with its solidity in a present“ (p. 50).

Time integration in gestalt perception is therefore just the same

as in gestalt development! Once more it is shown that the cognition

of organic gestalt formation is not possible without the

consideration of the knowing consciousness.

The same applies to the perception of resting shapes. Here not

the sensory stimulus moves, but the perceiving eye. In gazing,

one ‘scans’ the figure to be perceived, jumps from one point to

the next, so that at the current moment only a section is really

clearly seen, but the figure is mentally completed in an

anamnestic-proleptic way – remembering past impressions,

– 70 –

expecting future ones. It is the concept of the whole under whose

point of view the completion is made. This can be followed very

nicely in the self-experiment on the basis of Fig. 13.

Fig. 13. How many legs does the elephant have? For (self-)observation

of the anamnestic-proleptic character of gestalt perception based on

present sense data and a superordinate concept guiding time

integration and gestalt perception.

At first sight, one recognizes an ‘elephant’, the holistic

integrating concept. But then the view wanders e.g. to the trunk

and the foremost ‘foot’, from there to the front ‘leg’ – and

immediately an inner contradiction arises, which is strengthened

by further ‘wandering off’ of the leg and foot area. What one sees

in each case is not what one expects to see, nor does it

correspond to what one has seen before. In each moment, the

memory of the previously perceived as well as the expectation of

the future to be perceived are effective, which in this case just

cannot be combined to a consistent overall shape.

Von Weizsäcker compared these principles of biological gestalt

perception with those of physical thinking: “One must further realize

that the analytical form of natural science … virtually dissolves and destroys

the concept of gestalt. For the perception of the figure of the analytically

conceived motion of a moving particle of matter presupposes ‘memory’;

consequently this perception cannot be based only on matter, cannot be

anything material, cannot correspond to anything material. For matter (of

analytic mechanics) possesses no memory [and no expectation]; rather it

belongs to its definition that it as res extensa is not res cogitans. … The real

[of the perceived gestalt] is thus an unreal in analytic mechanics” (p. 49).

– 71 –

But because gestalt is given to us only as perceptual gestalt, the

physical, causal-analytical method cannot explain gestalt from the

movement and interaction of matter particles! The causal-

analytical research finds “its limit at the forms or shapes” (p. 39).

“Objective time, a basic concept of analytical natural science (mechanics,

theory of motion) destroys the reality of gestalt; but biological time, as

anamnestic-proleptic visualization of life events, overrules objective time. For

gestalts demand synchronicity of objectively no longer existing with objectively

not yet existing in a present – they thus escape the law of objective time and

become nullified in objective time. One may say: the mechanical reality kills

the biologically-formed with the time. … The biological annuls the objective

order of time by presupposing retention and anticipation according to its

concept” (p. 54). And finally he remarks: “It is not objective time in

which we live, but we get the times by living. … Biological time is, it now

follows, also subjective time” (p. 54).

Viktor von Weizsäcker has shown not only that it is impossible

to explain life and form-development of the organisms from the

interaction of dead particles, but also why. It becomes clear to

what extent the biochemical, genetic, molecular biological, etc.

analysis of living organisms must always miss the living whole:

One has the parts in hand, missing, alas, only the temporal band.

Similarly, one could also show that the biological ‘self’, which

we have characterized as an autonomous wholeness and species-

preserving force, cannot be explained from the interaction of

material parts. For a ‘self’ constitutes by itself its boundaries and

thus at the same time sets itself apart from its environment.

Material parts cannot delimit themselves from their

environment. The limitation of a purely physical system can only

be caused by external forces.

At the end of his treatise, von Weizsäcker then arrives at a

characterization of gestalt perception as a rhythmic interplay

between (perception-guided) cognition and (concept-guided)

perception, through which gestalt is constituted between the

knowing subject and external, material being in the first place.

“’Gestalt’, however, is the mode of appearance which … assumes that which

appears. Namely, in that the rhythm of systole of cognition and diastole of

action separates in time and reunites from this passing time to appear in a

present – in that this rhythm appears as one – gestalt appears. With this,

the togetherness of gestalt and time is shown as a necessary one from the

essence of gestalt. In the same way, however, it is now shown that the way

– 72 –

over the problem of perception was not an arbitrary application, but that this

way was an equally necessary one, demanded from the concept of gestalt” (p.

58).

The gestalt does not stand outside of cognition, the observer

does not merely look at it, but it arises only through and within

the encounter of perceiving and thinking. The gestalts are neither

material nor ideal, but (as perceptual gestalts) time-integrated and

(as organic gestalts) time-integrating intermediate beings. They

stand – or better said: they live – in a double in-between: between

past and future as well as between man and world.

5.3 Time as a Double Stream

According to common understanding, time is a continuous

sequence of moments, which one likes to imagine as a (spatial!)

arrow, running from somewhere to somewhere through the

point of the present. Each point on this arrow, whether past,

present or future, is considered to be perfectly equivalent. This is

an abstract notion that is not valid in the living. In order to better

grasp the living time, the rooting of the concept of time in inner

experience shall now be considered. I refer here to a lecture

Rudolf Steiner gave in 1910, in which he presented human

consciousness from the perspective of time.

97

Consciousness is always a present phenomenon, but it is

connected with the past as well as with the future. It recalls the

past through memories, through representations formed on past

experiences. The once imagined is forgotten again and lives on

unconsciously connected with the subject. From this stream,

which continuously flows from the past into the present,

individual contents can be presented again, i.e. remembered.

Then Steiner referred to feelings such as longing, impatience,

hope, anxiety, fear, etc., which relate to the future and “rumble”

strongly in the soul as an expectation or, as he said, “desire” of

what is to come. One can understand such feelings if one

presupposes that phenomenological time not only flows from

the past into the future, but “that which we desire does not flow at all

in the same direction as the flowing stream of representations, but that it

comes towards this stream. … You will be able to throw a tremendous flash

97

Steiner, 1909-1911, GA 115, p. 179-213, 04.11.1910 [transl. CH].

– 73 –

of light on your whole soul-life, if you only presuppose this one thing: that

everything which desires … are, represent a current in the soul-life, which

does not flow at all from the past into the future, but which comes towards

us from the future, which flows from the future into the past. – All at once

the whole sum of soul experiences becomes clear! … Then what is our soul

life at the moment? It is nothing else than the meeting of a stream from the

past into the future, and a stream flowing from the future into the past. …

You will easily understand that these two currents come together in the soul

itself, as it were, they collide. This clashing is the consciousness. … Thus our

soul participates in everything that flows on from the past into the future, and

in everything that comes towards us from the future. If you look into your

soul life at any moment, you can say: There is something like an

interpenetration of what flows from the past into the future with what flows

from the future into the past and opposes the former as desires, as

interestedness, as wishes and so on. Two things interpenetrate.”

98

Let these unusual yet illuminating statements be clarified by a

thought experiment. How would consciousness be configured if

it had either no memory of things past or no expectation of

things to come?

Let us assume that I looked out of the window and that there

was snow outside. Usually, this sensory impression is associated

with a variety of associations that arise from my memory: That it

must be cold outside, that the snow feels cold, that it is winter,

that there is a summer, etc. All this knowledge implicitly

emerging with the sensory impression would fall away if I had no

memory. I would simply see ‘white stuff’ on the landscape. But I

could not even speak of ‘white’, of ‘stuff’ or ‘landscape’, because

I would not know what these terms mean. – Without memory

one would have only the pure, present sense impressions, with

which one could connect no sense and meaning (or only current

thoughts). I could also no longer experience myself as a

conscious subject in relation to the world, because the

perceptions of my body and my inner experiences would be

completely equivalent to the perceptions of the ‘outer’ world,

impressions under impressions – all order of being would

dissolve in a great, structureless flowing whole.

If, on the other hand, I had no expectation of what was to

come, the world would seem frozen to me. I would always have

98

Ibid., p. 190–191, 04.11.1910 [transl. CH].

– 74 –

the impression of standing in front of an impenetrable wall. I

could no longer move purposefully, e.g. reach for a cup, because

this movement presupposes the expectation that I will grasp the

cup in a moment. I could no longer speak a sentence because I

would not know where it would end. Just as cutting off the past

would make my imagination chaotic, closing off the future would

make my will ‘crazy’. Without memory and expectation, normal

consciousness would not be possible; both are always present

and interpenetrate each other.

Fig. 14. The external and the phenomenological internal perspective

of the experience of time.

What do memory and expectation mean for our relationship to

the world? I must be able to expect that I will grasp the cup, that

this sentence will end, that there is still a world around the next

corner. Usually one interprets this fact in such a way that there is

a spatial-material reality ‘out there’ independent of me, which I

watch in its course and in which I move (Fig. 14a). One interprets

the phenomenal experience of time by the assumed constancy of

matter in space. (It is really only an assumption, because one can

perceive matter neither in the past nor in the future!) But if one

really sticks to experience, then one must start from what one

experiences from the world and not from what one thinks about

it. One must observe not the world, but the world within the

– 75 –

consciousness of the world and its course. In this way,

consciousness shifts from the outside position of the uninvolved

observer into the stream of world events, as it were; it goes from

being a spectator to being the stage or scene (Fig. 14b).

The habitual external perspective of consciousness may be

called the ‘representational spectator consciousness’, the

phenomenological internal perspective the ‘participatory scene

consciousness’. For the scene consciousness there is a stream

from the past, in which its memories flow, that is met by a stream

of what is expected from the future.

Of course it is not meant that the expectations of future events

will come true. It is merely pointed to the hardly conscious

threads which the soul constantly stretches out in the direction

of the future and which it needs for its present experience,

especially for its acts of will.

5.4 The General Structure of Consciousness is

the General Structure of the Organism

Rudolf Steiner further elaborated the image of the double stream

of time experience enclosed by the circle of consciousness. For

in consciousness is also found the ‘I’, that is, the fact that there

is a self-conscious and autonomously acting element which, on

the one hand, can actively deal with the stream from the past

(through conscious memories), and, on the other hand, actively

places itself in relation to what is expected or desired in the future

(through ‘judging’). According to Steiner, the influence of the ‘I’

can be “graphically represented – and the graphic representation in this case

corresponds completely to the facts – by letting the stream of the I fall

perpendicularly on the stream of time. … You will come to terms with the

phenomena of the soul if, in addition to the two currents – the one from the

past into the future and the one from the future into the past - you assume

another such current in the human soul, which stands perpendicular to the

other two. This is that which corresponds to the impact of the ‘I’ itself.”

99

Finally, concerning the impressions of the senses, which also

occur in consciousness, Steiner said, “If I now draw the fourth

direction, from below to above, I would have to call the direction running

opposite to the I the direction of the physical world. … The impressions of

99

Ibid., p. 198–199, 04.11.1910 [transl. CH].

– 76 –

the physical world thus go, graphically represented, from bottom to top and

reveal themselves in the soul as sense impressions.”

100

We thus arrive at

the following overall representation (Fig. 15), which represents

the soul’s experience as an experienced order of time.

The ‘I’ places itself above the continuous flow of time and

stops this, as it were, for moments: presence. Things therefore

do not appear blurred in transition, but as delimited particulars.

What thus confronts the ‘I’ becomes its counter-object. In

recognition, it takes a sum of perceptual impressions from the

flow of time and fixes them temporarily as a form. Thus

conscious presence arises in the confrontation of the ‘I’ with the

world which it has helped to shape. In the twilight state of

dreaming, in trance or ecstasy, the separation of ‘I’ and world

blurs and changes the experience of world and time.

Fig. 15. The TIME CROSS of consciousness according to Rudolf

Steiner. (Steiner called the stream from the past the ‘stream of

representations’, the one from the future the ‘stream of desire’. Further

explanation in the text.)

Summing up, Steiner said, “Now I can give you the assurance that

innumerable riddles of the soul will be solved for you if you take this scheme

as a basis. … In this cross, which is traversed by a circle, [is given] a very

good scheme of the life of the soul, as it adjoins the spiritual above, the physical

below, the [past] to the left and the [future] to the right. Only, in doing so,

you must rise to the idea that the stream of time is not merely something

flowing calmly along, but that something is coming toward it, but that the life

100

Ibid., p. 205, 04.11.1910 [transl. CH].

– 77 –

of the ‘I’ and the life of the senses can be comprehended only when they are

understood as meeting the stream of time at right angles.”

101

The structure of biological development presented above thus

corresponds to the structure of consciousness. For comparison,

let us once again place the two side by side (Fig. 16).

Fig. 16. Comparison of the structure of biological development with

the structure of consciousness.

As in consciousness, so in the organism four aspects interact:

1. the spiritual being (the species),

2. the descent or origin, i.e. the past course of development up

to the present,

3. the future developmental paths and goals, as well as

4. the respective physical appearance, embedded in a likewise

physical environment, to which the organism is adapted and

against whose influences it asserts itself.

If one pushes the individual stages of development together in

Fig. 16, one obtains the general structure of the organism (Fig.

17). It may be called the idea or the type of the living organism,

the Bio-Logos.

101

Ibid., p. 206-207, 04.11.1910 [transl. CH].

– 78 –

Fig. 17. The general structure (type) of the organism, the Bio-Logos.

We have thus gained the possibility of examining the quality

and essence of the four aspects of the organism on the basis of

the four aspects of consciousness; an inner, differentiated

experiential access to the living opens up. In true organicism, the

ontology of life and the epistemology of cognition coincide into

one.

Immanuel Kant wrote in the Critique of Judgment that “it is left as

unanswered whether in the inner ground of nature itself, unknown to us, the

physical-mechanical [i.e., the causal, note. CH] and the [final] connection

of purpose in the same things may hang together in one principle: only that

our reason is not able to unite them in such a one.”

102

One now sees how

these two causalities nevertheless hang together in one principle,

and that the inner ground of nature unknown to us can be found in

our consciousness itself. Thomas Nagel’s quest, mentioned in the

introduction, for an understanding of nature which contains a

teleological component immanent in nature, is fulfilled for the

living organism by the link between cognition and organicity.

That this view can also apply to the evolution of organisms will

be shown in the second part of this book. On the basis of what

has been said above about the relation of subject and object in

developmental thought, the comparison of the aspects of the

organic with those of consciousness is also fully justified. For the

past development of an organism is opened up by memory of it,

its future by expectation. Only the respective present physical

appearance in its environment is accessible to sense observation.

102

Kant (1790), p. 338 [transl. CH].

– 79 –

Finally, the living being, which permeates and connects all

individual appearances is experienced in the volitional intuition

of the ‘I’.

5.5 The Problem of the Wholeness of the Organism

The inclusion of self-observing consciousness in biological

cognition also sheds light on the problem of the wholeness of

organisms. Kristian Köchy, who investigated this problem in the

history of biological ideas

103

, wrote: “The question of the actual

relation between the whole and the parts may belong … to the deepest and

so far least solved problem fields of the philosophy of the organic.”

104

The

wholeness of an organism, which integrates the individual parts

spatially and temporally, cannot be grasped in sensory

perception. Perception can always see only details or individual

states of development. But these details are not the real organism.

There is more to the rose than the blooming shoot. The

wholeness represents the spatial and temporal total form of the

organism. It is its idea, which connects the details to a unity,

namely on the scene of the recognizing consciousness. This idea

is not an unreal, subjective addition of the human mind to the

external phenomena, but the actually effective, unity-creating

instance, an objective world power, which appears on the scene

of the knowing consciousness. The question of wholeness can

only be solved by the realization of the effect of the supersensible

in the sensually perceptible.

Goethe had grasped this wholeness when he said to Schiller

“that one can also represent nature acting and living, striving out of the whole

into the parts”

105

.

5.6 The TIME CROSS, the Four Aristotelian ‘Causes’

and the Critique of Teleology

The structure of the TIME CROSS is already spanned by the

famous four ‘causes’ that Aristotle considered necessary for the

explanation of natural things. In the 2nd book of Physics he

asked for the reason of things: “To know each we believe not sooner

103

Köchy (1995, 2000) [transl. CH].

104

Ibid., p. 263.

105

Goethe (1817), p. 867.

– 80 –

than until we have apprehended the why with respect to each, i.e., its first

cause.” Then he distinguished, “In one way cause is called that of which

… something consists of, e.g., the ore of the statue and the silver of the bowl;

but in another way the form … – that is the concept of what it should be,

e.g. of the octave the division ratio of the string two to one; furthermore, that

from where the first beginning of the movement or the persistence comes – e.g.

the father is the cause of the child and everything changing of the changed;

furthermore, one speaks of cause in the sense of the goal, this is the therefore

– e.g. of going for a walk the health. Why does one go for a walk? We say:

to stay healthy. And by speaking thus, we mean to state the cause.”

106

Fig. 18. Aristotle‘s four ‘causes’ in the cross of time.

107

In later philosophy, the four causes have been called form

cause (causa formalis), substance cause (causa materialis), effect

cause (causa efficiens), and goal cause (causa finalis). The cause of

form is the ‘what’ of a thing, the archetype or the idea (Greek

eidos, ‘the thing to be seen’), which causes its essential peculiarity.

The cause of substance means the ‘what material’, that is, the

sensually perceptible material. The effect cause means the

‘whence’ or the effecting (it corresponds to today’s conception

of a mechanical or efficient cause), and the goal cause means the

‘wherefore’, the purpose or the goal (Fig. 18).

106

Aristoteles (2021) Physik II 3, 194b 23-35 [transl. CH].

107

Volker Harlan has described the four causes in detail with a view to the

living organism and comes to the same conclusion as we do. Harlan (2002).

Cf. also Lauenstein (1976).

– 81 –

For Aristotle goal-causes were operative not only in the human

mind but also in nature: “Therefore some are perplexed whether with the

mind or something else the spiders do their work, and the ants and such

animals. If we go a little further, it becomes clear that in plants, too,

something conducive to the goal comes into being, e.g. the leaves for the

protection of the fruit. If then by nature and for the sake of a goal the swallow

builds its nest, the spider its spider's web, both the plant has its leaves for the

sake of fruit and the roots not upward but downward for the sake of food, it

is evident that there is such a cause [namely, a goal cause] in beings that

by nature become and exist.“

108

The goal cause has often been criticized, and modern natural

science has radically abandoned all teleological explanation.

Paradigmatically, Francis Bacon (1561-1626), founder of the

methodology of empirical natural science, formulated this

criticism in his Novum Organum (1620): “… not bad is the statement

of four causes: Matter, form, the agent, and the purpose. Of these, the cause

of purpose is not only useless, but downright harmful to science; it applies

only to human action. One despairs of the discovery of form; … In nature

… nothing truly exists except the individual bodies with their particular,

pure, lawfully produced efficacy; in the sciences this very law, its investigation,

discovery, and explanation, is the basis of knowledge as well as of action.”

109

Bacon takes a radically empiricist standpoint and concentrates

entirely on representational knowledge. He has no awareness of

the inner aspects of knowledge; they are perceived only as an

obstacle to a knowledge of nature that aims at mechanistic

understanding and technical usability. “Knowledge is power [over

nature],” this thought attributed to Bacon summarizes what has

become the basis of scientific-technical culture since the 17th

century.

110

108

Aristoteles (2021) Physics II 8, 199b 21-30. Spaemann and Löw explain:

„A [living] natural thing is characterised by the fact that the what and what for fall into

one in itself. The purpose is the form of the thing itself, hence the word entelecheia: I carry

the goal within me. If one seeks to understand the processes that take place in a living body,

one must orientate oneself towards their possible or functional meanings for the preservation

or production of the living being. The starting point for such an understanding is the natural

human being, which knows by itself what its parts and organs are ‘good’ for, i.e. what they

can be used for. ‘Man is the best-known animal, because his parts do not elude perception’.

[Aristoteles (2013) Hist. An. I 6, 491a 23]”. Spaemann & Löw (1981), p. 62.

109

Bacon (1620), p. 73.

110

Cf. Appendix Francis Bacon’s Four Fallacies, p. 184.

– 82 –

Aristotle saw the tetradic structure in nature in terms of

ontologically effective causes. One can assume that he still

experienced something of the living formative forces that

connect subject and object. Baco could no longer do this and

looked only at an objectified, externalized, and in this sense dead

nature to which cognition is alien. Rudolf Steiner made conscious

man’s own share in the emergence of world reality through the

self-observation of cognition and thus showed that true

cognition of nature is at the same time cognition of spirit. If this

spiritual knowledge cultivates the scientific thoroughness and

conscientiousness of a Francis Bacon also in its field, it becomes

spiritual science.

5.7 Man and Nature – Together a Whole

Rudolf Steiner designated the four directions of the TIME

CROSS with four terms, which in Anthroposophy describe four

so-called ‘essential members’ of the human being. He called the

past current (psychically the current of memory, organically the

current of living becoming) the ‘etheric body’. This term stands

for the organization of the life forces of man as well as of other

living beings (one can also speak simplistically of ‘life’). The

stream of expectation and organic development potential, which

comes from the future, he called ‘astral body’ (‘soul’). The stream,

which represents the sense perception, he called ‘physical body’

(material body), and the vertical impact from above ‘I’ (‘spirit’)

(Fig. 19).

Fig. 19. The TIME CROSS as interaction of the essential members of

the human being (according to Rudolf Steiner).

– 83 –

The four members of human consciousness and organic

development also correspond to the four realms of nature: stone,

plant, animal and human. A stone has a physical body, but no

etheric body, no astral body and no I (active spirit). A plant has

a physical body (it’s current appearance for the senses), and also

an etheric body (its life). It has no sensation and desire, thus no

astral body in the sense in which it is effective animals. And

nevertheless: Future, formative developmental goals also work in

a plant, and it has likewise also a spiritual being. The

‘psychological’ and the ‘spiritual’ do not appear in it as such, but

‘hover around’ it as it were from the outside. The plant ‘knows’

nothing of its future, it does not strive for it, but the future is

effective in it. The plant has also a spiritual aspect to it, which

does not awaken to self-consciousness as in man, but still works

in it as the species-specific, autonomous forming power. In the

animal then the psychological appears (as sensibility, desire and

behaviour), and in man the spiritual in the thought-life and free

action of the I.

How do we recognize the future of the organisms, their

purposiveness? – We experience it in our consciousness! As

knowing subjects we always complete those aspects of the TIME

CROSS which are missing with the natural beings. A stone also

has its history and future – but the forces that formed it are in its

environment and not in itself. As knowing subjects, we add them

to what appears to us of it as a sense impression (Fig. 20). In the

plant, we see the becoming power realized in the being, we see

what has grown. It is immediately clear that it has formed by its

own power. We could call plants embodied memories. Their future

potential of becoming, on the other hand, does not appear in the

present appearance. Here it is again we as observers who expect

their further development. (In sprouting seedlings, leaves and

flower buds one can observe how their sight is surrounded by an

aura of expectation of their further development). In the animal

appears then also the ability to expect the future. The animal feels

and behaves, strives for satisfaction of its needs. In this sense,

animals are living, embodied intentions or desires. However, their

spiritual essence does not appear in the physical being, but is

completed in our cognition. Finally, in man a spiritual essence is

also individually ‘embodied’ as a self-determining, autonomously

– 84 –

effective ‘I’. Here the outer way of life of the being and the inner

structure of the cognition completely coincide.

