260
Subtle Agroecologies
rather than in pure academic form. Much more can be found in my book Quantum Agriculture,
Biodynamics and Beyond ( Lovel, 2014).
THE ADVANCE OF WESTERN SCIENCE, FROM KANT TO GOETHE
Western thought has been considerably shaped by the adoption of Emanuel Kant’s epistemology –
the study of how we know what we know. Kant ( 1724–1804) was an influential German philosopher
in the Age of Enlightenment. His most persuasive work was Critique of Pure Reason, written in
1781, and his views continue to influence contemporary philosophy, especially in the fields of epistemology, ethics, political theory and postmodern aesthetics. Kant asserted that we know something
is real by seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting or touching it – and that there are no other means. So,
we can know the physical corpus of any plant, animal or human, but since we cannot hold its life
in our hands and measure its weight and circumference or its will to live, then the fact of its life
is not real ( Kant, 2017). Excluding the influence of life and values on physical reality may seem
strange in the twenty-first century, but in Kant’s time, phenomena beyond the five senses were categorised as ‘ imponderable’ and to be avoided. Kant’s epistemology coupled neatly with the ideas
of Pierre-Simon Laplace ( the French polymath who from 1799 to 1825 wrote Mécanique Céleste –
Celestial Mechanics ( Biot, 2009)) that the universe follows a precise calculable path, and the Kant/
Laplace cosmologies were far and away the predominant theories taught in western schools in the
late nineteenth and most of the twentieth centuries. This all seemed to make the pursuit of scientific
truth so clear and simple that physicists and mathematicians of that time believed they were on the
verge of understanding the totality of natural science, or at least the ‘ hard’ sciences like physics and
chemistry.
However, physics went from Isaac Newton ( who laid the foundations of classical mechanics)
and James Maxwell to the twentieth-century figures of Ernest Rutherford ( father of nuclear physics) and Einstein, Niels Bohr ( who paved the foundations for understanding quantum theory) and
Werner Heisenberg ( pioneer of quantum mechanics), Paul Dirac ( who contributed to both quantum
mechanics and electrodynamics) and Erwin Schrödinger ( who showed how to calculate the wave
function), and things clearly became more complex than they had previously seemed ( Becker, 2019).
Nevertheless, all efforts to form a ‘ theory of everything’ failed. But there also was Johann Wolfgang
von Goethe. Goethe ( 1749–1822) was a German writer, statesman and scientist of wide acclaim.
In his lifetime, Goethe’s scientific writings were often rejected by fellow scientists, though a bit
later quantum physicists like Heisenberg and Schrödinger found Goethe to be a rich source of inspiration. Goethe’s belief that the observer and the phenomenon were inseparably linked was especially at odds with his contemporaries. To Goethe, it was obvious that perception is limited to and
determined by our concepts. What is beyond our conception eludes our perception. Furthermore,
the observer chooses what to look at and how. People commonly attract those experiences they look
for most, whether out of desire or aversion. Other experiences pass them by unnoticed ( Steiner,
1988).
Here, Goethe’s thinking flies in the face of the popular Cartesian belief ( from René Descartes,
founder of modern philosophy) that reality is purely objective and the observer has no influence over
phenomena. But quantum theory vindicated Goethe as it found the observer, and his/ her measuring
instruments, are determining factors of what is actually observed. Observers seeking waves find
their non-local patterns, and those seeking particles find their locations. Both are indeterminate
until the observer looks. To some as yet unknown extent, we determine the realities we experience.
MAXWELL’S ETHER AND THE ETHERIC REALMS
In conventional physics, gravity is the first force and electromagnetism is the second. James Clerk
Maxwell ( 1831–1879) was a Scottish physicist, known for his formulation of electromagnetic theory. By combining electricity and magnetism, Maxwell and his colleague Michael Faraday created
Subtle Agroecologies
rather than in pure academic form. Much more can be found in my book Quantum Agriculture,
Biodynamics and Beyond ( Lovel, 2014).
THE ADVANCE OF WESTERN SCIENCE, FROM KANT TO GOETHE
Western thought has been considerably shaped by the adoption of Emanuel Kant’s epistemology –
the study of how we know what we know. Kant ( 1724–1804) was an influential German philosopher
in the Age of Enlightenment. His most persuasive work was Critique of Pure Reason, written in
1781, and his views continue to influence contemporary philosophy, especially in the fields of epistemology, ethics, political theory and postmodern aesthetics. Kant asserted that we know something
is real by seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting or touching it – and that there are no other means. So,
we can know the physical corpus of any plant, animal or human, but since we cannot hold its life
in our hands and measure its weight and circumference or its will to live, then the fact of its life
is not real ( Kant, 2017). Excluding the influence of life and values on physical reality may seem
strange in the twenty-first century, but in Kant’s time, phenomena beyond the five senses were categorised as ‘ imponderable’ and to be avoided. Kant’s epistemology coupled neatly with the ideas
of Pierre-Simon Laplace ( the French polymath who from 1799 to 1825 wrote Mécanique Céleste –
Celestial Mechanics ( Biot, 2009)) that the universe follows a precise calculable path, and the Kant/
Laplace cosmologies were far and away the predominant theories taught in western schools in the
late nineteenth and most of the twentieth centuries. This all seemed to make the pursuit of scientific
truth so clear and simple that physicists and mathematicians of that time believed they were on the
verge of understanding the totality of natural science, or at least the ‘ hard’ sciences like physics and
chemistry.
However, physics went from Isaac Newton ( who laid the foundations of classical mechanics)
and James Maxwell to the twentieth-century figures of Ernest Rutherford ( father of nuclear physics) and Einstein, Niels Bohr ( who paved the foundations for understanding quantum theory) and
Werner Heisenberg ( pioneer of quantum mechanics), Paul Dirac ( who contributed to both quantum
mechanics and electrodynamics) and Erwin Schrödinger ( who showed how to calculate the wave
function), and things clearly became more complex than they had previously seemed ( Becker, 2019).
Nevertheless, all efforts to form a ‘ theory of everything’ failed. But there also was Johann Wolfgang
von Goethe. Goethe ( 1749–1822) was a German writer, statesman and scientist of wide acclaim.
In his lifetime, Goethe’s scientific writings were often rejected by fellow scientists, though a bit
later quantum physicists like Heisenberg and Schrödinger found Goethe to be a rich source of inspiration. Goethe’s belief that the observer and the phenomenon were inseparably linked was especially at odds with his contemporaries. To Goethe, it was obvious that perception is limited to and
determined by our concepts. What is beyond our conception eludes our perception. Furthermore,
the observer chooses what to look at and how. People commonly attract those experiences they look
for most, whether out of desire or aversion. Other experiences pass them by unnoticed ( Steiner,
1988).
Here, Goethe’s thinking flies in the face of the popular Cartesian belief ( from René Descartes,
founder of modern philosophy) that reality is purely objective and the observer has no influence over
phenomena. But quantum theory vindicated Goethe as it found the observer, and his/ her measuring
instruments, are determining factors of what is actually observed. Observers seeking waves find
their non-local patterns, and those seeking particles find their locations. Both are indeterminate
until the observer looks. To some as yet unknown extent, we determine the realities we experience.
MAXWELL’S ETHER AND THE ETHERIC REALMS
In conventional physics, gravity is the first force and electromagnetism is the second. James Clerk
Maxwell ( 1831–1879) was a Scottish physicist, known for his formulation of electromagnetic theory. By combining electricity and magnetism, Maxwell and his colleague Michael Faraday created