Talk:Rudolf Steiner

Neutrality tag

WP:Neutrality specifies that on Wikipedia, neutrality means "representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic." I don't see here any sources (much less reliable sources) being suggested that present points of view that are not included. Unless we can demonstrate unrepresented POVs, this is not the right tag. Clean Copy^talk 21:03, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

The current article is written from a hagiographic point of view. The tag is appropriate. Feoffer (talk) 01:41, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

This article in general and the examples i've listed above (excluding the first one that was just a dead link) fail to meet Articles which cover controversial, disputed, or discounted ideas in detail should document (with reliable sources) the current level of their acceptance among the relevant academic community per WP:FRINGELEVEL—blindlynx 04:46, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

This appears to be a well-supported thoughtful biography. I don't see how the content can honnestly be called, "hagiographic." This isn't promotional. It appears that some comments, on this talk page, are by people with a visceral dislike for the subject and are of the opinion that negative or defamatory commentary, unlikely to be supported by reliable sources, be included. If there are clear examples of "hagiographic," exceptionally promotional portions to this article please list them here. --23mason (talk) 16:43, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

You got that right, we are people with a visceral dislike for WP:FRINGE subjects. Spot on! tgeorgescu (talk) 17:24, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

As far as I can see, the evaluative statements in the article all stem from reliable, generally academic sources.

Please list specific examples, not of factual information (such as the number of Waldorf schools in the world), but of purportedly hagiographical interpretations where the cited reference does not qualify as a reliable source. I have replaced the Evans citation with one to a mainstream medical publishing house. Clean Copy^talk 20:18, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

IMHO, the problem is not hagiography, but an in-universe view which makes little sense to outsiders. tgeorgescu (talk) 20:38, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Gotta agree with tgeorgescu, blindlynx, and Feoffer here. The tag is appropriate, there are issues with this page wrt POV, insofar as the article is in-universe and I think ALSO too laudatory. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 21:02, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Yup, compare with Martin Heidegger: we explain that he is regarded by many as one of the greatest philosophers, we briefly explain his thinking, but we also explain his mistakes and why other philosophers see him as scum.

The difference being that either if you love him or hate him, Heidegger is a mainstream philosopher, while Steiner is a fringe and pseudoscience guru.

The mainstream view is that Anthroposophic medicine is fringe and based upon self-deception (at least the part MDs have learned from Steiner). His directives for agricultural preparations are hardly anything else than ritual witchcraft. Waldorf schools are rife with occult meditations whose meaning is only apparent to insiders or advanced scholars of Western esotericism. Not that they actively teach occultism, but the schools are imbued with occult symbolism, and teachers have to believe in the occult, otherwise they're fired. I no longer believe there are spirits like sylphs, gnomes, salamanders and elves is reason enough for immediate dismissal. And they tell that overtly: overt disbelief in core Anthroposophical teachings means one is finished as a Waldorf teacher. Anthroposophical MDs cannot claim that mistletoe is not effective against cancer, since that is heresy and they would be sacked on the spot. Reaffirming such dogma means they are extremely prone to self-deception, rather than facing empirical reality. The old ideology vs. reality game. Anthroposophical MDs say they're right about mistletoe and every reputable and independent source claims otherwise. I'd like to be proven wrong, but please no WP:PROFRINGE apologetics! tgeorgescu (talk) 03:50, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Can we stick to verifiable sources? Neither your opinion nor mine are relevant here. Clean Copy^talk 23:07, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

a consensus of editors is relevant insofar as it is how we determine when to leave or remove tags. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 23:50, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Sure, but if you want to demonstrate that an article is not "representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic," it would make sense to cite some of those views. This would also facilitate their incorporation into the article. Clean Copy^talk 00:38, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

In plainspeak: the article should say that Steiner is a fringe and pseudoscience guru. Otherwise it dodges the WP:PSCI policy.

