Theos-Talk Archives (December 2011 Message tt00002)

The souls of those who are drawn into vivisection are coarsened by engaging in the activity, it seems.  And from there, some are drawn into abortion of the human child, making a grotesque karma, methinks.

"Baconian and Goethean Science

"The true spirit of this kind of scientism can be illustrated by a telling metaphor coined early in this epoch by scientism's seminal spokesman, Francis Bacon. He said, propounding scientific experimentalism, that we must put Nature on the rack and force Her to answer the questions we put to Her. 
-- This figure will speak volumes to those who meditate upon it: We, seeking information for whatever motives, are to torture the Goddess who gave us birth and nurture, so as to cause Her, through unbearable pain and injury, to blurt out secrets which She, in her wisdom, conceals from the impure and self-seeking. 
-- In much of so-called "physiological research" and "medical training" this is hardly even a metaphor; the torture unto death is quite literal. The usual victims are animals, but all too many "researchers" are not above using human "subjects" when they can get enough power over them. 
And even a slight whiff of occult knowledge shows us a deeper meaning: The central rite of "Satanism" or "black magic" -- sometimes crude, sometimes sophisticated -- is the deliberate, ritual torture and killing of animals and, at a more advanced level, of human beings. When done in a precise way, this practice confers knowledge and power upon the practitioner; also, it affects the whole earth, hardening and rigidifying it, to the characteristic Ahrimanic purpose. Thus we can see the hordes of "researchers" and medical students -- who hurt, injure, and "sacrifice" animals -- as undergoing an unconscious, Ahrimanic black magic initiation, which hardens, brutalizes, and Ahrimanizes their souls, and through them also the culture, and even the earth itself. (Sacrifice is the actual word they commonly use, not thinking which "god" they sacrifice unto.) Vivisection is truly the archetypal act of modern science as it is generally understood and practiced.

In contrast to our Baconian science, there does exist a little-known scientific trend, inaugurated by the German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. In the general culture he is known primarily as the author of Faust; but he was also a scientist, known for (if known at all) the prediction of the discovery of the intermaxillary bone in Man, or, less often, for his anti-Newtonian theory of color. His mode of scientific thinking was quite different form the Baconian-Ahrimanic mode, and likewise he illustrated it with a telling metaphor. 

He said (in paraphrase) that we must approach Nature as a reverent lover, and, perhaps, She will whisper to us Her intimate secrets. -- The contrast to Bacon's metaphor could hardly be more stark. Also, the Goethean method of scientific investigation, in contrast to amoral experimentalism, is a method of self-improvement and self-development -- a reverent meditating upon the facts of experience, in the hope that they will speak. 

This scientific method has, of course, been all but buried under the Baconian-Ahrimanic avalanche, even in Goethe's own country. And it was no mere accident that Steiner's first professional appointment was to edit Goethe's scientific writings, in the Goethe-Schiller Archive in Weimar. 

Steiner and his successors have developed and expanded the Goethean method to an amazing extent, giving us a reasonable hope for renewed life in our deadened, death-dealing scientific culture. Steiner too has been almost totally ignored by scientists in the West, slightly less so in Central Europe. Also, the practice of Goethean-Steinerean science has vast implications for the soul of the practitioner, as well as for the whole earth. Spiritual science sees soul and spirit in Nature, in a real, practical way, completely consistent with the "empirical" facts. It reverently approaches the scientific laboratory as a holy place, and the experiment as a sacrament, as a revelation of the Creator-Spirits through the sacred symbols of Nature. This is consistent only with the moral development of the scientist, and with the furtherance of the Gods' plan of human and cosmic evolution."