A Bibliography of Writings related to a Goethean Phenomenological Approach to Science - PART 1

https://www.natureinstitute.org/bibliography-of-writings-on-goethean-science

This is a partially annotated bibliography of books, book chapters, and articles, with emphasis on the life sciences.

General/Foundations/History
👉 Goethe: Scientific Studies; the Collected Works, Vol. 12
- Edited and translated by Douglas Miller (Princeton University Press, 1995)
- This is probably the most comprehensive collection of Goethe's scientific writings in the English language at the present.

👉 Goethe on Science: An Anthology of Goethe's Scientific Writings
- Selected and introduced by Jeremy Nadler (Edinburgh: Floris Books, 1996)
- A fine selection of Goethe's writings, often excerpts from essays, and also aphorisms, ordered by themes.

👉 Nature's Open Secret: Introduction to Goethe's Scientific Writings
- By Rudolf Steiner (Great Barrington, MA: Anthroposophic Press, reprinted 2000)
- These essays by Steiner, written between 1883 and 1897, still belong to the most penetrating elucidations of Goethe's scientific approach.

👉 Goethe's Way of Science
- Edited by David Seamon and Arthur Zajonc (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1998)
- This excellent collection of essays by contemporary authors considers both the philosophy of a Goethean approach to science and examples of practical application in different fields.

👉 The Wholeness of Nature
- By Henri Bortoft (Great Barrington, MA: Lindisfarne Press, 1996)
- A masterful philosophical introduction to a Goethean approach to science.

👉 Taking Appearance Seriously
- By Henri Bortoft (Edinburgh: Floris Books, 2012)
- Bortoft describes the pathway to a dynamic way of seeing and places it within the context of the development of modern science and philosophy.

👉 “Doing Goethean Science” By Craig Holdrege (2005)
- This article focuses on the practice of a Goethean approach.

👉 “Goethe and the Evolution of Science”
- By Craig Holdrege (2014)
- This article describes some of Goethe’s work in botany and animal morphology, and shows the relevance of his approach today.

👉 Goethe and the Sciences: A Reappraisal
- Edited by Frederick Amrine et al. (D. Reidel Pub. Co., 1987).
- This volume contains many excellent discussions of Goethe's approach to science.

👉 Goethe's Delicate Empiricism
- A special issue of the journal Janus Head that contains many articles on Goethe's approach from a variety of perspectives. Published in 2005.

👉 The Marriage of Sense and Thought By Stephen Edelglass, Georg Maier, Hans Gerbert, John Davy (Great Barrington, MA: Lindisfarne Press, 1997)
- A clear and concise discussion of a phenomena-based approach to science.

👉 Wonders of Development: In Plants, People, and Projects
- By Jan Diek van Mansvelt (Hillsdale, NY: Adonis Press, 2022)

👉 Goethe's Science of Living Form: The Artistic Stages
- By Nigel Hoffmann (Ghent, NY: Adonis Press, 2007)

👉 The Organism By Kurt Goldstein (New York: Zone Books, 1995)
- Goldstein's main work, describing his holistic approach to science; most of the examples are drawn from neurobiology. A classic.

👉 Toward a Phenomenology of the Etheric World
- Edited by Jochen Bockemühl (Great Barrington, MA: Anthroposophic Press, 1985)
- The contributions in this volume explore different applications of the Goethean approach in biology and physics. They were written for an audience familiar with Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy.

👉 The Romantic Conception of Life: Science and Philosophy in the Age of Goethe - By Robert J. Richards (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002)

👉 The Will to Create: Goethe's Philosophy of Nature
- By Astrida Orle Tantillo (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002)

👉 The Vortex of Life - Nature's Patterns in Space and Time
- By Lawrence Edwards (Edinburgh: Floris Books, 1993)

#steiner #goethe #goethean #spiritualscience

A Bibliography of Writings related to a Goethean Phenomenological Approach to Science - PART 2

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BOTANY

👉 The Metamorphosis of Plants
- By J.W. von Goethe (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2009)
- This new edition contains beautiful color photographs and an introduction by Gordon Miller.

