Spiritual science
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Spiritual science refers to the application of scientific methodology to experiences or phenomena of mind, culture or spirit. Interest in such an application arose widely at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. In 1907, Wilhelm Dilthey described his aim of creating a "Science of inner experience, or spiritual science",[1] while Edmund Husserl wrote in 1935:
- It is my conviction that intentional phenomenology has for the first time made spirit as spirit the field of systematic scientific experience, thus effecting a total transformation of the task of knowledge.[2]
The term spiritual science is a translation from the German "Geisteswissenschaft" (pl. "Geisteswissenschaften"), which arose as a translation of John Stuart Mills' reference to "moral sciences". The term is also translated as human studies, the humanities, cultural studies or the social sciences.[3] Its literal meaning, however, is the sciences of the mind or spirit. It is not meant to be a branch of natural science.
Spiritual science is often used as a synonym for anthroposophy. The latter, however, refers more narrowly to the work of Rudolf Steiner and the movement connected with him, while spiritual science refers more broadly to any research that uses the methodology of science to explore cultural, human or spiritual experience.
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[edit] Nature of research methodology
The contents of perception are given by the objective world; the task of natural science is to generate concepts that correspond to this perceived world. There is no universal objective world of human experience, accessible to all, as there is of nature, however. Thus, in spiritual science, the scientific method must start with inner experiences generated by human subjects and not from a pre-existing objective world. Starting from subjective experiences, the challenge is to win through to an objective reality. The scientific method is thus necessarily reversed in its process, though its aim — to unify objective reality and subjective experience (ideas, concepts) — remains constant.[4]
Steiner saw, with other idealistic philosophers before him, in the content of thinking reflections or shadows of an objective reality; what is subjective in thinking is the distortion inherent in the reflection. Through actively perceiving the thought process itself, this distortion can be perceived and progressively overcome, thus leading the way to the direct perception of the objective world that lies behind thinking, as well as other inner experiences. Steiner suggested that thinking provides the most accessible starting point in inner experience, and that it is more difficult to perceive the objective realities behind experiences such as feelings and intentionality, though this would be a further goal of spiritual science.
[edit] Historical Foundations
Even before the rise of modern science, Thomas Aquinas and the Scholastics asserted the applicability of reason to the divine. They could thus be regarded as forerunners of late-nineteenth and twentieth century attempts to apply scientific methods of systematic investigation to inner or spiritual experiences. This began with Wilhelm Dilthey, who founded a systematic approach to the expanded sciences. Dilthey introduced the term "Geisteswissenschaften", variously translated as human sciences, cultural sciences, or spiritual sciences, into the philosophical discourse of his time (see his Introduction to the Human Sciences). He used this term to cover all fields treating human experience: history, cultural anthropology, qualitative psychology and sociology, philosophy, etc.:
- "The human sciences [Geisteswissenschaften] have as their comprehensive material all manifestations of life. These manifestations become comprehensible to us because they are imbued throughout with the relationship of their outward form to an inner nature....Only what spirit created, does it understand. Nature, the object of the natural sciences, comprehends that part of reality which arises independently of the activity of the human spirit [Geist]. The human sciences are concerned with all that is imprinted with human character."[5]
Two pupils of Dilthey carried his philosophical approach forward:
- Rudolf Steiner sought to treat inner experiences with methodological rigor; he gave his major philosophical work, the Philosophy of Freedom, the motto "Results of soul observations using the methodology of natural science".
- Edmund Husserl attempted to include physical, psychological and spiritual phenomena in his phenomenological philosophy. Husserl emphasized that all our experience originates in the psychological realm; thus, soul experience is primary for Husserl. From this, we derive physical and spiritual phenomena as secondary results. It was and is easy to misinterpret this as extreme subjectivism, an interpretation against which Husserl fought vigorously, clarifying his standpoint that, though I can only know the physical and spiritual worlds through my experience of them, nevertheless they exist and are objectively real.
Later phenomenological philosophers generally have not followed up Husserl's work on the spiritual level of reality.
Rudolf Steiner called his research Geisteswissenschaft, which has the triple meaning in English of the Humanities generally, of a science of the mind, and of spiritual science. He reported his evolving methodology in a series of books; of these, the most relevant are: The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity and How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds. He also reported on a vast number of research results, both in a series of books (e.g. Theosophy: An Introduction and An Outline of Occult Science) and in many lectures, about 6000 of which were transcribed and are now published.
