Tycho de Brahe Verlag

SUMMARIES 2007

ANDREAS SUCHANTKE Goetheanism as a grounding’ of anthroposophy

WALTHER STREFFER An outline for a biology of freedom using songbirds as an example

WOLFGANG SCHAD Miniatures on the path

ULRICH WUNDERLIN Evolutionary morphology

REINHARD KOEHLER, HANS BRODER VON LAUE, GERO LENEWEIT Substance changes by flow processes

MANFRED WECKENMANN, CHRISTIAN HECKMANN Morningness and eveningness in the night-day-rhythms

ANDREAS SUCHANTKE

Goetheanism as a grounding’ of anthroposophy– The meaning of sense perception for Goetheanistic and anthroposophical methods of knowledge

Consciously conducted and controlled Goethean study takes place by the following steps, characterised approximately:

1. Perception is fully focused on the object, and carries out with it all the movements

of its form and structuring, without any interpretation of them, but keeps every perception in mind as exactly as possible. As research shows, in this kind of intense perception the subject is actively involved without critically reflecting the object – just 'doing' it, i. e. drawing it, making notes etc. (active devotion: sentient soul).

2. In the second step, the experiences are lifted to the level of designating them with concepts although such designations have only the character of analogy, just serving the process of becoming conscious, without having any knowledge value. They are purely for sharpening attention and exactness of memory (intellectual soul).

3. In the next step the observer repeatedly dwells meditatively on the pictorial, sensorial experiences, and the movements of the form experienced inwardly are carried out again. This has to be done in conformity with the object in such a conceptually clear way that the resulting concept is not rigid but movable, open for new, extending, and possibly even completely changing, experiences (consciousness soul).

The reader of the following paper may wish to keep these three steps in mind and verify them. If it is thought that proceeding in this way is unnecessary and instead that it is possible to interpret the phenomena of the sense world with statements of spiritual science, then this will lead to the opposite. Phenomena will be interpreted according to one’s own world view, as happens everywhere, whether be is spiritualist, materialist or – as is currently back in fashion – creationist. This has nothing to do with true knowledge or being scientific.

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WALTHER STREFFER

the differentiation of the territorial song

The territory defended by songbirds is much more an acoustic territory than a foraging one. Therefore singing outside a territory more often leads to conflict than does searching for food there. The great significance of song quality is also recognisable by the fact that territorial behaviour correlates

with the degree of development of the singing ability of a species. A differentiation of territorial song shows that conventional interpretations have only a certain validity for the lower level, the ‘aggressive territorial song’. Here, the males sing against each other, while they sing with each other in the ‘relaxed full song’ which is more complete, more varied, finer structured and more sonorous. Most of the disharmonic changes (noisier, sharper and shorter phrases) in the transition from the relaxed to the excited

song are significant and reveal the bird’s change of mood. It is even possible to hear the bird descend into old, inherited song structures.

Everything which has been developed beyond the functional aggressive song of the lower level is development that has gone beyond biological necessity and shows a stepwise increase of autonomy up to the highest level, which may be called the ‘spherical song’. Counter singing (interactive singing) of neighbouring males reflects the steps of the three types of territorial

song: at the lower level (vocal matching) one can hear the singing birds overlapping into each other’s phrases. At the intermediate level, in a relaxed atmosphere, they sing in a harmonic and rhythmic interchange. At the higher level, the ‘convergent counter song’, they try to adapt to each other in their song phrases and themes until the sound patterns match each other.

On the basis of differentiating territorial song and the transitions from one song level to another a possible evolutionary developmental process of birdsong is discussed and the higher development of song is directly related to a reduction of sociability and an increase in individual autonomy.

WOLFGANG SCHAD

butterflies, and two amphibians in comparison

Both native freshwater red algae, Batrachospermum and Lemanea, have been introduced. Their morphology in space and time are compared. A report on breeding both native swallowtail butterfly species – Iphiclides podalirius and Papilio machaon – follows. By comparing them with each other and with Parnassius apollo many details are understandable. The paper concludes with the biology of the olm, Proteus anguineus, in Slowenia and the midwife toad Alytes obstetricans in western Europe. The characteristics were obtained from observing them in their natural biotope and from their position in the threefold classification of their relatives.

ULRICH WUNDERLIN

a typological study of the development of form

The development of the inflorescence of Digitalis lutea is described in detail from the formation of the primordium on the apex to the opening of the mature inflorescence and is documented by drawings of illuminated, complete preparations of the different developmental stages and by electron microscope (REM) photographs. This developmental sequence of Digitalis lutea is analysed and compared with the sequences of other inflorescences, first of all among different species (Digitalis lutea, Digitalis isabelliana) and then in comparison with the development of other genera that today are considered as individual subfamilies (Nemesia, Alonsoa).

The comparison of the ontogeneses shows two possibilities for variation that lead to the formation of the different shapes of the mature inflorescences: on the one hand the variations of spatial form with largely comparable temporal succession of development, on the other hand a variation of the temporal form of the ontogeneses. Developmental processes are accelerated or retarded. These differences of the temporal form are especially pronouncedin the special formations of the mature inflorescence. If the lower lip of an inflorescence is particularly pronounced, the initial processes of development are retarded. If the upper lip of the mature inflorescence is pronounced, the speed of development is distinctly accelerated during the initial developmental processes.

