Talk:Rudolf Steiner

Notice: Pete K is indefinitely banned from editing this article.

The user specified has been banned by the Arbitration committee from editing this article. Posted by Penwhale for the Arbitration committee. See Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Waldorf education/Review.

Links to Fine Arts Presentations

This link: Rudolf Steiner at Fine Arts Presentations features the artworks of the good Doctor, as well as a directory for Portraits and for the Goetheanum. I will be adding a new directory for his Blackboard Drawings. Does the community believe these additional links in the External Links section would enhance this document? The elibrarian (talk) 17:55, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

The link is spam, contains product advertising and is not a reliable source, see WP:EL...Modernist (talk) 17:42, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

1923 preface of Theory of Knowledge...

As edited by Hgilbert at 12:11, 15 August 2012. This revision to Qexigator's fails adequately to balance or compare the unsourced assertion that Steiner considered PoF to be "his most important work". In the Preface to ToK, dated Nov. 1923, Steiner's own words (O.D.Wannamaker's trans.) were "Now that I again turn my attention to [ToK], it seems to me to be also the foundation and justification, as a theory of knowledge, for all that I have asserted since [sc. up to Nov. 1923]." In the next sentence he states in a few words exactly what he means (not some other party's paraphrase): "It speaks of an essential nature of knowledge which opens the way from the sense world to a world of spirit." It may be that at the same time (or later) Steiner said in truth that he considered PoF to be "his most important work", but surely the ordinary reader relying on Wikipedia for information deserves a better presentation of these two assertions than Hgilbert's revision. Qexigator (talk) 13:35, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Ouch! I have now sourced the statement and modified it to be closer to the original wording. It is not unlikely that Steiner spoke of both texts as being foundational:

1. The two works are closely related (ToK being the preliminary work to PoF), and
2. Steiner was not known for his consistency in such matters hgilbert (talk) 19:09, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your response. Yes, the two works are closely related, but Steiner took more care than most to say what he meant about each, in ways that may be lost on some readers, perhaps due to translation or the reader's/ hearer's pov, or lack of attentiveness. For instance, those who know of S.O.Prokofieff's reputation and work will be able to judge for themselves how far to rely on it. More to the point, does he or anyone else source this particular assertion about PoF to Steiner himself: when and where? (I have seen his book but do not have it to hand so cannot check what appears on p.460 of the work cited.)

I do not propose to tinker further with this, but to my mind your revision-

"...The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conception (1886), in which Steiner set forth the foundation and justification for much of his later work..."

is still not sufficient to repair destroying the import of my earlier edit, and its place in the text-

"Nevertheless, he later affirmed, in his Preface to the 1923 edition of The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conception, that this work (The Theory...) was speaking of an essential nature of knowledge opening the way from the sense world to a world of spirit, such that, as a theory of knowledge, it had been the foundation and justification for all that he had since asserted orally or in print." (emphasis added)

If I could I would have checked the 1923 Preface with the German from which the translation was made. I remain of the view that paraphrasing risks misrepresenting an author who himself has made a habit of using his own words with care, and too often loses the very point which the author was actually making. Qexigator (talk) 22:07, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Further to above, I now see the following printed on the unnumbered page after the Contents page of Anhroposophy and the Philosophy of Freedom by S.O.Prokofieff (trans. fom German, 2009)-

• I asked Rudolf Steiner: "What will remain of your work thousands of years from now?" He replied: "Nothing but The Philosophy of Freedom. But in it everything else is contained. If one realizes the act of freedom described there, one can discover the whole content of anthroposophy." From the conversation between Rudolf Steiner and Walter Johannes Stein, Den Haag, April 1922.
• "One who is willing can indeed find the basic principles of anthroposophy in my Philosophy o Freedom. Rudolf Steiner, 11 June 1923.

These have been widely disseminated for years, as has the 1923 edition of ToK. It is easy to see he speaks/ writes of PoF otherwise than he does of ToK. Qexigator (talk) 23:00, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Why contradict the author?

For those more closely concerned with the circumstances of the republication, the author's Preface was dated November 1923 in both the first edition which appeared in December 1923 and in the second and final edition which was corrected and seen through the press by the author and published in 1924. The English translation by O.D.Wanamaker was from the second 1924 edition.

