Title: Man or Matter
Description: Review title: Review of Man or Matter: Ernst Lehrs, the Einstein of astral-etheric forces

Short version: Lehrs details humankind’s slow progress of dis-identification with physical-material matter and our growing healthy identification with truly human values and a light-filled, humanistic stance. 

Lehrs shows how the inner life of humankind was never static, but was always in movement towards humanistic values.  

Borrowing from recent thinking not found in Lehrs, while second-order Cartesian-Newtonian science was progressive in the 1700s-1800s, only second and third order science is progressive in the 21st century.  Goethean Holistic Science is first-order science.  


“The handbook to the Borderlands of Science… fundamental text for science in harmony with nature” ~ Borderland Science Research

Without acrimony or anger, Lehrs reveals how Cartesian-Newtonian science was inescapably led to the illusions it holds today.  Lehrs offers readers exit doors from the one-eyed, color-blind science based exclusively on matter and gravity.  

Lehrs rectifies Goethe’s two-fold approach to experiments of all kinds, what we now call “experimental science.”  

Goethean color studies ~ By far the best presentation I have ever seen of many of Goethe’s color studies and how to grasp their significance.  Lehrs was a Waldorf high school science teacher. 

Review of Man or Matter: Ernst Lehrs, the Einstein of astral-etheric forces

Review of Man or Matter, Understanding of Nature on the Basis of Goethe's Method of Training Observation and Thought.

Other books like Man or Matter ~

Etheric Formative Forces, Gunther Wachsmuth, German:  1923, English: 1932

The Evolution of Matter, Gustave Le Bon (1909)

All three of these books are still read and highly regarded by fringe science enthusiasts of every stripe.


Edition notes for Man or Matter ~

German title is “Man and Matter.”  Not sure where the confusing ‘Man OR Matter’ comes from.

This reviews only the most accessible edition of Man or Matter, the one most readers can get immediately for free. Because of a copyright oversight, the entire first edition of Man of Matter is free online at Gutenberg Project and Books.Google with illustrations here: 

http://books.google.com/books/about/Man_or_Matter.html?id=33zS4gsDopEC

The 1957 edition revised by Lehrs is of unknown additional value. Please comment below if you own a copy.

The 1985 edition revised and expanded by two other authors is of unknown additional value to this author. Please comment below if you own a copy.  The book image is third edition.

Editions with other years are “fictitious,” mere reprints of the original free 1951 edition.  Don't pay more than $8.00 for a paper version of the first edition.

Other reviews ~

I can find no other useful review of Man or Matter. If you have read or have a copy of Owen Barfield’s Review of Man or Matter in Anthroposophy Today 1 (Summer 1986): 86-87, please comment below.

In 25 words or less, Man or Matter is a history of science revised in light of and incorporating a poetic approach to the astral and etheric forces formative behind material phenomena.

Because it stands alone in revising the history of science in light of Goethean science, Man or Matter remains one of the deepest books written in the sciences, ever.

It’s also one of ‘most forgotten books’ ignored and dishonored by Cartesian-Newtonian hard scientists and even most Quantum researchers.  

Why is this?  Why is the most insightful book on science, maybe ever, so ignored?

The answer stands before us.  Science in the public’s mind is driven by curiosity and search for truth.  But in the minds of scientists, science is driven by research funding.  The research avenues Goethe, Steiner and Lehrs opened up are rarely if ever going to lead to bombs or other commercial applications corporations can sell and profit from.

This is why Man or Matter is shared only widely among readers with a mystical and poetic inclination.  Perhaps this is how things should be.

Man or Matter stands almost alone for those wishing an operational understand of astral-etheric forces within and external to mankind. 

Lehrs was a radical holistic thinker, a student of both Goethe and Rudolf Steiner. Wikipedia informs us, “Lehrs was a senior teacher at the first Waldorf School in Stuttgart. In 1935, he emigrated to the Netherlands where he participated in a Waldorf school and then later to Britain. In 1952, he returned to Germany and worked as a lecturer at the newly established course in anthroposophical curative education in Eckwälden, where he remained until his death in 1979.”


Man or Matter as a “healed” history of science ~

Lehrs follows the flow of science history and how this reflects evolving human thinking.  Man or Matter is largely organized around his responses to the history of science in historical order. 

Lehrs’ language is geared to junior high and high school students. We are spared useless technical jargon and academic hoo-hahing. The immense vista and critical challenge Lehrs must have offered his young students in intact in this work.

