At the present time the human mind is in danger of confusing the realm of dynamic events, into which modern atomic research has penetrated, with the world of the spirit; that is, the world whence nature is endowed with intelligent design, and of which human thinking is an expression in terms of consciousness. If a view of nature as a manifestation of spirit, such as Goethe and kindred minds conceived it, is to be of any significance in our time, it must include a conception of matter which shows as one of its attributes its capacity to serve Form (in the sense in which Ruskin spoke of it in opposition to mere Force) as a means of manifestation.
The present part of this book, comprising Chapters VIII-XI, will be devoted to working out such a conception of matter. An example will thereby be given of how Goethe's method of acquiring understanding of natural phenomena through reading the phenomena themselves may be carried beyond his own field of observation. There are, however, certain theoretical obstacles, erected by the onlooker-consciousness, which require to be removed before we can actually set foot on the new path. The present chapter will in particular serve this purpose.
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Science, since Galileo, has been rooted in the conviction that the logic of mathematics is a means of expressing the behaviour of natural events. The material for the mathematical treatment of sense data is obtained through measurement. The actual thing, therefore, in which the scientific observer is interested in each case, is the position of some kind of pointer. In fact, physical science is essentially, as Professor Eddington put it, a 'pointer-reading science'. Looking at this fact in our way we can say that all pointer instruments which man has constructed ever since the beginning of science, have as their model man himself, restricted to colourless, non-stereoscopic observation. For all that is left to him in this condition is to focus points in space and register changes of their positions. Indeed, the perfect scientific observer is himself the arch-pointer-instrument.
The birth of the method of pointer-reading is marked by Galileo's construction of the first thermometer (actually, a thermoscope). The conviction of the applicability of mathematical concepts to the description of natural events is grounded in his discovery of the so-called Parallelogram of Forces. It is with these two innovations that we shall concern ourselves in this chapter.
Let it be said at once that our investigations will lead to the unveiling of certain illusions which the spectator-consciousness has woven round these two gifts of Galileo. This does not mean that their significance as fundamentals of science will be questioned. Nor will the practical uses to which they have been put with so much success be criticized in any way. But there are certain deceptive ideas which became connected with them, and the result is that to-day, when man is in need of finding new epistemological ground under his feet, he is entangled in a network of conceptual illusions which prevent him from using his reason with the required freedom.
A special word is necessary at this point regarding the term illusion, as it is used here and elsewhere. In respect of this, it will be well to remember what was pointed out earlier in connexion with the term 'tragedy' (Chapter II). In speaking of 'illusion', we neither intend to cast any blame on some person or another who took part in weaving the illusion, nor to suggest that the emergence of it should be thought of as an avoidable calamity. Rather should illusion be thought of as something which man has been allowed to weave because only by his own active overcoming of it can he fulfil his destiny as the bearer of truth in freedom. Illusion, in the sense used here, belongs to those things in man's existence which are truly to be called tragic. It loses this quality, and assumes a quite different one, only when man, once the time has come for overcoming an illusion, insists on clinging to it.
As our further studies will show, the criticism to be applied here does not only leave the validity of measurement and the mathematical treatment of the data thus obtained fully intact, but by giving them their appropriate place in a wider conception of nature it opens the way to an ever more firmly grounded and, at the same time, enhanced
application of both.
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