E.g., the fact that the word "pseudoscience" does not appear in the article is a clear violation of WP:PSCI. Goethean science is not science, but pseudoscience. Not telling this in the article is a violation of WP:NPOV.

Also, according to WP:LUNATICS we are bound to call Anthroposophic medicine quackery.

His views on science were risible at best, delusional at worst.

Verdict of the reality-based community: Anthroposophic medicine is quackery.

Verdict of the reality-based community: biodyanmic agriculture can never feed 4 billion people at once. Rudolf Steiner's cranky ideas cannot feed the world, you need artificial fertilizers in order to feed the world.

Anthroposophists are generally speaking anti-vaxxers and Waldorf schools are pockets with a large number of unvaccinated children. Totally not vaccinating your child is comparable to allow them playing Russian roulette, once in their lifetime.

One source: Bourne, Joel K. (2015). The End of Plenty: The Race to Feed a Crowded World. W. W. Norton. p. 164. ISBN 978-0-393-24804-3. Retrieved 28 January 2022. We aren't going to feed six billion people with organic fertilizer. If we tried to do it, we would level most of our forest and many of those lands would be productive only for a short period of time. If you want a real-world case, see Sri Lanka.

Steiner's POV is severely at odds with mainstream science and medicine. This has to be stated very clearly inside the article. He presented himself as having paramount superiority in matters medical and scientific. So, yeah, the mainstream view is that Steiner was a bizarro, wacko guru who bragged too much about his spiritual powers and his own intellect.

Who takes seriously a clairvoyant? Declare that you are are clairvoyant and you instantly lose credibility with rationally-minded people.

I don't say that the article has to bash him, to be wholly negative. But at the University of Amsterdam, when studying Western esotericism, students were told very clearly they are studying a marginal (i.e. fringe) phenomenon of European cultural history.

Whether you endorse the fringe, that's a personal choice. Wikipedia doesn't. Wikipedia is WP:MAINSTREAM.

You don't have to agree with the worldview of the anti-fringe editors, but you have to agree that according to WP:PAGs Steiner is a peddler of fringe and pseudoscience.

It is not a matter of worldview: Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Schelling pushed idealistic worldviews without quickly becoming fringe. tgeorgescu (talk) 20:32, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

I have reported the edit war to WP:FTN. Clean Copy and 23mason have already been warned of discretionary sanctions for pseudoscience and alternative medicine. tgeorgescu (talk) 22:37, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

Warned why? For what? Is there a blanket ban on editing this article unless I get some special permissions? All I did is find some sources, where they were needed, and removed some unsupported superfluous content. I got a message that some sources weren't reliable. Sorry, if that was the case, but the edit was in good faith. Please tell me which ones so that I can steer clear of them. I feel like I am being harassed and I don't know why.--23mason (talk) 16:50, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

@23mason: You're not being harassed, just alerted that the pro-Steiner faction has dodged for far, far too long the website policy, namely WP:PSCI, which requires us to call a spade a spade, i.e. call a pseudoscience a pseudoscience. Even clearer: do not remove or water down the fact that Rudolf Steiner was a pseudoscientist, that's all WP:AE is about this article. tgeorgescu (talk) 20:15, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

And the remarks about organic agriculture weren't a joke. In Economy of Sri Lanka#Transition to biological agriculture, organic agriculture, Anthroposophic or otherwise, simply could not deliver, despite the highfalutin claims from Joel K. Bourne's book that organic agriculture could feed more than four billion people. Nobody was there to help the Sri Lankan agriculture avoid disaster. And it wasn't practically possible that anyone could have helped them avoid disaster. Transition of the country to 100% organic agriculture was WP:CB. tgeorgescu (talk) 03:22, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

I'll echo this with my scientist hat on. So much of organic is unfounded WP:FRINGE or marketing claims us educators have to deal with too often. That said tgeorgescu, I haven't been able to keep up with my watchlist the last few weeks. Are most of the pressing issues taken care of here, or was there anything that still needed an eye or two? Good to see it's been getting cleaned up. KoA (talk) 03:29, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

