Towards an Adequate Epistemology and Methodology for Consciousness Studies
Contributions from Modern Physics and the Western Contemplative Tradition1
Arthur Zajonc
Amherst College and Kira Institute
The most persistent criticism of first-person methodologies in consciousness
research is the accusation of subjectivity. In what follows I will argue that recent
developments in science convincingly demonstrate that the objects of science always
arise in relationship to the perceiving subject. The subject or observer, therefore, is built
into the very structure of contemporary scientific inquiry in inextricable ways. Instead of
the illusory quest for the elimination of the subject, science achieves objectivity through
its legitimate search for an unbiased method of investigation and a coherent account of
phenomena that include the observer. After establishing observer dependence in
Einstein’s theory of relativity and quantum mechanics, I explore the positive potential of
a phenomenological approach for the scientific study of consciousness. I will draw on
contributions from cognitive psychology and the western contemplative tradition in order
to provide an adequate epistemology and methodology for the study of consciousness
without reduction to mechanism.
Impressive advances have been made in the study of consciousness in recent
years. This is due, in large part, to new non-invasive imaging technologies of value to
cognitive neuroscience. Yet for all this progress, two fundamental issues still confound
consciousness research, namely an adequate epistemology and an appropriate
methodology. Without an adequate epistemology one inevitably ends up confronted the
so-called “hard problem.” Without an appropriate methodology (or better, an array of
methodologies), one cannot include first-person or second-person accounts in the
research paradigm. Using a blend of modern physics and reference to the Western
contemplative tradition, I address these two issues.
The hard problem as it appears in consciousness studies is the reflection of the
mind-body problem familiar to us from dualist philosophies.1 Physics, chemistry, and
neuroscience provide accounts for the mechanism of consciousness but say nothing about
the experience of consciousness itself. Already in the 19th century Du Bois-Reymond
could write, “it is, indeed, thoroughly and forever incomprehensible that it could make
any difference to a number of atoms of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, etc., [i.e. the
human being] how they lie and move… There is no way to understand how
consciousness could arise out of their interaction.”2 While physics can say little about
conscious experience per se, it does offer a stunning refutation of conventional scientific
realism. Once we have turned aside from this untenable view we can entertain an
alternative that puts the observer and phenomena at the center of our attention. I
therefore begin by examining the place of objects and perceiving subjects in modern
physics. Then, in place of the conventional scientific worldview, I offer an alternative
that owes much to phenomenology and the Western contemplative tradition.
1
This work made possible by support from the Infinity Foundation and the Fetzer Institute.
1
Having suggested an epistemology that is better suited to both modern physics
and consciousness studies, I move on to the issue of methodology. Here it is a question
of understanding the differences between physics, biology and consciousness studies.
The research methods suitable for one area may well be unsuitable for another area.
Therefore a range of methodologies will, in general, be required for an adequate
exploration of the complex area of consciousness.
We can begin by treating the most mature area of science, namely physics.
Physics treats inert matter and the interactions that operate within this realm. Already
here we will discover the essential role of the observer, and the elusive nature of
“objective reality.” The lessons learned here are crucial for the development of a suitable
framework for the study of consciousness.
The elusive objects of modern physics
What are the things or objects studied by physics? Every individual has a unique
personal experience of the common objects that populate our world. No two observers
see the same thing, whether that thing is a fly ball viewed by thousands of baseball fans,
or a rainbow hovering within the spray of Niagara Falls. Yet from the singular data
available to us we have successfully developed a consistent, functional, and intuitive
understanding of the world that allows us to navigate through it with great success. We
successfully catch fly-balls; we move at high speed over long distances to far-away
destinations and arrive without incident; we construct intricate buildings and inhabit
them. Each of these is a marvel of spatial and temporal knowledge. Most of this
knowledge is tacit. It exists without a correct formal scientific theory of space and time,
but rather uses only a commonsense understanding that incorporates changes of
perspective and simple locomotion. We all know that things look different from different
viewpoints, even without a theory of perspective. Long before the 15th century artist and
architect Brunelleschi discovered single-point perspective, people were getting around
their villages, and even around the world.3 This implies some kind of mental
representation of the world, or, following J.J. Gibson, a reciprocal relationship between
world and perceiver.4 We experience the world as other than ourselves, and we naturally
grant it its own autonomous existence. We do not usually ask, What is the world like in
itself, apart from the way we happen to see it?
As we seek to address this question, our commonsense experience of the world
gradually gives way to a more abstract scientific conception of objects located in space
and time. 5 These objects are essentially independent of the observer, and are imagined to
possess an objective, intrinsic, three-dimensional nature. In addition they evolve steadily
and autonomously in time. The introduction of an observer is incidental to the object.
The observer merely projects a view of the object along a particular line of sight onto the
retina at a series of moments of objective time. Within this formal classical account
nothing important is lost by removing the observer – space, time and the objects they
contain can be conceived of as independent of any observer. In Newton’s universe
absolute space and absolute time are a given. The contents of a classical universe can
thus be completely described as it is in its own right, to itself, as opposed to how it
happens to appear to a sentient being. Classical science should provide a God’s eye
view, or, to borrow Thomas Nagel’s phrase, a “view from nowhere.” Its description
purports to be one that presents the way objects were “to themselves”, and not as they
2
happen to appear to an observer. Implicit in this view is a particular notion about the
world itself (ontology) and how we can come to know about it (epistemology).
Einstein’s relativity theory and quantum mechanics fundamentally challenged this
view of the world and of knowledge. It showed that the things of the world, or the
objects of the theory, are much more elusive than naively thought. To appreciate the full
scope of relativity’s implications would require a detailed exposition, but in the interests
of brevity two aspects must stand in for the rest – the relativity of simultaneity and length
contraction. After treating relativity, an even shorter account of the impact of quantum
mechanics on our conception of subject and objects will follow.
Relativity
In classical physics two events, A and B, either occur simultaneously of not. In
relativity theory this is no longer true. Whether two events are judged to occur at the
same time or not depends essentially on the frame of reference from which they are
viewed. Consider the figures below.6
Figure 1 shows a train car, traveling at speed V, whose two ends are struck by
lightning. The two flashes travel at the speed of light from A and B to an observer at C
located on the ground (not on the train) exactly midway between the ends of the train car.
The signals are experienced as two simultaneous flashes of light by the ground observer.
Thus the lightning will rightly be said to have struck the ends of the train car at the same
time (at least in the frame of reference of the ground observer).
