Subject: Unscientific germ (Was: Re: Man and Animal/Waldorf science (long))
Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2000 11:31:06 +0200
From: Sune Nordwall <Sune.Nordwall@home.se>

Dan wrote:

[someone]:

If Dan tells me what to look for and why it represents Anthroposophical science, I will faithfully search for it and report back, as David recently did.
Dan:
Got any threefold organisms in there?
You mean the more or less full description of how the fully grown organism of man can be understood against its long development out of the egg with its basic polarized structure into 
- a "vegetative" (future nutritional) pole and 
- an "animal" pole (pre-"head" "pole")
(still described when I studied biology at the Univ of Stockholm some 12 years ago, the "unscientific 80's") and its further development via

the three (bad word huh?) basic layers of the germ:
- endoderm (-> primitive gut - main part of the digestive organs), 
- mesoderm (-> mesenchyme - circulatory system) and 
- ectoderm (-> receptors, nervous system)
("still" described in all basic books on human embryology) and 

how this then develps into what can be observed as
- a basic digestive and metabolic system
- a basic rhytmic-circulatory/respiratory system and
- a basic sense/nervous system
as a basic structure of man 

- that this evolutionary perspective of man should be clearly understood as an only "queer anthroposophic" and "anti-scientific" description and understanding of the development of man, and 

how in this more general systematic biological perspective the understanding of for example the heart as an intermediary, primarily rhythmic regulatory organ of the organism (as you write on Fri, 10 Mar 2000 10:13:46 -0800) shows how "occultist" and how "far from  real-world physiology as you can get" this basic evolutionary structural-functional perspective of man is?

Respecting you as a platonically oriented humanist (like the Alfred North Whitehead you recently referred to), I understand your anti-Aristotelean stand, yet think you underestimate the biological understanding of Steiner as working in the at least 2 300 year long Aristotelean tradition.

Sune Nordwall
Stockholm, Sweden

http://hem.passagen.se/thebee/indexeng.htm
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EU as a mechanical esoteric temple and threefolding of society