I appreciate this attempt to think about Goethean morphology and modern physics alongside one another. These sorts of exercises are always interesting and I've done a couple myself. The refusal to let life get summed up by chemistry is always most welcome, and the claim that the living world is primary while "physics" deals in shadows is one I share.
I do think this piece ends up granting the word "quantum" far too much ontological authority. From a stricter field-theory standpoint, "quantum" names a quantity. It is a measure, a parceling of action or energy for mathematical treatment, a calculatory grammar and nothing more. There is nothing in nature you can point to and call quantum, the same way there is nothing in a rock you can point to and call it its "weight". That number is a descriptor stuck on from outside. Take the rock to deep space and it is gone. The atomists (truly mathematicians and not physicists) made a religion of these descriptors because they cannot abide anything they can't tally. A hammer sees nails. A mathematician sees particles.
So treating tunneling, superposition, coherence, orbitals, and potential as if they were formative principles in Nature (or even analogous to such) repeats the very error the piece seems to be trying to overcome. The physicist quantifies field phenomena, and then the metaphysician spiritualizes those quantified abstractions. The post called the particle zoo demolition debris in one paragraph, correctly, and then laid that same inventory against the Urpflanze in the next. This is straight up diabolical.
The Goethean sequence does not need the rescue. Seed, leaf, calyx, flower, fruit, seed is a directly perceptible arc of contraction, expansion, rhythm, and return standing on its own. The analogy to quantum mechanics weakens it, because it translates living metamorphosis back into the language of the mathematical atomism we should be eradicating.
The most catastrophic bit, on the flowering stage, rests on the bugbear of the photon. All of it assumes light is a little packet hopping from site to site. The photon is an arbitrary abstraction. Tesla said so plainly. Light is a sound wave in the ether, a compound coaxial circuit of rarefactions and compressions along the dielectric, and the so-called speed of light is the hysteresis of the medium.
"Physics" continues mistaking successful prediction for explanation. "Quantum potential" and "coherence" describe a measurable (whatever that really means) behavior while leaving the actual force, field, or formative principle completely unnamed. This piece ends up critiquing the Standard Model while still borrowing its prestige vocabulary to do that same critiquing. To me, these matters should not be a "keep your enemies closer" situation.
The post notes that electricity is the Light Ether pushed sub-physically, that magnetism is the inverted Chemical Ether. That is field language, Steiner's language, and that of the men who actually understood the field. Steinmetz, Heaviside, Russell, Dollard, who all treated quantum theory as a travesty of how nature actually works. J.J. Thomson called his own electron one unit of dielectric induction and left it at that. A more radical Goethean critique would begin exactly there, from formative fields, etheric polarity, motion, tension, expansion, contraction, and phase. It would treat "quantum" as a bookkeeping term applied to effects within field modalities and refuse to let it stand as anything that might be confused as a hidden key to Nature's inner grammar.
The plant in your garden reveals how impoverished the quantum vocabulary becomes the moment it tries to speak about life. When the door is standing open, we must refuse to walk back through it to the likes of Bohr and Feynman to bless the supersensible.
Nathaniel, thank you for your comment. It is the kind of critique that sharpens rather than diminishes, and I welcome such.
I see where I made the category error, I'm a bit surprised I made it, and I totally appreciate getting called out on it. I got carried away with an idea long in my mind, initially inspired by Lehrs' perspective, where I see the quantum realm concept as being like a distorted mirror of the supersensible. In laying the quantum states against Goethe's metamorphic sequence, I attached an ontological weight to the quantum vocabulary that it has not earned and cannot support, even if I imagine the analogy as useful. Quantum potential, tunneling, coherence: these are mathematical interpretations of measurement outcomes, not phenomenological realities of the order the plant stages are. The Goethean sequence stands in direct perceptual ground. The quantum formalism stands in abstraction. I collapsed that distinction in the execution of the five-fold table, and your demolition-debris "diabolical" reference names the result with precision.
What I was reaching toward, imperfectly, as you have shown, was the observation that quantum physicists, working entirely within the subsensible register and without Goethean organs of perception, nevertheless arrive at a mathematics of discontinuous stages: jumps, thresholds, discrete states separated by qualitative leaps. Nature, even seen from below and through an inadequate instrument, still moves in stages. The quantum formalism shadows that fact without comprehending it.
I'm inspired to construct a fuller response, one that takes your field-language critique seriously, follows Thomson and Dollard where you point, and attempts to state the mirror concept in a form precise enough to actually hold. It deserves more than a thread reply. Watch this space.