In this way the world becomes comprehensible, e.g. the fact

that a plant potentially continues to grow, while the animal closes

itself in a finished form.

111

In the plant the future expectation

does not yet embody itself in a formative way, it lies in the

observer, while in the animal the intentionality pushes itself into

the living formation processes and helps to form them. In man,

finally, the intentionality, in general the psychic, is drawn into the

realm of the ‘I’ and thus remains freely movable, while in the

animal it appears embodied and species-specifically determined.

With all this one must keep in mind that the TIME CROSS

represents the living synopsis of four different world layers and

modes of experience. It should always be referred to the

experiences underlying it by taking the spatial figure in its

temporal sense.

Fig. 20. The connection of human cognition with the natural

kingdoms. The solid lines signify the actually appearing, ‘embodied’

aspects, the dashed lines those aspects which man adds to the

appearances in the act of cognition.

112

111

Kunze (1981).

112

Cf. Witzenmann (1986), p. 83; Witzenmann (1983).

– 85 –

At the end of this chapter, an interesting phenomenon of

consciousness should be pointed out. The Munich brain

researcher Ernst Pöppel showed that adult humans determine a

present moment as two to three seconds long. Poems, indeed

languages in general, are structured in this measure of time. If

you hold someone while shaking hands for longer than 2 to 3

seconds, it seems strange, etc. “What we experience as ‘present’ in each

case is not an extensionless point on the time-axis of classical physics, but

are events with meaning integrated into shapes. … This temporal frame is

the basis of our consciousness activity; for a short period of time, consciousness

‘concentrates’ on one fact and automatically, after a few seconds, the brain

‘forces’ the concentration to the next content.”

113

The length of this

period of time seems to be determined primarily by the duration

of one breath. When breathing in, one grasps the respective content

of consciousness in a contoured manner; when breathing out,

one lets it go again. It is like a fine waking up and falling asleep,

which lets us glide from one present moment into the next. The

experience of time is not continuous, but rhythmically

structured.

113

Pöppel (1984), p. 135 [transl. CH].

PART II

THE TIME CROSS AS STRUCTURE

OF LIVING DEVELOPMENT AND EVOLUTION

– 88 –

6 THE ANIMAL FORM AS EXPRESSION OF THE

PSYCHE

That form, how pregnant with a godlike trace!

⁠A look, how did it whirl me t‘ward that ocean

Whose rolling billows mightier shapes embrace!

114

(Goethe)

n the first part of this book it was shown that an

understanding of the living opens up when one takes into

account, besides the biological phenomena, the knowing

consciousness. One can understand consciousness not as a

spectator but as the scene of world events. In the second part,

the question of the human form and its evolution will be

pursued. Can we find reasons for the design of animals and

especially for that of man that go beyond Darwin? Has our shape

developed by chance? And what roles do heredity or genetics

play? – In order to understand the human being, the formation

principles of the animal shape are to be looked at first more

exactly.

6.1 Metamerism and Shape

An important formation principle of organic forms is the

repetition of the same or similar elements (metamerism). From

cell division to reproduction, this principle is elementary for all

living things. Adolf Portmann described the metameric structure

as a basic pattern of animal formation: “The repetition of similar parts

in rows is characteristic for large circles of related animals. The body sections

of an earthworm or a caterpillar, the order of the trunk muscles in a fish, a

salamander are familiar examples.”

115

(Fig. 21).

“Particularly striking,” Portmann continues, “is the series of

equivalent limbs in early stages of development of vertebrates or arthropods,

even in species in which the adult body outwardly shows nothing more of them.

The row-wise arrangement of the organ systems appears therefore at first as

a building principle, as a possibility to provide the building material in a

simple way for the formation of more complicated body forms. … At these

early stages of development the embryos of fishes, birds, and man resemble

114

Goethe (1826), S. 366.

115

Portmann (1965), p. 36 [transl. CH].

I

– 89 –

each other in many general features of the building plan; those of spiders,

insects, and crustaceans are also remarkably similar.”

116

(Fig. 22).

Fig. 21. Metameric body articulation in the lancelet and an earth

salamander (from Portmann, 1965).

Fig. 22. Metamerism and developmental height. Left: In the fins of

primitive fishes, the embryonic metameric arrangement (upper left) of

the structural elements (nerves, muscle, skeleton) is largely preserved.

A: pectoral fin of Devonian cartilaginous fish; B: pectoral fin of shark;

C: ray. Right: The limb bud of terrestrial vertebrates resembles that of

a fish fin. It usually develops into a five-rayed limb (top right). The

embryonic structure (A) of a bird-wing still shows clear resemblance to

the five-rayed prototype. Oldest birds of the Jurassic period show three

clawed fingers (B). Skeleton of an extant bird (C) by secondary

remodelling (from Portmann, 1965).

Ernst Haeckel’s famous embryo chart also shows the early

metameric body structure (Fig. 23). In more highly developed

organisms, it is over-formed in the course of individual

development by the design principle of the organism as a whole.

116

Ibid., p. 36 [transl. CH].

– 90 –

Like ontogeny, also phylogeny leads from the simpler, rhythmic-

metamorphic forms (fish) to differentiated forms (birds and

mammals).

Fig. 23. Metamerism and gestalt formation. Embryonic development

of vertebrates according to Ernst Haeckel.

117

The reshaping of metameric structures underlies many

biological formation processes (Fig. 24), such as the formation

of the five-rayed hand from cartilaginous elements of prehistoric

fish or the formation of the mammalian dentition from the

homodontic tooth-rows of prehistoric reptiles. In each case,

similar elements are first differentiated, specialized, reduced in

number, and integrated as parts under the whole of a

superordinate gestalt.

118

117

Around this representation there has been some dispute. Especially from

creationist side Haeckel was accused of simplification and falsification. In fact

the different early stages of the vertebrates are more dissimilar than drawn by

Haeckel. But this is not decisive here, because the metameric division of the

body is given in all vertebrates. This is also shown by molecular genetics,

which, as it were, newly discovered the metameric organization of all

vertebrates on the basis of the segmental activity of different genes. For a

detailed discussion of Haeckel’s account, see: Richardson & Keuck (2002). Cf.

also chapter Ontogeny und Phylogeny, p. 137.

118

Palaeontologist Samuel Williston wrote in 1918, “It is a law of evolution that

the number of parts of an organism frequently diminishes, these rarer parts then being

functionally specialized.” Cited from Carroll (2008), p. 39.

– 91 –

Fig. 24. Examples of gestalt differentiation by integration of

metameric structures. For vertebrate and insect, embryonic stages are

shown on the left, and adult organisms are shown on the right. The

three lower figures show differentiations from phylogenetically older

forms to later, integrated forms. Vertebrates: from the lancelet (left) to

the mammalian skeleton; limbs: from the fin of a prehistoric fish

(Sauripterus) to the human hand; dentition: from the homodont

dentition of prehistoric reptiles to the mammalian dentition.

The earliest complex organisms of the so-called Ediacara and

Burgess Shale fauna, which evolved long before present-day

animal phyla, also show astonishing metamerism, with the

phylogenetically younger organisms from the Burgess Shale

characteristically already remodelled into more differentiated

forms (Fig. 25).

This is an important principle of organic shape formation: the

simpler an animal is organized, the more similar it remains to its

metamerically structured embryonic form, the more highly

developed it is, the more it departs from it. Goethe, too, had

already clearly recognized this principle: “The more imperfect the

creature is, the more these parts are alike or similar to each other, and the

more they resemble the whole. The more perfect the creature becomes, the more

dissimilar the parts become to each other. In the latter case, the whole is more

– 92 –

or less similar to the parts, in the latter case, the whole is dissimilar to the

parts. The more similar the parts are to each other, the less they are

subordinated to each other. The subordination of the parts points to a more

perfect creature.”

119

Fig. 25. Organisms of the 580-540 million year

120

old Ediacara fauna

show plant-like, metameric designs. These are soft-bodied organisms

whose imprints (upper right) were found in the sedimentary rocks of

the Ediacara mounds of southern Australia. Bottom: Animals from the

geologically younger Canadian Burgess Shale (505 million yrs.), some

of which already formed hardened outer skins.

6.2 The Animal Form as Expression of the Psyche

Metamerism means repetition of the similar. In inner experience,

metameric repetitions are felt as relatively dull because of their

uniformity. One is pointed to the life processes from which the

individual elements emerge in a rhythmical way. In the case of

the integrated figures, on the other hand, the (much more alert)

attention lies both on the details and on the whole figure, which

119

Goethe (1807, 1817), p. 15 [transl. CH].

120

According to today’s usual time indication from geological dating. One can

be of different opinion about the absolute meaning of these numbers [cf.

Bockemühl (1999); Bosse (2002)]. Here they are consistently meant as relative

markers of geological distances.

– 93 –

is immediately experienced as a self-contained wholeness. And

this expresses something inward, psychological. While the

metameric divisions resemble growth patterns of plants, the

integrated figures clearly express the element of animal

experience and behaviour. How responsive and ‘awake’ a fly

appears while its larva is still incubating in dull life processes! A

mammal shows a differentiated psychological expression in

comparison to a reptile, and what sublimation expresses the hand

of man in relation to the fin of a primeval fish! Consider also the

increasing differentiation of the soul, the increasing ‘richness of

world-reference’ (Adolf Portmann), which is shown in the series

from fish to amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals and finally

in man (cf. Fig. 26).

Fig. 26. The shape of animals as an expression of their inner psychic

life (according to Portmann). The higher an animal is organized, the

richer and more directly the shape expresses the psychic life.

In the self-observation the kinship of the animal-psyche with

one’s own inner experience becomes apparent. The boundary

between subject and object does not exist here as it does in

representational consciousness. We live with the animals in a

common psychological space.

When watching the forms and especially the behaviour of

animals we experience certain psychological impressions. When

we look at animals in this way, we also see that they belong to

their respective habitats: fish belong to water, butterflies to

flowers, air and light, horses to the steppe, deer to the mountain

forest, bats to dusk, and so on. In the light of inner experience

the physical appearances of the animals and their life worlds

become transparent for a soul world expressing itself in it. The

brilliant mathematician and natural philosopher Karl Snell (1806-

1886), whose thoughts on evolution we will discuss later,

formulated very succinctly: “Every living natural being seems to be

determined in its peculiarity by a psychic principle which stands in the most

– 94 –

exact connection with the external world of the animal, indeed which is the

same that is also capable of exciting this particular external world of the

animal in the soul of man; a creature appears as an imprint of the spirit

which inhabits that sphere of nature in which it has its external world

assigned to it.”

121

The psychological or soul life appears in animals largely

‘embodied‘

122

, i.e., fused with their physical appearance and

interwoven with their environment, whereas in man it is

environmentally independent and free. Man can inwardly detach

himself, as it were, from his corporeality and his external

conditions of life; he can think, feel and will this today, that

tomorrow. In the course of evolution, a being has evolved in

which the psychological is held back from embodiment and thus

can be inwardly freely moving.

6.3 The Interaction of Life and Soul as a Design Principle in the

Development and Evolution of Animals

The repetition of similar parts is a principle of the living, in gestalt

integration soulfulness expresses itself. Living repetition of the

similar and soulful moulding to holistically integrated shapes are

the two basic principles of animal development. Repetition

enables an uninterrupted stream of life and renewal, which also

includes reproduction, while soulful (psychological) shaping is

associated with individual aging and death. In the course of

evolution, the forms are more and more differentiated and

shaped by the psychological, although they mostly develop from

simple, metameric stages. The psychological pushes back, so to

speak, the effects of the living. The living builds up the organism,

the psychic degrades it. The Tübingen zoologist Karl Friedrich

Kielmeyer (1765-1844) already described a correspondingly

reversed relationship between reproductive power and sentience

in the animal series: “The more … reproduction, the more the sentience

is excluded. … The more one of these powers has been developed on the one

side, the more it has been neglected on the other.”

123

Anthroposophy calls the living reproductive power the ‘etheric’

and, in so far as this power is individually organized, the ‘etheric

121

Snell (1847), p. 149 [transl. CH].

122

Cf. Suchantke (1964), as well as the epistemological presentation in

Heusser (2011), p. 199-206.

123

Kielmeyer, 1793.

– 95 –

body’. The faculty of feeling is called the ‘astral’ or,

correspondingly, the ‘astral body’.

124

The etheric body supplies

the living material through repetition. Steiner says: “The most

elementary principle of the etheric body is that of repetition. … We see this

in the plant in the most pronounced degree. We see how leaf after leaf develops

on the plant. This is due to the fact that the physical body of the plant is

permeated by an etheric body, which has the principle of repetition. It forms

one leaf, then a second, a third, and thus adds leaf to leaf in constant

repetition.”

125

“That in a living being members repeat themselves over and

over again is the fault of the etheric body, for it always wants to produce the

same thing. That is why there is something in life which we call reproduction,

the bringing forth of one’s own kind. It is essentially based on an activity of

the etheric body. Everything that is based on repetition in man and also in

animals is due to the etheric principle. That in the backbone ring-bone is

repeated ring-bone is due to this activity of the etheric body.”

The life principle of the etheric body alone, however, does not

cause the formation of the animals, but merely supplies the living

material, which is then formed by the soul or psychological

principle of the astral body. Steiner wrote: “In the astral body the

animal form arises outwardly as a whole form and inwardly as the form of

the organs. … Life is not brought [in the animal] within the etheric up to

the formed life. It is maintained in flow; and the shaping pushes itself through

the astral organization into the flowing life.”

126

Elsewhere he said that

“the astral body counts, but it counts differentiatingly, counts the etheric body.

It shapes it counting.”

127

We have shown above that the astral ‘works’ backward in

time. Thus, animal formation can be understood from the

interaction of two time currents from the past and from the

future (Fig. 27). In one stream the perpetual repetition of the

similar takes place, which leads to the production and

propagation of organic material. One can imagine the living

forces in this stream as acting from the inside out. In the other

124

Steiner, 1908-1909, GA 107, p. 83–84, 02.11.1908. With such new terms,

we should first and foremost ask what they mean instead of rejecting them or

even making fun of them. They are not that completely new. Aristotle and

Thomas Aquinas already spoke of the soul as a ‘form of the body’. Rudolf

Steiner presented these concepts in an extremely differentiated way and

continued to deepen and develop them in the course of his spiritual scientific

research.

125

Ibid., p. 28–29, 21.10.1908 [transl. CH].

126

Steiner & Wegman, 1925, GA 027, p. 35-36 [transl. CH].

127

Steiner, 1921, GA 204, p. 139-140, 23.04.1921 [transl. CH].

– 96 –

stream, the living material is shaped into differentiated and

integrated gestalts in a discontinuous manner. These gestalts

express the inner psychic life of the animals. The shaping and

differentiating forces can be conceived as if acting from the

outside. The first stream is and remains continuously alive, the

other always leads to death. The counteracting effectiveness of life (etheric

body) and soul (astral body) in the double stream of time provides a key to

the understanding of biological gestalt development.

Fig. 27. Shaping of the living gestalt by interplay of (etheric) repetition

and (astral) shaping in the double current of time.

It should be noted that this concept is similar to Darwin’s

notion of descent with variation and natural selection by

environmental conditions. Thus, reading Darwin in the light of

inner experience can lead to similar results as described here.

In evolution, moreover, the above-mentioned Williston’s law

is manifested: many similar elements are transformed into a

formally differentiated and functionally integrated whole

consisting of fewer, distinctly different elements. It is the

interplay of the building-up life processes, the repetition of the

similar, with the degrading and differentiating soul effectiveness.

The ontogeny and phylogeny of the hand provide nice

examples of the effect of the formation principles described.

Embryonically, the hand forms from a limb bud (Fig. 28, top).

Differentiation into individual fingers occurs by programmed

cell death (apoptosis) of the cell tissue initially still present

between the fingers – an interplay of living, space-filling cell

growth (ethereal) with bifurcating, differentiating death (astral).

The same principle operates in the transition from the fins of fish

to the extremities of terrestrial vertebrates.

– 97 –

Fig. 28. Top: Growth and programmed cell death (apoptosis) in the

embryonic hand bud. Middle: Evolution of the hand. Bottom:

Evolution from fish fin to terrestrial vertebrate limb. Transition to

terrestrial life in the Devonian 375 million yrs. ago. (from Rohen, Bolk,

Shubin,

128

modified).

The described principle of formation applies to both the

individual and the phylogenetic development of animals. It is in

both cases a dynamic ‘shift’ on this double axis. Embryonic and

early forms of evolution are to be located far ‘to the left’, while

in the course of ontogenesis and phylogenesis, which are

128

Bolk et al. (1938), p. 64; Rohen & Lütjen-Drecoll (2002), p. 51; Shubin et

al. (2006).

– 98 –

associated with ever-increasing penetration of the psychic, their

place shifts further to the ‘right’.

129

6.4 Evolution of the Tripartite Organization

Although we have now described a principle of formation of the

organic gestalt, the question is still open as to the reasons for the

specific formation. The fact that it arises through the influence

of the soul (astral) on the living material of the physical-etheric

organization, says nothing about why the forms of the animals

and the human being are formed just in such a way and not

completely differently. To get further, I fall back on a central

discovery of Rudolf Steiner: The threefold structure of the human

organisation.

Three soul faculties can be distinguished: representational

imagining (thinking in a broader sense), experiencing feeling and

active willing. Imagining is experienced in a waking

consciousness. Feeling, on the other hand, surges up and down

on the border between the conscious and the unconscious;

compared to waking representation, it has a dream-like character.

Willing, finally, plunges completely into the unconscious depths

of the human organization, there to become effective in the

movements of the body and its limbs.

Rudolf Steiner‘s seminal discovery

130

is that these three soul

faculties have their physiological bases not only in the brain, but

129

Among anthroposophically oriented, Goethean biologists, Hermann

Poppelbaum has described this connection. In his Tier-Wesenskunde he wrote:

“The more developed limb-animals are to be understood by concentration, compression and

subordination of the [metameric] successive pieces into higher units. In these processes of

concentration the efficacy of the astral body proves itself, as in the stringing together of uniform

successive pieces that of the etheric. … The subordination of the segments into higher units

points to an increase of the state of consciousness.” Poppelbaum (1937). Also Iwer

Thor Lorenzen has pointed out the interaction of etheric and astral body in

animal formation, e.g. in the metamorphosis of insects or the generation

change of hollow animals between polyp and medusa: Lorenzen (1969). See

Appendix The Life Cycle of Jellyfish as an Example of the Work of Etheric and Astral

Formative Forces, p. 190. In contrast to this, Wolfgang Schad was of the opinion

that the TIME CROSS and especially the interaction of etheric and astral body

only applied to the psyche, but not to the organic development. Schad (2013),

p. 194. In Schad’s opinion, the living (etheric) stands between the physical, in

which causality rules, and the soul (astral), which is determined by finality, and

forms itself from itself. Schad (1966, 2013).

130

Steiner, 1917, GA 021, p. 150-163.

– 99 –

in three bodily functional systems. He did not see the soul

faculties only in connection with the brain, but differentially

embodied in the entire physical organization:

● representative imagining/thinking in the nervous- and sense

system,

● feeling in the respiratory and the circulatory systems (the so-

called rhythmic system), and

● willing in the metabolic and limb systems.

131

Fig. 29. The tripartite organization of man.

The three systems are clearly distinguishable from each other

and yet they interpenetrate each other. The nerve-sense system

has its centre in the head, respiration and circulation in the chest,

the metabolic-limb system in the lower trunk and limbs.

Imagination is bound to the nervous-sensory system. Willing, on

the other hand, lives out in the movements of the limbs, which

are ‘fuelled’ by metabolism. Feeling is related to heartbeat and

breathing; it is not only experienced there, but also directly

affects rhythmicity.

131

The tripartite organization has often been described in great detail and is

only sketched here in the very roughest outlines. Cf. e.g. Kolisko (1921); Vogel

(1992); Rohen (2000).

– 100 –

The will is localized where it is also experienced, namely in the

movements of the limbs or the entire voluntary musculature. Not

the imagination of what I wish or want is will, but the actual

doing. Thinking belongs to the nerve-systems (head), which only

serves the awareness of the will impulses. The same is true for

feeling: Feelings become conscious in the head, but they are

experienced in connection with heartbeat and breathing. The

whole body is organ and expression of the soul (Fig. 29).

Fig. 30. The evolution of the tripartite organization of vertebrates in

the double stream of time.

The three bodily functional systems have gradually

differentiated from each other in the course of evolution (Fig.

30).

132

In a primitive chordate animal, as in fishes generally, the

head merges into the trunk without incision; it is the mere front

end and cannot be moved independently of the trunk. The brain

capsule, if already present, is open to the abdominal cavity. The

lateral line organ, which is important for the orientation of the

fish and from which the sense of hearing and the sense of balance

of the inner ear will develop in evolution, is spread over the

whole body. The middle, rhythmic system also does not yet close

132

Vgl. Kipp (1948).

– 101 –

in a ‘chest’, indeed in primitive fishes there are no ribs (fishbones)

yet. Limbs with an inner skeleton are missing, the whole trunk

serves as an organ for locomotion.

Amphibians already have an independent head and limb

formation. Locomotion, however, still shows the flailing of

fishes; the limbs are not yet brought under the trunk as in reptiles,

their leverage is still little efficient. The head merges into the

trunk without an externally visible neck. Respiration is also not

yet concentrated in the thoracic region, but is spread over the

body surface in addition to the lungs. Reptiles show increasing

independence of the head and limbs, each differentiated from the

trunk. However, the entire trunk is still dominated by the

rhythmic element of ribs and vertebrae. Only in mammals,

through the diaphragm, do the systems of the abdominal cavity

differentiate into the thoracic cavity with the central organs of

the rhythmic system and the abdominal cavity with the organs of

metabolism. Only mammals form the tripartite structure

completely. In the course of vertebrate evolution, therefore, the

three systems gradually ‘unmix’, and thus the tripartite type

comes to appear more and more clearly.

133

Nevertheless, in mammals, the three areas or the gestalt are still

functionally intertwined and only become completely

independent of each other in humans through the upright

posture. In animals the head still serves as an organ of grasping

and the front limbs for locomotion, the rear limbs are often used

like hands (for climbing, scratching etc.). The human spirit,

however, can live only in a formally and functionally tripartite

organization. In the bodily organization of a fish no

independence of imagining, feeling and willing would be

possible. Only by the separation of the three organ systems the

soul abilities can differentiate. And only by the differentiation of

the soul abilities the human being can be what he is. Only in this

way can he imagine something without at the same time

triggering a behaviour; only in this way can he accompany,

evaluate and change his actions imaginatively; and only in this

way can he distinguish himself in feeling from the outer world.

