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The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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30. Collected Essays on Philosophy, Science, Aesthetics and Psychology 1884–1901: Hermann Helmholtz 15 Sep 1894,
Translated by Steiner Online Library

These two men are the embodiment of our current understanding of nature. The one endeavored to solve the riddle of the becoming of living beings; the other immersed himself in what had become and traced the laws of its action.
He was one of the best of his time because he understood his tasks like few others. His views on art were rooted in the soil of classicism. In his "Doctrine of the Sensations of Sound", he wanted to create a scientific basis for classical music. This did not prevent him from fully understanding Richard Wagner's genius. We younger people need not be deceived by the fact that we can no longer share Helmholtz's views in many areas.
30. Collected Essays on Philosophy, Science, Aesthetics and Psychology 1884–1901: Wilhelm Preyer 07 Jul 1897,
Translated by Steiner Online Library

It could therefore be that the bodies that fall to earth from outer space contain substances in which there is dormant life that can be awakened on earth under suitable conditions. In this way, the once dead Earth could have been populated with life. This hypothesis is so unadventurous that Helmholtz and Thomson have spoken out in favor of its scientific justification.
Preyer's view must attract philosophical minds. They will never be able to understand how the phenomena of life can be explained by the summation of mechanical, physical and chemical processes. That living things transform themselves into inanimate things is quite understandable and proven by daily experience; that living things develop from inanimate things contradicts all observation that penetrates into the essence of things.
30. Collected Essays on Philosophy, Science, Aesthetics and Psychology 1884–1901: Charles Lyell 27 Nov 1897,
Translated by Steiner Online Library

One need never have read a line in the "Origin of Species" and in the "Principles of Geology", and yet one is under the influence of these books. Not only our thinking, but also our emotional life has received its characteristic imprint from them.
In addition, there are the transformations that the earth's surface is undergoing today through floating icebergs, through moving glaciers that carry debris and boulders with them.
The processes that we see today with our eyes and understand with our minds have always taken place. No others have ever been there. What is happening today is happening without miracles and without supernatural influences.
30. Collected Essays on Philosophy, Science, Aesthetics and Psychology 1884–1901: Herman Grimm on his Seventieth Birthday 08 Jan 1898,
Translated by Steiner Online Library

Every thing he touches takes on a peculiar meaning in his hands. One can look at it under the idea of nobility. The greatness that lies in nobility is peculiar to him. There are things that remain alien to him because they cannot be viewed from the perspective of nobility.
He does not say things that do not interest Herman Grimm, even if scholars believe that they are important for understanding Goethe. Herman Grimm's Goethe is not the "objective" Goethe, but we would not want to be without him as part of our intellectual life.
30. Collected Essays on Philosophy, Science, Aesthetics and Psychology 1884–1901: The Beautiful and Art 15 Jan 1898,
Translated by Steiner Online Library

That was the fundamental question for Vischer. A high, mature philosophical training underlies all his explanations. The language he speaks is only understood by a few today. It could only be understood by those who had the philosophical thoughts of Schelling and Hegel as part of their education.
This is a humanly willed world, not one that has sprung from the divine spirit. Today's people no longer understand it when one speaks of art as a realization of the divine, they can only understand that man has the need to shape things according to his temperament, according to his inspiration. Modernists want to talk about art in human terms; they no longer want to go into the religious trait that underlies Vischer's explanations.
30. Collected Essays on Philosophy, Science, Aesthetics and Psychology 1884–1901: Count Leo Tolstoy - What Is Art? 30 Apr 1898,
Translated by Steiner Online Library

A ballet, however, in which half-naked women perform sensually exciting movements and entangle themselves in garlands, is nothing more than a morally corrupting performance, so that one cannot even understand for whom it is intended. An educated person has had enough of it, and an ordinary worker simply does not understand it.
Tolstoy does not regard art as an end in itself. People should understand, love and support each other; that is the purpose of every culture. Art should only be a means of realizing this higher purpose.
30. Collected Essays on Philosophy, Science, Aesthetics and Psychology 1884–1901: On Truth and Veracity of Works of Art 27 Aug 1898,
Translated by Steiner Online Library

Even if one were to go so far as to make the monkey understand that he should not eat painted beetles, he would never understand one thing, namely what painted beetles are for, since one is not allowed to eat them.
It may be possible to bring him to the realization that a work of art is not to be treated in the same way as an object found in the marketplace. But since he only understands such a relationship as he can gain to the objects of the market, he will not understand what works of art are actually there for.
30. Collected Essays on Philosophy, Science, Aesthetics and Psychology 1884–1901: New Year's Reflection by a Heretic 07 Jan 1899,
Translated by Steiner Online Library

I would like to explain the reasons why the most advanced spirits of the present are so little understood. 1. See note, page 635
30. Collected Essays on Philosophy, Science, Aesthetics and Psychology 1884–1901: Ludwig Büchner 13 May 1899,
Translated by Steiner Online Library

How little understanding there is among the philosophers of our time for the scientific approach and its achievements!
It was naivety of the highest order when Du Bois-Reymond set a limit to human knowledge because it would never understand how it is that feeling and thinking, consciousness, develop from the processes of the brain. He said: "One cannot understand why a sum of material particles should not be indifferent as to how they lie and move and why they evoke the sensation of "red" through a certain position and movement and the feeling of pain through another.
Without an understanding of the results of natural science and the methods by which these results are obtained, no world view is possible today.
30. Collected Essays on Philosophy, Science, Aesthetics and Psychology 1884–1901: Ernst Haeckel and the “The Riddles of the World” 21 Oct 1899,
Translated by Steiner Online Library

Composing transforms the laws of musicology into life, into real reality. Anyone who does not understand that a similar relationship exists between philosophy and science is not fit to be a philosopher.
That every truth is only valid in its place, that it is only true as long as it is asserted under the conditions under which it was originally founded, this must be understood above all. [ 9 ] Who today does not cringe with respect when the name Friedrich Theodor Vischer is mentioned?
If they did know it, then a quite different air would flow towards them from Vischer's magnificent works; and one would encounter less ceremonial praise, but more unconstrained understanding of this writer. Where are the times when Schiller found deep understanding when he praised the philosophical mind over the bread scholar!

Results 991 through 1000 of 6551

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