The Rudolf Steiner Archive

5. Cognition and Reality

[ 1 ] Thus, it is in concepts and ideas that we have given that which at the same time leads beyond the given. This, however, offers the possibility of also determining the nature of the remaining cognitive activity.

[ 2 ] We have separated out a part from the given picture of the world by means of a postulate, because it is in the nature of cognition to proceed precisely from this part. This separation was therefore only made in order to be able to comprehend cognition. At the same time, however, we must realize that we have artificially torn apart the unity of the world view. We must realize that the segment separated by us from the given, apart from our demand and outside of it, is in a necessary connection with the content of the world. This is the next step in the theory of knowledge. It will consist in restoring the unity that has been torn apart in order to make knowledge possible. This restoration takes place in thinking about the given world. In the thinking observation of the world, the unification of the two parts of the world's content actually takes place: that which we survey as given on the horizon of our experiences, and that which must be produced in the act of cognition in order to be given. The act of cognition is the synthesis of these two elements. And indeed, in every single act of cognition one of them appears as something produced in the act itself, added by it to the merely given. Only in the beginning of epistemology itself does that which is otherwise always produced appear as a given.

[ 3 ] Pervading the given world with concepts and ideas, however, is thinking contemplation of things. Thinking is thus actually the act by which knowledge is conveyed. Only when thinking organizes the content of the world view of its own accord can knowledge come about. Thinking itself is an act that produces its own content in the moment of cognition. Insofar as the cognized content flows from thinking alone, it offers no difficulty for cognition. Here we need only observe; and we have given the essence directly. The description of thought is at the same time the science of thought. In fact, logic has never been anything other than a description of the forms of thought, never a proving science. Proof only occurs when a synthesis of thought with other world content takes place. Therefore, Gideon Spikcker rightly says in his book: "Lessings Weltanschauung" (p.5): "That thought is right in itself we can never know, either empirically or logically." We can add: All proof ends with thinking. For proof already presupposes thinking. It is possible to prove a single fact, but not proof itself. We can only describe what a proof is. In logic, all theory is only empiricism; in this science there is only observation. But if we want to recognize something apart from our thinking, we can only do so with the help of thinking, i.e. thinking must approach a given and bring it out of its chaotic connection into a systematic connection with the world picture. Thinking thus approaches the given world content as a forming principle. The process is as follows: first, certain details are mentally singled out from the totality of the world as a whole. For in the given there is actually no single thing, but everything is in continuous connection. Thinking now relates these separate details to each other according to the forms it has produced and finally determines what results from this relationship. By establishing a relation between two separate parts of the content of the world, thinking has not determined anything about them of its own accord. It waits to see what emerges of its own accord as a result of establishing the relation. Only this result is a realization about the relevant parts of the world content. If it were in the nature of the latter to express nothing at all about itself through this reference, then the attempt to think would have to fail and a new one would have to take its place. All knowledge is based on the fact that man brings two or more elements of reality into the right connection and grasps what results from this.

[ 4 ] It is undoubtedly true that we make many such futile attempts at reasoning, not only in the sciences, where the history of the same teaches us so well, but also in ordinary life; only in the simple cases which we mostly encounter, the right one so quickly takes the place of the wrong one that we do not or only rarely become aware of the latter.

[ 5 ] Kant envisioned this activity of thought derived from us for the purpose of systematically structuring the content of the world in his "synthetic unity of apperception". But how little he realized the actual task of thinking in this process is evident from the fact that he believes that the laws of pure natural science can be derived a priori from the rules according to which this synthesis takes place. He did not consider that the synthetic activity of thinking is only one that prepares the extraction of the actual laws of nature. Let us imagine that we detach some content a from the world-picture, and likewise another b. If it is to come to the realization of a lawful connection between a and b, thinking must first bring a into such a relation to b that it becomes possible for the existing dependence to present itself to us as given. The actual content of a law of nature thus results from the given, and it is merely up to thinking to bring about the opportunity by which the parts of the world picture are brought into such relations that their lawfulness becomes apparent. No objective laws follow from the mere synthetic activity of thinking.

[ 6 ] We must now ask ourselves, what part does thinking play in the production of our scientific world view as opposed to the merely given world view? It follows from our description that it is responsible for the form of regularity. Let us assume in our above diagram that a is the cause, b the effect. The causal connection between a and b could never be recognized if thought were not capable of forming the concept of causality. But in order to recognize a as cause and b as effect in the given case, it is necessary that these two correspond to what is understood by cause and effect. It is the same with other categories of thought.

