The Value of Thinking: For a Cognition That Satisfies the Human Being: The Relationship Between Spiritual Science and Natural Science (Cw 164

11 lectures, Dornach, August 20 - October 9, 1915 (CW 164)

"As soon as you start thinking about the living sphere, you have to make the thought itself mobile. The thought must begin to gain inner mobility through your own power." --Rudolf Steiner

Rudolf Steiner divides these absorbing, previously-untranslated lectures into three sections. Opening with the value of thinking, he discusses the quality of thinking itself, contrasting "dead physical cognition," "living imaginative cognition," "inspired cognition," and the latter's connection with previous periods of human and planetary development. He clarifies how visionary clairvoyance can relate to individual intelligence, and speaks of the submergence of ideas--the effects of sad or joyful experiences and feelings--into the unconscious. These can be a life-promoting or life-inhibiting.

In the second part, he speaks on the relationship between spiritual science and natural science, using a contemporary publication as a case study for how texts can be fruitfully analyzed. He characterizes the spiritual-scientific method as allowing facts or personalities to speak for themselves, rather than making personal judgements.

Finally, Steiner deliberates on episodic observations on space, time, movement--kinetic formula and concepts such as the speed of light--introducing notions such as light ether directly from his own spiritual observations.

These lectures are supplemented by an introduction, comprehensive notes, line drawings and an index.

This book is a translation from German of Der Wert des Denkens f eine den Menschen befriedigende Erkenntnis. Das Verh鄟tnis der Geisteswissenschaft zu Naturwissenschaft (GA 164)