The revision of 19:06, 15 August retains the assertion that in ToK Steiner set forth the foundation and justification for much of his later work, in contradiction to Steiner's 1923 Preface, and remains without supporting citation or other explanation. The English translation unequivocally states "all" not "much". Qexigator (talk) 18:50, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

There is a supporting citation to that very preface, but I've changed the wording to indicate clearly that it represents Steiner's own judgment. I took out the unneeded and perhaps misleading word "much", as well. I hope this meets your needs! hgilbert (talk) 20:32, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for that revision: it seems to be a neat way of putting it, without overstraining the text with explanations beyond what, I daresay, would be needed by the ordinary reader.Qexigator (talk) 21:26, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Today's revision to the footnote results from looking at the article again after a watchlist prompt due to a recent revision to another part of the article.Qexigator (talk) 22:55, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

The text now shows the distinction between ToK and PoF:

• ToK-- the epistemological foundation and justification for every thing he later said and published (which "opened the way from the sensory world to the spiritual one").
• PoF-- an exploration of epistemology and ethics that suggested a path upon which humans can become spiritually free beings.... containing implicitly, in philosophical form, the entire content of what he later developed explicitly as anthroposophy.

This both avoids misinforming the more casual reader and lets the more attentive reader recognise the relationship of these two works from their author's own point of view.Qexigator (talk) 09:28, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

From the previous discussion at User_talk:EPadmirateur#Edit_reversion_for_Rudolf_Steiner

If you look at the Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Waldorf_education#Remedies section, the explicit point is

Editors of these articles are expected to remove all original research and other unverifiable information, including all controversial information sourced in Anthroposophy related publications.

When this was discussed with User:Fred_Bauder it was clarified that all quotations from Rudolf Steiner lectures and books should be omitted. The rationale was stated in the Findings of Fact:

Waldorf education, Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophy and related articles contain large amounts of original research and information gathered from Anthroposophical related sources which are for verification purposes properly considered self-published by the Anthroposophy movement.

I don't see how this is any different from the usual restrictions on self-published sources -- they should only be used to reference the source's viewpoints. a13ean (talk) 05:05, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

The following represents my best understanding of the arbitration decision. Others who were there are welcome to contribute to this.

The arbitration decision explicitly referred to avoiding sourcing even Steiner's own viewpoints through references to his work when such a sourcing was remotely controversial. This unusual decision was made in response to the frequent situation where quotations from one place in Steiner's works were being contested using quotations from different parts of his works. Every use of a quotation threatened to explode into an article-length comparison of often self-contradictory quotations from different parts of his ouevre; the result was invariably a kind of OR by community action. (The word community here belies the often disputatious tone of the conversation and editing process that resulted.)

The arbitration suggested that verifiable third-party sources have presumably sifted this material and come to some sort of citable and non-contentious overview, though even here there are of course differences of opinion. hgilbert (talk) 11:22, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

There is flexibility here; I think everyone would agree with the fact that Steiner spoke about elemental beings, including gnomes, salamanders, etc., as in some sense real beings. It seems reasonable to include a balanced presentation. It might be easier to agree that such a presentation was balanced if it was sourced to a non-anthroposophic reliable source, however. hgilbert (talk) 11:32, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

New discussion

I see two issues over the inclusion of a citation to Steiner's works over gnomes:

1. It is controversial, as evidenced by the discussion here. This violates the arbitration proceedings, which decided that to resolve the problems created by selective use of quotations, third-party, objective sources were preferable.
2. It overemphasizes a tiny point of his work. In Steiner's world-view, gnomes are a subset of the realm of elemental beings, which are a subset of spiritual beings generally, one branch of which includes an entire angelology. The nature of the human being as a spiritual being would also have to be considered. In other words, in an article on Steiner's ideas about spiritual beings, gnomes would play a subsidiary role. In an article on Steiner generally, their importance diminishes to insignificance.

Nonetheless, referencing a non-anthroposophical work on the subject published by a reliable source would provide a considerably more solid basis for inclusion in a balanced way. hgilbert (talk) 02:46, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. Hgilbert's comment gives a reasonable perspective, both from the point of view of Wikipedia practice and the published work by and about Rudolf Steiner. If it is proposed that Steiner's explanation about gnomes be added somewhere, see articles Gnome, Elemental, and see Wiktionary gnome linked at Gnome (disambiguation). It can be seen that Steiner was speaking of "gnomes" in a way for which the use of "belief in" is as little suited to the context as it would be to say "Isaac Newton had a belief in the force of gravity". Qexigator (talk) 08:28, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