@KoA: I did not touch most of the article. Others have eliminated some dubious stuff. My main concern was that Steiner gets clearly labelled as a pseudoscientist. Anthroposophists do not have to agree that he was a pseudoscientist, but only with the hard fact that that's the mainstream view. In their mind, he wasn't, they consider him a fighter against pseudoscience (see talk page archives, when I has raised some years ago the point that Steiner should be labelled a pseudoscientist). I'm content that their dodging of WP:PSCI came to a grinding halt. I mean, rules are rules, we don't have another set of rules for Rudolf Steiner. Rules need to be enforced, we cannot build a serious encyclopedia otherwise, it would quickly become a mess. As Kww has stated, As for the page having two sets of rules, it doesn't: sources representing mainstream scientific thought have precedence over mysticism and fringe science. That should be a fairly simple rule to comprehend and abide by.

I do not seek to offend anyone, but I regard attempts to deny that Rudolf Steiner is WP:FRINGE as outright delusions. That, of course, it is my own view and not a medical diagnosis. How could someone pretend to have a grasp of reality if they deny such obvious fact? Of course, everyone thinks their beliefs are true, otherwise they would change their beliefs. But ignoring how their group is seen by the mainstream shows lack of awareness. tgeorgescu (talk) 04:34, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

Yes. We are biased.

Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, once wrote:

Wikipedia's policies ... are exactly spot-on and correct. If you can get your work published in respectable scientific journals – that is to say, if you can produce evidence through replicable scientific experiments, then Wikipedia will cover it appropriately.

What we won't do is pretend that the work of lunatic charlatans is the equivalent of "true scientific discourse". It isn't.

So yes, we are biased.

• We are biased towards science, and biased against pseudoscience.
• We are biased towards astronomy, and biased against astrology.
• We are biased towards chemistry, and biased against alchemy.
• We are biased towards mathematics, and biased against numerology.
• We are biased towards medicine, and biased against homeopathy.
• We are biased towards venipuncture, and biased against acupuncture.
• We are biased towards solar energy, and biased against esoteric energy.
• We are biased towards actual conspiracies and biased against conspiracy theories.
• We are biased towards cargo planes, and biased against cargo cults.
• We are biased towards vaccination, and biased against vaccine hesitancy.
• We are biased towards magnetic resonance imaging, and biased against magnetic therapy.
• We are biased towards crops, and biased against crop circles.
• We are biased towards laundry detergent, and biased against laundry balls.
• We are biased towards augmentative and alternative communication, and biased against facilitated communication.
• We are biased towards water treatment, and biased against magnetic water treatment.
• We are biased towards mercury in saturated calomel electrodes, and biased against mercury in quack medicines.
• We are biased towards blood transfusions, and biased against blood letting.
• We are biased towards electromagnetic fields, and biased against microlepton fields.
• We are biased towards evolution and an old Earth, and biased against young Earth creationism.
• We are biased towards holocaust studies, and biased against holocaust denial.
• We are biased towards an (approximately) spherical earth, and biased against a flat earth.
• We are biased towards the sociology of race, and biased against scientific racism.
• We are biased towards the scientific consensus on climate change, and biased against global warming conspiracy theories.
• We are biased towards the existence of Jesus and biased against the existence of Santa Claus.
• We are biased towards geology, and biased against flood geology.
• We are biased towards medical treatments that have been proven to be effective in double-blind clinical trials, and biased against medical treatments that are based upon preying on the gullible.
• We are biased towards astronauts and cosmonauts, and biased against ancient astronauts.
• We are biased towards psychology, and biased against phrenology.
• We are biased towards Mendelism, and biased against Lysenkoism.

And we are not going to change. tgeorgescu (talk) 01:05, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

References

Bare reference and "Discretionary sanctions"

I see that editors have cleaned up much of this article, except there is an error message in the reflist. Upon investigation I found the culprit to be "." I later found this:"" So should I remove the orphan tag, or should we have some way to warn other editors to not use the same source and risk getting sanctioned?--23mason (talk) 17:22, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

Obliged. tgeorgescu (talk) 19:43, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

References

Edit warring against WP:PSCI

@Rodanmeb: You're edit warring against basic website policy, namely WP:PSCI.

