I ordered a copy of "Voltaire's Bastards" immediatly after reading what you wrote. Reading Goethe's ideas on science is not very easy but if you are really interested you might check out this wiki article
I ordered a copy of "Voltaire's Bastards" immediatly after reading what you wrote. Reading Goethe's ideas on science is not very easy but if you are really interested you might check out this wiki article
I read Goethe's critique of materialism while a high school senior(1966). For some reason I have always approached new knowledge as an object of curiosity with no desire to have a final answer. The story of the blind men and the elephant has been my preferred paradigm as far back as I can remember. I had been studying science and math more to get my father's attention than as some self chosen pursuit. At age nine I told my father I wanted to become a novelist. He said I would never make a living doing that. The subtext was that if I wanted to continue to get what little dribles of attention and affection I was getting at the time I would continue being daddy's little scientist. Hi life's dream was to have become a theoretical quantum physicist but he graduated from high school in 1929. His family was middle class and the only sibling who went to college was a bbrother who majored in business which had some chance of a return on investment. My life has been dominated by curiosity, so studying math and science was alot of fun for me but I also had a deep love for the profounder parts of religion. I share that with Carl Jung. When Goethe pointed out the limitations of reductionist materialism, I saw immediately that he was right. This fact has been one of the most difficult aspects of the holism vs reductionism debate. For me, holism is obviously superior in understanding nature and humanity's place in nature. Trying to get many people who are professionals in the STEM areas is close to a hopeless quest. Ecology really only makes sense from a holistic perspective. In spring of 2015, I was auditing a course on Daoism taught by Roger Ames at the University of Hawaii Manoa. One of the students in the course loaned me his copy of "The Master and his Emissary" by Iain McGilchrist.
This was a major event in my life because it helpedto explain why so many STEM people simply couldn't get the holistic perspective. Iain McGilchrist is a Burkean conservative, so we don't see eye to eye on politics but his work on the lateralization of cognition is a major breakthrough. Recently he published a follow up on TMAHE titled "The Matter with Things"
Iain McGilchrist has YouTube videos that are hard to count, there are so many.My point is that checking out McGilchrist is a worthwhile endeavor. Many British intellectuals are enamored of Edmund Burke. I have spent more than two decades studying political psychology. I agree with William James and Friedrich Nietzsche who point out that a person's character draws them to the philosophical view that is most appealing to them. Maybe some people are born right brain dominant and are drawn inexorably to people like William James and Carl Jung. I really don't know. The nature nurture debate is one of my primary areas of curiosity. It seems like people in the creative arts are naturally drawn to a holistic perspective. I learned about Ted Gioia from Rick Beato whom I listen to fairly regularly. My true home is in the arts and humanities but I hope to see the end of the wars between the two cultures sometime soon.
I ordered a copy of "Voltaire's Bastards" immediatly after reading what you wrote. Reading Goethe's ideas on science is not very easy but if you are really interested you might check out this wiki article
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goethean_science
I read Goethe's critique of materialism while a high school senior(1966). For some reason I have always approached new knowledge as an object of curiosity with no desire to have a final answer. The story of the blind men and the elephant has been my preferred paradigm as far back as I can remember. I had been studying science and math more to get my father's attention than as some self chosen pursuit. At age nine I told my father I wanted to become a novelist. He said I would never make a living doing that. The subtext was that if I wanted to continue to get what little dribles of attention and affection I was getting at the time I would continue being daddy's little scientist. Hi life's dream was to have become a theoretical quantum physicist but he graduated from high school in 1929. His family was middle class and the only sibling who went to college was a bbrother who majored in business which had some chance of a return on investment. My life has been dominated by curiosity, so studying math and science was alot of fun for me but I also had a deep love for the profounder parts of religion. I share that with Carl Jung. When Goethe pointed out the limitations of reductionist materialism, I saw immediately that he was right. This fact has been one of the most difficult aspects of the holism vs reductionism debate. For me, holism is obviously superior in understanding nature and humanity's place in nature. Trying to get many people who are professionals in the STEM areas is close to a hopeless quest. Ecology really only makes sense from a holistic perspective. In spring of 2015, I was auditing a course on Daoism taught by Roger Ames at the University of Hawaii Manoa. One of the students in the course loaned me his copy of "The Master and his Emissary" by Iain McGilchrist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Master_and_His_Emissary
This was a major event in my life because it helpedto explain why so many STEM people simply couldn't get the holistic perspective. Iain McGilchrist is a Burkean conservative, so we don't see eye to eye on politics but his work on the lateralization of cognition is a major breakthrough. Recently he published a follow up on TMAHE titled "The Matter with Things"
https://channelmcgilchrist.com/matter-with-things/
Iain McGilchrist has YouTube videos that are hard to count, there are so many.My point is that checking out McGilchrist is a worthwhile endeavor. Many British intellectuals are enamored of Edmund Burke. I have spent more than two decades studying political psychology. I agree with William James and Friedrich Nietzsche who point out that a person's character draws them to the philosophical view that is most appealing to them. Maybe some people are born right brain dominant and are drawn inexorably to people like William James and Carl Jung. I really don't know. The nature nurture debate is one of my primary areas of curiosity. It seems like people in the creative arts are naturally drawn to a holistic perspective. I learned about Ted Gioia from Rick Beato whom I listen to fairly regularly. My true home is in the arts and humanities but I hope to see the end of the wars between the two cultures sometime soon.