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Subtle Agroecologies
If each ether creates the conditions for the next ether to arise, then the life ether depends on the
creation of time by warmth, space by light, and movement by tone to create coherence, thus forming living organisms with all four ethers which work together in unity within a boundary. Life ether
is the vitalising force of identity, containment and healing that permeates every living organism
within its cell wall, skin, bark or its outer integument. When this is lost, the organism dies. Author
and biophysical researcher Rupert Sheldrake calls this ‘ morphic resonance’, or the resonant coherence that sustains form and keeps it whole ( Sheldrake, 2009). However, Sheldrake’s work is more in
accord with Goethe’s epistemology than Kant’s and thus still lacks mainstream acceptance.
So from the Goethean point of view, the four dynamic, syntropic ethers create time, space,
motion and coherence, each of which is associated with the elements – fire, air, water and earth. The
warmth ether creates nature as an oscillation between past, present and future, just as subatomic
particles are found to go both forward and backward in time. All else follows. Critically, the light,
tone and life ethers are opposed by the entropic disorganisational forces of electricity, magnetism
and radioactivity, which tend to destroy the integrity of living bodies, eliminating their coherence,
paralysing their motion and creating an absence of space.
It might seem that Goethe’s belief that concepts are required for perception to occur has nothing
to do with agriculture. However, agriculture has long been perceived as a battle to wrest a living
from nature which fights back with weeds, pests, diseases and inclement weather. Our war with
nature has typically depleted its resource base with ‘ disorganisational’ activities. Ploughing led
to erosion, and adding nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium salts to soils over the last 100 years
has made these soils increasingly less fertile. Even though we started with soils rich in humus and
organic life, we ended up with soils so low in carbon that earthworms are now rarely seen. What
our farms lack most is vitality or life, or, what can be termed organisational, etheric forces. From
the Goethean point of view, the ethers, which are organisational and essential to life, reverse entropy
just as living organisms are islands of order amidst a sea of chaos ( as Schrödinger pointed out in his
biophysics lectures in 1948). This makes a study of the ethers an overdue investigation.
MY FARM JOURNEY
Since my early childhood in South Louisiana, I was aware of the environmental challenges that
were occurring around me. As the oil companies pumped, the tidelands south of us were subsiding. At the dinner table, my parents discussed our house going underwater if Greenland melted. I
was aware of the gradual trend towards extreme weather events even in the early 1950s. My family took long summer trips from Louisiana to the Pacific Northwest to visit relatives, back when
the roads were almost all two lane and rural. We saw lots of crops – along with flash floods, dust
storms, devastating erosion, grasshopper plagues and failed farms. The Oklahoma Dust Bowl was
history already, but my geography book had pictures of more recent and quite serious soil erosion
in Georgia. Though this was decades ago, even then farming had worn out and used up its most
basic resources, particularly soil and water. Weather affected soil loss and soil loss affected weather.
I was a city boy who had just a few summer farm experiences. Still, in 1970 I studied soil
microbiology as a biochemistry major, and at the time, I found it odd that there were no agriculture
students in our class. When I started farming, I assumed farmers knew what they were doing, so I
copied their examples by ploughing and discing my fields edge- to-edge. This didn’t work as well as
I had hoped; I had some hard lessons to learn.
Trying to farm an eroded and failed farm that held only 1.5% organic matter, in 1976 I grew a
crop of sorghum for syrup using conventional methods of ploughing and chemical fertilisation.
The sorghum crop was made into syrup, but the manner in which I grew it had such a negative effect on the soil biology – which already was quite poor – that it obviously could not be
farmed further this way. Fortunately, I soon realised that I couldn’t afford to grow any crop or
use any method that didn’t build life back into my soil. I already knew that soil fertility, from
the soil microbes on up, was the basis of every farm’s vigour. Somehow in the back of my mind,
Subtle Agroecologies
If each ether creates the conditions for the next ether to arise, then the life ether depends on the
creation of time by warmth, space by light, and movement by tone to create coherence, thus forming living organisms with all four ethers which work together in unity within a boundary. Life ether
is the vitalising force of identity, containment and healing that permeates every living organism
within its cell wall, skin, bark or its outer integument. When this is lost, the organism dies. Author
and biophysical researcher Rupert Sheldrake calls this ‘ morphic resonance’, or the resonant coherence that sustains form and keeps it whole ( Sheldrake, 2009). However, Sheldrake’s work is more in
accord with Goethe’s epistemology than Kant’s and thus still lacks mainstream acceptance.
So from the Goethean point of view, the four dynamic, syntropic ethers create time, space,
motion and coherence, each of which is associated with the elements – fire, air, water and earth. The
warmth ether creates nature as an oscillation between past, present and future, just as subatomic
particles are found to go both forward and backward in time. All else follows. Critically, the light,
tone and life ethers are opposed by the entropic disorganisational forces of electricity, magnetism
and radioactivity, which tend to destroy the integrity of living bodies, eliminating their coherence,
paralysing their motion and creating an absence of space.
It might seem that Goethe’s belief that concepts are required for perception to occur has nothing
to do with agriculture. However, agriculture has long been perceived as a battle to wrest a living
from nature which fights back with weeds, pests, diseases and inclement weather. Our war with
nature has typically depleted its resource base with ‘ disorganisational’ activities. Ploughing led
to erosion, and adding nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium salts to soils over the last 100 years
has made these soils increasingly less fertile. Even though we started with soils rich in humus and
organic life, we ended up with soils so low in carbon that earthworms are now rarely seen. What
our farms lack most is vitality or life, or, what can be termed organisational, etheric forces. From
the Goethean point of view, the ethers, which are organisational and essential to life, reverse entropy
just as living organisms are islands of order amidst a sea of chaos ( as Schrödinger pointed out in his
biophysics lectures in 1948). This makes a study of the ethers an overdue investigation.
MY FARM JOURNEY
Since my early childhood in South Louisiana, I was aware of the environmental challenges that
were occurring around me. As the oil companies pumped, the tidelands south of us were subsiding. At the dinner table, my parents discussed our house going underwater if Greenland melted. I
was aware of the gradual trend towards extreme weather events even in the early 1950s. My family took long summer trips from Louisiana to the Pacific Northwest to visit relatives, back when
the roads were almost all two lane and rural. We saw lots of crops – along with flash floods, dust
storms, devastating erosion, grasshopper plagues and failed farms. The Oklahoma Dust Bowl was
history already, but my geography book had pictures of more recent and quite serious soil erosion
in Georgia. Though this was decades ago, even then farming had worn out and used up its most
basic resources, particularly soil and water. Weather affected soil loss and soil loss affected weather.
I was a city boy who had just a few summer farm experiences. Still, in 1970 I studied soil
microbiology as a biochemistry major, and at the time, I found it odd that there were no agriculture
students in our class. When I started farming, I assumed farmers knew what they were doing, so I
copied their examples by ploughing and discing my fields edge- to-edge. This didn’t work as well as
I had hoped; I had some hard lessons to learn.
Trying to farm an eroded and failed farm that held only 1.5% organic matter, in 1976 I grew a
crop of sorghum for syrup using conventional methods of ploughing and chemical fertilisation.
The sorghum crop was made into syrup, but the manner in which I grew it had such a negative effect on the soil biology – which already was quite poor – that it obviously could not be
farmed further this way. Fortunately, I soon realised that I couldn’t afford to grow any crop or
use any method that didn’t build life back into my soil. I already knew that soil fertility, from
the soil microbes on up, was the basis of every farm’s vigour. Somehow in the back of my mind,