Tycho de Brahe Verlag
SUMMARIES 2009
HEINRICH BRETTSCHNEIDER Approaching Anthroposophical Medicine
CHRISTOPH HUECK An anthroposophical elucidation of molecular biology – the common time structure of consciousness and genetics
WOLFGANG SCHAD Goethe and evolution
CHRISTOPH SCHEMPP The evolution of the skin and the skin-associated immune system
ANDREAS SUCHANTKE Formative motifs in the genus Ranunculus
ERNST ZÜRCHER The interaction between rhythm and form
HEINRICH BRETTSCHNEIDER
Approaching Anthroposophical Medicine
In the European medical tradition there are basically two therapeutic procedures: 1) the substitution procedure; 2) the stimulus procedure.
The substitution procedure gives the diseased organism what is missing: for example hormone replacement for hormone deficiency (hormone replacement therapy in diabetes or the menopause), replacement antibodies for antibody deficiency, monoclonal anti-auto-antibodies in hyperimmunity, tissue replacement for tissue loss (blood transfusion for blood loss, cornified skin transplantation for cornified skin loss), organ replacement for organ loss (heart transplantation for cardiac infarction, bone marrow transfusion for leukaemia) etc. This is the way of academic medicine supported by science. Ultimately it leads only to medical dirigism focused on parts replacement.
The stimulus procedure arises from the observation that the living organism responds to every outer influence with a resistance (the so called rebound phenomenon). This resistance is an expression of the self-regulation (autonomy) of the organism. As an 'undesirable side-effect' the rebound phenomenon endangers the long term success of any dirigistic therapy, i.e. it impedes the healing of especially chronic diseases.
The first systematic research of the rebound phenomenon was undertaken in Samuel Hahnemann's homeopathy. This led to the discovery that one can stimulate the forces of spontaneous healing of the organism through potentised medicines (natural substances in highly diluted form), i.e. that the forces of spontaneous healing are related to the rebound phenomenon in a systematic way.
As Hahnemann's homeopathy aimed to strengthen the individual autonomy of the organism through researching the rebound phenomenon, it was described by Rudolf Steiner as 'the dawn of a medicine of the future'.
All stimulatory procedures require the overcoming of the mechanistic paradigm of modern medical thinking and an intimate knowledge of the self-regulation of the organism.
The anthroposophical extension of Hahnemann's approach rests on the knowledge that the individualised spirit in the human being shares the same origin as the spirit creative in nature. The particular training for the anthroposophical doctor that results from this is here outlined primarily along the lines of a human physiology to be based on new foundations and is indicated sketchwise as a therapeutic prospect.
With this it appears especially significant that the germ of the principle of reincarnation and karma is already expressed in the 'simile principle' discovered by Hahnemann.
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CHRISTOPH HUECK
An anthroposophical elucidation of molecular biology – the common time structure of consciousness and genetics
A qualitative study of the types of molecules involved in protein synthesis (DNA, RNA and protein), guided by the anthroposophical view of man as a three membered being, led to correlating DNA with head/thinking, proteins with limbs/willing and RNA, as the mediating member, with the rhythmic system. Considered temporally, DNA appears to work from the past whereas protein functions have their potential significance in the future and are determined from there by the organism. RNA is formed in the molecular present, when gene expression, which can be regarded as molecular memory, is induced by molecular signals from the cellular environment. As physical substances that can be isolated, they are 'arrested processes'. The resulting time configuration can be illustrated by a cross comprising four arrows pointing to the centre. The cross corresponds to the soul functions that Rudolf Steiner presented in a lecture entitled 'Psychosophy'. Molecular biology and the anthroposophical conception of the living world can be viewed jointly in this way. Genes do not cause life, but life causes genes. The image of man is also found at the molecular level.
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WOLFGANG SCHAD
Goethe and evolution
During the 17th and 18th centuries ‘evolution’ literally meant unwrapping what was already there. Goethe and Darwin therefore avoided this term, preferring to use ‘metamorphosis’ or ‘descent’. It was Herbert Spencer who first used the term in its modern sense. There upon, however, Goethe was a complete evolutionist, as confirmed by many hitherto overlooked statements by him. Goethe summarised in the development of his ‘Homunculus’ all the evolutionary theories to be found in his time.
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CHRISTOPH SCHEMPP
The evolution of the skin and the skin-associated immune system
This paper considers the formation of the skin and its associated structures from the most primitive metazoa to the human being:
- In Porifera the delimitation from the outer world is incomplete. A proper epidermal sheath does not exist, merely a thin coating in the form of pinacoderm.
