Determining the Whole

Something else. There is an immense difference between the way we unite with the light-flooded spaces and the way we unite with the warmth conditions of our immediate environment. Physics since the sixteenth century has quite lost hold of this difference. The distinction is that we share in the warmth conditions of our environment with our physical body and in the light conditions, as we said just now, with our etheric body. This proneness to confuse the two has been the bane of physics since the sixteenth century, especially since Newton's influence came to be dominant. On the whole scientists have lost the faculty of focusing attention purely and simply on the given facts.

What is called gravity is an example. The fact that material bodies in the neighborhood of other material bodies will under given conditions fall toward them has been conceived entirely in Newton's sense—gravity. Yet ponder how you will, you will never be able to include among the given facts what is understood by the term "force of gravity." If a stone falls to the Earth, the fact is simply that it draws nearer to the Earth. We see it now at one place, now at another, now at a third and so on. If you then say, "The Earth attracts the stone," you in your thoughts are adding something to the given fact. You are no longer purely and simply stating the phenomenon.

People have grown so unaccustomed to stating phenomena purely, yet upon this it all depends. For if we do not state the phenomena purely and simply, but proceed at once to thought-out explanations, we can find manifold explanations of one and the same phenomenon. Suppose for example you have two heavenly bodies. You may then say, "These two bodies attract one another—send some mysterious force out into space and so attract each other" (Figure 21). But you need not say this. You can also say, "Here is the one body, here is the other, and here (Figure 22) are a lot of other, tiny bodies—particles of ether, it may be—all around and in between the two heavenly bodies. The tiny particles are bombarding the two big ones on all sides. Now the total area of attack will be bigger outside than in between. Hence the two will approach each other." (Please note, Steiner is not saying this is true or is an observable phenomenon. He is simply saying that, as theory or kinetics, it is as valid as Newton's theory of gravity which also, as in the case of any force, cannot be directly observed.)

There are no doubt many other explanations to add to these. It is a classical example of how people fail to look at the real phenomenon but at once add thought-out explanations. What is at the bottom of it all? It saves one the need of doing something else. Adventitious theories relieve one of the need of making one fundamental assumption, from which the people of today seem to be very much averse. For if these two apparently independent bodies approach each other, we cannot but look for some underlying reason (such as gravity) why they do so—some inner reason. Now it is simpler to add in thought some unknown force (such as gravity) than to admit that there is also another way, namely, no longer to think of the (heavenly) bodies as independent of each other. If for example I put my hand to my forehead, I shall not dream of saying that my forehead "attracts" my hand, but I shall say, "It is an inner deed done by the underlying soul-and-spirit." My hand and forehead are not really independent, separate entities, but rather I must regard myself as a single whole. I would have no reality in mind if I were to say, "There is a head, two arms and hands, trunk and two legs." There is nothing complete in that. My task is not merely to describe what I see. I have to ponder the reality of what I see. The mere fact that I see a thing does not make it real.

Steiner here repeats his oft-used illustration of a crystal cube of rock salt, which is in some respect a totality (everything will be so in some respect), while a rose, cut from the shrub it grew on is no totality.

The implications of this are far-reaching. Namely, for every phenomenon, we must examine to what extent it is a reality in itself or a mere section of some larger whole. In considering the Sun and Earth and Moon separately, the things you have in mind are not totalities. They are but parts and members of the whole planetary system.

Our scientists have saved themselves the need of contemplating the inherent life of the planetary system. The tendency has been to regard as wholes those things in nature that are only parts, and then to construe by mere theories the effects that arise in fact between them. The essential point is that for all that meets us in nature we have to ask, "What is the whole to which this thing belongs?" Things are wholes, of course, only in certain respects. Even the crystal cube of rock salt is a totality only in some respect. Our need is to give up looking at nature in the fragmentary way so prevalent in our time.

Science has conceived the idea of universal, inorganic, lifeless nature since the sixteenth century. There is indeed no such thing, just as in this sense there is no such thing as your bony system without your blood. Lifeless nature is the bony system. It is impossible to study it alone as is done in Newtonian physics to this day. The only really inorganic things are our machines, and even these are only so insofar as they are pieced together from sundry forces of nature. Only the "put-togetherness" of them is inorganic. Whatever else we may call inorganic only exists by abstraction. From this abstraction present-day physics has arisen.

In the phenomena of sound and tone, there is a direct connection between vibrations executed by a body or by the air and our perceptions of tone or sound. Vibrations are going on around us when we hear sounds. But it is a pure play of analogies that leads one to the idea that the same thing applies in the case of light or colors so that some hypothetical ether with its vibrations beats upon our eye to produce a sensation of light. By the application of kinetics or theoretical movement calculations are made that cannot be perceived but are at most assumed theoretically. Of course, in time the assumption that light moved by waves through some tenuous elastic substance called ether fell by the wayside. This came about because of the experiments showing that an electromagnet brought to bear upon a cylinder of light (from which a spectrum was made) affects the phenomenon of light. The old theories were shaken, and many physicists then concluded that light is among the electromagnetic effects—that it is really electromagnetic rays passing through space. (This appears to be Fagg's primary thesis, along with the fact that electromagnetism is ubiquitous in our creation and travels with the speed of light. But to say it is ubiquitous in creation is not to say that it is the Creator, as Fagg concedes, or even that it is light. If it is not light, the Creator, then how can light be said to be an electromagnetic effect? Rather than concede that electromagnetism is not light, Fagg prefers to say that "God is not light" [p. 109]. Fagg's work is marvelous, and was very helpful to me, but one can see that Steiner's work differs markedly from it in spiritual conclusion, while not rejecting its utility in the kingdom of matter. The distinction is not unlike that made by Christ, "Render … to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's" (Mt 22,21; Mk 12,17; Lk 20,25). If Christ is light, then light is not to be understood in Caesarean terms.)

Now think a moment what has happened. First scientists thought they knew what light was in reality—vibrations in the elastic ether. Then they said, "What we regarded as vibrations of the elastic ether are really vibrations of electromagnetic force." Only they do not know what these are! It is a highly interesting journey that has here been made from the hypothetical search for an unknown to the explanation of this unknown by yet another unknown. The whole assumption is hypothetical.

These things Steiner gave as background to move into other areas he felt necessary for an adequate understanding of the spiritual aspects of light.

He then performs an experiment portrayed in Figure 23 (placing a red glass in front of the left light only, as indicated). He shows that the right shadow is greenish even when looked at through a tube which shuts out the red surroundings from the viewer's vision. But when the red glass is removed the greenish color immediately disappears.

FIGURE 23