👉 Goethe's Botanical Writings
- By J.W. von Goethe, translated by Bertha Mueller (Woodbridge, CT: Ox Bow Press, 1989)

👉 Thinking Like a Plant: A Living Science for Life
- By Craig Holdrege (Great Barrington, MA: Lindisfarne Books, 2013)
- This book shows how we can learn from plants to think in more dynamic and context-sensitive ways — the plant as a teacher of living thinking.

👉 Awakening to Landscape
- By Jochen Bockemühl (Dornach, Switzerland: Natural Science Section, Goetheanum)

👉 In Partnership with Nature
- By Jochen Bockemühl (Wyoming, RI: Biodynamic Literature, 1981)

👉 Metamorphosis of Plants
- By Jochen Bockemühl and Andreas Suchanke (Cape Town: Novalis Press, 1995)

👉 A New Eye for Plants
By M. Colquhoun and A. Ewald (Stroud, UK: Hawthorn Press, 1996)

👉 The Plant, Vol. I and II
- By G. Grohman (Kimberton, PA: Biodynamic Farming and Gardening Assoc., 1989)

👉 The Living World of Plants: A Book for Children and Students of Nature
- By G. Grohman (Fair Oaks, CA: AWSNA, 1999)

👉 Planetary Influences upon Plants
- By E. M. Kranich (Wyoming, RI: Biodynamic Literature, 1984)

👉 About Formative Forces in Plants
- By Dick von Romunde (Jannebeth Roell, 2003)

👉 “The Concept of Morphological Polarity and Its Implication on the Concept of the Essential Organs and on the Concept of the Organisation Type of the Dicotyledonous Plant”
- By P. Schilperoord-Jarke in Acta Biotheoretica vol. 45 (1997), pp. 51-63

👉 “Goethe’s Metamorphosis of Plants and Modern Plant Genetics”
- By Peer Schilperoord-Jarke in Goethes Beitrag zur Erneuerung der Naturwissenschaften, edited by Peter Heusser and translated by P. Schilperoord-Jarke (Bern: Verlag Paulhaupt, 2000)

#steiner #goethe #goethean #spiritualscience

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ZOOLOGY

👉 Seeing the Animal Whole — And Why it Matters
- By Craig Holdrege (Lindisfarne Books; 2021)

👉 Threefoldness in Humans and Mammals: Toward a Biology of Form (2 Volumes)
- By Wolfgang Schad (Ghent, NY: Adonis Press, 2020)

👉 Do Frogs Come from Tadpoles? Rethinking Origins in Development and Evolution
- By Craig Holdrege (Great Barrington, MA: Evolving Science Association, 2017)

👉 The Giraffe’s Long Neck: From Evolutionary Fable to Whole Organism
- By Craig Holdrege (Ghent, NY: The Nature Institute, 2005)

👉 The Flexible Giant: Seeing the Elephant Whole
- By Craig Holdrege (Ghent, NY: The Nature Institute, 2003)

👉 “Horns, Hooves, Spots, and Stripes: Form and Pattern in Mammals”
- By Mark Riegner in Orion vol. 4, pp. 22-35 (1985)

👉 “Essays in Philosophical Zoology: The Living Form and the Seeing Eye”
- By Adolf Portmann in Problems in Contemporary Philosophy, Vol. 20 (Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1991)

👉 Animal Forms and Patterns
- By Adolf Portmann (New York: Schocken Books, 1967)

#steiner #goethe #goethean #spiritualscience

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HUMAN BIOLOGY

👉 Functional Morphology: The Dynamic Wholeness of the Human Organism
- By Johannes Rohen (Ghent, NY: Adonis Press, 2007)

👉 From Mechanism to Organism: Enlivening the Study of Human Biology
- By Michael Holdrege (Hudson, NY: Waldorf Publications, 2022)