The separation of imagining, feeling and acting are therefore the

prerequisite for the unfolding of human self-consciousness, of feeling

133

Thus, as Ernst-Michael Kranich wrote, “the fish-type can be ideally derived from

the much more perfect mammalian type”. Kranich (1989). p. 62.

– 102 –

oscillating freely between self- and world-experience, and of free and

self-responsible self-efficacy.

We can call this threefoldness the archetypal lawfulness or the

‘type’ of human organization. This type was realized in the course

of evolutionary development, in that the tripartite organization

as a soul-body differentiation has shaped itself more and more in

the forms arising from the common descent.

134

In this sense the

reason for the evolutionary development up to the human being

lies in the shaping of the tripartite (human) organization.

134

The three main groups of mammals – rodents, carnivores and ungulates –

are also to be understood from the tripartite structure. In rodents, the nervous

and sensory systems predominate, in ungulates, the metabolic and limb

systems predominate, while carnivores represent a balanced middle. Schad

(2012).

– 103 –

7 MOLECULAR GENETICS IN THE DOUBLE STREAM

OF TIME

For only that which can still do its work,

in truth deserves its name.

135

(Aristoteles)

7.1 Genes and Gestalt Formation

f you open a modern textbook of biology, the first thing you

usually find is a presentation about cells and molecules: The

cell as the so-called basic building block of life with the

hereditary substance DNA in the nucleus, which is supposed to

contain the program by which organisms construct themselves.

The cause of the otherwise inexplicable properties of life, it is

suggested or formulated, is the genetic ‘blueprint’.

Since the discovery of the DNA structure (the famous double

helix) by Francis Crick, James Watson, Rosalind Franklin and

Maurice Wilkins (1953) and the subsequent elucidation of its

function, an immeasurable wealth of information about

molecular biology has been amassed. But as much as one has

learned in this way, the attempts to explain the living form and

wholeness from its supposed genetic ‘causes’ and to create it in

the laboratory have remained unsuccessful.

Of course, genes have an enormous influence on life

phenomena, they are part of the living. Goethe was already

interested in this side of organisms. A few weeks before his death

he wrote to the chemist Heinrich Wilhelm Ferdinand

Wackenroder: “I am highly interested in how far it is possible to come to

terms with the organic-chemical operation of life, by which the metamorphosis

of plants is effected according to one and the same law in the most manifold

way.”

136

Goethe wanted to follow the metamorphosis principle

down to the material details of plant chemistry.

Genes have a linear arrangement of their building blocks. Their

order constitutes the genetic code, which is translated into the

structure of proteins. Proteins build cells and organs and they act

as enablers (catalysts) of material conversions in the organism.

They catalyse the breakdown of food and the building-up of

135

Aristoteles (1955), p. 390a.

136

Goethe (1832), p. 209.

I

– 104 –

endogenous substances, but they also act as pores through which

substances are transported into and out of cells, as sensors that

detect hormonal and other signals, as regulators that control the

activity of individual genes, and so on. All of these different

activities each require specific proteins, and each of these

different types of proteins is encoded by a different gene.

Each individual body cell capable of division contains the

totality of all the genes of the organism, the so-called genome.

However, different genes are activated or inhibited in different

cells; other genes are activated in a liver cell than in a retinal cell.

The control of genetic activity is effected by regulatory proteins,

which themselves react to influences from the whole of the

organism and its environment (e.g. certain food-degrading

proteins are produced by the organism only if the corresponding

nutrients are present in the digestive system). The same principle

applies in a complicated way to all the genes that are active in

embryonic development and where mutations can lead to serious

malformations.

Genes are thus necessary for the development and shaping of

an organism, but they are far from sufficient. The question

therefore arises whether and how the above-described shaping

principles can be reconciled with genetics.

7.2 The TIME CROSS of Genetics and the Threefold Structure of the

Cell

DNA is a macromolecule of individual building blocks, called

bases, arranged in a row. The sequence of the bases is passed on

from cell to cell and inherited from the ancestors to the

descendants. This process involves the respective sequence-

identical duplication of DNA (replication). Individual sequence

segments of this macromolecule represent functional units, the

genes. The genetic ‘information’ rests in the DNA. When

needed, it is activated (a process called gene expression). Then

those gene sequences are ‘translated’ into protein sequences that

are needed by the organism here and now. During gene

expression, the DNA sequence of a gene in the cell nucleus is

first ‘transcribed’ as a mirror image into the sequence of a

messenger molecule, the so-called mRNA (transcription). The

mRNA migrates from the nucleus into the cytoplasm, where

transmitter molecules, the tRNAs, ‘read’ the sequence of the

– 105 –

mRNA and mediate its ‘translation’ into the sequence of amino

acids of the proteins (translation) (Fig. 31).

Fig. 31. A (highly simplified) schematic of the components involved

in gene expression.

Interestingly, DNA is a completely passive molecule: It is

duplicated, read, activated, inhibited, passed from cell to cell, etc.

All these activities are brought about by proteins, which are the

active components of the molecular events in the first place.

How do DNA and proteins relate to time?

137

– As a molecule

of heredity, DNA clearly acts from the past into the present. Its

sequence was formed in the past, and it preserves it for the

present and the future. DNA keeps the past of an organism

present; it is the conservative molecular memory of the cell.

In contrast, the catalytically active proteins have a specific

relationship to the future. They are the progressive enablers of

all biochemical and molecular biological events. After all,

catalysis means enabling reactions that would proceed so slowly

under natural conditions that they could no longer have any

significance for life. Proteins thus literally bring future

possibilities into the present. In this way, they simultaneously

enable the further development of organisms. The DNA

mediates the presence of the biological past, the proteins that of

the biological future in the present molecular-biological events.

The third class of molecules mediates between DNA and

proteins. They are different varieties of RNA. They act between

the DNA structure and protein function by realizing parts of the

DNA ‘information’ as needed via conversion into functional

proteins. This need is communicated to the genes via signals

(with the help of regulating proteins). Through such signals, the

cell, surrounding tissues, organs, and indeed the whole organism

137

Detailed in Hueck (2009).

– 106 –

and its environment, act to activate and inhibit individual genes

(epigenetic control).

138

One can represent the preceding as a TIME CROSS of genetics

(Fig. 32). In the double stream of time, the functions of genes

(inheritance) and proteins (metabolism) meet and interpenetrate

in protein biosynthesis. Their interaction is mediated by RNAs

and controlled by signals that regulate the process according to

the needs of the whole organism.

Fig. 32. The TIME CROSS of genetics. Further explanation in the

text.

Inheritance, metabolism/catalysis, and regulation are functions

that go beyond the material interactions between molecules. The

heredity function of DNA is only possible if a living ancestor

existed to inherit, and metabolism likewise presupposes an

organism in which substances change. Thus, the functions of

DNA and proteins are more than physics and chemistry,

although they occur as physico-chemical interactions between

molecular substances. The material appearance of molecules and

their physico-chemical properties thus correspond to the

‘material’ aspect of the sense perception of the physical world in

the TIME CROSS, i.e. the direction from below.

138

Bauer (2008). Mayr (1998), S. 229.

– 107 –

The DNA is the past-preserving molecular memory of the cell,

from which individual ‘information’ in gene expression is

recalled, as it were, on the current occasion. The genetic stream

of heredity corresponds to the stream of memories in the time

cross of the consciousness. Remembering and inheriting are

related processes. Just as at any given moment only a portion of

the genetic ‘information’ for the synthesis of proteins is realized,

so at any given moment we are aware of only a portion from the

sum of the images we carry within us.

Unlike linear DNA, in which one ‘unit of information’ follows

another, proteins are spatial entities, and their functionality is

based on their three-dimensionality. It is through structured

surfaces and interiors, depressions and pockets that proteins

become biochemically active. Proteins are dynamic molecules.

They act like active tools, like hands that can grab a substance,

reshape it, and let it go.

One understands proteins by comparing their mode of action

with one’s own voluntary action. Action is active; one moves

one’s limbs in three-dimensional space, grasping, changing, and

releasing the objects of action. Finally, the connection between

action and proteins also lies in the fact that the exercise of will

requires an active metabolism catalysed by proteins. Proteins

represent the will pole of the cell that makes the future possible.

The correspondences between DNA function and imagining,

protein function and willing show up even in the microstructures

of the molecules. Both, DNA and proteins, consist of a

molecular backbone on which their respective building blocks

are arranged like beads on a chain. In the case of DNA, this

backbone consists of sugar phosphates; in the case of proteins,

it is the nitrogen-containing peptide bonds of the amino acids.

While the functional parts (the bases) of DNA are oriented

inward (head principle), the side chains of proteins are oriented

outward (limb principle). Without the inward orientation of the

bases, the mirror principle of DNA replication and transcription

would not be possible, while the outwardly extended side chains

of the amino acids determine the spatial structures and

functionality of the proteins (Fig. 33).

– 108 –

Fig. 33. Polar structure of DNA and protein. R = functional residues

of protein building blocks (amino acids).

RNA occupies a middle position functionally and structurally.

It carries sequence information, but as ribosomal RNA it can also

form a protein-like, three-dimensional structure. It usually

unfolds into two-dimensional, sheet-like structures and can even

be catalytically active in certain forms.

We thus have an image that describes the interrelationship of

DNA, RNA and proteins in an organism. It is much more than

an analogy between consciousness and molecular biology. In it,

the essence of molecular processes is expressed, because

molecules are understood through their corresponding

psychological activities. To understand proteins, one has to

understand their dynamics in inner will movements. One slips

into the protein with inner activity and lets it perform in the

imagination those movements which explain its catalytic activity.

In the case of DNA, on the other hand, passive pictorial ideas

are sufficient for a basic understanding. Becoming aware of these

psychological processes, which take place in each act of

cognition, opens the way to a ‘reading in the book of nature’ and

unites inner consciousness with outer nature in a higher unity of

experience and cognition.

– 109 –

Fig. 34. The tripartite structure of the cell and the classes of molecules

that are significantly involved in gene expression.

The whole cell is also tripartite in design. The DNA is located

in the (spherical) nucleus, the ‘head’ of the cell. The cytoplasm,

where proteins catalyse cellular metabolic and motility processes,

represents the metabolic limb pole, while the nuclear membrane

and the RNAs mediating the exchange between the two

represent the rhythmic system of the cell (Fig. 34). – The human

head reflects stalled images of the past; through metabolism and

limbs, we give birth to future becoming. These polar processes

are rhythmically integrated in the chest as present experiences.

Thus, the functions of genes and proteins are embedded in a time

structure that corresponds to the time structure of life and

consciousness.

The tripartite structure is also evident in the physiology of the

nervous, respiratory and blood systems. The basis of thought is

the nervous system, that of will the blood system. The blood is

the energetic carrier of the impulses of will which permeate the

whole body.

139

Nerve cells and red blood corpuscles show a

particularly interesting polarity just from the point of view of the

double stream of time, because for both the embedding in this

double stream is interrupted in a characteristic way. Nerves are

completed, finished formations. Nerve tissue, once formed, still

has a minor, peripheral capacity for growth, but hardly for

reproduction and regeneration. Nerves are thus determined from

the past, but their connection to the biological future is, as it

were, cut off.

139

Steiner, 1919, GA 293, p. 30-44, 22.08.1919.

– 110 –

In contrast to nerve cells, red blood cells do not have a nucleus.

They, too, have lost their regenerative capacity, but for a reason

opposite to that of nerve tissue: For red blood cells, the

connection to the biological past has been cut, they are no longer

anchored in the living stream of development. Blood is

constantly being formed, it is in a constant state of becoming. It

is the same with blood as it is with proteins: It is formed, fulfils

its function for some time (especially in metabolism) and is then

broken down again. Nerve and blood are thus integrated

between imagination and DNA or will and proteins.

Past

Present

Future

Memory

Actuality

Potential

Imagining

Feeling

Willing

Head

Chest

Limbs

Nerve

Respiration /

Circulation

Blood

Cell Nucleus

Exchange through

Membranes

Cell plasma

DNA (Inheritance)

RNA (Regulation)

Proteins (Catalysis)

Tab. 2. Threefold structure on different levels of the organism.

Above we had said that the threefoldness is the type of the

human being, of the evolution of mammals and also of the three

main groups of mammals. The same basic principle applies also

to physiology and down to cell structures and molecules.

7.3 What is Organic Matter?

The level of cells and molecules is governed by the same laws as

the whole living organism. However, we have to analyse more

thoroughly how the molecular level relates to the life of the

organism in order to understand the relationship of the organic

formative forces, which we had called ‘supersensible’ above, to

the material substances.

Material substances always appear only in the present; they can

be observed and handled only presently. As soon as the current

moment has passed, one can no longer perceive the material

– 111 –

appearance, and there is also no sensual perception of the future.

One rarely makes this simple fact completely clear to oneself. But

it has significant consequences, which Rudolf Steiner outlined in

an early essay. He wrote that “the concept of matter [owes] its origin

to a quite mistaken conception of time. One believes that the world would

evaporate into an insubstantial semblance if one did not think that the

variable sum of events was subordinated to something that persists in time,

to something that is unchangeable. … [But] only he who cannot complete

[the] ascend from appearance to essence … needs … an existence that

outlasts the changes. As such he grasps the indestructible matter. With it he

has created a thing which time shall not harm. … But actually he has only

shown his inability to penetrate from the temporal appearance of facts to their

essence, which has nothing to do with time.”

140

‘Matter’ is a content of perception, not a permanent substance.

What is permanent are the regularities and the essence of

sensuously perceived phenomena. “The sensuous world-view is the

sum of metamorphosing perceptual contents without an underlying matter.

… [With this], of course, only that concept of matter is met which physics

bases its considerations on and which it identifies with the old, likewise

incorrect concept of substance of metaphysics. Matter is something else … as

phenomenon and as appearance. … For if I call that which fills space

‘matter’, then this is merely a word for a phenomenon to which no higher

reality than other phenomena is ascribed. I must thereby only keep this

character of matter always in mind.”

141

This insight has no consequences for our perception of the

world and its phenomena, but significant consequences for our

understanding of the world. If one looks at the perceived

phenomena with the thought: these are all appearances “without

an underlying matter”, then one is immediately much closer to the

spiritual. The sensuous things appear as presently perceptible,

140

Steiner, 1884-1897, GA 001, p. 272-273 [transl. CH]. Cf. Appendix

Consciousness and Matter, p. 185.

141

Ibid., p. 274 Steiner wrote elsewhere: “The idea of ‘matter’ is only a provisional

one, which has its justification as long as its spiritual character has not been seen through.

But one must nevertheless speak of this ‘justification’. For the assumption of matter is

justified as long as one faces the world perceptively with the senses. Whoever in this situation

makes the attempt to assume some spiritual entity behind the sensory perceptions instead of

matter, fantasises about a spiritual world. Whoever first penetrates to the spirit in inner

experience, does not transform himself dreamily, but exactly vividly, what first ‘haunts’ as

matter behind the sensory impressions, into a form of the spiritual world, to which he himself

belongs with the eternity of his being.” Steiner, 1921-1925, GA 036, p. 266,

22.04.1923 [transl. CH].

– 112 –

floating in time: “The sensuous world [is] only a part of that which

surrounds man. From the general environment of man this part stands out

with a certain independence, because it can be perceived by the senses, which

leave out of account the psychic and spiritual, which likewise belong to this

world.”

142

In the phenomenological attitude of consciousness,

which we characterized above as the participatory scene

consciousness, this statement is perfectly intelligible. These

considerations apply to the material appearance of organisms,

which, as present forms, have no duration, but are mere extracts

from the continuous stream of life

The substances of which an organism ‘consists’ are subject to

metabolism and continuous change. Only when they fall out of

the stream of life (e.g. in tooth enamel or fingernails), or when

the organism is broken down into its component parts, do they

appear as dead, permanent substances. As long as they flow in a

living context, they always have a specifically biological past and

future. The concept of a biological molecule, therefore, quite

analogous to the concept of an organism, encompasses both

substantiality and processuality. When the biochemist speaks of

proteins in the organism, he means not only a material structure,

but at the same time a biochemical function. The geneticist

implies with DNA in addition to the material structure always the

hereditary function. The substances isolated from the life process

are products of a living, i.e. changing, interrelated and structured

whole. As isolated substances they are, as it were, frozen, arrested

processes.

143

The material of a living being is already dead. The

becoming, life itself remains invisible. But because the

consciousness can at first fully awake only at the objective, the

illusion arises that living beings are material, and that life can be

explained from the interactions of material particles.

7.4 Part and Whole in Biology – from Meaning to Molecule

Biologists always include in all their findings the implicit

knowledge they have of the living organism. Without this

knowledge, one could not develop any understanding of

biological phenomena at all. When one speaks of ‘genes’, one

knows that genes have certain functions in cells; that cells are

parts of an organ; that organs belong to an organism; that the

142

Steiner, 1904, GA 009, p. 146.

143

Rozumek (2003).

– 113 –

organism is a specimen of its species living in a certain

environment; that this species has developed in evolution from

certain precursor forms, and so on. From the smallest to the

largest, you think of everything when you say ‘gene’. And one

implies the temporal integration of having become and becoming

potential. Only in this way one can think the term ‘gene’ at all. It

leads through itself beyond itself.

144

‘One sees only what one knows’ is an important principle,

especially for biology. But one does not always know how one

sees. Nobody would have come up with the idea of looking for

a substance in living beings that mediates the inheritance of

individual characteristics if one had not first thought of the whole

organism, broken it down into individual characteristics, and

recognized these characteristics as inheritable. Only this

knowledge has shown the way to the finding of the genes. The

conception of the whole necessarily precedes the determination

of its parts. This fact describes again a point where an objective

property of organisms coincides with a subjective property of

cognition: we must think the whole first if we want to determine

its parts, but this whole must also be there first if its parts are to

be there. To emphasize it once more: From the whole organism

one can always gain (by destruction) its parts, but one can never

rebuild the whole from the parts.

The light of the concept of life must illuminate the organic

details, otherwise they would not be seen. But because one lives

in this light oneself as a recognizing I, one does not notice it, but

only looks at the appearances illuminated by it. One sees the

physical light only through the objects it illuminates. The light

that illuminates the living world is the living light of the knowing

mind. And it is, as we have seen above, of the same kind as the

growth forces of the living organism.

We have characterized above the relation between the

imaginative activity and individual ideas. The same relation as

between the wilfully imagining ‘I’ and what it imagines also apply

to the organism (Fig. 35). Its vital activity, which penetrates all

individual stages of development and levels of organization

(organs, tissues, cells and molecules), cannot be perceived

sensually, but can only be experienced in active thinking. The

living thinking activity is closely related to the organic living

144

Hueck (1993).

– 114 –

activity, yes, one could say, one and the same, only once seen

from the inside, the other time from the outside (cf. Fig. 7, p.

57).

145

Fig. 35. The relationship between the spiritual organism and its

individual physical-material stages of development and parts.

7.5 Genes and Evolution – the Invisible Tree of Life

The past of organisms remains present in their genes. Thereby,

the DNA sequences of two organisms are all the more different,

the earlier their ancestors separated from each other in

evolution. If one assumes that certain DNA sequences change

with a certain regularity in the course of generations, one can

calculate from the difference in the DNA of two organisms the

approximate period in which their ‘last common ancestor’ must

have lived. In this way, a family tree can be derived, which is used

as a supplement to the study of fossils. In most cases, the

theoretical age calculated from DNA analyses significantly

exceeds the age of fossil finds, and the further back into the past

one goes, the more so.

Genetic analyses show that the lineages leading to humans and

chimpanzees diverged 5 to 7 million years ago, while the

common ancestor of humans and wolves lived in the Cretaceous

period about 100 million years ago, of humans and reptiles in the

Carboniferous period about 325 million years ago, and of

humans and the earliest fishes in the Cambrian period about 550

145

Cf. Appendix Rudolf Steiner: Perception of the Vital Force by Strengthening the

Power of Thinking, p. 180.

– 115 –

million years ago. If we even compare the DNA sequences of

humans with those of the simplest living beings, bacteria and

archaebacteria, we come back to the beginnings of physical life

on Earth.

146

We are related to all living beings. The diversity of life forms

probably sprang from a single source, as the human organism

sprang from a single cell. The majority of our gene sequences are

also found in unicellular organisms, and therefore were present

at the beginning of life on Earth.

147

The whole Earth can be

viewed as a maternal organism for the emergence of the first

delineated living things.

148

As might be expected, many of the ‘oldest’ genes that we share

with today’s bacteria are involved in basic metabolic processes,

cell division and protein biosynthesis. To these are then added

those that we share with all multicellular organisms, and which

are primarily related to interactions among cells. Other genes we

share with all bilaterally symmetrical animals, still others with all

chordates, then with all vertebrates, quadrupeds, amniotes,

mammals, and finally with primates. So in the genes of man we

find a kind of imprint of the evolutionary stages that preceded

his appearance. We carry all the earlier evolutionary stages of life

within us like a memory. This also means that everything that

appears around us today in living nature also lives in us in a

sublimated way; we recognize ourselves in nature as in a living

mirror.

146

Hedges & Kumar (2009). www.timetree.org allows the calculation of age

differences of almost any species.

147

Domazet-Loso & Tautz (2008). In prehistoric times, there was probably a

pool of genes that was exchanged between unicellular organisms as if within

a living sea, and from which the gene sequences of higher organisms were

recruited.

148

Frisch (1992).

– 116 –

8 THE EVOLUTION OF ANIMALS

In the becoming of the world there is a precursorship,

which must be considered in the light of what is to come.

149

(Hermann Poppelbaum)

8.1 Higher Development and Segregation

he world of living beings is hierarchically structured.

Organisms form groups with common characteristics,

which again belong to super-groups, etc. (Fig. 36). The

highest concept under which all living things fall is life itself. All

living things can then be divided into three major domains, the

bacteria, archaebacteria and eukaryotes (which have cells with a

true nucleus). The eukaryotes are divided into organisms that

photosynthesise and produce oxygen (algae, plants) and those

that feed on organic material and breathe oxygen. The latter

together form the kingdom of animals (Animalia). The animals

can be unicellular or multicellular organisms (subkingdom

Metazoa). The Metazoans can be divided into sponges and

animals that form real tissues (Eumetazoa). The Eumetazoans are

divided into animals with radial symmetry (such as polyps and

jellyfish) and those with bilateral body symmetry (Bilateria). The

Bilaterians can be divided into the Protostomia, which include

molluscs, annelids and other worms, and the arthropods

(crustaceans, isopods, spiders, insects, etc.), and the Deuterostomia,

the group that leads to the vertebrates. The Deuterostomes

include the chordates (Chordata, as opposed to the hemichordates

and echinoderms such as crinoids and starfish), the skull-bearing

vertebrates (Vertebrata, as opposed to the skullless chordates and

tunicates), and the jawed mouths (Gnathostomata, as opposed to

the jawless ones such as hagfishes and lampreys).