The classical idea of the ‘type’ (typus) needs to be extended. The dynamic ‘type’, i.e. the ‘typus’ in Goethe’s sense, comprises a concept of type that takes into account the processes of ontogenesis and includes the static ‘type’, the Bauplan, as a final stage.

REINHARD KOEHLER,

Substance changes by flow processes

The authors discuss this subject that was introduced by R. Steiner in 1920 for processing a pharmaceutical preparation from Viscum album.

In Part 1, the origin of the need for flow processing of mistletoe preparations is reported insofar as it can be traced back to lectures and recorded statements by Steiner. Further development of this began with the approach of A. Leroi, discussed briefly here, which was focused on the task that Steiner left to others of ‘removing’ the Viscum substance from the ‘earth’s gravity’. The first application of a ‘rippling film flow on a rotating disk’ by G. Brunck is elucidated by two polar flow types in the course of a river. With this as a basis, the enquiry is directed on the one hand to destructive, outwards-oriented flow processes which are connected mainly with thin layers and a large water surface, and on the other hand to constructive flows which mainly stress the inner environment of the liquid. Work on substance changes by these flow processes has been carried out since 1968 in the Carl Gustav Carus-Institute. With reference to the related question of the physiology of the human organism, we describe typical phenomena which are determined by surface processes and formation of internal boundary surfaces of organs.

Part 2 is connected with R. Steiner’s description in his lecture cycle ‘Spiritual Science and Medicine’ (1920) of two different directions of action. With the first a direct effect on the tumour is intended in order ‘to avoid the surgeon’s knife’. With the second the organism’s own activity needs to be reawakened.This clearly happens, for example in the case of the appearance of fever at the beginning of mistletoe therapy. Therapeutic experience with cancer patients confirms the effects Steiner indicated. This is the basis on which a three-stage flow process can be developed and presented. In this process substance variations of aqueous plant extracts on outer and inner boundary surfaces within flows are consistently observed and these are described together with their functions. The formation by this method of a structure that therapeutically comes to meet the physiology of the organism in the sense of ‘homeopathic potentising’ is described for the first time. The model for every potentising process is seen in the function of the human organism, because here substances are stepwise and qualitatively transformed from a ponderable, exterior-related state to a state that is open to the ‘I’ in its physical activity.

Part 3 reports pathological and therapeutic aspects of cancer patients and the criteria for a healing process. It should be noted that in different stages of cancer a varying balance is established between a tumour-specific immuno-competence of the organism and escape mechanisms coming from the tumour as ‘immuno-subversion’ of the organism. The innovative possibilities of flow processing and the necessity of developing it in cooperation with the clinic are made clear.

Part 4 reports on the experimental examination of different substance and structure changes by flow processing and on establishing the necessary requirements for technical development of a ‘pharmaceutical method by flow processing’ in six divisions. It has recently been demonstrated by the addition of fluorescent dyes to lipid monolayers that such monolayers can be induced to synthesise liposome membranes by the process of ‘drop impact on a stationary liquid’. In principle this can also be achieved by flow processing of large volumes of many droplets. The essentially new finding here is that this method can produce membrane asymmetry which was rarely achieved by other methods of producing liposome suspensions. It is likely to be of great significance for the substance configuration of the Viscum remedy and its immunological effects.

MANFRED WECKENMANN, CHRISTIAN HECKMANN

Morningness and eveningness in the night-day-rhythms

The following can be concluded from a study initiated by Gunther Hildebrandt, from further observations and from the literature:

Human subjects are generally inclined towards being at their greatest productivity in the morning and in the afternoon towards their best mood. This inclination thus corresponds with the awake psyche. Inter-individually, it is divided into a phase of five to six hours in the morning with its frequency maximum at about 10.00 h local time and in the afternoon into approximately 3-hours frequency phases with maxima at local times of about 14.00, 17.00 and 20.00 (23.00) h. The phases are synchronized to the solar day by the approximately twelve-hour bathyphase with maximal hunger.

A second rhythmic order is synchronized to approximately 3.00 h, with the attributes of maximal resting, for example regarding the heat production and metabolism, and with the maximal rhythmic order and general co-ordination. This should be considered in the sense of the generation of a general human-typical body and its organisation.

In the polar counterphase, the 3.00 h rhythm approaches the course of the phases of the psychic 12.00 h rhythm during daytime. In the opposite direction, the 12.00 h rhythm in its counterphase in the night during deep sleepiness relies on the 3.00 h rhythm.

The morning and evening types are distinguished from each other firstly by the frequency occupancy of the 12.00 h rhythm maxima set by local time and secondly by the phase shift of the reversal hours of the 12.00 h and 3.00 h rhythms. The variation seems to be relatively large during waking and going to bed, with a mean of 1 - 1½ hours but somewhat smaller at the synchronization times of approximately 12.00 h or 3.00 h.

The evening type tends to withdraw from the environmental rhythms of the world. This corresponds with the rapid and extensive capacity to change his synchronization, for example in night shift work, and with his efforts to develop the essential that can be learnt from the events experienced during the day. The morning type tends towards being active in the world. This strengthens their connection with the rhythms of the world.