Category: Machines

  • Rudolf Steiner on Natural Objects

    This is one of several posts which are based on my reading of The Philosophy of Freedom by Rudolf Steiner. For other posts, see below. Ruldolf Steiner seems not only to overvalue thinking, but seems to be stuck in mechanistic thinking? Steiner writes: I construct a machine purposefully when I bring its parts into a…

  • The problem with the machine model

    Iain McGilchrist writes in The Matter with Things that the problem with the machine model is that we have to explain organisms from the bottom up. Organisms are unfathomably complex. McGilchrist writes, no organism develops as the result of the execution of a sequence of predetermined steps. Each developmental ‘step’ is not simply computable from…

  • Six features of organisms

    Iain McGilchrist suggests in his book The Matter with Things that there are broadly six features that stand out in the description of organisms in contradiction to the metaphor of the machine. They are references to actively co-ordinated processes,expressing a sense of wholeness,inextrictably linked with values, meaning and purpose,leading to self-realization.