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. “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 (in his foreword) Contents: 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

Goethe's Science of Living Form: The Artistic Stages (Adonis Press)

Literature & Fiction

Hoffmann, Nigel

History & Criticism

Adonis Press

About the Author\nNigel 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.\n“A threshold is a juncture of the path unlike any other, although many events may have anticipated it. What occurs there is the realization that what is beyond is utterly different from what has already been passed through. The Threshold demands a change of heart, a turning around in the seat of consciousness” (from the introduction). 
Basing this practical study of human care for the world around us, Nigel Hoffmann takes us to a threshold beyond which lies a true science of living form. Care, he says, springs from the whole human being―the thinking, heart, and will―and is implicit in the scientific method of conscious inner participation in nature, which derives from the work of the poet and scientist Goethe. The Goethean approach―a living form that unites science and art―is not an alternative to contemporary natural science, but complements it. Artistic practice, says Hoffmann, is a guide across the threshold and into the sphere of the living whole. However, artistic sensibility can be lifted to higher possibilities of itself, allowing us to discover the faculties of cognitive feeling and cognitive will. 
The author calls for a grounding in Goethean science for all students as a preliminary to their specialist and professional studies. He introduces us to the concept of the metamorphosis of the university―from the doctoral ideal to the ideal of the whole human being―and concludes with a case study of the economic sphere and capital using Goethean methodology. This profound book indicates a transformative path for human culture and civilization in the twenty-first century.

The University at the Threshold: Orientation Through Goethean Science

Religion & Spirituality

Rudolf Steiner Press

The Social Archetype: Realizing Society’s Threefold Unity: A New Goetheanism

Clairview Books

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Books by Hoffmann, Nigel