Figure 1
Now consider the same pair of events from the viewpoint of an observer on the
train at its midpoint C’. Figure 2 shows that the light signals, which always travel at the
speed of light, will not arrive at the same time at C’. Rather, as shown by the dashed
circles, the light propagates from the ends of the train reaching C’ first from A’. Only
later does the flash from B’ arrive at C’. We can easily understand this as due to the
motion of the train advancing towards A and away from B.
3
Figure 2
Figure 3 shows how the lightning bolts will be seen by an observer on the train,
namely first as striking A’ on the right, and then later striking B’ on the left.
Figure 3
Note, however, that both observers will agree that the two flashes hit when A was across
from A’ and when B what across from B’, but they will give different accounts for why
this happened. From the unprimed frame S (observer on the ground), the two lightning
bolts struck the ends simultaneously when the two ends of the train A’ and B’ were both
4
aligned with points A and B on the ground. By contrast the observer on the train will say
no, the lightning bolts hit the two ends of the train one after the other. First the front was
hit when A’ was across from A, and later after the ground (not the train) has traveled a
distance L, the rear was hit when B’ was across from B. Moreover, in order to make
this all work out we must take into account the relativistic length contraction of the
ground distance AB when viewed from the train car’s moving frame S’. This shows up
in Figure 3 where the distances AB and A’B’ are different from one another.
The conclusion we are forced to draw is that the temporal ordering of events is
not an absolute. Two events can appear to occur at the same time or not depending
entirely on the relative states of motion of observers. Moreover, it makes no sense in
relativity to search for or to imagine that while appearances are relative there exists an
objectively true situation at a particular moment in time. The notions of before and after
have no absolute or universal meaning, rather they only take on particular meanings to
well-defined observers. In addition, as mentioned above, self-consistent, empirically
adequate accounts can only be given if we allow for relativistic length contraction and
time dilation. These two factors, taken together with the relativity of simultaneity,
challenge our conventional notions of space and time profoundly. For a more complete
treatment I refer readers to one of the many texts on special relativity.7
For our purpose I want to stress the essential place of the observer in the above
analysis, and the collapse of classical concepts of space and time in relativity theory.
Every scientific explanation is an account given by a specific observer. The objects of a
scientific account are always objects described or conceived within a particular frame of
reference, never as they are “to themselves.” The account given is cogent to the observer
and to others in the same inertial frame. That is, each particular account is consistent
with the laws of physics, but the accounts of two observers in relative motion will
generally disagree in fundamental ways. Only by making the appropriate (Lorentz)
transformation can an observer in one frame make sense of the account given by an
observer in a second frame of reference.
In relativity theory not only are space and time fluid, but so are such concepts as
electric and magnetic fields, or mass. In other words, the bedrock concepts of our
commonsense understanding cannot withstand the scrutiny of relativity theory
unchanged. Relativity presents us with the following picture of “reality.” For every
observer (or inertial frame) an empirically adequate account of phenomena will be
possible that is consistent with the laws of physics. These accounts will differ in
significant ways from one another, violating a commonsense, classical scientific
understanding of the world as comprised of stable objects whose spatial dimensions and
temporal evolution are independent of us. But if the scientist-observers know relativity
theory, then by a suitable translation of their accounts (by means of the correct Lorentz
transformation), they will understand the differences between their respective accounts.
They will have given up the idea of absolute space or time or fields, and rather work
within the more fluid framework of an observer-dependent theory of spacetime.
One can ask, is there nothing that is stable and observer independent in the
relativistic understanding of the world? The answer is formally, yes. If, for example, one
unites space and time into a four-dimensional spacetime, then invariants do exist. These
invariants do not exist in the phenomenal space of our lived experience, but we can
construct formal mathematical spaces that possess invariant structures of great beauty.
5
To be specific, the classical spatial length, s, of a three-dimensional object is given by the
Pythagorean theorem as
s2=x2 +y2+z2.
The classical length, s, above is invariant under rotations in 3-space, that is to say, the
length of a ruler does not change no matter how we spin it. This is no longer true
relativistically! The relativistic invariant is the spacetime interval, L, in which space and
time appear on equal footing. The interval L is given by
L2=x2+y2+z2-(ct)2.
In other words, if we wanted to imagine a “real” world whose objects possessed
something like the invariant lengths of space, or an invariant interval of time between
events, then we are required to combine space and time. In this view, objects don’t
“really” have a length, s, and likewise events are not “really” separated in time by an
invariant time interval. The only concept that persists in the face of relativity is the
spacetime interval L.
Are the new higher-level invariants such as spacetime intervals real? Are they the
objects God has in mind when he sees the universe from his view? Is this Nagel’s “view
from nowhere?” Physicists know that even the invariants of special relativity are not
good invariants under the class of transformations of the general theory of relativity
(diffeomorphisms). Therefore we cannot consider the spacetime interval to be an
ultimate feature of reality either. Is there a truly fundamental set of invariants? Do they
constitute the objective things of reality? I believe this to be the wrong way of addressing
this problem. Every time we have reified invariants of a theory in the past, they have
fallen to more subtle analysis. Relativity suggests that we adopt a different notion of
reality entirely. 8 Before turning to this, we can ask a similar question concerning
quantum mechanics. What is the relationship between observer and observed?
Quantum Mechanics
As I read it, quantum mechanics leads us to similar conclusions concerning the
intimate and changeable relationship between observer and observed. In a manner
analogous to relativity theory, the wavefunction describing a quantum system does not
exist in normal space and time but in a more formal abstract mathematical configuration
space. In order to make predictions we must define the details of the experimental
arrangement by selecting a “complete set of commuting observables.” In doing so we
define our particular frame of reference and how we wish to represent the wavefunction
in that frame. To Niels Bohr this fact changes everything. The particulars of the
experimental arrangement are now essential to a proper epistemology. Knowledge only
arises in relationship, and it makes no sense to think of attributes of an object apart from
the actual experimental setup designed to measure them. Bohr put it this way in one of
his late essays.
