Parcelcus, Goethe, Steiner...and the Tao

Here is an interesting excerpt from "The Abolition of Man...or reflections on education with special reference to the teaching of English in the upper forms of schools." pg. 78-79, 1944  by C, S. Lewis

"In Paracelcus the characters of magician and scientist are combined. No doubt those who really founded modern science were usually those whose love of truth exceeded their love of power; in every mixed movement the effacy comes from the good elements not from the bad. But the presence of the bad elements is not irrevelant to the direction the efficacy takes. It may be going too far to say that the modern scientific movement was tainted from its birth: but I think it would be true to say that it was born in an unhealthy neighborhood and at an inauspicious hour. Its triumphs may have been too rapid and purchased at too high a price: reconsideration, and something like repentance, may be required.

Is it then possible to imagine a new Natural Philosophy, continually conscious that the 'natural object' produced by analysis and abstraction is not reality but only a view, and always correcting the abstraction? I hardly know what I am asking for. I hear rumours that Goethe's approach to nature deserves fuller consideration--that even Dr. Steiner may have seen something that orthodox researchers have missed. The regenerate science which I have in mind would not do even to minerals and vegetables what modern science threatens to do to man himself. When it explained, it would not explain away. When it spoke of the parts it would remember the whole. While studying the It, it would would not lose what Martin Buber calls the Thou-situation. The analogy between the Tao of Man and the instincts of an animal species would mean for it new light cast on the unknown thing...Instinct, by the only known reality of conscience and not a reduction of conscience to the category of Instinct. Its followers would not be free with the words only and merely. In a word, it would conquer nature without being at the same time conquered by her and buy knowledge at a lower cost than that of life."

Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) was one of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century and arguably the most influencial Christian writer of his day. He wrote more than 30 books, among them The Chronicles of Narnia, Out of the Silent Planet, The Four Loves,, The Screwtape Letters, and Mere Christianity.