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Adonis Press Series Read Description

Goethe's Science of Living Form

The Artistic Stages

Paperback
March 2013
9780932776358
More details
  • Publisher
    Adonis Press
  • Published
    5th March 2013
  • ISBN 9780932776358
  • Language English
  • Pages 174 pp.
  • Size 7" x 10"
$25.00

“I put my hopes for the future in such practice because it plants seeds of a life-attuned thinking into the world that can help us to act in more life-engendering ways.” —Craig Holdrege (from the foreword)

In this groundbreaking book, Nigel Hoffmann shows that understanding the dynamic, living qualities of nature requires artistic capacities. He distinguishes four stages of scientific inquiry that correspond to the four classical elements of Earth, Water, Air, and Fire. Modern analytical science with its causal thinking can be characterized as an Earth mode of cognition. A dynamic approach that follows transformation over time requires a sculptural sense of form and corresponds to the element of Water. The stages of Air and Fire engage yet more vital aspects of nature through musical and poetic capacities.

Combining scholarly-scientific acuity with artistic insight, Hoffmann first characterizes these four different ways of knowing. He then applies them, leading us ever more deeply into the dynamic qualities of specific plants, animals, and the landscape they live in. In doing so, he demonstrates how this four-step methodology provides a comprehensive framework for the life sciences.

This beautifully illustrated book will appeal to all who are interested in gaining deeper insights into nature.

C O N T E N T S:

Art and the Emergence of an Authentic Organic Science
Goethe and the Phenomenological Method
Toward an Authentic Method in the Life Sciences
A Goethean Methodology through the Elemental Modes

Earth Cognition—Physical Thinking—the Mechanical
Water Cognition — Imagination — the Sculptural
Air Cognition — Inspiration — the Musical
Fire Cognition — Intuition — the Poetical

Evolution as Creative Process
The Landscape and its Organs
The Human Being and the Evolution of Landscape
The Yabby Ponds: A Goethean Study of Place

Nigel Hoffmann

Nigel Hoffmann was born in Sydney, Australia. He has been a high school teacher for eighteen years in Australian and Swiss Steiner–Waldorf schools. He is the author of Goethe’s Science of Living Form: The Artistic Stages (Adonis Press) and is a director of the Education for Social Renewal Foundation.