The Science Of Knowing

Rudolf Steiner
Intellect and Reason
Our thinking has a twofold task: firstly, to create concepts with sharply delineated contours; secondly, to bring together the individual concepts thus created into a unified whole. In the first case we are dealing with the activity that makes distinctions; in the second, with the activity that joins. These two spiritual tendencies by no means enjoy the same cultivation in the sciences. The keen intellect that enters into the smallest details in making its distinctions is given to a significantly larger number of people than the uniting power of thinking (reason) that penetrates into the depths of beings.

http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/MP1988/GA002_c12.html

Steiner makes an important observation in the above article namely that the scientific method of today , as important as it is , is not always capable of viewing a totality because it has become consumed in the parts , all of which may be brilliantly studied in their individual components,but ultimately not re-assembled into a truthful whole. An example is the nature of light as expounded by Newton and Goethe .Newton believing that he had conquered the nature of light by breaking it down to its seven colours , while Goethe preferred to stay within the phenomena of the dance as light meets dark . Einsein had his say on the nature of light by declaring that “these days every rascal thinks he knows what the nature of light is , but he is wrong!”
Perhaps we should take Steiners other thought above more seriously –the uniting power is only given to a few.Steiner also lists the following 12 world outlooks , all of which are needed to form a whole picture of the world.


THE TWELVE WORLD OUTLOOKS
http://wn.rsarchive.org/RelArtic/BobbetteRSW/steineraz_1914.html

Materialism: Sole belief in the crudest impressions, valid for the material world and its laws.

Spiritism: Sole belief that material reality is only illusion and that all genuine reality is found only in the Spirit.

Realism: Sole belief in what can be perceived and thought about as the external world.

Idealism: Sole belief in ideas manifesting through reality and giving it purpose.

Mathematism: Sole belief in the mathematical ordering of reality.

Rationalism: Sole belief in the ideas discovered in external reality.

Psychism: Sole belief in the need for ideas to be embodied in beings to be real.

Pneumatism: Sole belief that beings with ideas need to embody an active spirit able to do things.

Monadism: Sole belief in abstract spiritual monads with varying powers of perception.

Dynamism: Sole belief in the power of external and internal forces in reality.

Phenomenalism: Sole belief in sensual phenomena as representing a world of appearance to be thought over.

Sensationalism: Sole belief in sensual phenomena as the basic reality, with thought a mere addition.] (67, pp. 30-39, précis by RSWB))