Introductory remarks

AT this point in The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, Steiner turns his thoughts to the relationship between truth and science. As he explains:

Theory of Knowledge aims at being a scientific investigation of the very fact which all other sciences take for granted without examination, viz., knowing or knowledge-getting itself. To say this is to attribute to it, from the very start, the character of being the fundamental philosophical discipline. For, it is only this discipline which can tell us what value and significance belong to the insight gained by the other sciences. In this respect it is the foundation for all scientific endeavour. (p.134)

These days, epistemology is divided into four main areas of debate. These are analysis, which sets out the actual conditions of knowledge and the manner in which they may be justified; the sources of knowledge, including perception, reason, memory and testimony; the structure of knowledge, be it centred on either justified foundational beliefs or a coherent set of beliefs that provide justification both in and of themselves; and philosophical scepticism, which involves questioning if knowledge actually exists and whether scepticism is justifiable under the circumstances.

Steiner, on the other hand, suggests that knowledge can only function if it operates without any presuppositions of its own and remains capable of taking into consideration the fact that human knowledge is finite. Despite this, he goes on to claim that the field of epistemology is prone to making certain assumptions that may undermine our ability to arrive at a rational justification:

The history of the sciences teaches us that countless errors, from which whole epochs have suffered, are to be traced wholly and solely to the fact that certain problems were wrongly formulated. For illustrations there is no need to go back to Aristotle or to the Ars Magna Lulliana. There are plenty of examples in more recent times. The numerous questions concerning the purposes of the rudimentary organs of certain organisms could be correctly formulated only after the discovery of the fundamental law of biogenesis had created the necessary conditions. As long as Biology was under the influence of teleological concepts, it was impossible to put these problems in a form permitting a satisfactory answer. (p.134)

Steiner uses the popular example of mankind’s former misinterpretation of the role of the pineal gland to demonstrate the importance of Comparative Anatomy. Naturally, in a wider context this serves to illustrate how a basic problem can be misrepresented and Steiner therefore insists that without framing the basis of an investigation correctly it is impossible for any scientific inquiry to proceed in a satisfactory manner.

The following parts in this series will see the Austrian apply this very methodology to his own investigatory procedure, something that will involve returning to the German Idealist philosophy of Kant and Fichte.