Steiner's cultural-scientific research extended into nearly every aspect of human life; the major categories of his publications (those for which there are multiple published works devoted solely to the theme) include art, eurythmy, speech and drama, music, fine arts and architecture, art history, education, medicine, science, agriculture, sociology, Christianity and religion. His declared purpose was to bring a new foundation to human existence, and he certainly succeeded in bringing significant impulses to many realms, as out of his work has come a new kind of education, medicine, agriculture, phenomenological approach to science (often called Goethean science), jurisprudence, sociology, psychology, art, and other new directions. Central to his work is a unique view of the human being as a reincarnating, developing soul originating in a spiritual existence and indwelling a bodily organization composed of the physical body; a life and rhythmic organization; and consciousness. Steiner describes a complex interaction of destiny and freedom with considerable scope for free will.
[edit] Present-Day Work
There are a large number of researchers that have followed a spiritual-scientific methodology since Steiner's times, some examples being: Ita Wegman, Albert Steffen, Guenther Wachsmuth, Valentin Tomberg, Walter Johannes Stein, Alfred Meebold, George Adams, Carl Unger, Karl König, Ernst Kranich, Lawrence Edwards, Ehrenfried Pfeiffer, Bernard Lievegoed, Theodor Schwenk, Herbert Witzenmann, Owen Barfield, Sergei Prokofieff, Georg Kühlewind, Friedemann Schwarzkopf, Massimo Scaligero, Jostein Saether, John Allison, Jesaiah Ben-Aharon, Richard Leviton,Christopher Bamford, Jonael Schickler, Adrian Anderson, Al G. Manning, and Dennis Klocek.
The Templeton Prize is awarded yearly to a recognized scientist for "progress toward research or discoveries about spiritual realities". It has been given to John Barrow, Charles H. Townes, George Ellis, Holmes Rolston III, John Polkinghorne, Arthur Peacocke, Freeman Dyson and many others.
[edit] Problems of acceptance
The idea that the inner nature of human experience can be treated scientifically has not found any easy acceptance, especially in English-speaking countries. On the one hand, many who accept the existence of an experiencing soul, spiritual Being or beings see faith and revelation, not scientific research, as the primary portal to these.[6] On the other hand, many who see in empirical (outer) observations the sole route to legitimate truth and knowledge deny the very existence of a spiritual realm, and point to the inaccessibility of inner experience to outer observation.
Dilthey's work was largely subsumed under the wave of empirical sociology, psychology and history that followed him. This tradition consciously ignored all inner experience; for Dilthey, the essence of the human sciences was that they were bound up with inner experience.
Husserl's own followers were challenged to follow his approach to inner experience, which tread a path between pure subjectivism in the tradition of Berkeley and pure objectivism in the tradition of Locke.[7] Thus, his comments on "Geisteswissenschaft" have elicited little philosophical echo.
Steiner often did not cite his own research approach when reporting results. This has raised the question of the replicability of his results. In fact, even the methodology itself (insofar as he reported this) is extremely difficult to replicate. Steiner recognized this problem but seems to have been unable to train others to anything like his own apparent level of competence here.
[edit] Publishers of literature on spiritual science
(Note: this is by no means a comprehensive list)
[edit] Notes
- ^ Dilthey, Wilhelm, Das Wesen der Philosophie, Pt. I, 2b
- ^ Husserl, Edmund, Crisis of European Humanity, Pt. III.
- ^ Rickman, H.P., Introduction to Wilhelm Dilthey, Pattern and Meaning in History. Harper: 1961 p. 23.
- ^ Stein, Walter Johannes, Die moderne naturwissenschaftliche Vorstellungsart und die Weltanschauung Goethes, wie sie Rudolf Steiner, vertritt, in Meyer, Thomas (ed.), W. J. Stein / Rudolf Steiner: Dokumentation eines wegweisenden Zusammenwirkens, Dornach (1985)
- ^ Dilthey, Wilhelm, "Die Verfahrungsweisen, in denen die geistige Welt gegeben ist", in Die Philosophie des Lebens. Frankfurt (n.d.), p. 84.
- ^ Emmanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason.
- ^ Held, Klaus, introduction to Edmund Husserl's Die phänomenologische Methode I. Stuttgart 1985.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Dilthey, Wilhelm
- Introduction to the Human Sciences (Selected Works Volume I) ISBN 0-691-02074-4
- Pattern and Meaning in History. Harper, 1961.
- Husserl, Edmund
- Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. ISBN 0-8101-0458-X
- Phenomenology and the crisis of philosophy: Philosophy as a rigorous science, and Philosophy and the crisis of European man Harper: 1965. ASIN B0007DLQZ8
- Steiner, Rudolf
- Truth and Science (1892), ISBN 1-4253-4916-1
- The Riddles of Philosophy (1914), ISBN 0-910142-56-4
- Philosophy and Anthroposophy (essays, 1904-23), ISBN 1-4254-5655-3