[ 7 ] It will be useful to refer here to Hume's remarks on the concept of causality in a few words. Hume says that the concepts of cause and effect have their origin merely in our habit. We often observe that a certain event is followed by another, and accustom ourselves to think of the two in causal connection, so that we expect the second to occur when we notice the first. But this view is based on a quite erroneous conception of the relation of causality. If, through a series of days, I always meet the same person when I step out of the gate of my house, I will gradually become accustomed to expect the temporal sequence of the two events, but it will not occur to me at all to establish a causal connection between my appearance and that of the other person in the same place. I will look at other parts of the world's content in order to explain the direct consequence of the facts mentioned. We do not determine the causal connection according to the temporal sequence, but according to the meaning of the parts of the world content designated as cause and effect.

[ 8 ] It follows from the fact that thinking only performs a formal activity in the creation of our scientific world view that the content of every cognition cannot be a priori determined before observation (the confrontation of thinking with the given), but must emerge completely from the latter. In this sense, all our cognitions are empirical. But it is also impossible to understand how this could be otherwise. For Kant's a priori judgments are basically not knowledge at all, but only postulates. In Kant's sense, one can only ever say: if a thing is to become the object of a possible experience, then it must obey these laws. So these are rules that the subject makes for the objects. However, one should believe that if we are to gain knowledge of the given, this knowledge must flow not from subjectivity but from objectivity.

[ 9 ] Thinking says nothing a priori about the given, but it produces those forms on the basis of which the lawfulness of phenomena appears a posterion.

[ 10 ] It is clear that this view about the degree of certainty that an acquired judgment of knowledge has, a priori can make no difference. For even certainty cannot be obtained from anything other than the given itself. It can be objected that observation never says anything other than that some connection of phenomena takes place, but not that it must take place and in the same case will always take place. But this assumption is also erroneous. For if I recognize a certain connection between parts of the world picture, it is in our sense nothing other than what results from these parts themselves; it is not something that I think in addition to these parts, but something that belongs essentially to them, which must therefore necessarily always be there if they themselves are there.

[ 11 ] Only a view which assumes that all scientific activity consists only in connecting the facts of experience according to subjective maxims lying outside them, can believe that a and b can be connected today according to this law, tomorrow according to that (J. St. Mill). But he who realizes that the laws of nature derive from the given, and are thus that which constitutes and determines the connection of phenomena, will not even think of speaking of a mere comparative generality of the laws obtained from observation. We do not, of course, mean to assert that the laws of nature once accepted by us as correct must necessarily be valid. But if a later case overturns an established law, this is not due to the fact that the same law could only be deduced with comparative generality the first time, but to the fact that it was not completely correctly deduced at that time either. A genuine law of nature is nothing other than the expression of a connection in the given picture of the world, and it is just as little there without the facts which it governs as these are there without it.

[ 12 ] We have defined it above as the nature of the act of cognition that the given world picture is interspersed with concepts and ideas through thinking. What follows from this fact? If the directly given contained a self-contained wholeness, then such a processing of it in cognition would be impossible and also unnecessary. We would then simply accept the given as it is and would be satisfied with it in this form. Only if there is something hidden in the given that does not yet appear when we look at it in its immediacy, but only with the help of the order brought into it by thinking, is the act of cognition possible. What lies in the given before mental processing is not its full wholeness.

[ 13 ] This will immediately become clearer when we look more closely at the factors that come into consideration in the act of cognition. The first of these is the given. Being given is not a property of the given, but only an expression of its relationship to the second factor of the act of cognition. What the given is by its own nature thus remains completely obscure through this definition. Thinking finds the second factor, the conceptual content of the given, in the act of cognition as necessarily connected with the given. We now ask ourselves: 1. where is the separation of the given and the concept? 2. where is the union of the two? The answer to these two questions is undoubtedly given in our preceding investigations. The separation exists only in the act of cognition, the union lies in the given. From this it necessarily follows that the conceptual content is only a part of the given, and that the act of cognition consists in uniting together the components of the world-picture that are initially given separately for it. The given world-picture thus becomes complete only through that indirect kind of givenness which is brought about by thinking. Through the form of immediacy, the world picture first shows itself in a completely incomplete form.

[ 14 ] If in the content of the world the content of thought were united with the given from the outset, then there would be no cognition. For nowhere could the need arise to go beyond the given. But if we were to produce all the content of the world with and in our thinking, then there would be no cognition either. For we do not need to know what we ourselves produce. Cognition is thus based on the fact that the content of the world is originally given to us in a form that is incomplete, that does not contain it completely, but has a second essential side in addition to what it directly presents. This second, originally not given side of the content of the world is revealed through cognition. What appears separate to us in thinking is therefore not empty forms, but a sum of determinations (categories), which are, however, form for the remaining world content. Only the form of the vast content obtained through cognition, in which both revealed sides of the same are united, can reality be called.