Fig. 36. (next page) Systematic structure of the animal kingdom. The

numbers in the vertical columns indicate the time of the branching of

the respective group according to DNA sequence comparisons

(www.timetree.org) and fossils for extinct groups (†).

149

Darwin (1871), p. 184.

T

– 117 –

– 118 –

Fig. 37. The relationship between systematics and phylogeny of

vertebrates with important evolutionary innovations. Horizontal lines

indicate mass extinction events (after Benton

150

, modified).

To the jawed animals belong the flesh-finned fishes

(Sarcopterygii, opposite to the ray-finned fishes, which do not form

limbs), to those the land vertebrates (Tetrapoda, opposite to the

lung-fishes), the Amniota, whose embryos develop in the

amniotic fluid (as opposed to the amphibians, whose

reproduction depends on water), and the mammals (Mammalia,

as opposed to reptiles and birds). To the mammals belong the

placentals (Placentalia, as opposed to the marsupials and cloacal

animals), to these the primates, then the dry-nosed monkeys

(Haplorrhini), to these the Old World monkeys (Catharrhini), to

150

Benton (2005), p. 48.

– 119 –

the Old World Monkeys the Hominoids, to the Hominoids the

Apes (Hominidae), to those the genus man (Homo), and to man the

species Homo sapiens (Fig. 36). Fig. 37 shows the systematic

relationship of the vertebrates and its evolution over time.

We share with all organisms the property that we are alive; we

have in common with a somewhat smaller group of living beings

that our cells possess true nuclei; with another somewhat smaller

group we share the two-sided symmetrical body structure; with

yet another smaller group we have four limbs supported by

bones, and so on. Each higher animal group integrates the

preceding developmental steps. The general life of the unicellular

organisms came first, the most individual life of man last. In this

individual, the general appears again on a higher level – in the

form of mental abilities and inner free activity, through which

man can recognise, feel and act to change himself and (almost)

everything else. Evolution proceeded, as it were, from the

outside to the inside, from the physical to the spiritual.

The first single-celled organisms occurred in unimaginable

masses, from which all other organisms developed. One can

therefore imagine evolution as a gradual specialisation or

branching of this original, undifferentiated life, which was

accompanied by gradual higher development. Phylogenesis is in

this respect an organism of higher order, a super-organism living

through the ages, the development of which embraces all living

beings and which finally led up to man. Man gradually

differentiated out of a living environment which still appears

around him in the various animal forms.

151

What aspects differentiated in the course of phylogeny? What

is characteristic of unicellular organisms, of multicellular

organisms, of old and new organisms, of chordates and

vertebrates, of land animals, etc.? Let us try to ‘read’ these aspects

in the light of inner experience.

152

151

In his monumental synopsis of the scientific and anthroposophical view of

evolution, Dankmar Bosse has dealt in detail with the principle of higher

development through segregation and has compiled many points of view on

this. Bosse (2002).

152

Particularly vivid and understanding descriptions of the animal groups can

be found in the book Tierwesenskunde. Poppelbaum (1937).

– 120 –

8.1.1 Unicellular Organisms

The nucleus-free unicellular organisms (prokaryotes) are the

most primitive and thus probably the oldest organisms. They are

mainly characterised by their ability to metabolise and reproduce,

i.e. by the most general life processes. The cells are undifferentiated,

all processes take place in a single compartment. They reproduce

by division and are therefore – under favourable external

conditions – potentially immortal. They represent a life stream

that flows continuously and unbroken from the past into the

future. As a rule, the cells are mobile by means of flagella and can

react, for example, to nutrients – here an intentional ‘striving’ is

already indicated, which is later expressed more and more

consciously in the animals.

In eukaryotes, the cell is divided into nucleus and plasma with

various organelles. In connection with this differentiation of the

cell, death occurs for the first time. Sexual reproduction begins,

the parental cells die. Differentiation and death, separation and

reunion – in eukaryotes the life process is structured

intervallically. The astral time stream from the future intervenes

in the life processes in a differentiating way.

Unicellular organisms such as calcareous algae and diatoms or

cyanobacteria, which form thick rock layers (stromatolites),

secrete mineral substances through which they are significantly

involved in the formation of the earth’s surface. The unicellular

organisms are close to the mineral world. In all multicellular

organisms, the unicellular organisms reappear in a transformed

way, namely as their cells. And just as they convert and secrete

physical substance as unicellular organisms, so they form and

process the physical substances of the body as cells of

multicellular organisms. Unicellular organisms are, in the words

of Eugen Kolisko, the ‘living atoms of the animal kingdom’.

153

8.1.2 Multicellular Organisms and Tissue Animals

The multicellular form rises from the general metabolic and life

processes. The most primitive multicellular organisms are

amorphous sponges, which are largely composed of flagellated

single cells. The sponges (Porifera) form for the first time the inner

spaces typical of all animals, which differentiate the body into an

153

Kolisko (1930), p. 130.

– 121 –

outer and inner side. However, in sponges the inner spaces are

only incompletely sealed off from the outer medium. They are

pierced in many ways by pores through which seawater flows in

and out of a central cavity. Like the unicellular organisms, the

cells of the sponges also secrete substances, but these are now

more ‘organic’ and form an essential part of the shape as

spongins. They are also interspersed with skeletal elements that

support the spongy body. Sponges are, as it were, nature’s first

attempt to assemble cells and form shapes from them. The

interior appears as a basic animal principle of form, but no

differentiated form can yet emerge; inorganic-amorphous

formation predominates. The sponges fall out of the central

stream of development, as they were not ‘suitable’ for higher

development, while the formative principle ‘form with an interior

space’ is further developed.

8.1.3 Hollow Animals

The hollow animals (Coelenterata) – corals, sea anemones, polyps,

jellyfish – form the interior in a much more distinct manner than

the sponges. The place where the embryonic tissue is inverted

towards the inner space (primordial orifice) remains the only

opening in the adult animal and serves both as a feeding and

excretory opening. The metabolic pole of the animals is located in

the interior, while sensory organs form on the outside – the nerve-

and-sense pole of the organism. These animals have radially

symmetrical shapes, through which – as well as through their

colours and often sessile way of life – they are strongly

reminiscent of plant formations (one group is actually called

‘flower animals’). In the hollow animals, a plant-like formative

element gains the upper hand, as it were, over the animal interior

formation, which separates them from the stream of higher

development, while the ‘animalic’ – organisms with cavities –

then continues to develop in a purer form.

154

Apt characterisations of the hollow animals, the echinoderms and tunicates

can be found in Poppelbaum (1937), Julius (1970); Kolisko (1930). Cf. on the

hollow animals the 190 The Life Cycle of Jellyfish as an Example of the Work of

Etheric and Astral Formative Forces, p. 188.

– 122 –

8.1.4 Two-sided Symmetrical Animals – Old and New Mouths

In addition to body cavities and interior organ formation, directed

locomotion is an essential characteristic of animals. Locomotion

shows the general characteristic of animate beings of having

directed desires towards something (intentionality). In directed

locomotion, the time stream from the future has a particularly

clear effect: the animal strives and expects to reach a goal it

desires. In the bilaterally symmetrical animals (Bilateria), the soul

penetrates more strongly into the body than in the hollow

animals. The organism now differentiates into front and back, into

a shape with mouth and anus. The separation into mouth and

anus, however, can happen in two different ways: The primordial

opening can either remain a mouth (with a secondary anus), or

the primordial opening becomes an anus and the mouth forms

anew. The former is the case with the Protostomia, to which most

worms, the molluscs, i.e. mussels and snails, etc., and the

arthropods (insects, etc.) belong, the latter with the phylum

leading to the vertebrates (Deuterostomia). Old and new mouthed

animals are build and behave in a polar way in many respects. In

the former, the nervous system lies on the ventral side, the heart

on the back, and insofar as a skeleton is formed, it lies on the

outside as a hard skin or shell. The Deuterostomes, on the other

hand, form an inner skeleton, a nervous system on the back and

a heart on the belly. Protostomes form protruding compound

eyes, new mouths intruding lenticular eyes, etc. What is

essentially new in both animal phyla is the formation of internal

organs, which lie between the outer and inner skins. But here again

a fundamental differentiation can be observed. In both lineages

animals increasingly express a differentiated soul, but in the

vertebrate phylum this soul works more and more inwardly and

finally becomes free of instinctive fixation in man, while the

worms, arthropods and insects remain attached to instinct as if

controlled automatically from the outside.

8.1.5 Echinoderms

In the line of the Deuterostomes now appear the echinoderms

(Echinodermata), to which belong crinoids, brittle stars, starfish,

sea urchins and sea cucumbers. What a strange appearance these

five-rayed symmetrical animals give! At first, it seems again like

plant-like organisms which are being separated here from the

– 123 –

stream of the becoming of man, but in a different form from the

hollow animals. The animals live on the ground, but can actively

move around by means of hundreds of suction-cup-like little

feet. In brittle stars, the arms are highly mobile. The mineralised

body surface, which is composed of individual plates, is covered

with mobile spines, pincers, tactile and chemosensors. The

spines can take on very different shapes in a variety of

specialisations. The body consists of a water-filled cavity in

which a rich differentiation of internal organs can be found. – If one

looks at these peculiar animal forms in the light of inner

experience, one is struck above all by a certain seclusion and at

the same time complexity of outer and inner organisation. While

the Coelenterata appear light and open to the environment like

plants, transparent, ethereal, rhythmically floating and resonating

with the water currents, the echinoderms live on the ground,

hardening themselves on the outward and withdrawing, as it

were, into their own interior. One experiences an almost

excessive organ-forming tendency in them which closes itself off

from its surroundings. One could say that the formative and

differentiating tendency of the animalic astral becomes

overpowering in this group of animals. The further ascending

evolutionary line cannot ‘use’ this surplus, it ends in a side

branch. (It is perhaps no coincidence that these organisms are

called ‘starfish’ as the astral means ‘starlike’.)

8.1.6 Tunicates

The next forms of the evolutionary line already belong to the

chordates, the actual precursors of the vertebrates. The

development of the dorsal chorda, the flexible axial rod that lies

below the neural tube, gives the whole animal an inner support and

is at the same time an inner abutment for the locomotor muscles

of the trunk. The development of the chorda thus enables free and

purposeful swimming locomotion. However, the chordate type does

not appear completely at once, but only as a larval form of the

tunicates. The later shows itself here, as so often, as an earlier.

The adults form sessile (sometimes also free-swimming) forms,

a kind of plump but upright feeding sacs, which let seawater flow

in through a mouth opening into a voluminous, reticulated gill

gut and out again after filtration from a siphon. The animals are

surrounded by a thick-walled, tough, cellulose-like jelly layer. –

– 124 –

Once again, a partially sessile group of forms is separated from

the evolutionary lineage. What is peculiar about these animals is

their upright posture. The tough mantle has less of an outwardly

closing effect (as in the echinoderms) than a supporting one. The

inner support function of the chorda is, as it were, taken over by

an outer mantle. We encounter here for the first time the motif

of erection, which, however, is segregated from further

development in order to now begin the long journey to erection

from within, which man finally realises.

155

The four groups of animals discussed so far appear to be

related to the mineral (the protozoa with regard to their

metabolism, the sponges by their shapes), then additionally to the

plant-like (the hollow animals with regard to their radial

symmetry, predominantly sessile way of life and plant-like

colourful design), then to the animal (the echinoderms with

regard to their differentiation and inner organisation), and finally

in a certain sense also to the human (the mantle animals with

regard to chorda and erection). One characteristic of animal

organisation, the internal organism, is thus already widely

differentiated in these basal animal groups, while the other

characteristic, the free ability to move, only appears in a hint.

8.1.7 Chordates

The next systematic group to appear are the chordates, which

retain the axial rod even as adult animals. They first form the

group of the skullless Acrania. The lancelet (Branchiostoma) with

its metameric body structure is their best known representative.

Thus a free-swimming animal form is achieved, which has

overcome all echoes of sessile, plant-like formations.

(Nevertheless, Branchiostoma still likes to burrow into the sandy

soil in order to swirl food into its always open mouth). The

similarity between Branchiostoma and the tunicate larva suggests

155

The tunicates show a tripartite structure into the sessile and metabolic sea

squirts, the swimming salps, which form huge, translucent bands of

rhythmically repeating and synchronously pulsating organisms, and the tiny,

also free-swimming, head-like and extremely complex larvaceans or

appendicularia. Simon (2001). It is as if the threefold structure of the human

being is already being echoed here, although its three members are not yet

connected to each other, but are distributed in the ocean.

– 125 –

that the skullless fish may have evolved from a tunicate that did

not develop into an adult.

156

8.1.8 Fishes

Like the lancelet, all other organisms in this evolutionary lineage

develop a chorda dorsalis. In the more primitive forms (such as

the jawless hagfishes and lampreys, as well as the cartilaginous

fishes) it is retained throughout life, but in the more highly

developed ones it is replaced in the embryonic period by the

vertebral column, which forms around the chorda by means of

complicated, rhythmically articulated ossifications. This is the

central supporting organ of vertebrates, which provides support and

is at the same time mobile in itself, and which provides the basis

for all further development. Vertebrates therefore always go

through the same elementary stages of chorda formation and its

segmentation to form the vertebral column, as well as the

metameric structure of the trunk, during their embryonic

development.

At the same time, vertebrates develop a true skull, a

cartilaginous or bony capsule that protects the now developing

brain. In fossil fishes this outer bony mantle still forms an

armour-like covering of the front end or even larger parts of the

whole animal, but gradually the exoskeleton retreats to the region

of the skull.

157

With the formation of skull and brain, the

integration centre of the central nervous system, the actual head pole of

higher organisms, emerges. Head and spine lie horizontally in the

direction of active desire. In the fish-type the intentional

directionality of the soul is embodied.

8.1.9 The further Evolution of Vertebrates

From the fish onwards, the tripartite vertebrate type is gradually

developed, as we have already outlined above.

158

First the head

region differentiates. A skull with brain and sensory centre is

formed, and this differentiates into a nerve-sense region (brain,

eyes, organs of smell, taste and equilibrium), a nasal opening and

cavity (the later middle region of the head belonging to the

156

Garstang (1928), cf. Fig. 41, p. 144.

157

Cf. Suchantke (2002)

158

Evolution of the Tripartite Organization, p. 97.

– 126 –

rhythmic organisation) and a mouth region with jaw (the

metabolic and limb region of the head). As a side branch, the

jawless fish separate from the central developmental stream.

With the formation of a gas-filled hollow organ, which

becomes the swim bladder (fish) or lungs (terrestrial vertebrates),

as well as the ossification of the skeleton and the formation of

ribs, the torso region is then further shaped. Cartilaginous and bony

fishes, as side branches, are lasting witnesses to these changes.

They are head-torso creatures; limbs in the true sense are still

missing.

In a certain group, the flesh-finned fishes (Sarcopterygii), limbs

developed in the next great evolutionary step (cf. Fig. 28, p. 97).

As a side branch remaining attached to the water, the amphibians

stopped at this stage. With the amniote animals (including

reptiles), whose embryos develop in the amniotic fluid, complete

independence from life in water was then achieved; and finally, with

the mammals, among other things, the ability to keep the body

temperature constant even in the face of external fluctuations

developed.

159

The last great segregation thrust occurred with the

appearance of the primates. In the great apes, which (preferably

in their youth) show intelligent learning and social behaviour, much of

human-like, mental flexibility and expressiveness is already

visible.

Evolution can thus be characterised by a total of seven major

developmental steps. Up to the vertebrates there are initially four:

1. living, tripartite cells,

2. formation of an inner space,

3. front-back orientation and internal organs,

4. supporting skeleton for directed movement.

The organisational form of the chordates thus achieved is then

further developed in a tripartite manner (cf. Fig. 30, p. 100):

1. first the head,

2. then additionally the hull and the trunk, and

159

The mammals show a threefold division into a group in which the nervous-

sensory system dominates (rodents), a group with a dominant metabolic and

limb system (ungulates), and the middle group of predators. In their entirety,

the mammals thus already represent the human being. Schad (2012).

– 127 –

3. finally the limbs are differentiated.

8.2 Evolution of the Tripartite Type

The evolutionary path from the lower animals to man can be

surveyed as an organic whole (Fig. 38). The organisms of the four

lower phyla (protozoa/sponges, hollow animals, echinoderms

and tunicates) appear as ‘head-like beings’, which preferentially

develop the nervous and the sensory system. Similar to the skull, they

form inner spaces, which in many cases are protected and

supported by outer skeletons. The senses are already

differentiated in many ways (light, touch, chemo, gravity

receptors), nervous systems are present. There is as yet hardly

any movement of its own.

Fig. 38. The formation of the three human organ systems in the course

of evolution. In the overlaps of the circles, a tunicate larva is shown at

the bottom, an amphibian larva at the top. (The aspects listed on the

right do not apply to all animal groups within the respective circles.)

160

Steiner, 1922, GA 303, p. 177–196, 01.01.1922. A comparable classification

can be found in the Protostomes: The molluscs (mussels, snails, octopuses)

can be regarded as ‘head animals’, the segmented worms as ‘hull animals’, and

spiders and insects as ‘limb animals’.

– 128 –

In fishes, the trunk is formed and rhythmically segmented. Gill

respiration is separated from feeding (in the lower forms of

tunicates and echinoderms, respiration and digestion are still

combined in the gill gut), and the circulatory system develops to

a first stage of maturity (directed blood movement). In fish, the

rhythmic organisation is formed.

The metabolic-limb system is fully differentiated only in the four

highest groups (amphibians, reptiles, mammals and primates).

Limbs do not appear until amphibians, and the metabolic system

does not reach full maturity until mammals. The whole system

of absorption, digestion, storage and combustion of nutrients,

heat regulation by hair, contractility of blood vessels, sweat

production and muscle trembling etc. becomes so efficient that

the body temperature can be kept constant against the

environment. Reproduction (which must also be counted as part

of the metabolic-limb system) is gradually internalised.

Thus, the three groups of organisms can be regarded as traces

of the becoming of man. First, the radially symmetrical or

spherical ‘head animals’ living preferably on the seabed, whose

central motif of formation is a differentiation into outside and

inside. Then the weightless, cylindrical and rhythmically

structured ‘head-and-torso animals’ swimming in the water,

which add the horizontal dimension of front-rear, and finally the ‘head-

and-torso-and-limb animals’ living under the full influence of

gravity, in which the vertical dimension of up and down is added. But

it is only man who is really organised vertically.

It is significant that just those forms which directly border on

the middle group, namely tunicates and amphibians, form fish-

like larval stages. Just as the rhythmic system is connected

upwards with the nervous-sensory system and downwards with

the metabolic-limb system, so these three groups of animals are

connected by their larval forms. (Here, quite in the sense of the

double current of time, the so-called ‘early larva’

161

of the

tunicates, from which the adult form differs greatly, already

anticipates the fish type, while the ‘late larva’ of the amphibians,

which already contains most of the essential organ systems of the

adult form, still resembles the fish type).

161

Fioroni (1987), p. 293.

– 129 –

9 EVOLUTION AS THE BECOMING OF MAN

The human is the starting point,

the dominating centre and the goal of earth-life.

162

(Karl Snell)

9.1 Phylogeny in Phenomenological Perspective

ot long after Charles Darwin had published his epoch-

making work On the Origin of Species

163

in 1859, a small

book by the Jena mathematician Karl Snell The Creation

of Man (1863) appeared, in which he vigorously advocated the

idea of evolution, but also formulated a fundamental critique of

the idea of descent, understood in purely external terms: “Man,

though nourished and brought up on the earth’s breast, nevertheless carries

within himself an activity of the par excellence general, in his thinking, and

a faculty of the unconditioned, in his moral will. We shall call both together,

as has already been done elsewhere, in one short word reason. In man, the

general essence of reason has come to appear in a concrete form. Reason,

however, can never emerge from a narrow, lower bondage and limitation.

Reason eternally presupposes a rational faculty.“

164

And so the “germ of

reason” must have already been present at the beginning of

creation and must always have preserved itself through the series

of developing animals as a potential for further higher

development up to man, while the animals came into being

through “falling away and stepping out of the common stream of

development, and an early fixing in the periphery of an equally narrow and

small external world”

165

. In Snell’s Lectures on the Descent of Man,

published posthumously in 1887, it is said, “that the series of creatures

capable of becoming man must run like a golden thread through the multiply

interwoven fabric of creatures, and that this series, bound together by the inner

bond of a common faculty, forms precisely the said basic trunk of creation,

which has dismissed everything else as branches from itself for the reasons

already stated above.”

166

162

Snell (1887), p. 159.

163

Darwin (1859).

164

Snell (1863), p. 141.

165

Ibid., p. 79-80.

166

Snell (1887), p. 145.

N

– 130 –

Fig. 39. Evolution as a stream of the becoming of man, with some

essential innovations, separating out the various animal forms that still

exist today.

One can represent the ‘golden thread’ that Snell spoke of as the

sequence of evolutionary innovations that made human

becoming possible. In the previous chapter, these innovations

were outlined in the vertebrate evolutionary line. In Fig. 39,

essential aspects of higher evolution are summarised.

– 131 –

The palaeontologist Edgar Dacqué (1878-1945) wrote in a

similar vein: “If we wish to adhere to the basic idea of natural evolution

… we must necessarily take man as the ‘archetype’ of all living things. And

this … in the following sense: No present-worldly or primeval species and

form known to us is so formed that it could be included in the family tree of

man as the highest creature. Everything is developed laterally from the path

to this height. But if everything is developed sideways, and if there is

nevertheless, as we believe, a connection in the history of development between

all living creatures and man, then man, as the last highest, is at the same

time also the continuous ‘archetype’ of the organic kingdom.”

167

–

Let us follow once again the ‘golden thread’ from the

perspective of the becoming of man. First of all, man needs life.

Even the first life flows in the double current of time, is in its

simplest processes an outer expression of the CROSS OF TIME

(cf. Chpt. 7, p. 103). In the knowing consciousness of man this

structure will later appear mentally. The primordial cells

differentiate into nucleus, plasma and a system of inner

membranes. Here the tripartite differentiation of the human

organism into the information pole, the metabolism and

movement pole, as well as into a mediating, rhythmic system is

already laid out. Then, one after the other, the abilities develop

to form a multicellular, inner space-forming shape, an alignment in

the front-back axis as well as inner organs, characteristics which

later become the basis of the physical existence of the human

being, his inwardness and his interaction with the outer world.