I think you're making a profoundly important discovery here, Thomas.
What if the phenomena of the quantum world are reflections of the phenomena of life itself? In much the same way that the physical forces we observe might be reflections of the Ahrimanic, Luciferic, or Asuric forces at work within human existence.
I realize this is a complex picture, perhaps almost impossible to grasp in a short comment. I only say this because I spent eight years studying quantum physics at university before I felt I could begin to understand it. Later, while my children attended a Waldorf school, I joined reading circles where we explored Rudolf Steiner's works together.
So let me offer you another perspective, Thomas. I'd love to hear what you think.
What if quantum phenomena, the plant world, and the influences of Ahriman and Lucifer are not external realities at all—but all exist within us?
What if nothing is truly outside us?
The plant I see appears within my mind, experienced by the witness that lives within me. In that sense, I am not directly experiencing the plant itself, but my own mind.
And by the same token, when we speak about quantum physics, could it be that we are actually speaking about the thoughts arising within our own minds?
What if this was precisely what Fermi was pointing toward all those years ago?
A super-entaglement is observed in the evolution of monozygotic twins. If raised at distance, without even nowing that the other exist, they make the same choices in life: they have the same hobbies, choose to marry same type of wifes, they name their children the same names and so on...
Great article Tom, at a time that feels like a step wise threshold. And coincidentally published right when the CERN collider long term shutdown starts till 2030!
Yes, I saw that CERN is shutting down. I guess the eggheads can't oggle billion-dollar electrical debris for a while. I was going to put in more on CERN, from the shadow side, but I have keep myself roped in, as these articles often get longer than I imagined at the inception. Another time, I have a whole powerpoint on matters related to CERN. You may appreciate Strange Matters, the documentary by Luis Sancho warning about CERN, gone from youtube, but still up on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/124682831
Thanks. Something I've brought up in presentations over the years.. and had an article I added to over the last couple years.. came across a lecture slide I did on it and decided to finish the article finally. From an original idea I got from reading Lehrs long ago.
I appreciate this attempt to think about Goethean morphology and modern physics alongside one another. These sorts of exercises are always interesting and I've done a couple myself. The refusal to let life get summed up by chemistry is always most welcome, and the claim that the living world is primary while "physics" deals in shadows is one I share.
I do think this piece ends up granting the word "quantum" far too much ontological authority. From a stricter field-theory standpoint, "quantum" names a quantity. It is a measure, a parceling of action or energy for mathematical treatment, a calculatory grammar and nothing more. There is nothing in nature you can point to and call quantum, the same way there is nothing in a rock you can point to and call it its "weight". That number is a descriptor stuck on from outside. Take the rock to deep space and it is gone. The atomists (truly mathematicians and not physicists) made a religion of these descriptors because they cannot abide anything they can't tally. A hammer sees nails. A mathematician sees particles.
So treating tunneling, superposition, coherence, orbitals, and potential as if they were formative principles in Nature (or even analogous to such) repeats the very error the piece seems to be trying to overcome. The physicist quantifies field phenomena, and then the metaphysician spiritualizes those quantified abstractions. The post called the particle zoo demolition debris in one paragraph, correctly, and then laid that same inventory against the Urpflanze in the next. This is straight up diabolical.
The Goethean sequence does not need the rescue. Seed, leaf, calyx, flower, fruit, seed is a directly perceptible arc of contraction, expansion, rhythm, and return standing on its own. The analogy to quantum mechanics weakens it, because it translates living metamorphosis back into the language of the mathematical atomism we should be eradicating.
The most catastrophic bit, on the flowering stage, rests on the bugbear of the photon. All of it assumes light is a little packet hopping from site to site. The photon is an arbitrary abstraction. Tesla said so plainly. Light is a sound wave in the ether, a compound coaxial circuit of rarefactions and compressions along the dielectric, and the so-called speed of light is the hysteresis of the medium.
"Physics" continues mistaking successful prediction for explanation. "Quantum potential" and "coherence" describe a measurable (whatever that really means) behavior while leaving the actual force, field, or formative principle completely unnamed. This piece ends up critiquing the Standard Model while still borrowing its prestige vocabulary to do that same critiquing. To me, these matters should not be a "keep your enemies closer" situation.
