Natural Science / Physics
9780932776440
The Marriage of Sense and Thought
Imaginative Participation in Science
- “In this brilliant book, the authors build a fascinating bridge between science and the world of the senses, a bridge that holds great promise for overcoming the fragmentation and alienation that is so characteristic of our time.” —Fritjof Capra, author of The Tao of Physics and The Web of Life
- “Likely to change many readers' comprehension of science.” —Arthur Zajonc, author of Meditation as Contemplative Inquiry: When Knowing Becomes Love
Having imagined a machine-like world, scientists now haunt this machine uneasily. Their plight is paradoxical: they have realized their world only through intense mental effort, yet this effort finds no legitimate place in the world it so painstakingly comprehends. It seems “objectivity” only comes at a cost. Why, for example, is science unable to describe a smile? Why is the moral life of a physicist regarded as his or her own private affair?
This exclusion of human qualities from science has practical as well as theoretical consequences. If we systematically imagine a world in which human beings don’t exist, we will eventually create a world in which they cannot exist.
Reclaiming the human sources of scientific insight, the authors of this book restore the scientist to the world given by science and celebrate the joyous marriage of sense and thought.
READ BOBBY MATHERNE’S REVIEW OF THIS BOOK.
Contents
Preface to the Second Edition
Preface
1. Two Smiles
The Scientific View
Inner Experience and the Outer Environment
2. The Deeper Roots of Materialism
Space, Matter, Time, Force, Energy
The Craftsman and the Scholar
The Relation of Materialism to Sense Experience
The Sense of Touch
The Somatic Sense
The Kinesthetic Sense
The Sense of Balance
The Body Reaches Out: Eyes
Galileo: Scholar and Craftsman
3. Changing Relations to Physical Reality
The Origins of Terrestrial and Celestial Mechanics
The Lonely Self
The Rise of Technology and the Concept of Energy
Electricity Challenges Mechanical Thinking
The Enigma of Quantum Reality
Relativity Theory Also Challenges Ordinary Thinking
Models and the Creation of Scientific Knowledge
4. Conscious Participation
A Thunderstorm and Acoustics
Scientific Thinking Leads to General Concepts
The Thunderstorm Again
The Two Roots of Vision
Looking at a Lake
Looking into Water—Reflections as Space Creators
Looking into Water—Visible and Tangible Objects
No Longer Coincide
Looking into Water—Color Aspects
In Search of Real Color
Geometrical Representations of Nonspatial Qualities
Independent Physical Principles Cooperate
A Visit to the Realm of Imaging
A Visit to the Realm of Chemical Action at a Distance
5. Science Coming of Age
Mathematical Physics: Exercise for
the Development of Sense-free Thinking
From Nature to Knowledge
The Objectivist Worldview
The Nature of the Physical World
Biology As a Science of Life
Holism
Morality and Choice in Science
Bibliography
Index
About the Authors
Paperback (978-1-58420-106-9)
$18.00
9780932776440
An Optics of Visual Experience
Physical optics has increasingly removed itself from immediate visual experience, focusing instead on abstract explanatory theories and the measurements of sophisticated instruments. It is fair to say that sensory experience has become the stepchild of our modern scientific world view.
However, failure to actively engage the phenomena leaves us with an impoverished relationship with the world around us. Acutely aware of the importance of sensory experience for deepening and enlivening our scientific understanding of nature, Georg Maier devoted much of his career as a physicist to studying the visual world. In this groundbreaking book, he guides us toward an experiential understanding of visual phenomena.
Contents:
The Seeing Eye
Seeing in Space
Relating Optics to Geometry—a First Step
Mirror Images
Exploring Air, Water and Glass
Light as the Relationship between Appearances
Shadow Images
Practical Optics
Seeing Clearly
Developing Geometrical Principles in Optics (Visual Connections)
Afterimages
Bibliographic Notes
Paperback (978-0-932776-41-9)
$35.00
9780932776440
The Physics of Human Experience
Tribute to a Pioneer in Phenomenological Physics
In its search for causal explanations, modern science has increasingly come to focus on particles, genes, and other hypothetical elements that lie beyond direct human experience. This reductionist approach has led to powerful new technologies, but it has failed to give us an understanding of nature as we can actually experience it in its richness and depth.
Stephen Edelglass entered MIT at sixteen and began teaching physics at Cooper Union at age twenty-two. Because of his deep connection with the arts and with nature, he increasingly felt the dichotomy between his vibrant experience of nature and the abstract world of theoretical physics. At thirty-seven he met Rudolf Steiner’s philosophy, Waldorf education, and a new phenomenological approach to science that satisfied him both as a keen, appreciative observer and as a thinker. He gave up his position as a university professor, began teaching high school physics using an experiential approach, and became a prime-mover in the development of phenomenological science in North America.
“In these essays we are led by Edelglass to a deeply phenomenological engagement with the natural world. Through that encounter the inquiring human being can come to a direct perception of the deep coherence that moves through and creates the beauty around us. I highly recommend these writings to all who long for a more intimate understanding of natural phenomena.” — Arthur Zajonc, Professor of Physics, Amherst College, author of Meditation as Contemplative Inquiry and Catching the Light
Contents include:
Biographical Introduction
Empowering Students through Science Education
Isaac Newton and the Chickens
Physics and Reality
What is Matter?