👉 The Heart and Circulation: An Integrative Model
- By Branko Furst (Cham, Switzerland: Springer Nature Switzerland, Second Edition, 2020)

👉 The Dynamic Heart and Circulation
- Edited by Craig Holdrege (Fair Oaks, CA: AWSNA, 2002)

👉 Living With Your Body
- By Walther Buehler (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1996)

👉 Bolk Companions to the Practice of Medicine
- Published by The Louis Bolk Institute in the Netherlands, on topics such as anatomy, physiology, embryology, and biochemistry. They address the multitude of facts in medical textbooks in the context of a phenomenological approach.

#aether #steiner #goethe #goethean #spiritualscience

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ECOLOGY

👉 The Earth's Face
- By E. Pfeiffer (East Grinstead, UK: The Langthorn Press, 1988)

👉 Eco-Geography
- By Andreas Suchantke (Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 2001)

👉 Moon Rhythms in Nature
- By Klaus-Peter Endres and Wolfgang Schad (Edinburgh: Floris Books, 1997)

👉 “Toward a Holistic Understanding of Place: Reading a Landscape Through its Flora and Fauna”
- By Mark Riegner in Dwelling, Seeing, and Designing, D. Seamon, ed. (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1993)

#aether #steiner #goethe #goethean #spiritualscience

A Bibliography of Writings related to a Goethean Phenomenological Approach to Science - PART 6

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GENETICS & GENETIC ENGINEERING

👉 Genetics and the Manipulation of Life
- By Craig Holdrege (Hudson, NY: Lindisfarne Press, 1996)

👉 Beyond Biotechnology
- By Craig Holdrege and Steve Talbott (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2008)

👉 “Genetic Engineering and the Intrinsic Value and Integrity of Animals and Plants”
- Edited by David Heaf & Johannes Wirz (Ifgene, 2002)
- Proceedings of a Workshop at the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, UK 18-21 September 2002.

👉 The Future of DNA
- Edited by Johannes Wirz and Edith Lammerts von Bueren (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997)

👉 “Progress Toward Complementarity in Genetics”
- By Johannes Wirz (1998)

#aether #steiner #goethe #goethean #spiritualscience

A Bibliography of Writings related to a Goethean Phenomenological Approach to Science - PART 7

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EVOLUTION

👉 Do Frogs Come from Tadpoles? Rethinking Origins in Development and Evolution
- By Craig Holdrege (Great Barrington, MA: Evolving Science Association, 2017)

👉 On the Origin of Autonomy
- By Bernd Rosslenbroich (Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2014)

👉 Metamorphosis: Evolution in Action
- By Andreas Suchantke (Ghent, NY: Adonis Press, 2009)

👉 Thinking Beyond Darwin
- By E.M. Kranich (Hudson, NY: Lindisfarne Press, 1999)

👉 Developmental Dynamics
- By J. Verhulst (Ghent, NY: Adonis Press, 2003)

👉 “The Theory of Increasing Autonomy in Evolution: A Proposal for Understanding Macroevolutionary Innovations”
- By Bernd Rosslenbroich in Biology and Philosophy vol. 24, pp. 623-44. (2009)

👉 The Spirit in Human Evolution
- By Martyn Rawson (Fair Oaks, CA: AWSNA, 2003)

👉 Hope, Evolution, and Change
- By John Davy (Stroud, UK: Hawthorn Press, 1986)

👉 Childhood and Human Evolution
- By Friedrich Kipp (Ghent, NY: Adonis Press, 2005)

#aether #steiner #goethe #goethean #spiritualscience

A Bibliography of Writings related to a Goethean Phenomenological Approach to Science - PART 8

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COLOUR & LIGHT

👉 Theory of Colours
- By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1970; reprint of original English translation from 1840)

