great video on Goethe as scientist (and Steiner)

Steiner as scientist, Goethe as scientist

An excellent investment of an hour. Art Zajonc talks about Goethe's scientific thinking about ten minutes in. He says Goethe fully expected to be remembered most for his science, not his great literary work.

In Goethe, Steiner found a shift from what was then, and, to some extent, continues to be  traditional science to a world into science behind the illusory world. Steiner found in Goethe a shift from transcendant realism (energy fields, energetic realities measured by traditional science) to a world full of qualities, a world of ethics, where feelings and values have their own standing as spiritual realities.

In Philosophy of Freedom,Steiner asks if it is possible to have true knowledge, can you be truly free?  Yes, Steiner believed. If you truly believe you can be free, on what basis do you act? Steiner found this thinking implicit, not explicit, in Goethe's scientific writings.

There will always be horizons, or limits, but you can't experience new aspects of yourself without rising to ever higher heights, if you don't do you work.

We can be known as the human being, for our potential of God-self.

Science in ways and measures was rejected by Steiner as being complete, but science today is consistent with Goethe's world view.  Steiner believed there is a broad knowledge of science, that embraces conventional science with spiritual, phenomenologicl science. Balancing the two spans of scientific inquiry was, essentially, Steiner's gift to the world.