Further, a supporting skeleton develops as an inner support and

abutment, the basis of uprightness.

The head with the encapsulating brain becomes the basis of the

later, thinking consciousness. The chorda becomes a mobile

support through segmentation as a spinal column, the basis of

uprightness. The development of limbs, which is now imminent,

also begins at the head, with the formation of a jaw. The

evolution of jaws is usually explained by the fact that food intake

became much more efficient. However, a mobile jaw is also a

prerequisite for the development of language. The formation of

the jaws of prehistoric fish already hints at the future ability of

humans to speak. In the next major stage of development, the

skeleton ossifies and thus forms a resilient support, a prerequisite

for later walking on land and the inner skeleton of the human being,

167

Dacqué (1948), S. 193.

– 132 –

which makes upright posture possible. The shoulder girdle and

pelvis are formed, to which the arms and legs will later attach. An

air-filled cavity develops, the precursor of the lungs. The being

takes the air into itself and with it the whole future significance

of breathing for physical performance, for emotional life and for

speech. Then follows the formation of limbs: man’s future

organism of movement appears as the basis and tool of his will.

Man could not have achieved his fully awake world- and self-

consciousness in the water, but only through a life on land. During

the transition from the reptiles to the early mammals, an ossifying

palate and the diaphragm were formed, the middle ear differentiated

from one to three auditory ossicles – again prerequisites for the

later ability to speak. The stage of the mammalian organisation

corresponds to a variety of organic differentiations, which are

primarily related to stable body heat. Without their own warmth,

humans could not develop a continuous inner life and could not

shape their actions independently of the influences of the

environment. It is also only now that the thoracic cavity and the

lower abdomen with the metabolic organs close off from each

other through the diaphragm – a prerequisite for human feeling

and willing to later exist in a certain independence from each

other. Finally, in order to be what he wants to be, the human

being needs the possibility to flexibly shape his behaviour and to

change it through social interaction and learning, a

developmental step that is marked by the appearance of primates.

9.2 Phylogeny as Development of Freedom

Every organism is more or less dependent on its habitat,

although the degree of dependence varies among organisms. The

most autonomous being is undoubtedly man.

168

In him all organ

systems are developed to such an extent that they become the

basis of a mental and practical creativity by which he can live in

the most diverse environments and populate large parts of the

earth.

The ‘golden thread’ of evolutionary innovations that finally led

to the appearance of man can therefore be understood as an

increasing development of freedom. Wolfgang Schad has

described how the increase in autonomy goes hand in hand with

168

Rosslenbroich (2018), p. 202.

– 133 –

the development of organ systems: “Pure sensory animals are actually

the invertebrate lower animals. … High specialisations of the sense organs

can be found. Let us only think of the compound eyes of insects and their

perceptive abilities, which go far beyond those of vertebrates. We can consider

them to be the animals that have the best sensory system. But because they

are still completely absorbed in the environment through their sensory system,

they lack everything that the higher animals, the vertebrates, have: the ability

to separate themselves from the environment, the stronger emancipation,

individualisation, independence and autonomy from the direct influence of the

environment. In fish, the fully centred nervous system, which is separated from

the other soft tissues by bone shells, is present for the first time. Most

invertebrates also possess a nervous organisation. However, this consists either

of diffuse nerve networks, ring-shaped nerve rings or rope ladder-like nerve

strands and not, as in the fish, of a single, fully centred nerve tube [with the

central organ of the brain]. In amphibians, the respiratory system slowly

detaches from the environment; they can already walk on land. The lungs are

formed. The fish already have the corresponding organ, but it does not yet

serve internalised respiration, but as a swim bladder. Only the amphibians

gain a respiratory system, which now moves into the anterior body cavity and

makes breathing possible on the inside. In reptiles, a further step towards

environmental independence occurs. The skin surface becomes scaly. Lizards

and snakes can live in dry, moisture-deficient environments and still maintain

their fluid balance. Here, the fluid system is fully independent. In birds, the

organism becomes further independent through an independent heat system.

However, their embryonic development still takes place in the nest outside the

mother’s womb. Only the mammals also take the reproductive processes

completely inside. Have they thus reached the highest degree of biological

emancipation? In mammals, we still find a last close functional ‘growing

together’ with the respective environment in the limb system: a horse cannot

move in the water like an otter, the latter cannot climb trees like a squirrel,

a bat again has certain limbs formed for its habitat. Only in humans does

the last remaining organ system show itself emancipated from an all too

specific environment. In the human body organisation, the greatest degree of

bodily independence from the environment is achieved. Step by step, the

independence from environment-dependent to independent life processes took

place.

The sensory system is everywhere where there is a surface. We have the

centre of the nervous system in the brain, of the respiratory system in the

lungs, of the fluid system, especially the circulatory system, in the heart. All

the internal organs are connected to the heat organisation as a so-called

‘heat core’. The reproductive processes extend into the uterus. We may call

– 134 –

the foot a particularly characteristic organ for the emancipation of the limbs:

the little toe shows the greatest backlog! In which direction has evolution

obviously taken place? From the organisation of the senses to the

organisation of the limbs, from the formation of the head to the formation

of the foot. The steps of emancipation have taken place first in the nervous-

sensory system, then in the middle and only last in the metabolic-limb

system.”

169

Bernd Rosslenbroich has shown in detail that phylogeny was

accompanied by a continual increase in organismic autonomy in

metabolism, locomotion, the rhythmic system (respiration and

circulation), the nerve-sense system and in behavioural

plasticity.

170

Evolution did not lead – as would be expected

according to Darwin – to ever better adaptation to external living

conditions, but on the contrary to ever greater autonomy.

In the chapter Understanding through inner Experiences (p. 30) we

pointed out that concepts are based on a volitional experience.

This also applies to the concept of ‘autonomy’. It is conceived

against the background of experience of one’s own spontaneity

and freedom.

In the increasingly autonomous organisation of animals, one

can recognise the sequence of stages that prepared the physical

appearance of the human being. The higher development, the

‘golden thread’ of phylogeny, can therefore be understood as the

becoming of man. In the (recent and fossil) animals, the stages

which have been run through have been preserved. They are, as

Rudolf Steiner once put it, “the traces left behind of the human

being.”

171

The animal world can be seen as an image of the becoming

of man.

Man thus appears as the centre of evolution, surrounded by

concentric circles of the animal world. Man and animals emerged

from a common origin, from the once unseparated unity of an

all-embracing life. Through gradual separation, this unity

diverged into circles. The central being, man, which as a principle

runs through the whole of evolution, finally appears in physical

form after the spread of the animals into all spaces of nature.

From what has been said arises a viable concept of higher

development, for whether evolution means higher development

169

Schad (1969), p. 180-181 [transl. CH].

170

Rosslenbroich (2007, 2018).

171

Steiner, 1906, GA 095, p. 79, 29.08.1906.

– 135 –

or not is a question of debate.

172

Higher development means

increasingly becoming human. Accordingly, a being is the more highly

developed the later it branches off from the line of becoming human, i.e. the

more similar it is to man.

173

That animals are in many respects not

higher, but more highly developed than man, will be shown

below.

9.3 Phylogeny in Inner Observation

In an older view of nature, created nature was distinguished from

creating nature (natura naturata vs. natura naturans). At first sight,

one is confronted with nature that appears to be ‘created’ or to

have become, and which is so mysterious because one was not

involved in its creation or becoming. As long as one merely looks

at its forms, one does not know the forces that produced them.

But if one ‘recreates’ the forms in inner volitional activity, then

one penetrates into the creative side of nature.

174

The history of life begins to speak when one thinks of it not

only progressing from the past into the future, but also being

shaped from the future. Why did a chorda, a brain, jaws, lungs,

limbs, etc., come into being? At some point they appear for the

first time, and the human mind demands an explanation.

Darwinism (i.e. ‘chance’) or a ‘divine creation’ are being offered.

Both views look at the phenomena from the perspective of a

spectator. Darwinism even implies that evolution would have

proceeded in the same way if man had not appeared at all.

One’s attitude to nature is different if one considers

evolutionary innovations as implications of those human abilities

that later develop from them. Take, for example, the appearance

of jaws in early fish. Did a ‘coincidence’ bring them forth, or an

otherworldly ‘creator’? Whichever side one chooses, the matter

remains external – one cannot see whether one thought or the

other is true, but can only decide on the basis of certain

considerations. For one is not the ‘chance’, nor the ‘creator’. This

is different when one approaches the history of development in

172

Vgl. Rosslenbroich (2008).

173

Kipp (1948).

174

“Nature creates, where it unfolds in vitality, in forms that grow out of each other. One

can come close to the creative power of nature in artistic sculpture if one lovingly and

sympathetically grasps how it lives in metamorphoses.” Steiner, 1921-1925, GA 036,

p. 336, 25.03.1923 [transl. CH].

– 136 –

an inwardly recreating and experiencing way. Then it becomes

apparent that one is not in the ‘accident’ and also not in the

‘creator’, but – in the jaw! Because you yourself have a jaw and

therefore you know what a jaw is and what it is good for. You

can ‘slip into’ the fossilised bones of prehistoric fish and

experience the catching and eating movements that their former

owners carried out with them. And this is what one actually does

whenever one forms the idea of the ‘jaws of primeval fish’!

Without the sympathetic experience of one’s own jaw activity,

the expression ‘jaws of primeval fish’ would not be

comprehensible at all.

We have repeatedly emphasised that the self-observation of

cognition and the consideration of the knowing ‘I’ are

inescapable prerequisites of a viable evolutionary understanding.

In the chapter Understanding through inner Experiences (p. 30) we

have also described that knowledge of nature is accomplished

through inner wilful ‘gestures’. We can now extend this insight

to say that the wilful experience of one’s own body mediates the concepts

through which one thinks the developmental steps of evolution.

Neil Shubin, a leading American evolutionary biologist, in his

2008 book Your inner Fish, described the discovery of a fossil fish

with incipient hand formation: “We had a 375-million-year-old fish

in front of us, staring at the origin of one of our own body parts.”

175

–

Shubin here clearly states what is the case with all thinking about

evolution: One necessarily relates it to oneself. I cannot but imply

myself, for it is me who thinks about them. Evolutionary

innovations come up to me in the time stream from the past and

are illuminated by my self-experience as a human being. My

inwardly experienced bodily activity already shines (as a light of

understanding) in the animal forms of the earth’s history. Before

my inner gaze, a wonderful play of states of equilibrium and

developmental thrusts arises in the double stream of time, in

which the image of the human being, initially only mentally, felt

and wilfully experienced, gradually and ever more clearly appears

in physical form.

A solution to the enigma of evolution requires the inclusion of the process

of cognition and its human bearer. As long as man wants to explain

himself by principles that are alien to him, he will not get

anywhere. One will never be able to understand how the

175

Shubin (2008), p. 50.

– 137 –

spiritual of man is supposed to have emerged from an

unspiritual nature and evolution. Only when the inwardly

experienced life and the tripartite differentiated being of man

himself become the criterion by which evolution is understood,

can satisfactory solutions arise. We actually draw the concepts

with which we understand evolution from our inner self-

experience. We presuppose our knowing, embodied self. The

new theory of evolution will take the knowing I into account.

Steiner: “Nothing in the cosmos is considered at all without the human

being present in it. Everything is only given meaning and at the same time

a basis of knowledge by considering it in relation to the human being.

Nowhere is the human being excluded. Anthroposophically oriented

spiritual science leads our view of the world back again to a view of the

human being.”

176

Steiner, 1921, GA 338, p. 114, 15.02.1921 [transl. CH].

– 138 –

10 PHYLOGENY AS A META-ORGANISM

Grey, dear friend, is all theory,

and green the golden tree of life.

(Goethe)

10.1 Ontogeny and Phylogeny

hylogenesis results from the stringing together of

uncounted ontogeneses, and the ontogeneses are subject

to phylogenetic change. One generation follows another.

But the living keeps its past present. Individual organisms always

return to the origin of all organisms: to the first, divisible cell.

From there, they go through embryonic development, which is

very similar in phases in animals of different evolutionary stages.

The relation between embryonic development and evolution is

an important problem in biology. As early as the beginning of the

19th century, Johann Friedrich Meckel (1781-1833) had

paralleled embryonic development with the comparative-

anatomical, systematic order of the animal kingdom: “The

development of the individual organism takes place according to the same

laws as that of the whole series of animals, i.e. in its development the higher

animal passes essentially through the permanent stages below it, whereby,

therefore, the periodic and class differences are reduced to one another.”

177

Louis Agassiz (1807-1873) then added to this parallelism the

course of phylogeny: “The phenomena of animal life correspond to each

other, whether we compare their rank, determined by structural

complications, with the phases of their growth, or with their succession in past

terrestrial ages. … Everywhere the same series!”

178

Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) coined his famous ‘biogenetic law’

on the basis of this triple parallelism: “Ontogenesis is the short and

rapid recapitulation of phylogenesis. … The organic individual repeats

during the rapid and short course of its individual development the most

important of those changes of form which its progenitors underwent ... during

the slow and long course of their palaeontological development.”

179

In the

parallelism of embryological, palaeontological and systematic

177

Meckel (1821), p. 396 [transl. CH].

178

Agassiz, 1859, p. 130 [transl. CH].

179

Haeckel (1866), p. 300 [transl. CH].

P

– 139 –

development he saw “one of the greatest and most instructive series of

appearances in organic nature”

180

.

Fig. 40. Parallelism between embryonic development, systematic order

and evolution of chordates.

The human embryo is never a fish or a reptile. However, it is

confusingly similar to the embryos of fish, reptiles and other

vertebrates. The great embryologist Karl Ernst von Baer (1792-

1876) wrote on this subject: “I possess two small embryos in spirit of

wine, for which I have neglected to note the names, and I am now quite unable

to determine the class to which they belong. They may be lizards, small birds,

or very young mammals. So similar is the formation of the head and trunk

in these animals. The extremities, however, are still missing in these embryos.

Even if they were there, in the first stage of development, they would still teach

nothing, since the feet of lizards and mammals, the wings and feet of birds,

180

Ibid., p. 31.

– 140 –

as well as the hands and feet of human beings, develop from the same basic

form. The further back we go in the history of the development of vertebrates,

the more similar we find the embryos as a whole and in the individual parts.

Only gradually do the characters which designate the larger, and then those

which designate the smaller divisions of the vertebrates emerge. From a general

type, therefore, the more particular one is formed. ... Every embryo of a certain

animal form, instead of passing through the other certain forms, separates

itself from them. ... Only in that the least developed animal forms depart little

from the embryonic state, do they retain some resemblance to the embryos of

higher animal forms.“

181

Ontogenesis is thus not a mere ‘mechanical’ repetition of the

phylogenetic stages once passed through, but an organic

branching off from the basic process of vertebrate evolution.

This consists of the fertilised egg cell dividing and initially

forming a cell sphere (Haeckel’s ‘morula’). The cell mass forms

an inner cavity and then inverts at one point to form a cup-

shaped structure (‘gastrula’), the outer layer of which is called

‘ectoderm’, the inner layer ‘endoderm’. The organs of the body

surface and the nerve-sense system later develop from the

ectoderm, and the inner linings of the digestive system in

particular from the endoderm. Between the outer and inner layer,

cavities and a middle layer of tissue (‘mesoderm’) forms, from

which the skeleton, musculature, cardiovascular and lymphatic

systems develop. With these three so-called germ layers, the

motif of threefoldness, which we have described above as the

archetype of animal and human formation, already appears in

early embryonic development.

182

Oscar Hertwig (1849-1922) described the early development of

vertebrates dynamically and vividly: “Those who are familiar with the

basic features of vertebrate development know how the germinal vesicle

emerges from the mulberry ball and from this again the cup larva, how this

then further subdivides itself by producing a middle germinal layer and the

anlagen of the nervous system and the axial skeleton by special processes from

the two primary germinal layers. As the embryo then stretches more

longitudinally, a head and tail end can be distinguished and on both sides of

the nerve tube in the region of the middle layer it separates into the trunk

segments, the number of which increases slowly and continuously at the rear

end, it only gradually acquires the form characteristic of the vertebrate type.

Thus, in the sequence of stages of metamorphosis, as Carl Ernst v. Baer put

181

Baer (1828), p. 221 [transl. CH].

182

For a detailed discussion cf. Schad (2003).

– 141 –

it in a formula in the law named after him, ‘from the most general of the

form relationships the less general develops, and so on, until at last the most

specific occurs’.”

183

“The ontogenetic theory of metamorphosis becomes a

source of even deeper knowledge, which also gives us an insight into the

causal connections of many developmental processes, if it is also pursued as

a comparative science. ... Through it we learn that not only the first

embryonic forms arising from the fertilised egg (morula, blastula, gastrula

etc.), but also almost all the individual organs without exception are laid

out in a basically very similar way in all classes and orders of vertebrates

and can therefore be understood as the expression of a general law of

development. Then the differences which emerge between comparable stages

in individual divisions reveal themselves to us as various modifications of a

basic form.”

184

From the sponges to the vertebrates, all classes pass through

an embryonic development which is markedly similar in its

formative gestures. It corresponds approximately to the

sequence of innovations in the course of evolution. The various

groups branch off from the common path sooner or later and

then stop at the stage of development they have reached: The

sponges and hollow animals at the two-layered gastrulation stage,

the echinoderms at the stage of a third germ layer (from which

they form skeletal elements and internal organs), the tunicates at

the first chordate formation (which they show only in their larval

stages), the lancelet at the rhythmically articulated pharyngula

stage, the jawless fish at the spine and first brain vesicle

formation stage, the bony fish at the jaw formation stage, the

amphibian terrestrial vertebrates at the first lung and limb

formation stage, etc. The higher a group is organised, the longer

it shares its embryonic development with its successors.

This principle of ‘branching off’ is clearly seen in the

invertebrate ancestors of the chordates, the sponges, hollow

animals, echinoderms and tunicates (Fig. 41). Although the adult

forms are very different in design, they are placed in the

vertebrate evolutionary series because of the similarities of their

larval stages.

183

Hertwig (1918), p. 175 [transl. CH].

184

Ibid., p. 177 [transl. CH].

– 142 –

Fig. 41. Developmental stages (left, from bottom to top), evolutionary

line of larval stages (middle) and lateral ‘branching’ of adult forms

(right). (In the larva of echinoderms the intestine, in the larvae of

tunicates and fishes the chorda dorsalis is drawn in black).

185

Fig. 42 gives an overview of the overall context of the animal

kingdom. Shown at the bottom centre is the gastrula, from which

all multicellular animal forms arise both embryologically and

evolutionarily. Both embryo and phylogenesis can be described

as a tripartite process (cf. Fig. 38, p. 127). First, a unilaterally open

hollow form is formed, from which, if not further developed,

animals with a predominantly sessile, ‘head-like’ character

emerge.

185

Kovalevsky (1866); Garstang (1928). For further discussion of the

relation between ontogenesis and phylogenesis see Gilbert (2003).

– 143 –

Fig. 42. Overview of the evolutionary context of the animal kingdom

(after Heintz, from Toepfer

186

).

186

Toepfer (2011), p. 67.

– 144 –

The spherical hollow shape of the gastrula stretches out,

becomes rhythmically segmented and forms a second opening,

so that a differentiation into anterior and posterior arises. From

this shape (in deuterostomes) free-swimming animals with

internal skeleton, head and trunk (fish type) develop. They then

form limbs during the transition to terrestrial life. Development

generally proceeds from the head to the trunk to the limbs. In

this sense, phylogenesis can be seen as a meta-organism evolving

in time.

187

According to Goethe, the archetype of the plant is the ‘leaf’.

The archetype from which all animal formations emerge is the

inverted hollow sphere. Haeckel wrote: “I consider the gastrula to be

the most important and significant embryonic form in the animal kingdom.

… From this identity of the gastrula in representatives of the most diverse

animal phyla, from the Spongia to the Vertebrates, I conclude, according to

the basic biogenetic law, a common descent of the animal phyla from a single

unknown ancestral form, which was formed essentially like the gastrula:

Gastraea.”

188

Whether this ‘gastraea’ ever really existed as a

distinct animal form is uncertain; that it represents the primordial

form of animal formation is beyond doubt.

189

The plant-leaf is

two-dimensional and surface everywhere. The three-

dimensional, hollow animal sphere has an interior. This

represents the organic basis for the life of the soul, that is, for the

separation into an outer and an inner world by which animals

differ from plants.

In a pictorial way, Michael Brestowsky has merged the relation

between ontogenesis and phylogenesis (Fig. 43)

190

.

187

This idea is already found in the work of the French physician and

embryologist Étienne Serrès (1786-1868). He considered “the whole animal

kingdom … seen ideally as a single animal which … stops here and there its own

development and thus determines at each point of interruption, on the basis of the very stage

it has reached, the distinguishing characteristics of the tribes, classes, families, genera and

species.” Serrès (1860), p. 833, quoted from Mayr (1984), p. 377 [transl. CH].

188

Haeckel (1872), p. 466-467.

189

Similar to Haeckel, Carl Ernst von Baer wrote, “that the bubble form is the

general archetype; for what would be more common to all animals than the contrast of an

inner and outer surface?” Baer (1828), p. 224 [transl. CH].

190

Brestowsky (2014).

– 145 –

Fig. 43. Human evolution as a pictorial synopsis of ontogeny, phylogeny and

recent animal forms. Drawing by Michael Brestowsky.

– 146 –

As above in the chapter on Goethe’s theory of plant

metamorphosis (p. 47) we can thus also speak of four stages for

the individual, systematic and evolutionary metamorphosis of

animals:

1. the individual, concrete forms – embryonic, systematic and

evolutionary;

2. the metamorphoses of the forms out of and into each other,

which can be followed most clearly in embryonic

development;

3. the laws according to which these transformations take place

and which lead to the formation of an organisation

differentiated into head, trunk and limbs;

4. the nature or essential being of the animal, which remains the

same in its various manifestations, with its organisation

differentiated into external and internal world.

10.2 Evolution as Metamorphosis

According to Charles Darwin, evolution was a random and

purposeless event and could therefore have proceeded

completely differently. Although there were

191

and are

192

various

alternative theories of evolution, Neo-Darwinism remains the

dominant view for the time being. Modern biology seems to be

largely in agreement: Teleological thinking, which thought

evolution leading to man, is considered to have been overcome.

Ernst Mayr wrote: “An explanation for the working of a ... teleological

principle could never be found, and the findings of genetics and palaeontology

finally discredited teleology completely. The well-known American

philosopher Willard Quine once told me that he considered it Charles

Darwin's greatest achievement that he had disproved Aristotle's final cause

by showing that development towards a certain goal could be explained by

natural selection. Apparently purposeful processes are often found in nature,

especially in biology. Only they are no longer explained by occult teleological

forces, but can now be explained by scientifically accessible chemical-physical

factors.“

193

We have discussed in detail in the chapter on molecular

genetics (p. 103) how the explicability of life and its changes of

191

Levit et al. (2008).