While within the scope of classical physics, the interaction between object and
apparatus can be neglected or, if necessary, compensated for, in quantum physics
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this interaction thus forms an inseparable part of the phenomenon. Accordingly,
the unambiguous account of proper quantum phenomena must, in principle,
include a description of all relevant features of the experimental arrangement…
The essential wholeness of a proper quantum phenomenon finds logical
expression in the circumstance that any attempt at its well-defined sub-division
would require a change in the experimental arrangement incompatible with the
appearance of the phenomenon itself.9
In other words we simply cannot think of attributes apart from the intentions of the
observer as constituted in the experimental arrangement. Moreover Bohr’s principle of
complementarity states that one experimental arrangement will necessarily be
incompatible with others; measure momentum and position is an incompatible
observable. This is, for Bohr, not merely a technical limitation but part of his ontological
framework. The world really is this way. Complementary attributes do not exist “inthemselves” hidden from our clumsy measurement attempts. Rather, it only makes sense
to speak of attributes at all once we have defined the particulars of (what he termed) the
“agencies of observation.” Phenomena arise at the dynamic and changeable boundary
between “object” and “agencies of observation,” and it will be these phenomena that take
center stage in my considerations.10 Einstein attempted to demonstrate that one could
indeed infer incompatible attributes through measurements on pairs of particles. Recent
EPR experiments have shown that no theory of the type Einstein wanted (local, hiddenvariable theory) can account for the phenomena. Various interpretations of EPR
experiments are possible, but all of them entail an delicate changeable relationship
between observer/apparatus (the agency of observation) and the system under study.
We can go further and take into account the feature of quantum theory termed
“entanglement” by Schroedinger. The experimenter’s frame and the system under study
then become an inseparable whole. This produces the so-called measurement problem.11
The boundary between observer and observed is even more ambiguous when viewed
through this lens.
All these considerations reinforce the essential place of the observer in physical
theory in Bohr “essential wholeness of quantum phenomena.” The traditional notion of
an “objective” observer-independent universe is an incoherent view from the modern
physical standpoint. The position, relative velocity, and experimental arrangement
associated with the observer are all essential to a coherent, treatment of phenomena. The
viable “objects” of an invariant reality are elusive at best. In fact, I would suggest that to
search for them is to mistake our theoretical representations for reality. A scientific
theory should be empirically adequate, but theory cannot provide us with a view of a
transcendent reality beyond experience. Our theoretical terms are, after all, couched in
the language of experience. Even fundamental particles have “properties.” We can be
satisfied with the treatment of phenomena offered by relativity and quantum theory
because they elucidate the relationships among physical phenomena in an extremely clear
mathematical language.12 We should be dissatisfied, however, with a theory that entails
transcendental entities.
Before assessing prevalent epistemologies against the facts of modern physics, I
wish to point out that the essential “subjectivity” of physics does not entail a lack of
rigor. Quite to the contrary, a rigorous analysis has led us to the conclusion that the
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subject cannot be eliminated, and that good theories includes the role of the observer in
an essential way. Therefore, in science we should view objectivity to mean free from
prejudice or bias, and reject its use to imply an ultimate observer-independent view on
the nature and the arrangement of things. We always find ourselves implicated in the
world, and any attempt to completely disentangle ourselves from that world will fail. We
should accept the inseparability of subject and object, and that an empirically-adequate
theory must include this feature. This suggests that we take an empirical or
phenomenological stance in science, one that values the data of experience fully while
granting theory its proper place as an articulation of the profound coherence hidden
within the phenomenal world. Einstein wrote, "The only justification for our concepts is
that they serve to represent the complex of our experiences; beyond this they have no
legitimacy."13 By taking an empiricist stance we resist the alluring temptation to treat a
particular reductionist account as anything more that a provisional, empirically-adequate
account of a certain limited domain of experience. It makes no deep claims concerning
the ultimate nature of things, but rather suggests that we value experience itself and the
coherence we are able to discern within it.
Towards an adequate epistemology
The philosophical position so characteristic of Western science (including
consciousness science) holds that the phenomena of consciousness are epiphenomenal
representations of a real world that is forever beyond experience.14 It is thought that
through careful experimentation and theory one can get behind the illusions of the senses
to a true reality, be it composed of quarks and gluons, or axons and dendrites. The
comparable position which dominated 19th century philosophy in the West was that
advanced by Kant. According to Kant the phenomena of lived experience are merely
representations of a transcendentally real world of noumena or things-in-themselves. By
definition, human consciousness cannot experience noumena. To do so would
immediately make them phenomena, that is, they would be corrupted by human
subjectivity. According to this position, the best one can hope for is to approach the real
noumena ever more exactly through one’s theoretical representation of them. The
theoretical description itself likewise needs to be sanitized of all subjective elements.
Therefore qualitative notions such as color, taste, etc. are excluded in favor of supposedly
objective and quantifiable features such as spatial extension, arrangement, position,
velocity, etc.
Science since Galileo has understood its task to be to provide an analysis devoid of the
qualitative aspects associated with phenomena. Galileo, Newton, Descartes, and Locke
articulated this now familiar goal of scientific theory. They sought to distance science
from the vagaries of subjective human experience by identifying what they felt were the
real, objective attributes of material reality and then to provide explanatory accounts
exclusively in terms of them. Primary qualities only, such as extension, mass, and
position, were considered to be “real” and therefore suitable for inclusion in scientific
accounts. But as many philosophers of science have pointed out, the distinction between
primary and secondary qualities is dubious.15 Galileo and others give little substantial
justification for considering one set of qualities as objectively real and another unreal.
We are certainly free to identify attributes suited to our theoretical treatment, and if we do
so wisely then the theory will prove powerful in various ways. However, in doing so we
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have not moved beyond qualities by limiting ourselves to a few, such as distance and
time, that are amenable to quantification. We should remember that measurement is
nothing more than a comparison (e.g. longer, twice as long, and so on) between the
qualitative aspect of one object and another which we take as the standard unit.
Moreover, our previous analysis of relativistic space and time does much to erode the
confident view held by Kant and classical physics that spatial distances and temporal
intervals were independent of the observer. From modern physics we know that
phenomena are best thought of as arising within the holistic context provided by the
measuring apparatus and its relative state of motion. This is not to say that we cannot
correctly infer the existence phenomena not yet experienced. This is routinely done in
science. What disappears from this view are transcendent metaphysical entities that are
without attributes, but which somehow produce these in perceiving subjects or their
instruments. Phenomena are central, in my view, to a coherent understanding of science.