👉 Seeing Colour: A Journey Through Goethe’s World of Colour
- By Nora Löbe, Matthias Rang, Troy Vine (Edinburgh: Floris Books, 2022)

👉 What is Colour?
- By Michael Wilson (Berlin: Logos Verlag, 2018)

👉 Rainbows, Halos, Dawn and Dusk: The Appearance of Color in the Atmosphere and Goethe's Theory of Colors
- By Johannes Kühl (Ghent, NY: Adonis Press, 2016)

👉 Catching the Light
- By Arthur Zajonc (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993)

👉 Goethe Contra Newton: Polemics and the Project for a New Science of Color
- By Dennis L. Sepper (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988)

👉 “Exploratory Experimentation: Goethe, Land, and Color Theory”
- By Neil Ribe and Friedrich Steinle in Physics Today (July 2002)

👉 “Goethe’s Theory of Color and Scientific Intuition”
- By Arthur Zajonc in American Journal of Physics vol. 44, p. 327ff (1976)


#aether #steiner #goethe #goethean #spiritualscience

A Bibliography of Writings related to a Goethean Phenomenological Approach to Science - PART 9

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ASTRONOMY

👉 Sky Phenomena: A Guide to Naked Eye Observation of the Stars
- By Norman Davidson (Hudson, NY: Lindisfarne Press, 1993)

👉 Astronomy: An Introduction
- By Hermann von Baravalle (Fair Oaks, CA: Rudolf Steiner College Press, 2000)


#aether #steiner #goethe #goethean #spiritualscience

A Bibliography of Writings related to a Goethean Phenomenological Approach to Science - PART 10

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GENERAL PHYSICS

👉 Forming Concepts in Physics
- By Georg Unger (Spring Valley, NY: Parker Courtney Press, 1995)

#aether #steiner #goethe #goethean #spiritualscience

A Bibliography of Writings related to a Goethean Phenomenological Approach to Science - PART 11

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FLUID DYNAMICS
👉 Sensitive Chaos
- By Theodore Schwenk (New York: Schocken Books, 1978)

👉 Water: The Element of Life
- By Theodore Schwenk and Wolfram Schwenk (Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1989)

#aether #steiner #goethe #goethean #spiritualscience

A Bibliography of Writings related to a Goethean Phenomenological Approach to Science - PART 12

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TEACHING PHENOMOLOGICAL SCIENCE & MATHEMATICS

👉 To the Infinite and Back Again: A Workbook in Projective Geometry
- By Henrike Holdrege (Great Barrington, MA: Evolving Science Association, 2019)

👉 Teaching Physics Phenomenologically: Electricity and the Practice of Embodied Learning
- By Wilfried Sommer (Kassel, Germany: Pädagogische Forschungsstelle, 2019)

👉 From Mechanism to Organism: Enlivening the Study of Human Biology
- By Michael Holdrege (Hudson, NY: Waldorf Publications, 2022)

👉 A Phenomena-Based Physics
- By Manfred von Mackensen (Fair Oaks, CA: AWSNA, 1994); Vol. 1: grade 6; Vol. 1: grade 7; Vol. 3: grade 8

👉 Phenomenological Organic Chemistry
- By Manfred von Mackensen (Fair Oaks, CA: AWSNA, 2009); grade 9 Chemistry

👉 Sensible Physics Teaching
- By Michael D'Aleo and Stephan Edelglass (Spring Valley, NY: Parker Courtney Press, 1999); for grades 6-8

👉 Fundamentals for Phenomenological Study of Chemistry
- By Frits Julius (Fair Oaks, CA: AWSNA, 2000); for grades 10-12

👉 The Wonders of Waldorf Chemistry
- By David Mitchell (Fair Oaks, CA: AWSNA, 2001); for grades 7-9

#aether #steiner #goethe #goethean #spiritualscience

Dialogical Knowing Excerpts from Goethe's Writings
https://www.natureinstitute.org/s/Dialogical-Knowing.pdf

👉 From The Undertaking Justified

" When we human beings confront nature, we may at first experience a tremendous urge to bring the objects of observation under our control. Before long, however, these objects will thrust themselves upon us with such force that, in turn, we will feel the need to acknowledge their power and revere their effects. When we are convinced of this mutual interaction, we can perceive a two-fold limitlessness: among the objects, manifold ways of being and becoming in all their living interactions; in ourselves, the potential for infinite growth of our sensibilities and judgments by cultivating ever new forms of receptivity and counteraction.