- Dicotyledonous Cnidaria have an ectodermis and an entodermis, both single layered, which already show a certain functional specialisation. The cells of the epidermis are fixed together with band desmosomes and ensure protection from the outer world.
- Worms go through various metamorphoses of a still single-layered epidermis which lead to a further intensification of the delimitation function (formation of a syncytium, neodermis of the Plathelminthes, formation of a cuticle in Annelida and Nematoda).
- The division of the organism into head, thorax and abdomen, as well as the formation of extremities in the Arthropoda, is enabled by a hard exoskeleton in the form of a chitinised cuticle.
- The Echinodermata, the most primitive Deuterostomia, exhibit a highly specialised but still single- layered epidermis.
- In the Tunicates, the most primitive chordate animals, the single-layered epidermis is overlaid by tunicin, a cellulose-like substance produced by the dermal cells.
- The Cyclostomata, the jawless fish, are the first to form a multi-layered epidermis. This is pluripotent and impregnated with mucosal cells.
- In the cartilaginous fish, the multi-layered epidermis maintains an exoskeleton-like supportive function through its many placoid scales.
- In the bony fish these recede into the background in the form of elastic dermal scales.
- With the amphibians, the transition from life in water to life on land leads to the first cornification of the outer cell layer of the epidermis. But the amphibians still remain connected with an aquatic environment.
- Only with the reptiles and the development of an amnion is a complete separation from the aquatic environment achieved. A strongly marked cornification of the epidermis is often associated with this; the cornified layer has to be shed as a whole.
- In birds, the denizens of the air, the epidermis forms a novel coating of various kinds of feathers. As with the feather spines, some of the bones are filled with air. The feathers significantly contribute to the maintenance of the as yet incomplete homeothermy.
- In mammals, a further novel formation of the epidermis is hair, which regresses only in the human being and secondary aquatic mammals.
In parallel with the increasing delimitation of the organism from the outer world by means of the skin, an innate immune system first of all developed on the basis of phagocytes and unspecific, yet highly effective, humoural defence factors. The first demonstrable adaptive immune system came with the cartilaginous fish. The development and compartmentalisation of the lymphatic system brought the formation of an immune system associated with the skin which, in mammals, especially the human being, spatially comprises three components. At the skin's outermost barrier to the outside world, a cellular, more sensory expression of the immune system predominates. In the middle layers of the dermis the dominant component is a dense network of capillaries which mediates the circulation and migration of immune cells. In the deeper layers of the skin, proliferative processes predominate. Thus the subcutis and its lymph nodes associated with the skin belong to the metabolic pole, the reticular dermis to the circulatory system and the epidermis to the nerve-sense system.
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ANDREAS SUCHANTKE
Formative motifs in the genus Ranunculus
According to 'Flora Europaea' (2nd ed. 1993) almost every available habitat is colonised by the 135 species of the genus (not family!) Ranunculus. In parallel with this, manifests an enormous plasticity in the formation of the vegetative parts, the leaves, which have an almost inexhaustible multiplicity of forms, a diversity the like of which is shared by no other genus of flowering plants. Each of these forms reflects the structure and living conditions of the respective landscape occupied, from moist woodland to desert; from still waters to rushing brook and from maquis, that is green only in winter, to the nival zone in the mountains. Where markedly different habitats abut each other, bastardisation can occur with intermediary forms arising between the respective characteristic species (two examples are documented).
In contrast, apart from a few prominent exceptions, flower formation does not show a particularly remarkable variation – the plasticity and diversity of the possibilities remains, so it appears, with the vegetative part. The exceptions concern two widely separated geographical regions: the eastern Mediterranean and the Alps of New Zealand. In the present paper the latter is dealt with only aphoristically – characteristically for New Zealand, they are predominantly species with large white flowers with a strong tendency to hybridisation (cf. FISHER 1965). The other example, dealt with more thoroughly in this paper, concerns Ranunculus asiaticus, a remarkable species in several respects. One is that it falls completely outside the bounds of what is typical of the genus through not only the size but also the colour diversity of its extraordinarily large flowers. Another is the unusual diversity of its leaf forms within a population. Obviously it is a case of a species which has developed above the natural level of the genus to a level that is independent of it in the central, if not the oldest, region of intervention in nature by human cultivation. Its development is comparable only with cultivars although in this case it is of course unintentional.
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ERNST ZÜRCHER
The interaction between rhythm and form
The process of metamorphosis is based on an interplay of space and time, form and movement. This also applies to the cognitive process. In the following presentation, I attempt to show, by means of observations of plants, how space and time, form and movement are permeated by mathematical-geometric relationships. This approach leads us to the level of astronomy, to the knowledge of the ancients and to the question of one possible experiential synthesis of space and time.
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