Phenomenology of animals and the human embryo in English

A selection of the Dutch pages is available in English: the comparative studies of mammals, the senses and the development of the human embryo in its first four weeks. Each page looks at an animal or an organ as a whole before explaining its parts.

Method

Introduction to the Phenomenology site – An introduction to Goethean phenomenology: how it observes, the twelve senses, threefoldness in humans and in mammals, and human embryology.

Phenomenology

Warmth: finding the core – How the anthroposophical approach to phenomenology uses warmth as a mode of observation, with the meditative attitude it asks for and worked examples.
The four ethers in anthroposophical phenomenology – How the anthroposophical tradition describes warmth, light, chemical or tone ether and life ether, and how these four are used as modes of observing.
Warmth ether: observing the impulse – How the anthroposophical approach to phenomenology describes warmth ether as impulse and orientation, shown in a symbolic image, as a tradition.

Animals

Dog and cat, with wolf, red fox and lynx – Dog and cat compared with their wild relatives wolf, wildcat, red fox and lynx: behaviour, domestication, body, senses, food and claws.
Ungulates: horse, pig and cow – Horse, pig and cow compared: origin, behaviour, body, fur, food, digestive tract, teeth and senses of the three best-known farm ungulates, side by side.
Mouse – lion – cow: three mammals compared – A rodent, a carnivore and an ungulate compared in behaviour, body, senses, teeth and digestion, and read as a threefold picture of mammals.
Odd-toed ungulates: horses, tapirs and rhinoceroses – Horses, donkeys and zebras, tapirs and rhinoceroses compared in behaviour, body, teeth, digestion and senses, and read as a threefold group.
Suina: peccaries, pigs and hippopotamuses – How peccaries, pigs and hippopotamuses differ in behaviour, body, teeth, diet and digestion, and how a threefold reading of their build groups the three.

The human being

The threefold human being – Skull, chest and limbs, the three functional organ systems and thinking, feeling and willing in the anthroposophical view of the human being.

The senses

Sense of life – the inner perception of the body – The life sense in Steiner's twelve senses: how organs, well-being and pain are perceived, and how the sense helps to read vitality in others.
Sense of movement, or muscle sense – The sense of movement or muscle sense: muscle spindles and tendon receptors, eye movements, and imitating the motion of animals and plants.
Sense of balance – orientation, uprightness and proportion – The sense of balance: semicircular canals, utricle and saccule, the role of the eyes, and how balance helps to judge verticals and proportions.
Sense of smell – scent, memory and judgment – How the sense of smell works, why scents fade and bring back memories, how people describe them, and how smell shapes judgment in humans and animals.
Sense of sight – the eye, light and colour – How the eye is built, how rods and cones register light and colour, Goethe's view of colour between light and dark, after-images and colour and mood.
Sense of temperature – perceiving warmth and cold – How the skin senses warmth and cold, why temperature is felt relative to the body's own warmth, and how warmth and cold colour mood and social life.
Sense of hearing – the ear, sound and listening – How the outer, middle and inner ear work, what volume, pitch and timbre are, and how listening reveals the inside of objects and people.

Exercises in the tradition

The six basic exercises by Rudolf Steiner – An introduction to the six basic exercises described by Rudolf Steiner for thinking, feeling and willing, and how the tradition practises them.

Embryology

Embryology: Images of Man – an introduction – An introduction to a series on human embryology: why the subject is studied, the phenomenological way of looking and how the drawings are read.
Plant and animal: two ways of embryonic development – How the embryo of a flowering plant and of a sea urchin develop, compared from a Goethean point of view: growth, cell differentiation and body cavities.
The human egg cell and sperm compared – Egg cell and sperm compared: size, shape, mobility, metabolism, number, location, formation and maturation of the two human germ cells.
The conception: the meeting of egg and sperm – How the human egg cell and sperm meet in the oviduct, the pre-conception attraction complex, the fusion of the cells and how this can be read.
The first week: a floating and timeless existence – The first week of the human embryo: cell divisions, morula and blastula, hatching from the zona pellucida and the fixed time of this phase.
The second week: growing out in a new shelter – How the human embryo implants in the uterine wall in week two, forms the two-layered embryonic disc, amnion, yolk sac and chorionic cavity.
The third week: the embryo gets direction – Week three of human development: primitive streak, mesoderm, notochord, neural tube, somites, allantois and the first blood vessels and heart.
The fourth week: the form emerges – Week four of human development: the amnion folds around the embryo, the gut tube and umbilical cord form and the heart moves into the chest.