We cannot get behind them to anything else. Qualia are not to be explained away, but
given a place of privilege, even in the mathematical sciences such as physics
Every science, if it would move beyond purely formal mathematical relationships,
must incorporate qualities into itself. All meaning inheres in qualities. The qualitative
connects the formal treatment with experience. Notions such as speed, wavelength, and
force ultimately derive their meaning from experience. Even the relatively abstract
concepts of electric and magnetic fields make physical sense because of the effects with
which they are associated. The less concepts are connected to experience (for example,
isospin and strangeness in the quantum theory of the strong interaction) the more formal
and abstract is our understanding of them. Science requires connection to a human
phenomenological world if it is to make meaningful statements. This suggests a stronger
form of empiricism, one that accepts the important place of lived human experience in
science as the basis for meaning. Therefore in addition to the weak inclusion of the
observer as demanded by relativity theory and quantum physics, I would suggest that the
meaningfulness of science itself requires the inclusion of qualities. Thus science cannot
legitimately turn its back on qualities. Rather, in pursuit of a trustworthy form of
knowledge, it can develop various ways of making them reliable. By this I do not mean
replacing qualitative experience with formal theory (although this may indeed be a help
at some stage of the inquiry), but instead we can seek methods that render phenomena
themselves trustworthy. In some instances instrumentation and quantification may be
called for, in other instances not. If our interest ultimately is consciousness, for example,
then we will require a means of investigation that is able to include the full range of
conscious experience we possess, and not rest content with a reduced set of
“consciousness variables” (read neural correlates) easily amenable to quantification.
The central purpose of this paper is to advance an alternative epistemological
framework and to examine methods of investigation that can be used to study
consciousness. I do not wish here to reframe the familiar territory of physics, although
one could do so. As we turn from physics to cognitive science, therefore, we can ask
which (if any) qualitative aspects of consciousness should be taken as fundamental? What
methodology should be adopted in order to bolster the reliability of the data and
subsequent analysis? What contributions can we expect from introspectionism,
phenomenology, cognitive and ecological psychology, or the contemplative traditions of
Asian and the West?16 The arena of conscious human experience has been explored for
9
some time within contemplative traditions, and each tradition has something to offer to a
non-reductive science of consciousness. Within this large subject I would like to focus
on two examples, the first drawn from cognitive psychology and the second examining
the experience of the Western contemplative tradition.
Objectifying the Subjective
Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) has been used for decades by physicists and
chemists in the analysis of complex physical and chemical materials and the processes
they undergo. More recently this discovery has been adapted to provide medical imaging
under the name of MRI (magnetic resonance imaging). It and related technologies have
found extensive use in cognitive neuroscience. From a technological standpoint, whether
a geological sample or a human being is in the NMR machine is irrelevant. A significant
difference arises only when we appreciate that the human in the machine possesses an
inner life with intentions, memories, perceptions, thoughts, fears, pains, and hopes.
These latter subjective experiences provide the crucial empirical content permitting
research within the domain of consciousness as opposed to the domain of chemistry and
physics. Without them we are engaged in the interesting but distinct task of mapping a
complex system of physical, chemical, and electromagnetic processes exactly as we
might for any other physical system. My point is that no matter how sophisticated the
technology, one can only research consciousness when consciousness itself assumes a
place in the paradigm. At a minimum we must seek a correlation of the physiological
with the mental, a correlation which usually is obtained by some form of self-report or a
self-conscious act (pushing a button). But such a methodology is far too limited.
In recent years the availability of new technologies has driven much of the
research program in psychology, a common situation whenever a new technology is
invented. The wealth of new data is fascinating, but it can also be distracting. If we
would objectify the subjective, it is insufficient to merely locate brain correlates for
subjective experience. I would like to use a different but equally exact and quantitative
set of studies to illustrate the significance of introspection for consciousness research
when coupled with third-person experimental methods.
In the 1970’s Roger Shepard and collaborators performed a set of landmark
experiments examining mental rotation of geometrical figures.17 Through these
experiments, Shepard tested various theories of mental representation with impressive
exactness. His work is connected to our previous considerations of space and time
through the fact that visually we are so constituted as to experience only two-dimensional
projections of three-dimensional objects on each retina. On the basis of a variety of cues
the mind quite naturally (and in the case of visual illusions, falsely) experiences the
object as three-dimensional. As we saw in our treatment of relativity, the space so
experienced does not correspond to an invariant reality “out there.”
Shepard sought to examine the specific ways in which we mentally represent the
objects of the external world. For example, in a 1971 experiment Metzler and Shepard
measured the time subjects required to determine that two perspective views were of
intrinsically identical rather than non-identical shapes.18
10
Subjects were shown pairs of perspective views and told to press one button if
identical and a second button if not. The time until decision was measured as a function
of the angle of rotation, for example.
Figure 4 shows illustrative pairs of perspective views as they were shown to the
subjects. The shapes in A and B differ by an 80-degree rotation around different axes.
The perspective pair in C cannot be rotated into one another as they differe by a reflection
as well as a rotation. The researcher discovered that the time until decision increasing
linearly with the angular difference of their orientations in three-dimensional space. This
is but a single example of a wide range of experiments they performed. Taken together
the data are read by Shepard and colleagues as supporting a particular theory of mental
representation and rotation, one which posits a mental analog of an actual physical
rotation. They argue for the empirical adequacy of their theory.
From the above example it is clear that
Shepard did not seek a metaphysical
resolution to what mind is. His discovery of
the linear relationship between time-todecision and the angle between perspective
pairs will stand whatever we take mind to be
ultimately.. Like Snels’ Law for optical
refraction, Shepard’s is a precise empirical
law. We are accustomed to empirical laws
in physics. It is initially surprising to
discovery how exact mental laws can be.
How such laws are instantiated, is not
developed by Shepard. Specifically,
Shepard is not concerned with an account in
terms of an underlying neuroscience.
Sherpard and Cooper write that, “Our entire
program of research is predicated on the
notion that there are different levels of
description of internal processes and that
significant theoretical statements about such
processes can be framed at a level of
abstraction that does not entail any
commitment to a particular mechanization of
these processes within the
neurophysiological substrate.”19
What is not evident from the above is the
consonance of the quantitative experimental
results with the introspective accounts given
by the subjects themselves. Shepard and
Cooper report, however, that there is good
agreement between external tests and
internal experience. “For the present,
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however, the theory of mental rotation seems to us to provide the account of our finding
that is at once the simplest, the most complete, and the most consonant with the
introspective reports of the subjects themselves.”20 Concerning the internal mental
representation of three-dimensional objects, Shepard formulated a conceptual model of
what subjects did in the rotation experiments. He went on to state that his model “is also
consonant with the post-experimental introspective reports of the subjects who generally
claimed the following: (a) They interpreted the perspective drawings as rigid threedimensional objects and, in an important sense, “saw” the angles even though these
angles varied widely from 90 degrees in the two-dimensional picture plane. (b) They
imagined the rotations as carried out in isotropic three-dimensional space…” Notice that
the recognition of same or different was not via a deductive proof, but rather was directly
perceived by the subjects. This was Shepard’s reason for choosing a visual study and not
a verbal/linguistic problem. It is also significant that error rates were small, typically a
few percent.
