Any science excluding the other two Orders, is only a partial science, a Frankenstein science, a Golem science, incapable of creating healthy new life.
Only a partial science celebrates one-sidedness. Only partial science celebrates creating partial-life, things half-alive. Only partial science celebrates paying researchers to avoid, exclude, ignore and not document, the social-moral consequences and ramifications of their research.
Unavailable in his day, the above unpacks Goethe's original intention in more pointed language.
Before we collect our pitchforks to storm the manor castle, let's have some empathy for Frankenstein's position.
Before the Enlightenment, The 'ghastly can of worms'
Systematic application of rational Thinking (Natural Science) began to spread more widely among intelligentsia, about 1650. When 1600s intelligentsia "woke up" and looked at the state of human knowledge, what did they perceive?
They perceived a ghastly can of worms: witchy rituals, rampant superstitions, gossip-as-truth, and scattered, diverse leftovers of non-functional, non-useful Alchemy. By 1650, "Enlightened" intelligentsia began exercising rational Thinking more and more systematically. The state of human knowledge was truly disorganized--even--never-organized, truly a 'ghastly can of worms" as viewed from a developed left-brain perspective.
What did the Enlighteners do? They went 180 degrees the opposite direction, towards left-brain-only-thinking, towards rationality to the exclusion of all other human intelligences. Frankenstein (1818) was written in part looking back on this tragedy. Going forward Dr. Frankenstein had multiple job offers. In the 1800s, in France and Britain, male-competitive thinking converged with Frankenstein left-brain-only science-thinking. This inaugurated corporate-commercial-science we know today. After WW I, it expanded internationally.
'Ghastly can of worms' as subjectivity and social responsibility
In Franken-science, the 'ghastly can of worms' is not just "superstition,' it's:
- Anything of a subjective, especially of a Feeling nature which cannot be measured with a machine,
- Any consequences of a social, moral, ethical nature, and
- Necessity to privatize Public Commons so natural resources can be exploited and sold.
Franken-science wishes not to measure social, moral, ethical consequences. Why? Because when they are measured, the cost of repairing-redeeming the Commons has to be priced into the cost of retail goods and services to the public.
If we don't measure consequences of a social, moral, ethical nature, maybe we can get away with off-loading their costs onto the consumer and/or the commons (example: plastic and trash accumulating in oceans).
dg- Iron Eyes Cody
When Iron Eyes Cody, a Native American, shed a glycerin tear for the litter despoiling his natural landscape, corporations led consumers to believe they themselves were 100% responsible for fast-food litter--not corporations generating throw-away packaging. Recycling fees should have been priced into all products. Without these social-environmental costs priced in, fast-food became so cheap to make and sell--litter was everywhere.
Now of course we call corporate "Keep America Beautiful" efforts "green-washing," Dr. Frankenstein in another guise.
To corporations and corporate-funded academic labs, First and Third Order Science is a 'ghastly can of worms' they wish to keep closed.
Without any of this modern rhetoric, around 1790, Goethe intuited the natural, lawful Pattern of experimenting, in the human experience, as converging...
- The reality and validity of individual subjective perceptions (First Order),
- The reality and validity of replicability of experiments by anyone, anywhere, at any time, regardless of subjective considerations and state (Second Order),
- The reality and validity of social-moral-ethical consequences and real-world costs (Third Order).
So how did science get side-tracked? For better and worse, the swing towards extreme one-sided, Spectator, non-participatory science was set in motion by Galileo and Bacon.
Similarities and differencesbetween one-paradigm- science and three-paradigm-science TO HEADLINES?
How much do Three Orders of Science share in common with the "hard science" of Galileo, Descartes and Newton? Quite a bit.
One-sided science is Dr.Frankenstein science
Rudolf Steiner a century later, recognized Goethe's synthesis as a solution to the one-sided, rigid, restrictive narrowness of left-brain-only, one-eyed "hard" science. Frankenstein scientists wish to avoid the other side of science experiments, how your experiments are changing you. Goethe wished experimenters to be open to this, to be benefitted by how exploring Nature was evolving-maturing their Inner Game of Life--my phrase, evolved from Tim Gallway, not Goethe's.
Goethe valued modern capacity for rational, objective, numerical thinking and analysis. He placed this capacity alongside, and in equal partnership with, right-brain poetic and artistic intelligences; including, our capacity to observe until--sometimes--Nature reveals itself in patterns new to humanity.
The way forward to whole-brained science was pioneered by Goethe. Building on Rudolf Steiner's legacy, a complete review of Goethe's science method and accomplishments was accomplished by Ernst Lehrs. Lehrs, a Waldorf high school science teacher and student of Steiner, did the heavy lifting transposing Goethe and Steiner into modern language In Man Or Matter (1951 first ed, 1985 3rd ed). No other book I knows persuades more successfully to move from "explaining Nature" towards "reading Nature," perceiving Nature, receiving Nature.
The 1951 first ed and 1957 second ed are famously free online in many places. The 1985 edition, revised and extended by two editors is preferred.
SIDEBAR ~ Jules Verne'sone-sided father
A biographical sketch suggests the character of conventional overly-Sherlock-Holmes thinking in l845. The person is Jules Verne's father. Jules' dates ate 1828-1905. The following suggests his father's generation of educated Frenchmen.
Life in the house of the lawyer Pierre Verne in Nantes, France, was correct and punctual. Every day at midday and in the evening, Father Verne checked all the clocks and the pocket watches in the house to make sure they were all keeping correct time. He knew the exact distance from his house to his office and had even calculated the number of strides it took him to get there.
Unfortunately Father Verne also knew the precise distance to the school of Jules and his younger brother, Paul, and how long that walk should take. Being late for school was an unforgivable offence (Jules Verne... Franz Born, 1964 p 13).
Dear Reader, if you had the benefits of a Waldorf K-12 education, it may seem science-fictional how such one-sided thinking dominated fledgling studies of medicine, psychology and K-12 education in the 1800s. Yet this is what happened.
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Goethean Holistic Science; Three Orders of Science We Use Every Day
Non-FictionThis is new Science, as if iNtuitive Feeling and Cultural Creatives Mattered (that's you and me). If we reach back 250 years, to the German playwright, poet and scientist, Johann Goethe (GER-tah) (1749-1832), Three Sciences are discernable: First...
