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"So far at all events
as the macroscopic universe is concerned," Barfield writes in "Science
and Quality," "the world itself on the one hand and the way we perceive
and think on the other hand are inseparable. It must follow from that that,
if enough people go on long enough perceiving and thinking about the world
as mechanism only, the macroscopic world will eventually become mechanism
only" (RM 185). The reductionism of modern idolatry
has made Barfield's syllogism much more than a mere "as if."
Though the mechanization
of nature is, in a sense, lamentable (Barfield never hesitates to expose
the fallaciousness of mechanistic thinking1),
it is nevertheless instrumental to the evolution
of consciousness. For the mechanism of the modern world view, Anthroposophy
teaches,
does indeed
reflect the death-principle in the universe, but the death-principle is
itself indistinguishable to life, and particularly to human life. It is
to this death-principle that we owe the existence of a conscious mind in
addition to that unconscious mind which is hardly distinguishable from
life itself and is one in us with the life and instinctive intelligence
present in nature. (RM 185)
See in particular
"Science and Quality" (RM 176-86), "The Time-Philosophy of Rudolf
Steiner" (RCA 184-204). |
1One
example will suffice (from Saving the Appearances):
The new theory of inertia (in its early
form of 'impetus') assumed, for the first time in the history of the world,
that bodies can go on moving indefinitely without an animate or psychic
'mover.' It was soon to be stamped indelibly on men's imaginations by the
circumstances of their being ever more and more surrounded by actual artificial
machinery on earth. The whole point of a machine is, that, for as long
as it goes on moving, it 'goes on by itself' without man's participation.
To the extent therefore that the phenomena are experienced as machines,
they are believed to exist independently of man, not to be participated
and therefore not to be in the nature of representations. . . . all these
beliefs are fallacious. (51)
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