These conditions provide much enjoyment and would bring the last touch of happiness in life if not for certain inner and outer obstacles on this beautiful pathway to perfection. The years, providers at first, now begin to take. To a degree we are satisfied with what we have gained and enjoy it all the more quietly, since it seldom meets with any genuine, open and vital expression of interest from without.

How few are those who feel themselves inspired by what is visible to the spirit alone! Our senses, our feelings, our disposition exercise far greater power over us, and rightly so, since we are dependent on life and not on reflection.

Unfortunately, even among individuals devoted to cognition and knowledge do we seldom find the desired degree of interest. For people of practical mind — who note details, observe precisely, and draw distinctions — what arises from an idea and leads back to it is viewed as an encumbrance. They feel in their own way at home in this labyrinth and have no interest in a thread that might more quickly lead through it. A metal that has not become a coin and remains uncounted is a burdensome possession. In contrast, someone with a higher vantage point easily disdains the particular and makes a lethal generality out of a concrete life."


👉 From The Intent Introduced

"When we observe objects of nature, especially those that are alive, and desire to gain insight into the relation between their inner nature and their doings, we may believe that the best way to gain knowledge is to divide things into their constituent parts. Such an approach may, in fact, lead us far. A few words suffice to acknowledge the contributions of chemistry and anatomy toward an understanding and overview of nature.

But these attempts to analyze, carried to an extreme, also produce many adverse effects. To be sure, what is alive can be dissected into its parts, but from these parts it is impossible to restore it and bring it back to life. This is true even of many inorganic substances, not to mention organic bodies.

Scientific minds of every epoch have, therefore, also exhibited an urge to understand living formations as such, to grasp their outer, visible, and tangible parts in context, to see these parts as an indication of what lies within and thereby to take hold of and behold the whole. It is no doubt unnecessary to describe in detail the close relationship between this scientific desire and our need for art and imitation.

The history of art, knowledge, and science has produced many attempts to establish and develop a discipline that we will call “morphology.” The historical part of our discourse will deal with the different forms in which these attempts have appeared.

The Germans have a word for a real being’s complex of existence: Gestalt [structured form]. With this expression they abstract from what is dynamic and assume that an interconnected whole, when identified, is self-contained and fixed in character. But if we look at all these Gestalten, especially the organic ones, we will discover that nothing in them is permanent, nothing is at rest or self-contained — everything is in a flux of continual motion. This is why German frequently and fittingly makes use of the word Bildung [formation] to describe what has been brought forth and what is in the process of becoming as well.

When introducing morphology, therefore, we should not speak of Gestalt. If we do use the term, we should at least refer only to an idea, concept, or experience held fast for a moment in time. What is formed will be reformed again. If we want to behold nature in a living way, we must follow her example and become as mobile and malleable as nature herself."


👉 from Toward a General Comparative Approach (1790–94)

"The statement “The fish exists for the water” seems to me to say far less than “The fish exists in the water and by means of the water.” The latter statement expresses more clearly what the former obscures: namely, the existence of a creature we call “fish” is only possible under the conditions of an element we call “water” — it not only exists in that element, but also develops there.

The same holds true for all other creatures. The initial and very general observation on what works from within outward and what works from without inward would be as follows: The culminating Gestalt is, as it were, the inner core that has been molded in various ways by the characteristics of the outer element. Thereby the animal retains purposefulness in relation to the outer world since it is shaped from without as well as from within. And this is all the more natural because the outer element can shape the external form more easily than the internal core. We can see this most clearly in the various species of seals in which the exterior has taken on a fish-like form even though the skeleton still retains all the features of a quadruped….

