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Threefolding in medical therapy

The threefolding of the human being, the central basis of anthroposophical medicine, is presented in outline. From its anatomical, physiological and psychological aspects, the pharmaceutical requirements and therapeutic possibilities of medicines developed by Rudolf Steiner are indicated and clarified.… Read More

Continuous movement - ocean currents between sun and earth

Ocean currents develop in the energy fields between sun and earth‚ between the heat that comes from the sun and the salt that comes from the earth. They serve to balance out the heat of the climatic zones and transport gases and nutrients. The biggest ocean current, the… Read More

The upright position in the evolution: ‘Why is the fluke of the Whale shaped horizontally?’

Dolphins and whales are water-based mammals and differ in various characteristics from fish, the predominant water species. A comparison of those two animal groups provides helpful insights into basic concepts of evolution. Evolutionary research… Read More

Periphery and centre — indicators for inversions in plant growth

Goethe said 'that nature has no secrets that she does not somewhere present naked to the eyes of the attentive observer' (Annals of 1790). A secret in two senses, i.e. not only for our inspection but also for our understamling, is the changing shape of the organ in the… Read More

Goethe's and Schiller's Xenien on 'The Philosophers'

The Xenien is a series of satirical epigrams that Johnnn Wolfgang von Goethe und Friedrich Schiller first published in 1797 in Schiller's Musenalmanach. The name Xenien was coined by the Roman poet Martial (1st century AD) who thus named the 13th book of his Martial Epigrams which… Read More

Archetypal experiments for conceptualising both the polarisation of light and the optical activity of a substance while staying close to the phenomena

In the 17"‘ century, C. Huygens described the 'phénornéne merveilleux', a 'wonderful' optical experiment with two calcite (Iceland spar) crystals. ln connection with this, a series of… Read More

Through the. specific anatomy of their lungs enclosed in the shell, the rhythtmic system of turtles is less autonomous than in other reptiles, higher animals or the human being. This correlates with an openness to the influences of annual rhythms in the environment. Such openness is at its most extreme in the North American Freshwater turtles,… Read More

What is expressed in a person’s sleeping phases?

Whereas contemporary psychologists and philosophers puzzle over whether there is any such thing as 'consciousness', sleep researchers are in surprising agreement that the human being daily passes through three different forms of consciousness: waking, sleeping, dreaming. But just as… Read More

Nodes and internodes — on Goethe’s concept of the spiral tendency

Starting from the interesting phenomenon of biastrepsis (‘Zwangsdrehung’), the helical twisting of shoots, in which the rhythm of node and internode formation in the plant shoot deviates from a kind of continuum of both elements, we discuss the question of the eonditions… Read More

It has long been regarded as unscientific to consider the musical aspects of territorial behaviour among songbirds. The musical abilities of song birds, for example their perception of melody and their capacity to transpose, have been questioned many times. Furthermore, avian intelligence — With the exception of ravens and parrots — was… Read More