Shepard’s work provides an important example of a style of consciousness research
that is free of metaphysical commitments, while being amenable to mathematical
quantification. In addition, we find at least anecdotal support for the accuracy of
introspective accounts offered by the study’s subjects.
No matter how elegant, science has never been content with empirical laws, but has
always sought more “fundamental” treatments in terms of atomic theory,
neurophysiology, and the like. As it matures, I expect that neuroscience, like physics,
will be open to the philosophical critique of anti-realists. They will rightly draw our
attention to the danger of mistaking the abstract elements of a formal theory for reality.
They will argue that the data themselves, the empirical content, the phenomena are
primary. Theory may help us elucidate patterns and make predictions and even gain
valid insights, but we should be skeptical concerning the ontological claims of such a
theory. Instead of pursuing the anti-realist critique, however, I prefer to develop a
positive method that stays close to the phenomena throughout. One is naturally dawn,
thereby, to the phenomenological tradition in philosophy from Goethe to Husserl, and the
ecological psychology of the later J.J. Gibson. While acknowledging the importance of
these thinkers, I choose here to concentrate on a lesser-studied contribution to
consciousness research, namely that stemming from the Western contemplative tradition.
The Western Contemplative Contribution
While best known for his play Faust and other literary productions, Goethe
considered his scientific studies in biology, botany, geology, meteorology, and
particularly his research into color, as his most important contribution overall. In
retrospect what seems most significant about Goethe’s efforts in science was his way of
doing science, and less his particular discoveries. Goethe was one of the earliest
advocates of a critical stance towards scientific models, advocating instead a mode of
scientific investigation that kept close to lived experience while retaining scientific care.
It was an approach that placed the cognitive act of discovery or insight at the center of its
attention. Model-building and abstract theory, by contrast, were viewed as important
accessory activity whose pictures should be understood useful, but they did not
necessarily correspond to reality. Goethe shifts our cognitive focus away from the
particulars of a formalism or model and to phenomena. Through this method the
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phenomena themselves are made increasing transparent to the patterns and lawfulness
operating in them. Elsewhere I have written extensively about Goethe’s approach to
scientific inquiry, including also its contemporary exponents, and so refer the interested
reader to these works.21
Goethe’s approach was influential in the 19th century study of perception. Even
Helmholtz, famous for his stimulus-response theory of perception, in later life came to
appreciate Goethe’s more holistic treatment.22 A century later J.J. Gibson would make a
systematic critique of the stimulus-response model, and go on to suggest a detailed
treatment of perception with many similarities to the approach taken by Goethe. Steven
Tainer’s discussion of J. J. Gibson’s ecological psychology makes similar points to those
I make elsewhere in my writings on Goethe.23 Instead of rehearsing my previous
discussions of Goethe’s work in the natural science, I want to take up the work of one of
Goethe’s foremost commentators, Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925).24
Rudolf Steiner viewed his own efforts as building directly on the scientific work
of Goethe and extending that work. He sought to make Goethe’s viewpoint
philosophically rigorous and, in addition, to apply it explicit to the “spiritual or cultural
sciences,”25 a direction Goethe never explored. In recent years the study of Buddhist
epistemology has been discussed in relation to cognitive science and the investigation of
consciousness generally.26 This is entirely justified. In Asia one has a long and vigorous
tradition of philosophical analysis developed at the hand of meditative experience. As
researchers in the modern West explore consciousness, they can benefit by acquaintance
with the research methods and epistemological studies of Buddhism. To a lesser extent
the description and analysis of experience, including those had at the hand of mediation,
also form a significant part of the literature of Western spirituality. Rather than attempt
a survey of the whole tradition, I will consider one individual, Rudolf Steiner, as an
example of a modern spiritual philosopher and contemplative who was well-trained in
both the natural sciences and modern philosophy. He sought both a method of inquiry
and an epistemology adequate to his wide range of experience.
From 1890-96 Steiner worked as a scholar in the Goethe-Schiller archives where
he served as editor of Goethe’s scientific writings for two large editions of Goethe’s
writings.27 In 1897 Steiner moved to Berlin where he worked as a writer, magazine
editor, and as a teacher at a worker’s college. It was during this time that Steiner wrote
his four purely philosophical books.28 In these early philosophical works Rudolf Steiner
repeatedly and extensively examined the nature of cognition, contrasting his own
approach (and Goethe’s) with that of Kant and others. His reasons for doing so were
both philosophical and existential. Parallel with his education in the natural sciences and
Western philosophy, Rudolf Steiner had been following a vigorous life of contemplative
practice that led him to a wide range of spiritual experiences. Only after 1900 did he
report on the content of his spiritual experiences and detail a path of spiritual
development available to others.29 During his lifetime, Steiner thus brought together
Western science, philosophy, and spirituality in a way that is nearly unique.
Rudolf Steiner viewed his earlier philosophical work as providing the
epistemological foundation for cognition quite generally, including cognition associated
with spiritual experience. Thus, like the Asian contemplative tradition, Steiner felt that a
proper understanding of consciousness must rest on a theory of knowledge adequate not
only to cognition arising from sense impressions but from all modalities of experience,
13
public and private, including those accessible only through introspection and meditative
practice. As contemporary researchers undertake the intensive investigation of
consciousness, I believe that the study of sophisticated philosophical systems associated
with the contemplative traditions of Asia and the West could prove enormously helpful.
In this spirit I provide a brief overview of Rudolf Steiner’s philosophy as it pertains to the
study of consciousness.
Rudolf Steiner’s Science of Consciousness
Rudolf Steiner distinguished between three different domains of science: the
inorganic, the organic, and the spiritual (or cultural) sciences.30 Each domain required a
method of investigation suited to itself. Specifically Steiner felt that much harm had been
done by the inappropriate extension into the organic and cultural sciences of methods
developed specifically for the domain of inorganic science (physics).