We raise our deliberation to a higher level when we consider the structured world itself as an interrelationship of many elements. The entire plant world, for example, will appear to us as a vast sea that is as necessary to the existence of individual insects as the oceans and rivers are to the existence of individual fish. And we will see that an enormous number of living creatures are born and nourished in this ocean of plants. Ultimately we will see the whole world of animals as a great element in which one species is created, or at least sustained, by and through another. We will no longer think of connections and relationships in terms of providence or purpose. Rather, we progress in understanding only by discovering how formative nature expresses itself from all sides and in all directions. We will find through experience and through the advance of science that the most concrete and far-reaching benefits for humanity come from an intense and selfless effort that neither demands its reward at the end of a weeks’ labor, nor needs to produce some useful result for humanity after a year, a decade, or even a century."


👉 from Significant Help Given by an Ingenious Turn of Phrase (1823)
In his Anthropology, Dr. Heinroth … speaks favorably of my work; in fact, he calls my approach unique and says that my thinking works objectively. Here he means that my thinking does not separate itself from objects; that the elements of the objects, the perceptions of the objects, flow into my thinking and are fully permeated by it; that my perception itself is a thinking, and my thinking a perception….

I must admit that I have long been suspicious of the great and significant-sounding task: “know thyself.” It has always seemed to me a deception of a secret order of priests who wished to confuse human beings with unreachable demands, and to divert attention from activity in the outer world to some inner and false contemplation. As human beings, we know ourselves only insofar as we know the world; we perceive the world only in ourselves, and ourselves only in the world. Every new object, clearly beheld, opens up a new organ in us.

Those fellow humans can be most helpful who have the advantage to compare us with the world as they see it from their point of view. They thereby attain a closer knowledge of us than we ourselves are in a position to gain….

Stimulated by these very considerations, I continued in my self-examination, and found that my whole method relies on derivation. I persist until I have discovered a pregnant point from which much may be derived, or rather — since I am careful in my work and observations — one that yields much freely of its own accord. If I discover in experience some phenomenon that I cannot derive, I let it stand as a problem. This approach has proven quite advantageous during my long life. When after a long time I could still not decipher the origin and connections of some phenomena, and I had to put the problem aside, years later at one moment the relationships became clear in the most wonderful way."

👉 Epirrhema (published 1827)

When considering nature
Attend always to the one and to the many;
Nothing is inside, nothing is outside:
Since what is inside is also outside.
So behold without delay
The holy open secret!
Enjoy the true appearance [semblance]
And the serious game;
Nothing alive is a one,
Always it’s a many.

NOTE: Translations by Craig Holdrege. To translate the prose texts, in addition to working carefully with the German essays, Douglas Miller’s translations in Goethe: The Scientific Studies (Princeton U. Press, 1995) were consulted for wording and phrasing.

Exercises with Polarity | Henrike Holdrege
- From In Context #46 (Fall, 2021)
- https://www.natureinstitute.org/in-context-46/henrike-holdrege/exercises-with-polarity

"We’re pleased to share an excerpt from Henrike Holdrege's new publication To the Infinite and Back Again, Part II — A Workbook in Projective Geometry, the companion volume to Part I published in 2019.

Building on the first volume, in Part II of this practice-based introduction to projective geometry, Henrike introduces and works extensively and intensively with the fundamental idea of polarity. Through a wealth of exercises, illustrated with Henrike’s drawings, the reader learns to see how every form has, implicitly, a polar opposite form that is related to it. Here we give you an intimation of the expansive tapestry of thought that those who work through the book can enter and begin to weave for themselves:

The blue disk is the “inner” of the growing point-circle. Shading the disk allows me to convey that all points within the circle have taken part in the growth process so far. The “inner” of the point-circle is “filled” with points. The “inside” of the corresponding tangent-circle is filled with lines and cannot be shown as easily. The figure shows only a few of the tangents of the tangent-circle itself. All lines that surround the circle make up its “inside.” All surrounding lines have taken part in the growth process so far.