192

Rosslenbroich (2018), S. 208 ff.

193

Mayr (2002) [transl. CH].

– 147 –

form by such chemical-physical factors stands. They are

necessary, but by no means sufficient. But can evolution be

understood as a purposeful process leading towards the human

being as its highest form? Certainly not from the point of view

of objective, scientific cognition.

Fig. 44. Metamorphosis in the examples of the leaves of an annual

flowering plant and the limbs of vertebrates in the course of the

evolutionary transition from fish to land animals (cf. Fig. 28, p. 97).

However, we have shown that – and why – one must go

beyond objective cognition to explain life. The same is true of

evolution, though here it is less obvious, for Darwin’s theory of

chance lies paralysing like a leaden block on understanding. One

can, of course, claim that the development of limbs, which made

possible the transition of fish to land life, was based on the

functional selection of random mutations. This cannot be proven,

but neither can it be falsified. The idea thus does not even fulfil

the most basic criteria of a scientific theory. But the opposite, i.e.

the effect of an inner teleological principle of development,

cannot be proved in this sense either.

– 148 –

However, like the development of an individual organism,

evolution can be viewed as a metamorphosis process (which is

illustrated in Fig. 44 using the example of the development of

limbs from fish to terrestrial vertebrates), which, like organismic

metamorphosis, proceeds according to superordinate laws. Such

laws are, for example, the repetition of similar elements described

above and the transformation of metameric elements into

holistically integrated shapes, which develop according to an

archetype (cf. p. 94 and p. 98).

Fig. 45. Overview of the leaf metamorphosis of ragwort (Lapsana

communis). Dark: sequence of fully grown leaves on the stem. Light:

development of the individual leaves (Bockemühl, 1966).

The relation between ontogeny and phylogeny can also be

compared with the development of the leaves of an annual

flowering plant. In many herbs, the sequence of leaves on the

stem shows a gradual metamorphosis (Fig. 44 and Fig. 45, outer

arch, dark). Jochen Bockemühl (1928-2020) also studied the

individual development of each leaf (Fig. 45, inner, light). He

arranged the juvenile forms in such a way that the common, still

quite undifferentiated form from which they all emerge is at the

– 149 –

centre of spiral lines of development whose respective endpoints

are the ‘adult’ leaves. Each individual leaf undergoes a

continuous transformation of form, while the successive leaves

show a discontinuous series of development, which in the literal

sense represents phylogenesis. This relationship corresponds to

the continuous descent of animals with a discontinuous sequence

of adult forms (cf. Fig. 41, p. 142)

Fig. 46. Overview of ontogenetic developments and phylogenetic

series of hominid skull forms.

Corresponding relations can also be found when comparing

the development of the skulls of human ancestors and humans,

which we discuss in more detail below (p. 160). Fig. 46 shows

phylogenesis (outside) and ontogenesis. We see an opposing

developmental dynamic of ageing of individual forms and

phylogenetic juvenilisation. The origin of the spiral is, of course,

only constant in form; in phylogeny it always arises anew from

an inherited germ.

The embryonic developmental stages of various vertebrates

can be depicted accordingly (Fig. 47). Just as all primate skulls

develop from a morphologically similar, approximately spherical

‘archetype’, so all vertebrates develop from a similar basic

embryonic form. However, this is mainly a further and higher

development of the metabolic and limb poles of the organisms.

– 150 –

Fig. 47. The development of various classes of vertebrates from egg

to adult. (A drawing from the Dept. of Comparative and Human

Anatomy at the American Museum of Natural History from 1932,

modified (cf. Ernst Haeckel’s embryo chart, Fig. 23, p. 90.)

As the leaf forms appear successively on the stem, so do the

various animal forms in the course of phylogeny. There are

spatial gaps between the leaves, spatial and temporal gaps

between the animal forms. However, all leaves, like organisms in

evolution, are also related to each other through common

descent. Just as one leaf form does not transform into another,

so the animal forms do not transform into each other. The

connection occurs via the common embryonic stages or the

undifferentiated egg cell, respectively, which can be compared

with the growth cone of the plant. Thus, the phylogeny of

organisms can be viewed as one single meta-organism.

10.3 The Influence of the Environment

Evolution was an often dramatic, endangered event. Due to

geological, ecological and cosmic influences, huge catastrophes

occurred time and again, in which changes in global living

conditions led to the extinction of large parts of the animal world

– 151 –

(sometimes between 50 and 80% of all marine and terrestrial

species).

194

But the dying made room for the new (Fig. 48).

Fig. 48. Earth history with extinction events (bold: in each case over

50% of all animal species became extinct, at the Permian-Triassic

boundary even over 95% of all marine and about 70% of all terrestrial

species). Below, times of occurrence of evolutionary innovations from

DNA sequence comparisons according to www.timetree.org.

There is an astonishing synchronicity when comparing times of

mass extinction with those when major evolutionary innovations

occurred. A well-known example is the extinction of the

dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous period about 65 million

years ago. Strong volcanism on the Indian subcontinent and the

impact of a meteorite in the Gulf of Mexico led to a poisoning

of the atmosphere and a worldwide drop in temperature, which

the alternately warm giants were unable to cope with. Close to

this catastrophe, however, lies the origin of the primates.

195

The

first appearance of mammals at the end of the Triassic 200-220

194

Stanley (1989); en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event.

195

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primate.

– 152 –

million years ago

196

was accompanied by two enormous mass

extinctions 252 million (transition Permian-Triassic) and 199

million years ago (transition Triassic-Jurassic), the causes of

which are also assumed to be worldwide volcanism. The

mammal-like reptiles appeared after a catastrophe in the Middle

Permian (270 million years ago). The appearance of terrestrial

vertebrates is also characteristic of the time when the Devonian

ended with major extinction events (about 360 million years ago).

Other catastrophes coincide with the appearance of lobed-fin

fishes 420 million years ago at the end of the Silurian, bony fishes

at the transition to the Silurian 450 million years ago, jawed

mouths 530 million years ago in the middle Cambrian, and

vertebrates 550 million years ago at the beginning of the

Cambrian.

197

Also of interest is the worldwide extinction of large mammals

(such as the mammoth, sabre-toothed tiger and giant deer) at the

end of the Pleistocene of about 10,000 years after the last ice age,

which coincided with the settling down of humans and the

beginning of agriculture. – Like every development, evolution

also occurred in a constant rhythm of dying and becoming new.

10.4 The TIME CROSS of Evolution

The structure of the organism, as we have shown above, can be

described by the four aspects of the TIME CROSS (cf. Fig. 17,

p. 78). Phylogeny can also be understood in this sense (Fig. 49).

A continuous stream of inheritance from the past connects all

living beings. The organisms that emerge from this stream are

differentiated by a shaping current acting from the future until

they reach the tripartite organism of mammals (cf. Fig. 30, p.

100). The threefold structure does not arise by chance and as an

adaptation to environmental conditions, but is the archetype of

animal and human formation, which is already active in the

simplest cell life (Fig. 34, p. 109).

Higher development is at the same time characterised by an

increase in organismic autonomy (cf. p. 132). While

threefoldness is a differentiating design principle, development

of autonomy describes the change in the relationship of

organisms to their environment. Both developmental principles

196

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammal.

197

According to Wikipedia und www.timetree.org.

– 153 –

work together and yet are not identical. The principle of the

increase in autonomy cannot explain why mammals and humans

are tripartite, any more than the bodily tripartism explains

autonomy. We had already shown in the first presentation of the

TIME CROSS (Fig. 4, p. 44) that every organism lives in a

tension between autonomy and environmental adaptation, and

that this dimension of the organic is to be thought orthogonally

to the direction of development from descent and formation.

The same applies to the relationship between development of the

tripartite organism and development of autonomy in evolution

(Fig. 50).

Fig. 49. The TIME CROSS of evolution.

Of the four aspects of the TIME CROSS, Darwin saw two:

descent and adaptation to environmental influences. Creationists

emphasise the other two: ‘God’ (the creative spirit principle

acting from ‘above’) and man as the God-set goal of evolution.

Darwinism cannot say why man appeared, creationism cannot

say why the diversity of animals was needed. Darwinism

describes a mechanism of diversification, but it lacks an inner,

organic principle of higher development. For Darwinism, all

formation is ‘happenstance’ (Stephen J. Gould). Creationism sees

the principle, but it cannot say why the diversity of forms arose.

– 154 –

Fig. 50. Tripartite structure and autonomy development in the course

of vertebrate evolution. cf. p. 132.

If, on the other hand, phylogenesis is understood as an

organism of a higher order, then man appears as its central

developmental motive and its final goal, the animals as its

necessary precursors and at the same time side branches from its

developmental line. In each animal species a part of man is

realised in a one-sided way, while in each part of evolution the

whole of man lives and works.

10.5 The Principle of Internalisation

In the course of evolution, a successive internalisation of

elementary conditions from the environment takes place (Fig. 50,

left). What lives and works on the outside appears increasingly as

an autonomous function inside of the organisms. With the

formation of a gradually centring nervous and sensory system,

the world of light, in a broader sense the sensually perceptible

environment, is internalised in the invertebrates and the fish. The

amphibians form the basis for the internalisation of the air

element in the lungs, the reptiles internalise the water element as

an autonomous physiological function. In mammals, on the basis

– 155 –

of a highly effective metabolism, the formation of heat is also

completely absorbed into the organism as an autonomous

function. Finally, man internalises the effect of gravity through

his limb system, against which he develops his autonomous will

and transforms it into the upright posture of the body, and later

into his freely impulsive action. In addition, it is possible for the

human being, through his perfectly developed brain, to inwardly

grasp the laws that shape the world and life on the outside.

– 156 –

11 ESSENCE AND EVOLUTION OF MAN

In man, the animal is raised to higher purposes

and put in shadow for the eye as well as for the spirit.

198

(Goethe)

11.1 Man in Space –

the Upright Posture and the Autonomous Essence of the ‘I’

umans differ from animals in their upright gait,

language and thinking. Although there are many

approaches to upright posture in the animal kingdom,

and although animals communicate in a differentiated manner

and also display impressive feats of memory and intelligence

199

,

there is nevertheless an irreconcilable difference in the quality,

flexibility and complexity of the three abilities mentioned. Above

all, man has the ability to freely combine his thinking, feeling and

willing, which gives him an imaginative, communicative and

cooperative gift far beyond any animal ability. Like no other

creature, he can conceive complex scenarios, communicate about

them with others and realise them cooperatively.

200

The human being must raise himself up by his own strength

and actively maintain his balance in an unstable static. If the inner

will activity slackens, the body sinks into itself or falls to earth.

“Always the upright posture is counter-direction to the downward pulling

forces; they are always at work; without them the upright posture would not

be what it is. It is an overcoming without end.”

201

In the upright walk,

man has the experience of being entirely active out of himself

and at the same time – in balance – resting in himself.

202

The

upright posture depends on and expresses the autonomous

nature and will of the ‘I’.

When a child stands up in its first year, it performs a feat that

does not rise instinctively from its biological nature, but is

worked into it, as it were, from the top down.

203

Children who

cannot stand up for medical reasons develop markedly different

198

Goethe (1795, 1820).

199

Detailed in Streffer (2016).

200

Suddendorf (2014).

201

Straus (1960) [transl. CH].

202

Kranich (2003).

203

Ibid., p. 19-70.

H

– 157 –

body forms than people who walk upright: The arch of the foot

remains relatively flat, the heel does not strengthen so clearly, the

slightly x-legged position of the knees does not develop, the

angle between the thigh and the pelvis remains greater, the

position of the pelvis relatively high, the spine does not form the

typical double curve and does not sink as deeply as usual into the

thorax, the cervical, thoracic and lumbar vertebrae do not

differentiate so strongly from each other, etc. This remodelling

of the body is only brought about by the active confrontation of

the human being with the force of gravity.

204

Fig. 51. Reconstruction of Australopithecus afarensis (left) with human

foot (right) but ape-like arms and skull. Middle: 3.6 million year old

footprints from Laetoli. The tracks are from one adult and two

children. One child walked in the footsteps of the adult, the other

probably by hand alongside, as suggested by the slightly oblique

footprints – the early image of a human community!

The attempt to explain uprightness in terms of Darwinism

reduces the grace and dignity of the upright posture, expression

and image of the free human being, to a clumsy and supposed

survival advantage. Such thoughts have contributed a lot to the

desolation of culture, and sounded very different in the words of

Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803): “Look up to heaven, O man,

and rejoice, shuddering, in your immeasurable advantage, which the Creator

204

Cf. Holdrege (1999).

– 158 –

of the world has attached to such a simple principle, your upright form. If

thou wert stooping like an animal, if thy head were formed in just this

voracious direction for mouth and nose, and if the structure of thy limbs were

arranged accordingly: where would thy higher spiritual power, the image of

the Godhead, remain invisibly lowered into thee?”

205

In palaeoanthropology, the early upright walking beings are not

spoken of as humans, but as apes (‘Pithecus’); the status of a

human being is only conferred when the brain is of a particular

size. By this attribution, one transfers the humane to

consciousness and not to the activity of the will, which always

precedes the reflective faculty. The essential difference between

humans and animals, however, lies in the origin of will activity –

in humans freely determined from within, in animals instinctively

determined from the outside – and only secondarily in different

cognitive abilities! Thinking is also based on an inner, intuitive

will activity. Not only in erection and action, but also in

cognition, the will is always primary. Only it is easily overlooked, for

one lives within one’s own will activity; one simply carries it out

without observing it. If one takes into account the will working

in cognition, one is led to a new conception of evolution, indeed

to a new and much more real knowledge of man and the world

in general. In conscious activity one experiences the will as a self-

supporting, spiritual reality. Materialism only survives because

the autonomous will is so little activated and therefore remains

unnoticed.

When the autonomous will becomes inwardly conscious, self-

consciousness arises. It is the conscious will that looks at itself –

as a spiritual force in man – in true self-knowledge.

206

He who conceives of himself as ‘I’ finds a fact more true and

irrefutable than any other in the world. With all other cognitions,

empiricism and theory must first be put together. This always

leaves a residual uncertainty about their actual fit. In self-

knowledge, this uncertainty is completely overcome; in it,

empiricism and theory are the same, they appear as one. The ‘I’

is the source of the will. It creates itself by knowing itself, and it

knows itself by creating itself. “The I cannot be shaken.”

207

In order to avoid an obvious misunderstanding, it should be

expressly pointed out that the ‘I’ does not mean the ‘ego’-

205

Herder (1784), p. 56 [transl. CH].

206

Steiner, 1910, GA 013, p. 66.

207

Steiner (1923-25), S. 85.

– 159 –

conception. This is only a bodily mirrored representation, not a

reality. The real ‘I’ lives in activity, it is a being of will and as such

is initially free from referring back to itself. It is active attention,

attentive activity. Precisely because it lives before its reflection, it

remains unnoticed as a spiritual being in ordinary consciousness,

for “active bringing forth and contemplative confrontation do not get along

with each other” (Rudolf Steiner).

He who discovers (awakens) himself as a spiritual ‘I’ can no

longer think that he has arisen from a ‘non-I’, from matter or

lower organisms. He must think the whole evolution anew.

11.2 The Effect of Uprightness

The erection was accompanied by a reshaping of the skull from

the apes through early man to present man. The facial skull

became smaller, the cerebral skull grew (Fig. 52).

The regression of the facial skull is already evident in the

infantile and juvenile forms of the preceding evolutionary stages,

which consistently have a more human-like shape than the adults.

Thus, the child skull of a Neanderthal already has the

proportions of an adult Homo sapiens, while the child skull of an

Australopithecus resembles an adult Homo erectus, and so on. The

children already prophetically anticipate the adult forms of the

following stage, as it were. – Moreover, the infant forms differ

far less from each other than the adult ones. A young ape skull

then soon grows into an animal shape, while the human skull

remains much more similar to the common, approximately

spherical embryonic form even as an adult.

In humans, the facial skull with the jaw region, which is

specialised in animals, remains behind in growth, but the brain,

as the organ of an unspecialised inner conscious life, is greatly

enlarged. It remains longer in an embryonic state than the brain

of the animals, for the strong growth and the ability to form of

neurological interconnections, which are more or less completed

in animals at birth, are preserved in man far beyond the

embryonic period.

208

Liu et al. (2012); Somel et al. (2009).

– 160 –

Fig. 52. Hominid skulls. Foetal forms, infant forms; adult forms (l.t.r.,

not to scale; after Schindewolf

209

and Schultz

210

). The numbers indicate

the currently assumed times (in years before presence) of separation of

the evolutionary lineages (Robson and Wood

211

; for the Nean-

derthal

212

, the chimpanzee and the orangutan, results from DNA

comparisons with Homo sapiens are given).

This ‘juvenilisation’ applies to a variety of human

characteristics.

213

The Dutch anatomist Louis Bolk (1866-1930)

summarised this phenomenon in his ‘foetalisation theory’.

214

However, Bolk’s hypothesis that man is ‘a monkey foetus that

has reached sexual maturity’ is wrong. Man is obviously not an

ape; his head does not look like that of a newborn chimpanzee. It

209

Schindewolf (1972).

210

Schultz (1940, 1941).

211

Robson & Wood (2008).

212

Green et al. (2010).

213

Verhulst (1999)

214

Bolk,

– 161 –

is true that man is more juvenile than the ape, because more

original features appear in the adult man than in the adult ape.

On the contrary, one could say that the ape is a human being

who has overshot the mark and developed too far.

Fig. 53. The arm and hand of man come closest to the ideal archetype

of the vertebrate limb.

215

Due to the upright posture, the human upper limbs are not

bound to a specific environment or function. They do not show

any specialisations, as is the case in apes for swing shimmying

and knuckle walking. The human arm and hand remain primitive.

They therefore embody the archetype of the vertebrate limb, and

this in a double sense. For on the one hand, the limbs are formed

from an embryonic anlage that is similarly shaped in all

quadrupedal vertebrates. While the animal limbs depart more or

less from this common origin, the human hand remains most

similar to the embryonic initial form. Because of this

primitiveness, it is also universal; with its help, humans can

achieve everything (and much more) that animals can do (using

215

“There is no more beautiful symbol of human freedom than human arms and hands.”

Steiner, 1919, GA 294, p. 104, 28.08.1919 Cf. also Poppelbaum (1928).

– 162 –

technical devices, which they in turn make with their hands).

Precisely because it remains unspecialised, the hand becomes a

culture-creating tool per se and serves man not only in action, in

giving and receiving, but also in showing, in symbolism and

gesture as an expression of his mental life. The hand is perhaps

the organ in which the human ‘I’ is most strongly expressed. The

human arm and hand also correspond to the archetype of the

vertebrate limbs (cf. Fig. 1, p. 24). If one looks for the common

basic form, one arrives at a scheme like the one shown in the

middle of Fig. 53. This abstract archetype appears in the human

form! The human hand sums up everything, it is the common

archetype that has flowed out in the limbs of the animals into

specialised forms, adapted to the most diverse habitats. From the

hand, one can derive the specialised animal limbs through

adaptation to certain environments, but from the latter, human

universality can only be derived through despecialisation.

In this sense Karl Snell, already quoted several times, wrote: “In

expounding the unity of the type, one generally starts from man, because one

sees that light and order are most easily brought into this doctrine by placing

man in the centre and grouping the mammals around him, and now proving

how the animal forms appear as modifications of the human form produced

by manifold lengthenings, shortenings, displacements and adhesions. Thus the

central position of man is implicitly presupposed and man is regarded and

used as the giver of understanding, as the key of the creatures. … What here

presents itself in the spiritual sphere as a derivation, will have to be grasped

in the physical sphere as descent.”

216

The general type of the upper vertebrate limb appears in the

human hand because it stops at an early stage of development.

The connection between developmental delay and typological

archetype is a basic motif of human development. Precisely

because the hand of the upright human does not grow into

specialised physical tasks, it can embody the archetypal form,

which is not determined by external circumstances, but solely by

inner principles of formation. These principles are inherent in

evolution, but in animals they become overgrown, as it were,

through entanglement with the physical environment – in man

they come to appearance.

The human gestalt is formed according to inner principles, not

out of adaptation to external circumstances. The bodily

216

Snell (1887) [transl. CH].

– 163 –

entanglement with the physical environment is stagnated. Ernst-

Michael Kranich formulated ingeniously: “The body of animals is

adapted to the environment, the body of man is adapted to the ‘I’.”

217

Man

in his whole design remains closer to the common archetypal

form. One may speak, like Richard Owen, of an incarnation of

the type in the human form: Animals evolved, “guided by the

archetypal light, to the appearance of the [archetypal] idea in the glorious

garb of human form.”

218

The archetype is not an abstract scheme,

but living, experiential reality.

Richard Owen sought the origin of the vertebrate type in the

thoughts of an otherworldly creator (cf. chapter 2.2, p. 23). This

Platonising idealism takes man away from the earth and from

himself. It makes one see, but what one sees is only an abstract

illusion. Charles Darwin wanted to remain 'down to earth'. But

he had lost the sense of the archetype of the human form. To

him it was one among many, physically derived from a common

ancestor like all others. He had completely forgotten himself as

a spiritual being. The materialistic world view makes one blind.

We, on the other hand, do not see the archetype of evolution

in a distant beyond, nor in blind chance, but in man himself,

whose inner, autonomous being appears in his outer shape and

its principles of formation. The head, the hand, indeed the whole

human form are not an expression of external necessity, but of

inner, self-setting freedom. Man is not the best adapted of all

vertebrates, but the least. His archetype is freedom. Charles

Darwin was right in thinking evolution, but wrong in overlooking

man.

11.3 Man as a Polarized Being

The head, arms and hands of man remain closer to the common

embryonic origin than that of animals; the evolution of skull

forms from apes to man shows increasing juvenilisation

(‘paedomorphosis’

219

). The lower limbs of humans, leg and feet,

however, move further away from the common starting point

than animal limbs do (‘peramorphosis’).

220

217

Kranich (1999) S. 84 [transl. CH].

218

Owen (1849), p. 86.

219

McKinney & McNamara (1991).

220

Cf. Schad (1992), p. 95.

– 164 –

While the head and arms/hands of man are less developed than

those of the apes, his legs and feet are more differentiated and

built for springy gait and balancing carrying of body weight. What

in apes is still a ‘grasping hand’ due to the opposable big toe, in

humans is shaped into a foot in a struggle with gravity.

The differentiation of the upper and lower body-pole is caused

by uprightness. The human being thereby places himself in a

polarity of above and below, lightness and heaviness,

consciousness and strength, intelligence and will, thereby

developing a centre that is freely movable between the two poles.