The post notes that electricity is the Light Ether pushed sub-physically, that magnetism is the inverted Chemical Ether. That is field language, Steiner's language, and that of the men who actually understood the field. Steinmetz, Heaviside, Russell, Dollard, who all treated quantum theory as a travesty of how nature actually works. J.J. Thomson called his own electron one unit of dielectric induction and left it at that. A more radical Goethean critique would begin exactly there, from formative fields, etheric polarity, motion, tension, expansion, contraction, and phase. It would treat "quantum" as a bookkeeping term applied to effects within field modalities and refuse to let it stand as anything that might be confused as a hidden key to Nature's inner grammar.
The plant in your garden reveals how impoverished the quantum vocabulary becomes the moment it tries to speak about life. When the door is standing open, we must refuse to walk back through it to the likes of Bohr and Feynman to bless the supersensible.
Nathaniel, thank you for your comment. It is the kind of critique that sharpens rather than diminishes, and I welcome such.
I see where I made the category error, I'm a bit surprised I made it, and I totally appreciate getting called out on it. I got carried away with an idea long in my mind, initially inspired by Lehrs' perspective, where I see the quantum realm concept as being like a distorted mirror of the supersensible. In laying the quantum states against Goethe's metamorphic sequence, I attached an ontological weight to the quantum vocabulary that it has not earned and cannot support, even if I imagine the analogy as useful. Quantum potential, tunneling, coherence: these are mathematical interpretations of measurement outcomes, not phenomenological realities of the order the plant stages are. The Goethean sequence stands in direct perceptual ground. The quantum formalism stands in abstraction. I collapsed that distinction in the execution of the five-fold table, and your demolition-debris "diabolical" reference names the result with precision.
What I was reaching toward, imperfectly, as you have shown, was the observation that quantum physicists, working entirely within the subsensible register and without Goethean organs of perception, nevertheless arrive at a mathematics of discontinuous stages: jumps, thresholds, discrete states separated by qualitative leaps. Nature, even seen from below and through an inadequate instrument, still moves in stages. The quantum formalism shadows that fact without comprehending it.
I'm inspired to construct a fuller response, one that takes your field-language critique seriously, follows Thomson and Dollard where you point, and attempts to state the mirror concept in a form precise enough to actually hold. It deserves more than a thread reply. Watch this space.
I think you're making a profoundly important discovery here, Thomas.
What if the phenomena of the quantum world are reflections of the phenomena of life itself? In much the same way that the physical forces we observe might be reflections of the Ahrimanic, Luciferic, or Asuric forces at work within human existence.
I realize this is a complex picture, perhaps almost impossible to grasp in a short comment. I only say this because I spent eight years studying quantum physics at university before I felt I could begin to understand it. Later, while my children attended a Waldorf school, I joined reading circles where we explored Rudolf Steiner's works together.
So let me offer you another perspective, Thomas. I'd love to hear what you think.
What if quantum phenomena, the plant world, and the influences of Ahriman and Lucifer are not external realities at all—but all exist within us?
What if nothing is truly outside us?
The plant I see appears within my mind, experienced by the witness that lives within me. In that sense, I am not directly experiencing the plant itself, but my own mind.
And by the same token, when we speak about quantum physics, could it be that we are actually speaking about the thoughts arising within our own minds?
What if this was precisely what Fermi was pointing toward all those years ago?
A super-entaglement is observed in the evolution of monozygotic twins. If raised at distance, without even nowing that the other exist, they make the same choices in life: they have the same hobbies, choose to marry same type of wifes, they name their children the same names and so on...
Yes, some of those cases are beyond belief, yet true.
Excellent article. Thankyou.
Great article Tom, at a time that feels like a step wise threshold. And coincidentally published right when the CERN collider long term shutdown starts till 2030!
Yes, I saw that CERN is shutting down. I guess the eggheads can't oggle billion-dollar electrical debris for a while. I was going to put in more on CERN, from the shadow side, but I have keep myself roped in, as these articles often get longer than I imagined at the inception. Another time, I have a whole powerpoint on matters related to CERN. You may appreciate Strange Matters, the documentary by Luis Sancho warning about CERN, gone from youtube, but still up on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/124682831
Perfect timing! I speak if this in class this week so now I can just send them this ha! You have done better than I could ever have! Brilliant
Thanks. Something I've brought up in presentations over the years.. and had an article I added to over the last couple years.. came across a lecture slide I did on it and decided to finish the article finally. From an original idea I got from reading Lehrs long ago.
The first article I did on Substack, March 2023 was Escaping the Subsensible Realm, so this has always been a theme: https://www.alkemix.art/p/escaping-the-subsensible-realm
Thank you my darling I will check this one out!!!