This imagination exercise allows us to expand our concepts of “inside” and “outside.” We can develop the concept of an “inside” that is centered in the periphery. The peripheral perspective complements the point-centered one. It challenges us in our thinking. The reality of an “inside” centered in the periphery is difficult to express in words.

The characteristics of a curve determine in every detail the characteristics of the polar opposite curve. [The light blue curve inside the inner circle is polar opposite to the yellow curve.] In all of the exercises in this chapter, we realize how important the concepts of point at infinity and line at infinity are. Without them, a geometry of polar opposite curves would not exist. The concept “at infinity” is not a question of distance. It is not a question of something being very far away, something growing infinitely large, something being beyond measure. It is not a question of measurable quantity at all. Rather, it is a question of completeness or wholeness.

Through projective geometry, the wholeness of a parabola or of a hyperbola, for instance, become tangible. Even though we reach the limits of our ability of mental picturing, we can grasp these forms with full inner clarity.

A “whole,” as the saying goes, is more than the sum of the parts. But what does “more” actually mean? Wholeness is not available to us in the way the parts are. Wholeness is in and through the parts, but is not “another part.” Parts we can measure; wholeness we cannot measure. It is of a different nature, and we need to develop a new way of knowing if we wish to catch a glimpse of wholeness."

#goethean #projectivegeometry

Whitehead and the Free Energy Principle: On the Physics and Metaphysics of Information

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uttC8KbOqws

A dialogue discussing this paper: Di Paolo, E., Thompson, E., & Beer, R. (2022). 'Laying down a forking path: Tensions between enaction and the free energy principle.' In "Philosophy and the Mind Sciences".

This discussion covers a huge range of intellectual and philosophical topics that consider the subtle relationship between sacred geometry, energy, and the essential nature of the cosmos, right through to practical considerations of weather phenomenon and environmental effects. It introduces intricate ideas such as the nature of information structure, the free energy principle, operational closedness, and the importance of realism vs. antirealism, as the concept of operational closure and the importance of realism versus anti-realism. This much interdisciplinary dialogue reaches towards biochemistry and cognitive sciences, through metaphysics and contemporary physics—common in the inspirational expression to touch base with deeper principles holding consciousness and cosmos.

Linked Papers:
- Laying down a forking path: Tensions between enaction and the free energy principle

Paper Abstract: "Several authors have made claims about the compatibility between the Free Energy Principle (FEP) and theories of autopoiesis and enaction. Many see these theories as natural partners or as making similar statements about the nature of biological and cognitive systems. We critically examine these claims and identify a series of misreadings and misinterpretations of key enactive concepts. In particular, we notice a tendency to disregard the operational definition of autopoiesis and the distinction between a system’s structure and its organization. Other misreadings concern the conflation of processes of self-distinction in operationally closed systems and Markov blankets. Deeper theoretical tensions underlie some of these misinterpretations. FEP assumes systems that reach a non-equilibrium steady state and are enveloped by a Markov blanket. We argue that these assumptions contradict the historicity of sense-making that is explicit in the enactive approach. Enactive concepts such as adaptivity and agency are defined in terms of the modulation of parameters and constraints of the agent-environment coupling, which entail the possibility of changes in variable and parameter sets, constraints, and in the dynamical laws affecting the system. This allows enaction to address the path-dependent diversity of human bodies and minds. We argue that these ideas are incompatible with the time invariance of non-equilibrium steady states assumed by the FEP. In addition, the enactive perspective foregrounds the enabling and constitutive roles played by the world in sense-making, agency, development. We argue that this view of transactional and constitutive relations between organisms and environments is a challenge to the FEP. Once we move beyond superficial similarities, identify misreadings, and examine the theoretical commitments of the two approaches, we reach the conclusion that far from being easily integrated, the FEP, as it stands formulated today, is in tension with the theories of autopoiesis and enaction."