In the inorganic sciences the factors affecting the phenomenon are external in
character. The objects under consideration may have characteristics such as mass or
charge, but the external arrangement of the objects, their relative motion, collision, etc.,
determine everything. The purpose of scientific investigation in this arena is to so
arrange the external factors (through experimentation) “that an occurrence will appear to
us in transparent clarity as the inevitable result of these conditions.”31
Here Rudolf Steiner is following the scientific method of Goethe who saw the
goal of scientific inquiry in this domain as the elimination of non-essential factors so that
the phenomenon can be experienced as the self-evident manifestation of natural law. One
varies the conditions of appearance in order to discover the invariant feature within the
phenomena, which remains constant throughout. In the archetypal phenomenon one sees
the ideal in the real. It is not a matter of replacing an experience by a formalism. Both
Steiner and Goethe viewed the goal of science as achieving a “higher experience within
experience” itself.32 The cognitive event or insight was termed by Goethe the aperu,
and was taken as fundamental. This feature of Steiner’s approach, which he took from
Goethe, is crucial for an understanding of his science of consciousness. Experience itself
is refined, enhanced so what had been inchoate becomes meaningful. The moment of
epiphany is the fruit of thoughtful engagement with the world of experience. In adopting
Goethe’s approach, Rudolf Steiner is explicitly rejecting the theory of knowledge
advanced by Imanuel Kant, a view that has, in one form or another, continued to
dominate much of Western philosophy. For Steiner, insight is the goal. One does not
posit a transcendent metaphysical reality as the basis for phenomena. We need to recall,
however, that in Steiner’s view phenomena can be sensory or “supersensory.” That is to
say, mental phenomena such as those born of contemplative inquiry are included on the
same footing as phenomena given through the physical senses.
Specifically Rudolf Steiner rejects Kant’s approach, declaring the noumena to be
illusory. “There is, however, not the slightest reason for seeking the foundation of things
outside the given physical and spiritual world.…”33 Instead Steiner advances an
approach that begins with the “given,” and goes on to ask where in the given can one
already find the certainly one is searching for. He identifies thought as that starting point.
From that beginning one moves to an understanding of truth not as a conceptual
14
repetition in consciousness of a transcendent noumenal reality, but rather insight arises
through a co-creative spiritual activity of the human being and the world.
The object of knowledge is not to repeat in conceptual form something which already exists, but
rather to create a completely new sphere, which when combined with the world given to our
senses constitutes complete reality. Thus man’s highest activity, his spiritual creativeness, is an
organic part of the universal world-process. The world-process should not be considered a
complete, enclosed totality without this activity. Man is not a passive onlooker in relation to
evolution, merely repeating in mental pictures cosmic events taking place without his
participation; he is the active co-creator of the world-process, and cognition is the most perfect
link in the organism of the universe. 34
Far from being an epiphenomenon, Steiner situates the activity of human cognition into
the world in a profound way. Indeed he sees man as the “active co-creator of the world
process.” Instead of being a passive on-looker, the creative spirit of the human being
participates and so completes what would otherwise remain a partial creation.35 Such a
view can only make sense if one takes the phenomenal world fully seriously, as Goethe
and Steiner did. From a materialistic standpoint human cognition can add nothing to the
material processes occurring in the world. The higher experience of cognitive insight,
which from a phenomenological standpoint means so much to Goethe and Steiner, means
nothing to a materialist reductionism.
For the inorganic sciences the search is for the external conditions of appearance
that govern the phenomena. The endpoint is reached with the perception of the
archetypal phenomenon as the transparent expression of natural law. In the organic
sciences a new element enters. If one treats the organic exactly as one did the inorganic,
then only the material aspects of life will show themselves, and so one misses precisely
the essential aspect of the organic world. Steiner held that Goethe’s approach, by
contrast, was perfectly suited to a science of the organic kingdom in nature. Goethe’s
study of the metamorphosis of plants was an important example. While Goethe
recognized the importance of the environment on plant morphology and development, he
refused to reduce plants to inorganic processes alone. Instead of the natural law one
searched for the “type” which could be studied via a comparative and evolutionary
method. In Steiner’s words, “Just as we trace a phenomenon in the inorganic to a law, so
here we evolve a specific form from the primal form (or type).”36 Today we would
understand this to imply an understanding in terms of DNA and evolutionary genetics.
By contrast Goethe and Steiner once again sought for a direct cognitive encounter but
now with the type. Since the type manifests itself in each single organic entity, the mind
should be able to reach back through these manifestations to the living principle that
operates within and animates the organic forms. Steiner termed this an “intuitive” form
of thinking, and recognized that it is normally held in suspicion. However a good case
can be made that all scientific discovery occurs through such intuition,37 and in the case
of the life sciences, Steiner saw it as the correct method.
Although much more could be said concerning both the inorganic and organic
sciences, our interest is particularly with the study of consciousness. According to
Steiner’s classification of the sciences, with the introduction of consciousness one moves
beyond the natural sciences to the spiritual or cultural sciences.38 These sciences not only
include psychology but also social and political science, history, and the arts. They must
15
be distinguished from both the organic and inorganic sciences, according to Steiner. In
the inorganic sciences one is concerned only with the outer causal conditions that
determine a system’s behavior. These factors, of course, still obtain for the physical
aspect of human beings, but Steiner explicitly maintains that human nature is not
exhausted by the physical. Likewise for organic aspects of the human being, humans are
alive and so the principles of life are to be found operating here as well. In addition,
however, another distinct and defining feature in active directly within the human being.
It is this that defines his or her nature and thereby also the nature of the spiritual and
cultural sciences.
Psychology is concerned with the study of this distinctly human characteristic. Its
method is a disciplined form of self-observation.39 Steiner advocates a first-person
methodology writing,
The first science in which the human spirit deals with itself is psychology. The mind here stand
observing itself… the psychological method consists in the immersion of the mind it its own
activity. Here, then, self-apprehension is the method.
Steiner contrasts this proper psychological method with the false one adopted by the
behaviorists, who were already in evidence in the late 19th century. They sought to avoid
the human spirit, seeking rather to examine only the external phenomena it caused.
These external manifestations were then analyzed according to the methods of science
developed in the inorganic sciences like physics. “Just here they [psychologists] have
allowed themselves to be brought to the false standpoint which would apply to all
sciences the methods of mechanics, physics, etc.”40 The result was “a theory of soul
without any soul.” One loses sight of the essential, according to Steiner.
Rudolf Steiner pursued this method of inquiry in various directions including in
his philosophical writings. His Philosophy of Freedom was subtitled “Results of Soul
Observation Arrived at by the Scientific Method.” In it Steiner addressed, among other
things, the so-called “hard problem,” which had already found articulation in the 19th
century for example by Du Bois-Reymond.