It is precisely through the strong expression of this polarity that

he differs from the animals (Fig. 54).

Fig. 54. Comparison between gorilla and human.

The free connection of consciousness and willpower makes it

possible, on the one hand, to think up something new through

imagination, and on the other, to create something new in the

world. All scientific cognition, all art and culture, all creative-

practical action of man is based on the free combinability of

thinking and willing (Fig. 55, left).

221

One can extend this view of man imaginatively. The human

form can be seen as an image of the polarity of consciousness

and will, of light and matter, of ‘heaven’ and ‘earth’ (Fig. 55,

221

Suddendorf (2014).

– 165 –

right). The radiant legs and feet are formed in confrontation with

the forces of the earth, while the spherical head shows an image

of heaven. To the outer light of the sky corresponds the inner

light of consciousness, thoughts move in relation to each other

like stars according to their own unchanging laws. The human

will, in turn, is formed and impulse by resistance to the earthly

substances and forces. And in his midst man lives freely giving

and receiving in his surrounding and fellow world.

Fig. 55. Left: Man’s cultural activities are made possible by the free

combinability of thinking and willing. Right: Head, limbs and torso as

images of the cosmos, forces of the earth, and man’s relationship to

his environment.

11.4 The Opposite Directions of Evolution and Hominization

Man’s upright gait preceded the development of his flexible hand

use and this in turn preceded the growth of the brain (Fig. 56).

In an upright position, humans could observe the activity of their

hands and thus gradually develop them from instinct-driven

behaviour to consciously guided, learning work. Through the

feedback between action and cognition, they visibly refined both

abilities (as can be seen in the now beginning and soon

differentiating use of tools and other cultural achievements), and

in the same course the brain also grew.

– 166 –

Fig. 56. Evolutionary steps of becoming human (from Antón

222

,

changed). The direction was from the feet to the head.

Wolfgang Schad described the evolutionary sequence of

uprightness, use of hands, development of language and thought

as follows: “From 7 million years before our time mankind had already

possessed upright gait as its first characteristic. From 2.5 million, the first

stone artefacts appear as the results of awakened manual dexterity. From

about 350,000 years ago, early archaic sapiens humans show the high arched

palate for the ability to speak (Steinheim man). But it is only with the

development of the blade culture and the appearance of many interchangeable

shafted tools that we encounter characteristics of increasingly combinatorial,

thought-planning abilities in the end of the last Ice Age and in the subsequent

Middle Stone Age. It is the time of small-scale art and cave painting: the

production of symbolising carved figures and those representations of inner

ideas, i.e. rock carvings and rock paintings. Then, with the onset of the post-

glacial period, mankind settled down, first in the Near East and then

gradually all over the world, with the help of the beginnings of agriculture.

Everyone defends their habitat against the others. The first depictions of war

appear (Spanish rock paintings). The separation of mine and thine, of I and

the world has occurred. Self-consciousness awakens.“

223

222

Antón et al. (2014).

223

Schad (2009), p. 37.

– 167 –

The direction of development from ape-like human ancestors

to man (hominization) thus proceeded in the reverse direction

than evolution, for in phylogenesis head-like animals arose first,

then fish with head and trunk, and finally land animals with head,

trunk and limbs (cf. Fig. 38, p. 127 and Fig. 42, p. 143).

Interestingly, the individual development of the human body also

proceeds in the same direction as evolution, namely from the

head to the limbs (Fig. 57). The human being grows, as it were,

from the head down to the earth.

Fig. 57. Changes in the relative proportions of head, trunk and limbs

during human ontogeny.

We must therefore distinguish two ‘modes of becoming

human’. One, evolutionary and ontogenetic, leads – in the

direction ‘from top to bottom’ – to the formation of the human

body. The other, ‘from bottom to top’, is a consequence of the

efficacy of an individual ‘I’, the inner autonomous power of will,

which, by its own inner strength, engages with the environment

through this body, erects it against the forces of gravity, forms

its organs of speech through imitation of the social environment

and its brain through orientation in the world. One direction is

embodiment, the other spiritualisation.

11.5 Man in Time – the Discovery of Slowness

Of all primates, man develops slowest and lives longest (Fig. 58).

The same developmental steps take much longer in him than in

– 168 –

apes and other animals. The greatly extended juvenile period

makes it possible for the instinctive learning of animals to be

replaced in man by social imitation and cultural learning – a fact

now generally recognised by science, the fundamental

importance of which was already pointed out in detail by

Friedrich Kipp in 1980.

224

Early forms of man (Australopithecus,

Homo erectus, Homo neanderthalensis) also developed more rapidly

than present-day humans.

225

Fig. 58. Different durations of comparable developmental steps in

macaque, chimpanzee, Homo erectus and H. sapiens (in years).

226

The slower a primate develops, the longer it lives, and the more

similar it is to present-day man. One can say: becoming human

means slowing down, extending time. The ‘juvenilisation’ of

cranial forms shown above (Fig. 52, p. 160) is also an expression

of this fact: morphological retardation due to slowed

ontogenesis.

227

Increased speed of development means that in animals (or in

early humans) similar features follow(ed) each other at shorter

intervals. For Homo sapiens, time is less filled with physical and

organic contents and necessities, he has more time for inner

224

Kipp (1980).

225

See Appendix Life Histories of Humans and Apes, p. 188.

226

Vgl. Robson & Wood (2008). The life expectancy of wild chimpanzees is

only 15 years. Hill et al. (2001).

227

Gould (1977).

– 169 –

experience, in which his creative activity can unfold. Out of the

void of boredom, creativity is born. This is another reason why

humans develop art and culture – unlike animals, they have the

time to do so.

Just as man, through his uprightness, frees himself from the

entanglement with his physical surroundings and attains a spatial

overview, so, through his slowed development, he rises

spiritually out of the flowing time and attains a free overview of

the past, present and future. It is, after all, characteristic of man

that, in contrast to animals, he develops an awareness of his

origin and tradition as well as of his death approaching him from

the future.

228

Fig. 59. The evolution of animal and human forms in the TIME

CROSS.

These relations can now once again be pictorially grasped in

the TIME CROSS (Fig. 59): Both man and the apes originate

from the living stream of inheritance. In the development of

animals, a soul (‘astral force’, cf. Chpt. 6.2, p. 92) coming from

the future pushes itself into this stream of life and embodies itself

228

In the course of human evolution, burial rites that point to an expectation

of a future after death are known for the first time among Neanderthals and

Homo sapiens – probably 120,000 years ago at the earliest. Apparently, the still

relatively rapidly developing Homo erectus was not able to develop a conscious

expectation of the future.

– 170 –

in the animal forms. In the human being this embodiment is

slowed down and thus partially restrained; the soul remains freely

mobile and can enter the inner sphere of the ‘I’. Rudolf Steiner

wrote accordingly: “In the astral the animal form arises outwardly as a

whole form and inwardly as the form of the organs. … If this formation is

carried to its end, the animal is formed. In man it is not carried to its end.

It is stopped at a certain point on its way, inhibited. … it is drawn into the

realm of the I-organisation.”

229

Thus, on the one hand, man loses the

wisdom of body-bound instinctual certainty, but on the other

hand gains a free space for inner creativity.

Hermann Poppelbaum has described the free space of the I in

wonderful words: “Only in the sphere of man is the spell of an

indispensable past and an unavoidable future broken. Only to the human

being is the present really open. Between the past and the future a narrow

space has become free, which the I has created for itself. Here it unfolds its

activity. Animal wisdom is still laden with past group experience and

overhung with urgent foresight. The animal acts out of inherited instinct, even

where it makes provisions for the future. In humans, such instincts recede.

The innate preparation fails. … The animal fits its scene. In man, it is

precisely the idea of not fitting in that is justified. … For man, the

discrepancy between the skills he has brought with him and the current

requirements of the situation is essential. He is not attuned or equipped. He

must spontaneously create the harmony and choose the direction himself.

What is ruinous for the animal being, the inadequate, becomes for the human

being precisely the element of increased life. The I needs this sphere for its

development. The incongruence of I and life situation appeals to the source of

strength in the human being that the animal lacks. The scene, for the animal

only a complement to the organisation, … acquires creative significance for

the human being. It makes its moral demands on the developing human

being, by virtue of the inadequacy that prevails in him. … Here human

triumphs, but also tragedies and comedies, are produced. … It is precisely in

human beings that the situation of life, unpremeditated and unique …

appeals to the true presence of mind. The moment takes on sole and supreme

significance. Success is not predetermined, and failure must be dared. In the

‘narrow’ space between the two stretches the immeasurable realm of human

freedom.”

230

The presence of the I in the body thus has a spatially uplifting,

temporally slowing and morphologically ‘juvenilising’ effect. The

229

Steiner & Wegman, 1925, GA 027, p. 35-36 [transl. CH].

230

Poppelbaum (1937) p. 24-26 [transl. CH].

– 171 –

evolution of the apes and early human forms prepared for and

already heralded the entry of the I into the physical body.

11.6 Summary

We have shown by many examples that evolution as a whole can

be compared to the development and metamorphosis of a single

organism. Like ontogenesis, we can therefore also understand the

transforming movements in phylogenesis in our own living

thought. We can describe the cognition of evolution with the

same four stages as the cognition of the individual organism (cf.

p. 52):

1. the physical-objective cognition of the individual forms (fossil

or recent),

2. the inner metamorphic activity through which we bring them

into a transformation context,

3. the superordinate knowledge of the whole evolutionary

context to which this activity is oriented,

4. the idea of the whole, which permeates everything.

For an individual living being, the superordinate idea is the

species. It is present in all stages of development and appears

most pronounced in the fully grown organism. But what is the

overarching idea of evolution that pervades all individual forms?

To answer this question of all questions, let us summarise all

that we have worked out so far. We have shown that the four

stages of cognition are characterised by four different subject-

object relations. This closes the circle to Thomas Nagel’s quest

that the knowing consciousness must be taken into account in a

viable view of evolution. For the knowing consciousness is the

human being and the knowing I (Fig. 60). It is we ourselves who,

as human beings, have increasingly come to physical appearance

in the course of evolution. The idea that permeates all

evolutionary steps and that appears fully formed at the end is the

human being. Man is the alpha and omega of evolution, from the beginning

its spiritual principle, appearing in the end in physical form. In the beginning

this living idea spiritually encompassed everything else, in the end it appeared

in bodily separation. In the future man will again unite spiritually with the

world.

– 172 –

Fig. 60. Four levels of evolutionary knowledge.

Against such a comparison of ontogenesis and phylogenesis,

the objection is obvious that in ontogenesis one knows from

experience how development proceeds, but not in phylogenesis.

One could never predict from the observation of a prehistoric

fish that it represents a step on the way to man. But I cannot put

myself in the place of a primeval fish without the at least implicit

knowledge that it embodies such a step on the way to becoming

human, for it is me who is active here. To say that one cannot predict

man from the fish stage is, on the one hand, just as correct as it

is, on the other hand, based on a misjudgement of the real events

that underlie this thought. When I think evolution, it is me who thinks

it. As a knowing human being, I belong to evolution and can only ever look

at it in retrospect, from the perspective of my own cognition and running

towards it. Natural science would again find a connection between

nature and man (and be able to answer many of its puzzling

questions) if it stopped ignoring its most essential asset: the

knowing human being.

If one takes into account the knowing ‘I’ as the subject of

evolutionary knowledge and as a self-supporting spiritual reality,

then the question of a goal directedness of evolution appears in

a new light. For then one need no longer seek the teleological

principle of evolution outside the cognizing ‘I’ in any “occult

– 173 –

teleological forces”

231

, but in it and in the consciousness of the

world encompassed by it. In its perceptions, the I faces the

outside of the world; in its concepts, it is united with its essential

inside. Thus one recognises the human being as a microcosm and

the evolution from the primordial cells to the human being as the

ever clearer appearance of the spiritual human being in physical

form under ‘separation’ of the world, which now appears

physically. The animals then appear as premature separations

from the evolution of the human being, because they are not yet

fully spirit-penetrated and have become sensual-physical.

Man is a result of evolution and at the same time its stage. He

is co-creator of the world, and at the same time its image, point

and circumference in one. Whoever grasps the human being

grasps the inner principle of the world.

In this sense Rudolf Steiner summed up his view of evolution

at the end of his life: “Imaginative contemplation brought me the

realisation that in primeval times there was in spiritual reality a quite

different beingness than the simplest organisms. That man as a spiritual

being is older than all other living beings, and that in order to assume his

present physical form he had to separate himself from a world-being which

contained him and the other organisms. These are thus waste products of

human evolution; not something from which he emerged, but something which

he left behind, separated from himself, in order to assume his physical form

as the image of his spiritual being. Man as a macrocosmic being, who carried

all the rest of the earthly world within him, and who has come to the

microcosm through the separation of the rest, that was for me a realisation

which I … attained in the first years of the new century.”

232

A time may come when what is here at the end will be the

beginning of every account of evolution. From here, from the

true and spiritual reality of the human I, evolution is to be

grasped anew. Everything that has been put forward here must

be considered from the point of view of this spiritual self-

knowledge.

11.7 Freedom and Responsibility

Through the thoughts developed here, one could think that the

future is predetermined. Such a view would relieve man of his

231

Mayr (2002)

232

Steiner, 1923-1925, GA 028, p. 403 [transl. CH].

– 174 –

responsibility for further development of himself and the world,

and it is in no way advocated here! It also does not result from

what has been presented. For seen from the current experience

of the ‘I’, the future is (at least partially) open; our actions and

omissions will decisively influence the world’s progress. –

Conversely, one could conclude from the fact of human freedom

that ‘degrees of freedom’ must have already prevailed in

evolution, that its course could not have been determined either.

In my opinion, both views are based on an imprecise

determination of the origin of freedom. In the developmental

series of animals, the capacity for freedom is indeed dispositioned,

but the possibility of actual freedom only arises when man

consciously confronts the world. One cannot say that a

chimpanzee or a crow – however intelligently they may behave –

are free. Only when consciousness falls out of the world-process

does the separation of perception and concept, of will and

imagination occur, which gives the possibility of their free and

responsible reunion.

In the light of inner experience, the animals appear as

embodied life of the soul. In the human being, this embodiment

is held back and drawn into the realm of his spirit-connected ‘I’.

The head becomes the organ of spiritual overview and

knowledge, the limbs remain unspecialised and enable free

choice of standpoint, walk, and action. In the tension between

spirit and matter and in the awareness of the limits of his

existence, the human being is embodied freedom. The life

current from the past is transformed in him into the light of

knowledge, the creative current from the future into the love of

responsible and devoted action. Love understood in this sense

can only arise from freedom. The world is the skull-site of man,

in which he can only generate freely created new life because it

has died to him completely. In separation and death, the ‘I’

awakens and, if it can overcome paralysis and pain, calls itself to

a self-imposed new beginning, to revitalising action.

11.8 The Common Structure of Life and Consciousness

Biologists are concerned with life. Every biologist knows the

enthusiasm that seizes them when an insight into life reveals itself

to them. We then usually express it stammeringly with words like

– 175 –

‘interconnectedness’, ‘system’, ‘complexity’, ‘evolution’, but the

language hardly suffices to grasp the inner movement.

I have tried to show what underlies the understanding of life –

it is the living in us. To gain insight into life is to become alive in

ourselves. We feel numb when we get stuck on the dead details

of reality, but invigorated and refreshed when the

interconnections of life begin to pulsate within us. Today, in the

age of intellectualism and materialism, dead thinking and the

thinking of the dead have taken over to such an extent that more

and more people are looking for ways out of the inner desolation

that has come upon them as a result. This book is dedicated to

them.

The ways out can be found. But to do so, one must return to

the phenomena, the external and the internal. As long as one

interprets the world as mere matter, life as a genetic product and

consciousness as the result of brain waves, one blocks one’s own

access to reality. Many then seek the way out in a nebulous way.

Rudolf Steiner showed how access to the reality of the living

spirit can be found in a prudent and systematic, that is in a scientific

way.

In detail, one may argue about the points of view represented

here. Some mistakes might be found, some things will have to be

added, and many things can certainly be presented much more

precisely. On the whole, however, the path described here can

lead to a spiritualisation of scientific research. The spiritual

connection of phenomena can be found if consciousness is taken

into account. What appears externally as phenomena of life is

grasped by the inner life. In living knowing consciousness one can observe

life from within. We are not the spectators of a finished, mechanical

and material cosmos, but co-creators in its living being and

becoming. We carry out this creation in the sign of the cross,

which, symbolising unity, is enclosed in a circle. Thus is fulfilled

what Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775-1854)

programmatically demanded: “Nature should be the visible spirit, the

spirit the invisible nature. Here, then, in the absolute identity of the spirit in

us and nature outside us, the problem of how a nature outside us is possible

must be resolved. The final goal of our further research into nature is therefore

this idea of nature. The system of nature is at the same time the system of

our spirit.”

233

Schelling, 1797 p. 706 [transl. CH].

– 176 –

PART III

APPENDIX

– 178 –

On the ‘Evolutionary Theory of Knowledge’

In the Introduction (p. 13) we mentioned the so-called

‘Evolutionary Theory of Knowledge’. It states that cognition can

be true because cognition has been selected for its ability to be

true. Gerhard Vollmer, one of its main proponents, wrote: “Our

cognitive apparatus is a result of evolution. The subjective cognitive structures

fit the world because they have evolved in the course of evolution in adaptation

to this real world. And they match the real structures (in part) because only

such a match made survival possible.”

234

The Darwinian conception of evolution (the truth of which is

presupposed by Vollmer) is supposed to explain the truthfulness

of cognition, by which again the Darwinian conception of

evolution is recognised as true. A remarkable circular argument.

But then why can one be wrong at all? And what would happen

to this theory if the Darwinian idea of selection were perhaps

wrong after all? As Ernst-Michael Kranich noted: “Evolutionary

epistemology is the paradoxical attempt to derive human thought from its

views on evolution.”

235

Rudolf Steiner has shown in his Philosophy of Freedom that

thinking can only be comprehended and explained by thinking

itself, and not by anything else, e.g., by brain activity or a selection

pressure acting from outside. In fact, it is just the opposite of

what is claimed by evolutionary epistemology: “In thinking, we hold

world events at a corner where we have to be present if something is to come

about. And that is precisely what matters. That is precisely the reason why

things are so mysterious to me: that I am so uninvolved in their coming about.

I simply find them; but in thinking, I know how it is done. Hence there is

no more original starting-point for the contemplation of all world events than

thinking.”

236

“A fixed point is gained from which one can seek with well-

founded hope for the explanation of the remaining world phenomena.”

237

Something else is the fact that man must again and again bring

his thinking and cognition into harmony with the external world.

Even in scholasticism it was taught that the form of the concept

(i.e. its transparency) comes from the subject, the content from

the object.

234

Vollmer (1975), p. 102 [transl. CH].

235

Kranich (1989), p. 7 [transl. CH].

236

Steiner, 1894, GA 004, p. 49 [transl. CH].

237

Ibid., p. 49.

– 179 –

Rudolf Steiner: Extension of Natural Science by Observation of the Will

in Thought

“Therefore spiritual research must begin precisely where natural scientific

thinking must end. That is to say, that which is will in thinking must be

sought out in thinking. And this happens in all that the soul has to go

through in those inner experiments … by inwardly strengthening thinking,

so that the will working in thinking no longer remains unconscious to

thinking, but this will becomes conscious, so that the human being really

comes to experience himself in such a way that he lives and weaves, as it were,

in thinking, is inside the life and weaving of the ideas himself and now no

longer looks at the ideas themselves, but at that which he does. And in this

the human being must become more and more … technician, must acquire

more and more inner practice, must live into that which happens from himself

as the life of the imagination takes place. Everything that the human being

discovers in himself otherwise remains between the lines of life. It always lives

in the human being, but it does not penetrate into the consciousness. ... If one

develops such an inner vitality, such an inner liveliness in oneself, that one

not only has ideas, but enters with one’s experience into this weighing up and

weighing down, into this becoming and passing away of ideas, and if one can

carry this so far that one no longer even brings into one's attention the content

of the ideas, but only this activity, then one is on the way to experiencing the

will in the world of ideas, to really experiencing something in the world of

ideas which one does not otherwise experience in life. That is to say, if one

faithfully adheres to what the scientific mode of imagination itself leads to,

one must go completely beyond the way in which natural science researches.

To a certain extent, one must not take what natural science explores, but

one must watch oneself doing natural science. And what is practised in this

way, and what can really only lead to success if it is practised for years - all

scientific results are, after all, only achieved through long work - what is

achieved in this way is a settling of the consciousness really into a quite

different world. That which is achieved can only be experienced; it can be

described, but it cannot be shown externally, it can only be experienced. For

that which is attained is … in practice that to which the scientific way of

thinking already points. This scientific way of thinking tells us: If I continue

on my way, I come to a limit. I go as far as I can still find something of the

human being. I do not find a world in which there is will and feeling. – But

this world, where one discovers feeling and will just as objectively as one

discovers plants and minerals here, this world is found when one can make

this inner experience of the ideas in the soul effective between the lines of

– 180 –

normal representations. Only now one experiences that which otherwise one

can only suspect.”

238

Rudolf Steiner: Goethe's Metamorphosis Thought Leads to the Spiritual

View of the Reality of Living Things

“Imagine how the human soul, which in Goethe’s sense faces the outer living

world, is compelled to think of such an organ as the plant leaf in

transformation into the flower leaf, then again into the threadlike stamen,

even transformed into the root, … and how necessary for this is what Goethe

himself felt to be the inner mobility of his thinking. … He who has a rigid

thinking, … which only wants to form sharply contoured concepts, forms the

fixed concept of the green leaf, the petal and so on, but cannot pass from one

concept to another. In so doing, nature falls apart for him into nothing but

details. He has no possibility, because his concepts themselves have no inner

mobility, of penetrating the inner mobility of nature. … While with many

others cognition is a joining together of concepts which they form separately,

with Goethe cognition is an immersion in the world of entities, a pursuit of

that which grows and becomes and is continually transformed, such a pursuit

that his thinking itself is thereby continually transformed, that it continually

becomes, continually passes from one into the other. In short, Goethe brings

into inner movement that which is otherwise mere thinking. … It is a

question of the human being awakening to an inner life of thought that which

is otherwise merely combining thought, as it underlies what is today often

called ‘science’ alone. Then thinking is a life in thought. … Then thinking

about thinking is transformed into a spiritual contemplation of thinking,

then one has thinking before one as one otherwise has external sense objects

before one, only that one has these before one’s eyes and ears, while one has

thinking before the soul filled with spiritual contemplation. Goethe wanted

everywhere to pass from mere thinking to inner spiritual views, from mere

consciousness, as it is saturated with thinking in everyday life, to the looking

consciousness, as I have called it in my book ‘Vom Menschenrätsel’.”

