rudolf steiner library newsletter: reviews ment that “thought is composed of electricity.” Haven’t many of our thoughts been degraded by beings whose function it is to take control of them, and who use the very energy of divine intelligence descending into human intelligence to do so? But we know that in the Michael age, “hearts begin to have thoughts.” We may be very confident that “heart thinking” is not an electrical composition. Mr. Francis’s attempt to reconcile Steiner’s public and private expressions about the atom is not designed to produce satisfaction or relief. It succeeds powerfully, however, in calling attention to what we do not fully understand. And what we do not understand is a gate through which we can go further spiritually—what Georg Kühlewind called a “sacred gate.” The second question is even more challenging: How would Steiner have viewed the quantum revolution that began in the year of his death? During Steiner’s lifetime, it had become “close to heretical” to question the notion that the atom, in something very close to the Rutherford/ Bohr model, existed independently. Atomic science was believed to provide an objective account of the world governed by deterministic laws. But following the quantum revolution, the border between subject and object had been blurred, determinism had fled before probability, and the Copenhagen Interpretation, initiated by Bohr, eventually won the field. According to his most brilliant pupil, Werner Heisenberg, Bohr’s own insights did not come from mathematical analysis or discursive reasoning, but from an observation of actual phenomena so open and unprejudiced that it was possible for him to sense relationships intuitively. Mr. Francis presents Bohr as a scientist with enormous spiritual patience, someone capable of remaining in the question and struggling to define it rather than answering it in a linear fashion. For Bohr, “the question and the answer grow together through the interplay of inner and outer.” His methodology was to grasp the outer world in a familiar way and then to penetrate further after learning inwardly to construct the purely mathematical aspect. His third step, in Steiner’s terms, would be “the entirely inner experience, like the mathematical experience but with the character of spiritual reality.” So far, Bohr’s methodology might suggest a modern version of Goethean science. But the comparison can be taken only so far, because the experimental methodologies employed by the leaders of the quantum revolution were made by intrusions into the natural world clearly
antithetical to the Goethean spirit. It cannot be sufficiently emphasized that for Bohr and Heisenberg, the scientific project was not to discover a reality behind the phenomenal world or to construct mental images of particles and waves to serve as substitute realities. The giants of the quantum era stand fast at the threshold, preventing the monster of all-embracing reductionism from sweeping the field. As Mr. Francis puts it, “modern psychology depends on physiology, physiology depends on biology, biology depends on chemistry, and chemistry depends on physics; and, deep down, the wonderful thing is that nobody understands physics.” Perhaps Niels Bohr was not, as Mr. Francis poses the question, a Goethean physicist. Certainly, quantum physics is in no way a proto-anthroposophical approach to reality. The atomic theory that came to flourish immediately after Rudolf Steiner’s death was initiated by scientists who, in the main, gave everything—often to the point of mental breakdown—for what they perceived to be the truth. The result of their efforts stands fast against the overwhelming lust in our day for determinism and reductionism. Perhaps one day, in ways that are not now apparent, it will lead to a science of the spirit.
Biomental Child Development: Perspectives on Psychology and Parenting By Frank John Ninivaggi, MD; Rowman & Littlefield, 2013, 512 pgs. Review by K. David Schultz, PhD, ABPP, FAACP Dr. Frank J. Ninivaggi, assistant clinical professor of child psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine Child Study Center and medical director of the Devereaux Glenholme School in Washington, CT, provides a thorough review of human physical and psychological development from infancy through childhood and adolescence to adulthood, which he refers to as “biomental child development.” His approach is consistent with the perspective evident in von Bertalanffy, Schaefer, and Buber. Utilizing an anthroposopher’s way of thinking without employing traditional anthroposophical language, Dr. Ninivaggi has crafted a comprehensive, professional survey of contemporary scientific developmental research expressed in modern, human-centered concepts. Remicontinued on page 62 summer issue 2013
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