In this context Steiner describes with great thoroughness the reigning dualism of
his own time (which he called “metaphysical realism”), and contrasts it with his own
monism. In metaphysical realism, transcendent noumena or things-in-themselves
constitute reality. We can only come to a partial knowledge of these through inference
from our subjective experiences. It is a form of dualism that transfers our sense-based
notions of physical reality to the inaccessible realm of transcendent entities that stand
behind sense appearance. “Dualism makes the mistake of transferring the antithesis of
object and subject, which has significance only within the realm of perception, onto
purely imaginary entities outside the realm of perception.”41 In metaphysical realism,
ideas themselves have no reality as such, but are understood merely as a way of
describing transcendently real entities (noumena). Du Bois-Reymond’s atoms are such
transcendent entities. Steiner’s description of dualism does not, therefore, map directly
onto the mind-body problem. Rather the dualism of which he writes is between
appearance and reality. What is “real” may, for example, be taken to be matter and
matter only. However, matter never appears unmediated to the observer as it is in itself,
but only as our senses or scientific instruments permit it to appear. Contemporary
16
materialist reductionism is, in this sense, dualistic according to Steiner and a form of
metaphysical realism.
Steiner rejects, or perhaps better, transforms metaphysical realism into a form of
monism that acknowledges the subject-object split but does not reify it. Rather Steiner
viewed the world as essentially unitary, or undivided. That we experience the world as
subjective and objective is an artifact of consciousness, not a fact about the world.
“Through my specifically human perception, I am placed as subject over against the
object. The connection of things is broken.”42 We experience the world in this way, but
we should not go further to mistake an epistemological fact for an ontological one by
instantiating a world of noumena over and against a world of phenomena. There is no
inaccessible realm of noumena. Rather, “everything one needs to explain any given
phenomenon of the world must lie within the sphere of this phenomenon.”43 Steiner
maintained that the broken connection is re-established though thinking. This is the high
role Steiner assigns to cognition, it acts to reunite what is torn apart in perception.
I would now like to return to my initial treatment of Einstein’s theory of relativity,
Bohr’s understanding of quantum phenomena, and to Shepard’s studies of mental
rotation, seeing them in relation to Steiner’s philosophy of cognition. Recall that Steiner
rejects the notion of reality as a world of eternal, transcendent objects somehow behind
the world of phenomenal appearances. Rather the object only arises as object by virtue of
the act of perception. He states explicitly that, “The object is not something absolute, but
only something relative with respect to this particular subject.”44 This philosophical
viewpoint is of immense significance when trying to comprehend modern physics. As
we have seen, when we falsely reify the object, making it and spacetime an absolute, we
encounter direct contradictions with relativity theory. If instead we understand the object
(and spacetime) as arising through perception by a particular observer (subject), then no
contradictions occur. Similarly for quantum phenomena, we can only make sense of
quantum physics by including the “agency of observation” in our account. In relativity
and quantum physics one has detailed examples of how different perceiving subjects
encounter different objects. Moreover, coherent cognition is possible in all frames of
reference. That is to say, the laws of physics obtain in all frames. It is only when we
reify “the object” to become “the absolute object” that contradictions arise in modern
physics. Steiner’s philosophy avoids these contradictions neatly, while also affirming the
laws of nature, viewing them again not as material entities but as “ideal connections
which one gains through thinking.”45 Remember that such ideal elements for Steiner
have standing in his philosophy and are not to be reduced to neural correlates.
Shepard’s studies are excellent examples of studies that do not reach beyond the
phenomenal realm at hand. Developing Goethe’s approach, Steiner maintained that the
appropriate method of investigation in psychology is self-apprehension. Shepard’s
experiments relied on both a quantitative measure and, to a lesser extent, verbal selfreporting. Even the quantitative measure of time used in their studies, however, required
self-apprehension, namely the judgement of whether the two figures were identical or
not. Here again one does not need to reach to a transcendent “reality.” Rather, as already
remarked before, “everything one needs to explain any given phenomenon of the world
must lie with the sphere of this phenomenon.”46
Finally, Steiner maintained that the faculties for self-apprehension, while meager
at the outset, could be schooled and developed. In this regard he is to be understood as in
17
the contemplative tradition. That our knowledge may today be limited is a reflection of
our particular organization now, and is not an indication of our permanent condition.
Steiner, therefore rejects any ultimate limits to knowledge including knowledge of the
psychological or spiritual. His writings and lectures after 1900 are largely a report of his
exploration of these realms and the methods by which others could also explore them.
He felt throughout his life that he was pioneering a science of the soul and spirit, one that
would have important consequences for education, medicine, agriculture and the arts.
For a more comprehensive treatment, I refer the reader elsewhere.47
Few theories of science are more elegant or rigorous than Einstein’s special
theory of relativity and the theory of quantum mechanics, both of which were developed
in the first decades of the 20th century. While they were formulated to describe an
objective physical world, both theories shed light on the troubling question of the place of
the experiencing subject in science. This issue is at the margins of physics, but it is at the
very center of consciousness studies, where consciousness itself becomes the object of
inquiry. By first examining the treatment of the observer in modern physical theory, I lay
the ground for a phenomenological stance to science generally. This approach is
uniquely suited to first-person consciousness research. Finally, I use J.W. Goethe and
Rudolf Steiner as two western exemplars – artist and contemplative – who struggled
mightily to frame a phenomenological epistemology suited to their direct artistic and
spiritual experiences.
The objectification of space and time away from subjective human experience is a
well-studied area. The importance of the observer’s position and relative velocity in
Einstein’s theory is an argument for inclusion of the observer, but the inclusion is only
formal. Likewise, quantum theory must include a treatment (no matter how inadequate)
of the observer in order to make contact with experiment. Modern physics requires an
inclusive or holistic treatment of subject and object. Relativity and quantum mechanics,
however, remain silent on the status of qualia in a fuller sense, that is on the multidimensional experience of a perceiving subject. It goes beyond the scope of this paper to
develop these thoughts further in this direction, although I believe that the
epistemological and methodological framework sketched here can be developed in
several directions.
Suffice it to say here that the methods of investigation and the epistemology we
hold are important factors affecting the character of our science of consciousness.
Physics, cognitive psychology, and the Western contemplative tradition can all contribute
to constructing a suitable framework for that investigation.
1
David Chalmers, The Conscious Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
Quoted by Rudolf Steiner in his The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, p. 102. Much of my subsequent
discussion is drawn from chapter 7 of this book entitled, “Are There Limits to Knowledge?”
3
Arthur Zajonc, Catching the Light (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).
4
Thomas J. Lombardo, The Receprocity of Perceiver and Environment: The Evolution of James J.
Gibson’s Ecological Psychology (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc., 1987), p. 336.