I would tend to agree as well that Bdub hasn't been disruptive yet. But I fail to see how anyone could pursue the argument that mainstream scholarship is wrong and ancient sources are right without quickly becoming disruptive. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 03:09, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

And what concord hath Christ with Belial? And what concord hath Wikipedia with Steinerian pseudoscience?

And I know this playbook by rote: WP:FRINGE POV-pushers who claim to understand WP:NPOV better than all established Wikipedians. Well, WP:PSCI is actually part of the WP:NPOV policy.

This is part of the neutrality policy of this website: The pseudoscientific view should be clearly described as such.

I explain you the basic policy of this website, but all arguments against basic policy are simply wasting your own time.

So, no, making the pseudoscience label appear subjective or disputed does not cohere with our policies and guidelines. We don't believe in teach the controversy.

Let me repeat: Rudolf Steiner is a pseudoscience guru. A topic ban has been enacted upon someone who did not abide by this understanding. You could be next. So, no, you're not fighting against me, you're fighting against the well-oiled machinery of Wikipedia.

In 2022, pro-Steiner editors no longer control the narrative. Their control violated basic website policy, anyway. They've been tolerated for only so long. Now they either abide by WP:PSCI or they're out. tgeorgescu (talk) 03:22, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

I am not a denialist, nor an anthroposoph nor a fan of Rudolf Steiner. And I therefore do not wish to be categorized as such. Like you, I am academically educated, and regard the scientific method very highly. But precisely the following sentence: 'His ideas are largely pseudoscientific.[20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30] Others call them parascience.[31]', implies that there is no scientific consensus that Steiner's ideas are pseudoscientific, after all others describe his ideas as parascience. So my point is not so much to equalize science with fringe science, but to equalize the first mentioned sources to the last mentioned sources.

Furthermore, I find only the source to Staudenmaier at the sentence : He was also prone to pseudohistory' not sufficient to make such a statement. That is why I have modified that sentence as well. I have read Staudenmaier, but he does not address the emanationism that underlies Steiner's history reading and Theosophy which is quite essential in understanding it. Again I am not a denialist, but I do think that statements like this should be properly substantiated, precisely in the name of the scientific method. Preceding unsigned comment added by Rodanmeb (talk • contribs) 11:59, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

@Rodanmeb: There is a technical difference between pseudoscience and parascience, but the difference is too small in order to count Mahner as expressing a dissenting view. About pseudohistory: Rudolf Steiner wrote lots of crap about Atlantis and Lemuria. Martin Gardner commented upon that, he wrote classic debunkings of pseudoscience.

Something else: admins do not judge intentions, they judge behavior. tgeorgescu (talk) 12:09, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

"Parascience" is a rather specific term which I have never heard outside of the context of GWUP. Its meaning is "something that is either pseudoscience or protoscience", so there is no contradiction to the other sources. I would delete the parascience half-sentence, it is not relevant and just gives fence-sitters vain hope, as we can see from what is happening here. We have enough sources already.

Not that it is relevant here, but knowing de:Martin Mahner, I am sure he views it as pseudoscience too. --Hob Gadling (talk) 15:52, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

@Rodanmeb: Just another thing: while we love and benefit from the scientific method, we don't apply ourselves the scientific method at Wikipedia. We apply the reliable sources method. tgeorgescu (talk) 20:03, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