I don't think User:hgilbert's representation of the arbitration outcome is accurate, or even applicable to the edit in question. The result of that process appears to me to have been that action was taken against a number of editors who had been behaving badly, and to re-affirm several core aspects of Wikipedia policy – which of course apply here just as they do to any article. If the edit in question advanced an evaluative or novel notion concerning Steiner then of course a secondary or tertiary source would be required; but WP:OR explicitly permits primary sources to assert "straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the source but without further, specialized knowledge". The edit in essence merely reports that Steiner had stated something, and so falls clearly within this permitted use. (The one improvement I would make would perhaps be to modify the title from "Belief in gnomes" to "Views on gnomes", to neutralize it absolutely.) If I had then gone on to editorialize by analysing his statement in terms of "the nature of human beings" (as you do) then yes, secondary sources would be required. So if you believe this statement is better accompanied by secondary sources, then please add those sources. It is not however in line either with Wikipedia policy (or the arbitration outcome) to delete the edit: that degrades the article by lessening it verifiable factual content.

On the question of "overemphasis" – that is an editorial judgement which of course risks embodying WP:OR in itself, since deciding what is "in" or "out" can effectively shape an article. As a editor disinterested in Steiner, who merely wanted to check whether Steiner had (as I had heard) said anything about gnomes, I was surprised that Wikipedia was silent on this topic when Google was comparatively deafening. As a rough-and-ready objective metric, Google (UK) returns 64,500 pages searching for "Rudolf Steiner gnomes" but 20,200 searching for "Rudolf Steiner scientism" – and that latter topic is accorded its whole own section in this article. So I suggest to you that that your opinion that mentioning gnomes "overemphasizes a tiny point of his work" is itself WP:OR, built on a personal editorial pre-conception of what is important and what is not, which runs counter to the empirical measures we have to gauge popular interest in the topic of "Rudolf Steiner". The article with my edit will help curious readers without preconception to get more accurate facts on Steiner than the article without it – and for that reason the edit should be allowed to stand. Alexbrn 09:06, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

(Caveat: The present comment is based on: 1_Given that all are affected by the arbitration ruling, whether or not parties to it and 2_making no comment about its effect on the present question, or the merits of the discussion about it.) With regard to Alexbrn's well reasoned reply to hgilbert's point 2: 1_Proposed change from "Belief in..." to "Views on..." agreed. 2_"...rough-and-ready objective metric" --perhaps more rough than objective: all edits and consensus building are proceeding from human not artificial intelligence (cp. revert bots which invite human attention), and require the exercise of judgment (inevitably more or less subjective, but aiming to present something recognisably objective). The claim that "The article with [the proposed] edit will help curious readers without preconception to get more accurate facts on Steiner than the article without it – and for that reason the edit should be allowed to stand" is a good example of editorial judgment. 3_ The proposed edit would be "better accompanied by secondary sources", if permitted. Qexigator (talk) 09:59, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Looking over the article as a whole, it seems to me that any reference to gnomes belongs in the Anthroposophy article rather than here. This article is primarily biographical and only has room for the barest glance at the details of his ideas, other than the de rigeuer overview of controversy and reception. hgilbert (talk) 11:37, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Inclined to agree with that. Qexigator (talk) 11:52, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Category: Pseudoscientists

This category has just been added, but there is no material in the text to support it. hgilbert (talk) 13:41, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

I agree -- totally unsupported. --EPadmirateur (talk) 16:15, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Also agree. Qexigator (talk) 18:12, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Steiner pretended to be a know-all, from world history to medicine. What is most relevant is that his contributions are ignored by mainstream academics and as Anthony Storr put it in Feet of Clay. A Study of Gurus: "Yet his so-called 'thinking', his supposed power of supersensible perception, led to a vision of the world, the universe and of cosmic history which is entirely unsupported by any evidence, which is at odds with practically everything which modern physics and astronomy have revealed, and which is more like science-fiction than anything else. The claims which he made for himself are astonishing. He had complete confidence that his own subjective powers of 'spiritual perception' revealed the truth about the universe in ways beyond the reach of orthodox science, and that the discoveries which he made in this way could be applied to every department of life, from medicine and agriculture to the education of both normal and handicapped children. ... Steiner's belief system is both idiosyncratic and incredible..." (p. 81). "His belief system is so eccentric, so unsupported by evidence, so manifestly bizarre, that rational skeptics are bound to consider it delusional." (p. 69). "But, whereas Einstein's way of perceiving the world by thought became confirmed by experiment and mathematical proof, Steiner's remained intensely subjective and insusceptible of objective confirmation." (p. 70). Tgeorgescu (talk) 21:33, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Steiner was an adversary of the idea that matter consists of atoms and ridiculed Einstein's theory as being able to hear the cannon before it shoots. Tgeorgescu (talk) 21:49, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