Working from a detailed history of science, Lehrs reveals points out the errors, detours and dead ends human thinking took.  He shows how science was inescapably led to the illusions it holds today.  More importantly, how readers can extricate themselves from conventional misconceptions, promoted by conventional-mainstream-corporate education.

Lehrs details humankind’s slow progress of dis-identification with physical-material matter and our growing healthy identification with truly human values and a light-filled, humanistic stance.  

Lehrs shows how the inner life of humankind was never static, but was always in movement.

Lehrs critique of Cartesian-Newtonian science history is widely honored, perhaps the best known and most insightful critique of conventional science history.  It is clearly a more pointed and imaginative critique than any other history of science I can think of.

Goethe-Steiner-Lehrs have nothing less in mind than a reconfiguration of how we view nature, the Cosmos and our own internal process of thinking, feeling and willing.

If readers of Man or Matter feel disoriented like Alice thru the Looking Glass or the protagonist in Flatland, this is to be expected. In little steps, a wondrous unforeseen landscape gradually comes into view.

The big picture for Lehrs is how Nature, the external world, and all the forces within it, are created between the two poles of gravity and levity. For Lehrs all the other polarities arise out of this primary polarity. 

Lehrs describes, gravity~levity constantly at play with each other.  Their meeting is the motive energy behind heat, friction, electricity, magnetism, radiation, you name it.  Lehrs does not emphasize how all forces he mention devolve from gravity~levity in the first edition. It may help to keep it in mind if you attempt a read.

Also worth mentioning is the modern idea. From atomic physics, of “strong and weak forces.”  I think Lehrs might agree that on Earth, gravity is the stronger force, levity is the naturally weaker force. This is worth bearing in mind as Lehrs allows readers to imagine both gravity and levity as a 50-50 proposition, in the sphere of the Earth. In the earthly human experience, gravity is clearly the strong force, levity the weak force.

I don’t pretend to understand all of Lehrs’ insights and vision. It’s taken me 25 years to educate myself to the point where I am attempting this second reading.

We also need to keep historical perspective here. What Steiner and Lehrs considered “spiritual” stems from thinking around the year 1900. What was “spiritual” in 1900 was “independent thinking;” including, correctly observing, without abstractions, the natural world; including, the workings of astral-etheric forces.

This is why Einstein’s ideas were a public and high-profile discussion between 1900-1930.  Einstein was a leap forward of insight into invisible forces shaping our world. 

Looking back from 2014, Lehrs is the Einstein of astral-etheric forces.

Contrast this with what we think is “spiritual” in 2014, addressing and resolving blocks and obstacles to health wealth and happiness; and ultimately, to loving and soul transcendence. Evolution keeps evolving.


Lehrs and Original Alchemy, a fragment ~

Lehrs expends effort trying to connect Goethe backwards to the flow of earlier healthy Alchemists, the ones using exploration of the natural world as impetus to personal-spiritual growth.  

The below is revised and paraphrased for clarity from CHAPTER XI, "Matter as Part of Nature's Alphabet" (first edition).

Lehrs sketches the original meaning and value of the earliest alchemy. Earlier humanity received genuine Original Alchemy as a gift. It was intended to preview and provide a way of working with what was coming in human evolution without the merely logical and intellectual capacity over-dominating, as it does today.

The fictional Sherlock Holmes is the epitome of our modern intellect, isolated, unmarried, childless, over-dominating all comers, appreciative of culture and fine art; yet, vulnerable to loneliness and multiple addictions.

If you can, try to imagine humanity before the advent of Sherlock Holmes intellect.

You necessarily imagine human existence more integrated into Nature, both more of one whole—for better and worse.

Prior to the intellect, precise and rigorous distinctions about the workings of Nature were rare. For example, it was believed houseflies were born wholly from rotting meat. Superstition was also widespread.  Second-order Cartesian-Newtonian science increased precision and rigor of our observing.

Original Alchemy was meant as a means to stay connected with the whole of Nature and not slip one-sidedly into the clutches of only-intellectual-thinking.

The value many students find in Goethe’s scientific ideas lies this direction. Goethe was perhaps the last alchemist, the last thinker of an era to actively attempt to reunite his intellect with the whole of Nature and Her operating principles. Steiner did us the service to preserve and expand upon this impulse.  In contrast, Steiner was the first holistic thinker, a throw-forward to humanistic-holistic thinking that blossomed in the 1970s.
Subjects: Anthroposophy, Cosmology, People's democracies, Constitutional law
People: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)