#whitehead

Awakening Inner Light - Our Enigmatic Visual Ray
by Thomas Joseph Brown

https://www.alkemix.art/p/awakening-inner-light

"Like a lighthouse beam, our visual ray illumines the path where Nature meets our souls, casting its radiance beyond the borders of perception, guiding our organs of cognition through the flowing currents of existence, to the true essence of life."

“This immediate affinity between light and the eye will be denied by none; to consider them identical in substance is less easy to comprehend. It will be more intelligible to assert that a dormant light resides in the eye, and that this light can be excited by the slightest cause from within or from without. In darkness we can, by an effort of imagination, call up the brightest images; in dreams, objects appear to us as in broad daylight; if we are awake, the slightest external action of light is perceptible, and if the organ suffers a mechanical impact light and colours spring forth.” — Goethe

Question: How are the sun neutrinos gathered/distributed along the earth’s latitude?

A: They are distributed even;y along the latitude but simple geometric considerations suggest that you will get less neutrino input when you are standing at the equator and more when you are lying down. Opposite will be true at the poles. Neutrino exposure will vary mostly at the equator on a daily basis as there is a greater volume of planet to absorb them at night.

Q: If the premise is they are the template for life/the life givers, their quantity will be directly proportional to human health.

A: Not necessarily- it depends how well we have adapted and whether there is a limit on the rate at which we can utilise the energy. Not a template but a neutral and consistent energy source.

How would:
- a lunar eclipse,
- a sun eclipse,
- an increased/ decreased sun activity influence the absorbed by the human body neutrinos?
- is there a “Faraday cage” against them?
- a lense to concentrate them in?

(👆 Kozyrev’s mirror - a special telescope in fact - seems to be the latter)

A: During a solar eclipse, the gravity of the moon acts as a lens and the neutrino stream will be concentrated in some parts of the eclipse footprint and depleted in other parts. Meyl links this to pandemics and earthquakes. No Faraday cage against neutrinos I don't think (you would die quickly anyhow). As far as I can make out, neutrinos are absorbed by water vortices and these are most prevalent in the capillary beds which is why blood flow is driven from the periphery not the heart. To increase energy absorption, keep the blood moving through the capillaries.

In this video 👇 the pupil of Kaznacheev and developer in NovGorodok of the Kozyrev’s legacy Alexandr Trofimov says that

A. beyond the 73’ parallel:

1. human brain activity and abilities get enhanced 10-fold, so an in-place-astronaut voyage could be done (in a Contact like capsule, remote viewing)

2. that there the laws of physics are different (for ex. no limit of speed as the speed of light).

A: Speed of light experiments are misinterpreted. Understanding of Meyl is required for this. There is no time travel with Meyl and the equations are irreversible in contrast to classical physics where things can go backward or forwards with the same laws. This means that there is no unique past for any given present, we have a time-like 'direction' to the universe and 'cause' is only one way.

B. Within the periods of minimal solar activity epidemics and bacteriological and viral (he still buys in this terminology) flair ups are observed.

——
- 1. That reminded me of Karl Von Reichenbach’s mid 19th century research on the “odic force” and somnambulism: in full moon the affected people acted most weirdly. (See link/photo 1)
les.

- 2. That made me think of the parasitic behavior (as being the parasites The driver for depressive and alike states due to the released by those neurotoxins) during full moon - those get more active, since our immune activity is seen decreased. (See photo 2; so that’s why the parasite cleanses are to be done during a full moon)

- 3. Which closes the circle coming back to Meyl’s solar neutrinos as the charge for our ATP batteries and so immune system.

The solar neutrinos are shielded by the opposite side of the Earth for the side from which the moon is observed when full.