That and 2/3 of his major theories have been determined to fall in the pseudoscience cat after general deliberation. a13ean (talk) 02:08, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

The quote from Storr is completely accurate but rather one-sided, as Storr also emphasizes Steiner's honesty, "perfectly sensible advice", and fruitful legacy. At one point Storr compares Steiner's ideas of a spiritual world to those of Plato. Storr's concluding statement in his chapter on Steiner is probably the best summary of his views: "Steiner's belief system is both idiosyncratic and incredible; but what he achieved in humanitarian terms is remarkable and enduring." I'm not sure that that's sufficient to put him in a pseudoscientist category.

Direct references to Steiner's work would not be usable by the terms of the arbitration, but perhaps it's worth noting that in those Tgeorgescu listed above, Steiner never claimsthat matter is not made of atoms. Rather, he agrees that it is, then goes on to suggest, as many working in the area of consciousness studies would agree, that human perception and experience cannot be wholly explained by material atoms and vibrations.

Similarly, Steiner agrees that Einstein's theory is accurate in the physical world, but suggests that it has philosophical consequences: "“Insofar as man considers himself within the world of natural things and events, he will find it impossible to escape the conclusions of [Einstein's] theory of relativity....It will not be possible to evade this theory of relativity for the physical world, but precisely this fact will drive us to a knowledge of the spirit.” (Rudolf Steiner, The Riddles of Philosophy, p. 444). Given the way relativism has become a dominant force in philosophy, social sciences, and general thinking, he may have a point. hgilbert (talk) 12:32, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

No connection between the theory of relativity (physics) and relativism (ethics, political philosophy). The gist is that Mother Teresa was seen as a champion of humanitarian action, but that did not make her a scientist. Therefore humanitarian success does not make Steiner a scientist. Fact is that Steiner championed many weird beliefs masquerading as science: ancient history which lacks academic recognition (stories about life on Atlantis and Lemuria are relegated to pseudohistory), geological and astronomical claims lacking academic recognition (like Great Britain being a floating island which the forces of the stars prevent from sinking), medical claims which have no impact outside of a fringe group of MDs and their patients (anthroposophical medicine which gets called pseudoscience and quackery in the lede), agricultural preparations which seem more like ritual witchcraft than modern chemistry or biology, and so on. Science is organized skepticism, therefore scientists have to be rational skeptics. For how rational skeptics are bound to consider Steiner's views see the quote above. If he did not claim to make science, he would be just a mystical philosopher and no pseudoscientist. But since he claimed to be divinely (or supernaturally) inspired in order to change several sciences, he cannot be something else than a pseudoscientist.

Steiner is mentioned in The Skeptic encyclopedia of pseudoscience by Michael Shermer and in Pseudoscience: a critical encyclopedia by Brian Regal. Anthroposophy is mentioned as pseudoscientific here. Steiner's agriculture ridiculed in Dick Taverne The March of Unreason: Science, Democracy and the New Fundamentalism. Also mentioned in The new encyclopedia of unbelief by Tom Flynn. Anthroposophy called "parascience" here or pseudoscience "in a broader sense, to also cover all those areas dealing with bogus knowledge." (Martin Mahner). C.K. Ogden wrote "Similarly in Anthroposophy, where a pseudo-science is invoked in support of the most extravagant ideas, we find a movement inspired by a Teacher, who, whilst laying claim to marvelous faculties, nevertheless found it convenient to avoid any verification of his claims." (here). Anthroposophy prominent in German, Dutch and Swedish sceptical publications ([1]). Anthroposophists as propagators of eccentric sexual theories which constitute pseudoscience (Martin Gardner, Fads & Fallacies In the Name of Science, [2]). The Flickering Mind: The False Promise of Technology in the Classroom and How Learning Can Be Saved by Todd Oppenheimer: "In Dugan's view, Steiner's theories are simply 'cult pseudo-science'." Tgeorgescu (talk) 01:45, 22 March 2013 (UTC)