239

Rudolf Steiner: Perception of the Vital Force by Strengthening the Power

of Thinking

“Just as we strengthen a muscle when we continually use it in work, so we

can strengthen the life of imagination … if we place certain easily

238

Steiner, 1916, GA 065, p. 379–382, 11.02.1916 [transl. CH].

239

Steiner, 1918, GA 067, p. 81–83, 21.02.1918 [transl. CH].

– 181 –

comprehensible ideas in the centre of consciousness and in this way again and

again give ourselves over to imaginative work to which we do not otherwise

give ourselves. … By creating this more powerful imaginative life, by raising

ourselves through meditation and concentration above what is actually merely

pictorial in our ordinary imaginative life, we arrive at what I call in the books

I have mentioned the substantial, imaginative imagining. This imaginative

conception lives with such inner vitality in the mere thought as man otherwise

lives in his outer perceptions. Through this, however, one gradually comes to

the point that the life of the imagination is no longer this merely abstract, …

merely pictorial, but one makes … the discovery that the soul … is inwardly

filled with forces which, as it were, shoot into the life of the soul. The ideas

are no longer merely this light fluid, when they are formed through meditation,

through concentration, but they are penetrated, permeated by forces which I

would like to call formative forces, by forces which make up an inner

spiritual-plastic element. And after a time one discovers that through this

formation of the life of the imagination one grows together with that which is

the formative forces of the human body itself; after a time one makes the

discovery that the life of thought is, so to speak, nothing other than the diluted

life of force of human growth. What forms us inwardly plastically in the

physical body from birth to death is, I should like to say in a ‘diluted’ state,

our imaginative life in ordinary consciousness.”

240

The Knowing Will as the Real and Idealistic Basis of Evolutionary

Knowledge

Rudolf Steiner drew on the philosophers of German idealism,

especially Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814). Fichte had

described the spirituality of the self-recognising ‘I’: “Power, to

which an eye is inserted, is the actual character of the I, of freedom, of

spirituality.”

241

With the self-consciously grasping volitional

activity of the I, an unshakeable ground of all knowledge had

been found, but there was also the danger of losing the bridge to

the world. For the I can bring itself into being, but not the world.

Steiner saw a way out of this problem in Goethe’s way of looking

at nature. Goethe applied his volitional activity to natural

phenomena by recreating them inwardly. In this re-creation, the

phenomena can be experienced in their spiritual contexts.

Steiner: “If the human being ... wants to grasp the spirit in all revelation,

240

Steiner, 1921-1924, GA 297a, p. 93–94, 17.01.1922 [transl. CH].

241

Fichte (1812), p. 17 [transl. CH].

– 182 –

he must do this in the same way as he grasps the I in the soul. He must turn

the activity [!] which has led him to perceive this I towards the revealed

world.”

242

In his book The Riddle of Man (Vom Menschenrätsel) (1916) Steiner

described this process in more detail: “One renders oneself special help

in the pursuit of this goal by observing the life in nature with a more intimate

part of the mind. For example, one tries to look at a plant in such a way

that one not only takes up its form in one’s thoughts, but in a certain sense

feels the inner life which stretches upwards in the stem, unfolds in the leaves

according to their width, opens the inside to the outside in the blossom, and

so on. In such thinking the will quietly resonates; and it is there a will

developed in devotion that guides the soul. … In experiencing the process …

one recognises that through this reversal of the will an extra-mental spiritual

is seized by the soul.”

243

One finds the spiritual in the world through activity! One must

inwardly re-create the phenomena and penetrate them with

conscious will activity, slip into them, as it were, and bring them

forth oneself. Rudolf Steiner called this form of cognition

intuition: “What now lives in the soul is really the object itself. … The life

of things in the soul is intuition. It is to be taken quite literally when one

says of intuition: one creeps through it into all things. – In ordinary life, man

has only one intuition, that of the ‘I’ itself. For the ‘I’ cannot be perceived in

any way from outside, it can only be experienced within. … The perception

of one’s own ‘I’ is the model for all intuitive knowledge. In order to enter into

things in this way, however, one must first step out of oneself. One must

become ‘selfless’ in order to merge with the ‘self’ … of another entity.”

244

When the I thus immerses itself in the colours and forms, the

movements, life-appearances and soul-expressions of the world-

beings, recreates them within itself, then they reveal to it their

soul and spiritual qualities. Anthroposophical knowledge of the

spirits is an empathic-spiritual activity directed towards the

world.

On the Inner Self-Observation of the Four Stages of Cognition

If you would like to observe more closely the four stages of

cognition described in Chpt. 4.2, p. 52 you can do so by means

242

Steiner, 1910, GA 013, p. 70 [transl. CH].

243

Steiner, 1916, GA 020, p. 162-164 [transl. CH].

244

Steiner, 1905-08, GA 012, p. 22 [transl. CH].

– 183 –

of the following small exercise: Draw a triangle on a piece of

paper. It has certain angles, its sides have a certain length. You

are on the level of objective consciousness. Now close your eyes

and imagine the triangle as an inner image. Then set this image

in motion (as slowly and concentratedly as possible) by first

enlarging or reducing one angle, then another, or by letting first

one side, then another, move outwards and back again, and

finally several at the same time, until the whole triangle is

liquefied, as it were (but it always remains a triangle). One now

consciously moves on the stage of metamorphosis activity, on

which the change between producing and looking at can be

observed well (cf. Fig. 7, p. 53). – Once you have concentrated

on this for a while, you move on to the next stage, actively putting

aside all figurative ideas of the triangle, but still thinking of a

‘triangle’. Concentration is now more difficult to maintain. In

order to keep the content, one can speak the word ‘triangle’ to

oneself. Finally, take the last step and also leave out the inner

words and the thought of the ‘triangle’ and immerse yourself

completely in the imageless and wordless being.

Seen exactly, the four steps do not exist next to each other, but

within each other. If, in the slowly and consciously accomplished

activity of metamorphosis, the lowest stage of objective

perception can be faded out, the third and fourth stages are still

contained within it. If one succeeds in consciously experiencing

only the third stage, it still contains the fourth. The highest level

is the last, deepest reason for all cognition; there is no cognition

without it.

On the fourth level, everything external falls away; one feels

outside of space and time, one with the object, everywhere. Just

as the pure concept has no place and no time, so also the I has

neither place nor moment – and yet it exists. There is nothing

left to hold on to at this stage, the I merges with the other being.

That is why it is so difficult to experience this level consciously.

If one penetrates to it, then one experiences something of the

inner unity that pervades all being. Rudolf Steiner therefore

described the human ‘I’ (the active subject) as a “drop from the sea

of the spiritual which pervades the whole world”

245

.

245

Steiner, 1910, GA 013, p. 70 [transl. CH].

– 184 –

Francis Bacon‘s Four Fallacies

In Chapter 5, p. 79 Francis Bacon’s critique of Aristotle’s four

causes was described. But in Bacon, too, one encounters the

‘four causes’, albeit indirectly in the form of four possibilities of

error. Since man could only master nature if he knew it, he had

to get rid of various prejudices that clouded his knowledge.

Bacon calls these prejudices ‘idols’, of which he describes four in

all. First, prejudices connected with the general inadequacies of

the human faculty of knowledge, ‘prejudices of the species’ (idola

tribus): “The prejudices of the species have their ground in human nature …

itself. For it is incorrect that the human sense is the measure of all things;

rather, all apprehensions of the senses and of the understanding take place

according to the nature of man, not according to the nature of the universe.

The human mind is like a mirror with an uneven surface for the rays of

objects, which mixes its nature with that of the latter, distorts and defiles

it.”

246

Then prejudices ‘of the theatre’ (idola theatri), based on false

belief in authorities: “There are prejudices which have entered into the

souls of men from the various tenets of philosophy and also from perverse rules

of evidence, and which I call the prejudices of the theatre, … which have made

of the world a poetry and a stage. … I refer this … also to some principles

and doctrines of the special sciences, which have acquired validity through

convention, credulity, and carelessness.” Then the prejudices of ‘the

market’ (idola fori) conditioned by language, which go hand in

hand with the designations of things and dependence on the

opinions of others: “There are also prejudices … which, because of the

intercourse … of men, I call the prejudices of the market. Men associate with

one another by means of speech; but words are attached to things according

to the opinion of the multitude; therefore the bad and foolish attachment of

names impedes the mind in a peculiar way.” Finally, prejudices ‘of the

cave’ (idola specus), which cause man to regard things not in and

of themselves, but all too easily distorted, that is, prejudices

through inaccurate observation: “The prejudices of the cave are the

prejudices of the individual man. For every individual has … a particular

cave or grotto, which refracts and corrupts the natural light … in consequence

of the difference of impressions in a biased and prejudiced mode of sense

against a calm and even temper.” – Bacon thus implicitly describes

246

Bacon (1620) 2. Book, Aphorism 2. This and the following quotes: ibid., 1.

Book, Aphorism 41-44 [transl. CH].

– 185 –

the structure of cognition by characterising its aberrations,

arriving at the same four-membered structure we have in mind.

For the prejudices of genus are obviously inherited, and are

therefore connected with the current of time from the past; those

of language and the market, as social prejudices, with what is to

be expected (‘What will the others say? How will I tell them?’).

False belief in spiritual authorities clouds the immediate, intuitive

cognition of concepts (in the time cross above), while inaccurate

observation has a distorting effect on the impressions of the

senses (below).

Surprisingly, Bacon’s namesake Roger Bacon (1220-1294), a

Franciscan, one of the first representatives of empiricism in

natural science, also taught 400 years earlier four obstacles

(offendicula) that block man’s path to true knowledge of nature: 1.

respect for authority, 2. habit, 3. dependence on the marketable

opinions of the crowd, and 4. incorrigibility of our natural

senses.

247

In Roger Bacon, the connection of the four obstacles

with the structure of the time cross is even more evident than in

Francis Bacon. It would be interesting to investigate whether the

later Bacon was aware of the source of the earlier one.

Consciousness and Matter

The most stubborn resistance to a spiritual conception of

evolution stems from the seemingly insurmountable conviction

that there was a permanent matter outside of knowing

consciousness. Was this ‘matter’ not apparently present for

billions of years before human thought and consciousness

appeared? Did not early organisms preserve themselves in this

matter as fossils? How could a world outside consciousness exist

if it were not sustained by permanent matter? The conviction of

a material world outside of consciousness is so completely self-

evident to modern man that the vast majority declare anyone

who questions this to be crazy.

On the other hand, this conviction leads to insurmountable

contradictions. Thomas Nagel has listed them: Life,

consciousness and ethical values simply cannot be explained

from matter. In 1872, Emil Du Bois-Reymond formulated the

247

de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Bacon.

– 186 –

dilemma in his famous Leipzig lecture Limits to the Knowledge of

Nature: “It is quite and forever incomprehensible that a number of carbon,

hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, etc. atoms should not be indifferent to each other,

should not be indifferent to how they lie and move, how they lay and moved,

how they will lie and move. It is in no way conceivable how consciousness

could arise from their interaction.”

248

And it is therefore also

impossible to understand how and why consciousness could

have arisen from unconscious matter in the course of evolution:

“At some point in the development of life on earth, … something new,

hitherto unheard of, occurs, something … incomprehensible. The thread of

understanding, spun in negatively infinite time, breaks, and our knowledge

of nature reaches a gulf over which no footbridge, no wing carries: we stand

at the limit of our wit. This new incomprehensible is consciousness.“

249

Even today, despite the most detailed brain research as well as

manifold efforts in cognitive science and philosophy, this

question remains unsolved.

250

And it cannot be solved either,

because one is dealing with a category problem.

A solution is only possible if one conceives of ‘matter’ not as

an ontologically independent substance, but as a phenomenon

for consciousness. Rudolf Steiner already presented this in 1890

in his essay The Primordial Phenomenon (Das Urphänomen)

251

in his

Introductions to Goethe’s Natural Science Writings. There it says: “The

perceived world is nothing but a sum of metamorphosed perceptions. … We

will now be replied: … ‘Behind the [changeable] phenomena, … there must

be a ‘permanent matter’.” But “the concept of matter owes its origin only to

a quite mistaken conception of the concept of time. One believes that the world

would evaporate into an insubstantial semblance if one did not think that

the changeable sum of events was subordinated to something that persists in

time, something unchanging. … [But] only he who cannot complete [the]

decline from appearance to essence … needs … an existence that outlasts the

changes. As such, he conceives of indestructible matter. In this way he has

created a thing that is not to be affected by time. … But actually he has only

shown his inability to penetrate from the temporal appearance of facts to their

essence, which has nothing to do with time.”

252

“The sensuous conception of

the world is the sum of metamorphosing perceptual contents without an

248

Du Bois-Reymond, p. 26 [transl. CH].

249

Du Bois-Reymond, p. 16-17 [transl. CH].

250

Bieri (1994).

251

Steiner, 1884-1897, GA 001, p. 266-280 [transl. CH].

252

Ibid., p. 272-273 [transl. CH].

– 187 –

underlying matter. … [This] is, of course, only the concept of matter on which

physics bases its considerations and which it identifies with the old, equally

incorrect concept of substance of metaphysics. Matter is something else … as

a phenomenon, as an appearance. … For if I call that which fills space

‘matter’, this is merely a word for a phenomenon to which no higher reality

than other phenomena is ascribed. I must thereby only keep this character of

matter always present to me.”

253

What we perceive as the external world is an infinite sum of

constantly changing phenomena. The concept of matter is added

to these phenomena. If one were to experience the spiritual

essence of phenomena as real, then ‘indestructible matter’ would

turn out to be an auxiliary concept that the ‘I’ needs in order to

be able to support and hold on to it. Steiner wrote that “the belief

in matter is only a preliminary stage for the realisation that even in space it

is not matter that haunts, but spirit that rules. And the idea of ‘matter’ is

only a provisional one, which has its justification as long as its spiritual

character has not been seen through. But one must speak of this ‘justification’.

For the assumption of matter is justified as long as one faces the world

perceptively with the senses. Whoever in this situation makes the attempt to

assume some spiritual entity behind the sensory perceptions instead of matter,

fantasises about a spiritual world. For him who first advances to the spirit

in inner experience, that which first ‘haunts’ as matter behind the sense

impressions is transformed, not dreamily, but exactly vividly, into a form of

the spiritual world to which he himself belongs with the eternal of his

being.”

254

253

Ibid., p. 274 [transl. CH].

254

Steiner, 1921-1925, GA 036, p. 266, 22.04.1923 [transl. CH].

– 188 –

Life Histories of Humans and Apes

Gestation

period*

Start of tooth

change

Menarche

Breakthrough

of molars+

Completion of

growth

Lifespan

M1

M2

M3

Lemur

139

2

3

14

Macaque*

170

1,8

2

1

3,5

5,5

7

24

Gibbon

210

6-8

9

30

Organ-Utan

260

3,5

6-11

11

59

Chimpanzee1)

225

2,9

8-9

4

6,5

10,5

11

53

Gorilla

255

3

9

11

54

A. africanus2)

4

Homo erectus3)

4

7,6

H. neanderthalensis4)

5

8

15†

Man1)

270

6,2

12-13

6

12

18

20

85

Gestation period in days, all other data in years. + Time of eruption of

molars correlates with other development: M1 with completion of

brain growth, M2 with sexual maturity, M3 with completion of length

growth. Data except for molars

255

and http://pin.pri-

mate.wisc.edu/factsheets/entry/orangutan/taxon. Data for molars

256

.

Further

257

. † Estimation

258

.

Seven Aspects of the Organic

In Chapter 4.4 (p. 58) it was mentioned that an organism can be

grasped by a total of seven aspects (see table). All of these aspects

are always present at the same time. Each higher level

presupposes and integrates the respective lower ones. A higher

255

Robson & Wood (2008).

256

Dean (2006). Dean & Lucas (2009), Dean et al. (2001), Smith et al. (2007),

Smith et al. (2010).

257

Bromage & Dean (1985). Lacruz & Ramirez Rozzi (2010).

258

Ramirez Rozzi & Bermudez De Castro (2004).

– 189 –

level aspect cannot be explained or derived from lower ones, and

none of the lower levels of the living can be without the higher

ones.

Properties of the

Living

Aspects

Forms of Knowledge

1. Material: concreteness,

mass, weight, filling of

space, substance with

certain, sensually

perceptible properties

Spatial appearance

Confronting observation

2. Living: temporal

processual organisation,

metamorphosis

Development in the

double stream of time

Active comprehension,

(co-)movement

3. Form-like and functional:

colour, form, size: form

and its functions

Functional adaptation,

threefoldness,

physiognomic expression

of form

Visual experience of

form, comprehending

experience of function

4. Acting: autonomous

formative power on the

one hand, behaviour on

the other hand

Autonomously acting

being (species)

Identification

5. Ecological: species-

specific connection with

the environment,

reflection of the

environment in the

expression of form

(spatial)

Functional and form-

related connection of the

organism with its

environment

Recognising and

experiencing the

organism-environment

relationships

6. Typological-systematic:

micro-evolution,

interrelation of the

species with its variants

(in the same and

different environments),

(temporal)

Variation of groups of

organisms in different

environments

Comparative grouping

and active variation

7. Macro-evolutionary:

Connection with all

other organisms (at

different times in

different environments)

Comprehensive, spatio-

temporal relations

between different groups

at different times in

different environments

Comprehensive

grouping, overviewing

These seven aspects themselves form systematic relations,

which becomes particularly clear when one considers the

position of the discerning observer in relation to them. Thus the

– 190 –

5th, 6th and 7th levels each represent reflections or

transformations of the 3rd, 2nd and 1st levels. For example, just

as the observer actively comprehends the transformations of the

organism on the 2nd level, he does so on the 6th level with the

variations in which a kinship group appears under different

environmental influences. He applies the same comparative-

transformative activity to the stages of development of a single

organism, and to the variations of a species, a family, genus etc.

And just as the observer experiences and functionally

comprehends the forms of the organism on the third level, so on

the fifth the interweaving of the species with its environment.

Apart from the functional meaning of the form, on the 3rd level,

as we have shown, the design motives must also be taken into

account, and on the 5th level the same applies to the expressive

reflection of the environment in the form of the organisms. (One

thinks here, for example, of the colouring and costumes of

animals; colourful butterflies in comparison to white-grey moths,

etc.), which can be understood both as a Darwinian adaptation

and at the same time as a physiognomic expression of form. The

whole context of our discussion has shown that these two

aspects of the organic, the wise functionality as well as the

physiognomic motifs of the form, are to be regarded as

belonging together. Like the motifs of the form, the reflection of

the environment in the form is also experienced in a feeling way.

The 1st and 7th stages represent, as it were, two end points of

the organic: The individual, spatial-material form on the one

hand, and the evolutionary context encompassing all organisms

on the other. We thus find a connection between the 1st and the

7th, the 2nd and the 6th, as well as the 3rd and the 5th stage. In

the middle, as the centre of all biological thinking, is the

autonomy of the organic growth force and of the mentally (in

humans also spiritually) impulsed behaviour.

The Life Cycle of Jellyfish as an Example of the Work of Etheric and

Astral Formative Forces

In Chpt. 6.3, p. 94 it was shown that the organic formation of

shape occurs in the interaction of living (etheric) and soul (astral)

forces. The etheric principle of life is plant-like and primarily

effective in the repetition of similar elements; the astral principle

– 191 –

is effective in the formation of animal, integrated overall forms.

The etheric principle builds up, the astral one breaks down; the

etheric one connects, the astral one separates. The etheric works

in vegetative reproduction, the astral in generative reproduction

through the two sexes. In the mutual attraction of the separate

sexes, an inner life of the soul awakens even in the lowest

organisms, however dark. The etheric principle works

unconsciously, the astral one exists in a psychic interrelation of

inner and outer world. Physiologically, the effect of the astral can

be seen in the formation of sense organs and the nervous system

as well as in the shaping of inner organs that are differentiated

from each other. The colouring of organisms, which has a

(psychological) effect on others, is also an effect of the astral.

Finally, the formation of toxins is also to be understood as an

effect of the astral.

259

The action of etheric and astral formative forces can be seen

particularly vividly in the life cycle of the horned jellyfish, which

belongs to the Cnidaria (cf. p. 121; Fig. 61).

260

The polyp is a

sessile hollow form composed of two layers of cells with a single

mouth and anal opening. It reproduces purely vegetatively by

budding or by so-called ‘strobilation’, by which a polyp forms a

stack of medusae. The medusa is a free-swimming, inverted

polyp. However, it is more complexly organised than the polyp,

which can be seen, for example, in the heavy sensory organs at

the edge of the umbrella and in the four ring-shaped sexual

organs. The vegetative regeneration and reproduction ability of

the polyp has been completely lost in the medusa. There are male

and female medusae, fertilisation takes place externally in the

water.

The sessile polyp stage thus shows similarity to vegetative plant

life, whereas the medusa has an animal character with its

perceptive and locomotor abilities, its more complex

organisation and its sexual reproduction. The polyp form is

dominated by etheric forces, the medusa by astral ones. Thus in

the case of the polyp and the medusa one also finds Rudolf

Steiner’s characterisations: “The most elementary principle of the etheric

259

Wolff (1998).

260

Hermann Poppelbaum has given a remarkable description of this group of

animals in his book Tierwesenskunde. Poppelbaum (1937).

– 192 –

body is that of repetition”

261

and “the astral body counts, but it counts

differentiatingly, counts the etheric body. It shapes it counting.”

262

Fig. 61. Life cycle of the horned jellyfish Aurelia aurita.

263

Thus, what appears successively in time in these lower

organisms, takes place in more highly organised animals within

the ontogenesis of a single organism.

261

Steiner, 1908-1909, GA 107, p. 28–29, 21.10.1908 [transl. CH].

262

Steiner, 1921, GA 204, p. 139-140, 23.04.1921 [transl. CH].

263

This fascinating development can be seen in the following videos:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDtJs6DPlVU

www.youtube. com/watch?v=Y_v9XLRDlXw+.

– 193 –

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Bielefeld 2023.

Christoph Hueck, PhD (* 1961), studied

biology and chemistry, doctorate in genetics, 10

years of molecular biology research. More than

40 years of intensive involvement with

epistemology and anthroposophy. Waldorf

teacher, lecturer in Waldorf pedagogy,

anthroposophy and meditation. Co-founder of

the Akanthos Academy, Stuttgart. Publications

on life sciences, the foundations of

anthroposophy and meditation, and the

lifelong, health-effects of Waldorf education.

hueck@akanthos-akademie.de

www.christoph-hueck.de

www.akanthos-akademie.academia.edu/ChristophHueck

https://publish.obsidian.md/evolution/Start+English

Evolution in the Double Stream of Time - an Inner Morphology of Organic Thought

Abstract

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