In
Context #1 (Spring,
1999, p. 4); copyright 1999 by The Nature Institute
One problem facing anyone who diverges from the vast body of conventional
scientific work has to do with naming oneself. "If you're not at home in
the mainstream, then where are you at home?" Sometimes there just is no
simple answer. We've found ourselves appealing at one time or another to
many different characterizations of our "home," including these:
- Holistic science
- Goethean science
- Phenomena-centered science
- Qualitative science
- Participative science
- Contextual science
Only "holistic science" is a widely used term—and its meaning, so much
compromised in various ways, remains vague to the general public, if not
to the practitioners themselves. As to what may be the most unfamiliar term
in the list, Rudolf Steiner, who edited Goethe's collected scientific works
and elaborated Goethe's methodology, once wrote:
To speak with Goethe: whoever thrusts forth a concept to delimit
the richness of life has no sense for the fact that life shapes itself
in relations.... It is, of course, easier to let a schematic concept take
the place of a view of full life.... Through such a process, however,
we live in empty abstractions....But [living] concepts are much more like
images or pictures that we take of a thing from different sides. The thing
itself is one; the images are many. What leads to a perceptive understanding
["inner beholding"] of the thing is not the focus on one image, but the
viewing of many images together. (from Goethe's World View, Mercury Press,
1992)
As for us, we will probably continue to jump from one term to another, depending
on context. And we will continue searching for the "inspired" terminology
that conveys to the public imagination something of the vision we are pursuing.
Meanwhile, we invite you to read through this newsletter—especially
the feature article by Craig on "Genes and Life: The Need for Qualitative
Understanding"—and form your own idea of this new science. The conscious
exercise of one's own activity in grasping the world is in any case central
to what we are talking about.
Original source: In Context (Spring, 1999, p. 4); copyright 1999
by The Nature Institute
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