5
Max Jammer, Concepts of Space (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
6
Figures are taken from Paul Tipler, Modern Physics (NY: Worth Publishers, 1978), pp. 15-17.
7
Albert Einstein, Relativity: The Special and General Theory (Crown Publishers, 1995), and Edwin Taylor
and John A. Wheeler, Spacetime Physics (W.H. Freeman, 1992) 2nd edition.
2
18
8
For more details see Bas C. van Fraassen, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Time and Space, (NY:
Random House, 1970) and Lawrence Sklar, Space, Time and Spacetime, (Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 1976).
9
Neils Bohr, The Philosophical Writings of Neils Bohr, Vol. III: Essays 1958-1962 on Atomic Physics and
Human Knowledge, (Woodbridge, Conn., Ox Bow Press, 1963), p. 4 and 72.
10
See also the important paper by Karen Barad on what she terms “agential realism.” “Meeting the
Universe Halfway: Realism and Social Constructivism without Contradiction,” in L. H. Nelson and J.
Nelson (eds.), Feminism, Science, and the Philosophy of Science, pp. 161-194, (Kluwer Academic
Publishers, 1996).
11
George Greenstein and Arthur Zajonc, The Quantum Challenge (Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett, 1997)
12
Bas C. van Fraassen, The Scientific Image (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).
13
Albert Einstein, The Meaning of Relativity, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1956), p. 2.
14
For a survey of the major positions, see Paul Churchland, Matter and Consciousness, (Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 1993). Churchland does not address the position maintained in this paper.
15
For example A.N. Whitehead criticizes the “bifurcation of Nature” due to Galileo and Locke in his book
Science and the Modern World, and declares in Process and Reality that his “philosophy of organism
accepts the subjectivist basis of modern philosophy… the whole universe consists of elements disclosed in
the experience of subjects.” Quoted in John Passmore, A Hundred Years of Philosophy, (NY: Penguin,
1966), pp. 340-41.
16
See The View from Within, First-person approaches to the study of consciousness, edited by Francisco
Varela and Jonathan Shear ((Thorverton, UK: Imprint Academic, 1999).
17
Roger N. Shepard and Lynn A Cooper, Mental Images and their Transformations, (Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 1982). See also the more recent work, for example, of Steve Koslyn on mental imaging.
18
Shepard and Cooper, Chapter 3.
19
Shepard and Cooper, p. 12.
20
Shepard and Cooper, p. 66.
21 David Seamon and Arthur Zajonc, Goethe’s Way of Science: a Phenomenology of Nature (Albany, NY:
SUNY Press, 1998), and “Facts as Theory: Aspects of Goethe's Philosophy of Science," Goethe and the
Sciences: A Reappraisal, F. Amrine, F. Zucker and H. Wheeler, editors (Reidel, Boston, 1986).
22
Jeffrey Barnouw, “Goethe and Helmholtz” in Goethe and the Sciences, Amrine et al., pp. 45-82.
23
Steven Tainer, paper for Infinity Foundation.
24
Rudolf Steiner is best known as the founder of the spiritual philosophy Anthroposophy, and for his work
in education (Waldorf schools), agriculture (Biodynamics) and medicine. See Robert McDermott’s article,
“Rudolf Steiner and Anthroposophy,” in Modern Esoteric Spirituality, edited by Antoine Faivre and Jacob
Needleman (NY: Crossroad, 1992).
25
Rudolf Steiner, A Theory of Knowledge based on Goethe’s World Conception (NY: Anthroposophic
Press, 1968), chapters 17 and 18.
26
Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rasch, The Embodied Mind (Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, ???).
27
Rudolf Steiner worked with two different publishers as editor of Goethe’s scientific writings. He edited
five volumes for “Kuerschners Deutsche National-Literatur” edition published from 1884-1897, and
afterwards for the so-called “Weimar or Sophien-Ausgabe,” Goethe’s Naturwissenschafliche Schriften,
published between 1891-1896 in Goethe’s Werke, Part 2, vols. 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, and 12. Steiner’s
introduction has been translated as Goethe the Scientist, trans. Olin Wannamaker (NY: Anthroposophic
Press, 1950).
28
Rudolf Steiner’s philosophical early philosophical writings are, Grundlinien einer Erkenntistheorie der
Goetheschen Weltanschauung (1886), translated as A Theory of Knowledge based on Goethe’s World
Conception, trans. Olin Wannamaker (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1968); Wahrheit und
Wissenschaft (1892), translated as Truth and Knowledge, trans. Rita Stebbing (Blauvelt, N.Y.:
Steinerbooks, 1981); Die Philosophie der Freiheit (1894), translated variously as The Philosophy of
Spiritual Activity (or Freedom) or Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path (Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic
Press) ; and Goethe’s Weltanschauung (1897), translated as Goethe’s Conception of the World (NY:
Haskell House Pub., 1973).
19
See for example Rudolf Steiner’s books, Theosophy, An Outline of Esoteric Science, and How to Know
Higher Worlds, (Hudson, NY, Anthroposophic Press).
30
A Theory of Knowledge…, Chapters 15-18.
31
p. 74.
32
p. 80.
33
Truth and Knowledge, p. 10.
34
Truth and Knowledge, pp. 11-12.
35
I do not mean to imply that the events of the world would not occur without human cognition. Steiner
explicitly states that the external aspects would certainly exist, but the inner conformity to law would never
be perceived, and so something significant would be missing. (p. 100, A Theory of Knowledge…).
36
A Theory of Knowledge…, p. 92.
37
See Arthur Zajonc, “Goethe’s Theory of Color and Scientific Intuition,” The American Journal of
Physics, vol. 44, pp. 327-333 (1977), and “Facts as Theory… (above)”. See also Henri Bortoft, The
Wholeness of Nature, Goethe’s Way toward a Science of Conscious Participation in Nature (Hudson, NY:
Lindisfarne Press, 1996). See in addition the essays in The Nature of Insight, edited by Robert J. Sternberg
and Janet E. Davidson (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995).
38
Steiner, A Theory of Knowledge…, chapter 17.
39
Steiner, A Theory of Knowledge…, p. 104.
40
Stiener, A Theory of Knowledge…, p.106.
41
Steiner, The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, p. 105.
42
Steiner, The Philosophy, p. 113.
43
Steiner, The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, p. 103.
44
Steiner, The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, p. 114.
45
P. 112.
46
Steiner, The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, p. 103.
47
Stewart C. Easton, Man and the World in the Light of Anthroposophy, (Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic
Press, 1975).
29
20