Light as Activity
Model-Free Cognition
Paperback (978-0-932776-34-1)
$14.95
9780932776440
Rainbows, Halos, Dawn, and Dusk
The Appearance of Color in the Atmosphere and Goethe's Theory of Colors
Rainbows, Halos, Dawn, and Dusk explores the captivating colors that appear in the atmosphere of the Earth—coronas, glories, halos, rainbows, dawn, and dusk. It invites readers to observe these ephemeral appearances with fresh attention and understanding. Moreover, it introduces us to little-known key experiences in Goethe’s life that were intimately related to his scientific pursuits and his deep experience of color.
Following the holistic phenomenological method developed by Goethe in his "Theory of Colors," this book bridges the broad gap between human experience and the conventional physics of atmospheric colors. The unfolding descriptions here assume an artistic quality through which our experience of color phenomena is deepened, while at the same time our scientific understanding is enhanced.
This book should prove helpful to scientists looking for a new approach to optics or an introduction to Goethe’s phenomenological science, to teachers looking for new ways to present optics lessons, and to anyone who loves the colors of nature and wishes to deepen their relationship to them.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. On Seeing
2. Coronas and Glories: order in diffraction phenomena
3. Halos and Rainbows: on the prismatic colors ?
4. The Blue Sky and the Setting Sun: on colors of twilight and colors of turbidity
5. An Overview of Atmospheric Colors?
6. On the “Sensory-Moral Effects” of Atmospheric Color?Phenomena?
7. Goethe’s Theory of Colors ?
8. The Theory of Colors in Goethe’s Biography ?
9. The Earth’s Atmosphere as the Natural Abode of Color?
10. Appendix: Aspects from the perspective of textbook physics
Literature
This book was originally published in German as Höfe, Regenbögen, Dämmerung (Freies Geistesleben, 2011).
Paperback (978-0-932776-48-8)
$30.00
9780932776440
Rudolf Steiner and the Atom
"This book is intended for people who have some knowledge of Rudolf Steiner's work, but I have tried to make it accessible to those who are new to Anthroposophy. And if you have no specialist knowledge of physics or mathematics, don’t be scared when you see an equation—there are only a few and you can just read around them!" —Keith Francis
In Rudolf Steiner and the Atom, Keith Francis explores the concept of the atom from ancient Greek times to contemporary quantum physics and relates this compelling but elusive concept to relevant statements by Steiner. His discernment and intimate knowledge of his subject, honed and enlivened through his years as a Waldorf physics teacher, transform what could be mental drudgery into a fascinating reevaluation of the enigmatic atom.
The title evokes the question of whether Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual-scientific research can shed any meaningful light on what might be deemed the most materialistic of human pursuits. These antipodes of human striving are, in fact, intimately connected by the rigorous thinking, sheer intelligence and spiritual integrity that characterize them both. What is especially valuable about Keith’s work is that he is careful not to attempt an easy synthesis of points of view that are commonly regarded as worlds apart. If he goes out on a limb, he is nonetheless fully conscious of doing so. He leaves us with many questions—and with a more profound appreciation of this challenging theme and its critical importance for us today.
CONTENT:
Author’s Note
Introduction
I. The Atom - A Historical Background
(i) Prelude in Greece
(ii) Elements and Principles
(iii) The Way of Truth
(iv) Atoms
(v) Roadblock
(vi) Atoms back in Vogue
(vii) Making Waves
(viii) Rudolf Steiner meets the Atom
(ix) Rejection
(x) The Age of Electricity
(xi) The Electrical Atom and Human Thought
II. A Background for Quanta
(i) Origins
(ii) Thermal Radiation
(iii) Enter Max Planck
.
III. Steiner in the Quantum Age
(i) Physical Science and Spiritual Science
(ii) The Goethean Alternative
(iii) The Primal Phenomenon
IV. Bohr’s Atom – Antecedents
(i) Periodic Tables
(ii) From Siberia with Love
(iii) Predictions and Confusions
(iv) The Hydrogen Spectrum
(v) Cathode Rays
(vi) The Unstable Atom
V. The Rutherford-Bohr Atom
(i) Bohr Gets Involved
(ii) The Hydrogen Atom
(iii) Beyond Hydrogen
VI. Late Words from Rudolf Steiner
(i) A Science of Dead Matter
(ii) The Demonic Atom
(iii) Don’t be an Ostrich
(iv) The Struggle for Human Consciousness
(v) So what about the Electron?
VII. The Atom After Steiner
(i) Waves and Particles
(ii) Knabenphysik?
(iii) “Thou Shalt Make No Mental Image.” ?
(iv) Discontinuities and Probabilities ?
(v) HBJ or the Three-Man-Paper?
(vi) Schrodinger’s Wave Mechanics?
(vii) Indeterminacy?
(viii) Quantum Physics and the Periodic Table
(ix) More about Probability
(x) Niels Bohr – A Goethean Physicist?
(xi) Are Particles Real??
VIII. Epilogue
Appendix
Endnotes
Bibliography
Paperback (978-0-932776-44-0)
$25.00