@Rodanmeb: To cut down all the craps: if you ever try to remove or water down the information that Steiner is a pseudoscientist, you will be reported to WP:AE and you will likely get topic banned from articles having to do with Anthroposophy. And you have not been singled out for special treatment: that will be the fate of every editor who tries to remove or water down that information. The website policy WP:PSCI has been dodged for far too long, and this time it is over for fringe POV-pushers. Fringe POV-pushing is utterly incompatible with a serious encyclopedia like Wikipedia wants to be. It is over, man, it is over. The pro-Steiner faction lost Wikipedia. The well-oiled machinery of Wikipedia will ban anyone who tries to remove or water down that information. This is simply applying the WP:RULES which have been decided as binding by the Wikipedia Community, and have been publicly endorsed by Jimmy Wales at WP:LUNATICS. tgeorgescu (talk) 07:00, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

Yes, that's how it is. --Hob Gadling (talk) 13:54, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

indeed—blindlynx 18:04, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

This isn't injustice, nor am I a bully or dictator for applying the WP:RULES which are universally mandatory at this website. If one does not like the WP:PSCI policy, they should avoid editing this article. Or, better, vote with their feet. We cannot make everyone happy, this is a website of mainstream knowledge, not of WP:SOAPBOXING for various sects.

Now there are a dozen WP:RS which WP:V the fact that Steiner was a pseudoscientist. If somebody really doubts that, I guess I can enlarge that number to two dozens. As I said, I was just scratching the surface, all this information already exists, properly cited, in other Wikipedia articles. tgeorgescu (talk) 06:00, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

If one's main purpose at this article is to sabotage the application of WP:PSCI and WP:FRINGE, then we don't need such editors. They should seriously ask themselves why they are here, if they don't like the policies and they don't like the guidelines. Knowing what is considered not done at Wikipedia, I avoid the article abortion: I know I'm unwanted there. tgeorgescu (talk) 06:41, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

Philosopher

@Rapidavocado: He wasn't a philosopher foremost, but he was a philosopher nonetheless. Even if you don't agree with his POV, he could write philosophy when he wanted to. tgeorgescu (talk) 19:49, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

We should probably redo the infobox though as it overstates his philosophical work—blindlynx 20:43, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

The fact that an external source like Britannica does not list him as a philosopher means there is a de-emphasis that should not be overlooked.

The reader needs this first line to get an idea on where his significant contribution was. Is a significant fraction of his work on philosophy?

I think "Overstating his philosophical work" is key here, and there is plenty of self produced literature that does this. His work is only known in anthroposophic circles and has been ignored anywhere else, which means his contribution to philosophy is thin as it is centered in spiritualism with few self-standing ideas.

There is a degree of philosophy in many disciplines, the question is: where is the bar to be considered a philosopher? do we mean he is considered on par with with Heidegger? or do we mean a mere "he could do philosophy if he really wanted to, but he mostly made a New Religion"?

A significant fraction of his work was devoted to creating a spirituality movement, which I think deviates from what the consensus would understand as the main work of a philosopher. Rapidavocado (talk) 23:16, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

Yup, "he could do philosophy if he really wanted to, but he mostly made a New Religion" is a neat summary of my point. He could have been The Great German Idealist of the 20th century, but that was wasted when he declared himself clairvoyant. tgeorgescu (talk) 00:20, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

should we stick with the philosopher infobox and just empty it out of nonsense or switch to a different one?—blindlynx 01:51, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

There was an edit adding a citation for the "philosopher" category.

Steiner is not listed as a philosopher in many sources, like Britannica, the internet encyclopedia of philosophy https://iep.utm.edu/s/, also, the encyclopedia of pseudoscience by Williams does not list him as one.

This is a point of view issue, and I think the best is to say he is is an esotericist, an spiritualist or an occultist and leave it there, these lines of thought do have some philosophy attached but it is misleading to present him as a philosopher in the Wikipedia as the reader will get the wrong impression.

No amount of citations will resolve this issue as he is mostly seen as a philosopher for people within the Waldorf community but he is mostly unknown elsewhere. Rapidavocado (talk) 01:51, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

Random blog which sells books

@23mason: https://www.famousphilosophers.org/contact/ fails according to WP:BLOGS. tgeorgescu (talk) 16:04, 1 April 2022 (UTC)