Book Review:  Rudolf Steiner's "Warmth Course"

By Jorge Resines

This is a series of lectures given by Rudolf Steiner at Stuttgart, from 
March 1st to March 14th, 1920; they were imparted after his "Light 
Course" and before the "Astronomy Course" and to better
facilitate the understanding of the subjects treated.  I will 
discriminate lecture by lecture:

(1) Lecture no. 1 (03-01-1920):

Steiner begins by making the audience notice that the personal bodily 
sensation of warmth or cold is fundamentally different from what the 
usual thermometer measures, for there are physiological factors not 
taken into consideration by this instrument; from here he extends his 
thinking into the widely known Zeno's paradox of the race between 
Achilles and the Turtle, to make the public notice how bare facts of 
experimental nature do not correspond to mental elaborations and how 
most science of his day (and you can unfailingly extend this reasoning 
into today's public science) were no more than a collection of mental 
constructs not related to experiments whose origins were in past 
centuries when scientific instruments for measurement were not very 
accurate.

(2) Lecture No. 2 (03-02-1920):  

Steiner subjected a metallic rod to the influence of a flame and 
measured its expansion, to later proceed to develop the formula of heat 
step by step and compared it (pages 20-21) with what is given in the 
Physics textbooks; from there the audience gathered that the formula in 
the texts is not the original one for it lacks small fractionary 
quotients which vary from material to material, this being totally 
excluded.  He calls the public's attention towards the fact that if 
gases, solids and liquids exist as they do this is because they are 
under the influence of earthly forces as the higher-level conditioner.  
He continues the analysis of how the physics of his time was influenced 
by the ideas of the *Accademia del Cimento*
 (Florence, 1657-1667) and how the lack of proper understanding of old 
Greek ideas led to a lot of confusion, to terminate this portion by 
stating:

	"Whatever was solids was called 'earth' in ancient Greece."

	"Whatever was fluid was called 'water' in ancient Greece."

	"Whatever was gaseous was called 'air' in ancient Greece."

Making the public also take notice of the forces involved in the 
phenomenon that, though heated things tend to increase in volume, 
frozen water does the same with the opposite phenomenon.

(3) Lecture No. 3 (3-03-1920):

Steiner begins by making the public notice how the experimental results 
produce some strange phenomena not properly accounted for in the 
textbooks, namely that whenever one solid body is heated and changes of 
state (from solid to liquid and from liquid to solid) occur, there is 
no temperature change at the critical point.  Thus, a sort of "plateau" 
is arrived at when a solid melts and the temperature remains constant 
until it becomes a gas, when the temperature again begins to ascend; 
this is to make the public infer that other kinds of forces are 
involved in the mere dissolution by heat of a body, comparing also how 
Einstein and Crookes reached similar conclusion from totally different 
viewpoints:  For Einstein the Fourth Dimension was the time factor 
pertaining to the solid under examination while for Crookes it was the 
gaining of more heat.  He ends the lecture by indicating how pressure 
can compress a gas into a solid and how the solid already possesses 
within the factor a gas needed to change the state.

(4) Lecture No. 4 (3-4-1920)

Steiner begins by making two different gases interpenetrate each other 
to demonstrate how this is possible and how when submitting a given 
liquid within a closed vessel with room for expansion, the gas pushes 
the liquid downwards at one place, thus creating an upwards flow at the 
opposite side ("the volume-pressure product is a constant at constant 
temperature").  From this he continues what was told in Lecture No. 3 
that only by leaving three-dimensional space, it is possible to gain an 
insight of how these simple processes actually occur and that if 
Physics' teachers were good at their trade they would make their 
students first notice this fact, for a purely mechanical approach 
cannot see all factors involved even in the simplest phenomenon.  Also, 
he stands behind the idea of popularizing "rigorously exact science" in 
order to make the people aware of what science is actually about and at 
the same time, to do away with "established authorities" that only stay 
entrenched in their positions!  He ends by discriminating how 
sensations are perceived by our whole organism and how, since all 
organisms are different, this may involve different degrees of 
qualitative perception for all of us.

(5) Lecture No. 5 (3-5-1920):

He begins his lecture by making the public notice the difference 
between what can be accounted for within the two divisions of 
Mathematics (Arithmetic and Geometry) and those psycho-physiological 
factors that pertain only to the individual and have no symbol whatever 
in mathematics.  Because of this short coming in expression, physicists 
tend to shy away from involving such factors in their science, thus 
leaving a huge gap capable of allowing the entrance of many mistakes 
(be they involuntary or not), stating that only the proper occult 
training can eliminate this deficiency, for it creates the possibility 
of a deeper penetration into actual material processes.

Note from the Reviewer:
Before continuing the review, I want to bring before the readership a 
personal feeling concerning the whole work:  As I read all the 
lectures, I could not avoid thinking that many of the things Mr. 
Steiner referred to as being of a spiritual nature, but possibly of 
being proved experimentally, were already proven by Dr. Gustave Le Bon, 
about whom I have extensively talked about in my "The Complex Secret of 
Dr. T. Henry Moray" (including all the bibliography I could find in 
French for independent verification).

As I am not acquainted too deeply with Steinerian bibliography, I 
suggest those who actually are to find and read English (or German) 
translations of "Evolution of Matter" and "Evolution of Forces" 
published in French in 1905 and 1907 by Emile Flammarion Editeur of 
Paris. These two works are an excellent resume of Le Bon's important 
experimental discoveries and match very accurately the "spiritual 
viewpoint" Steiner urged his public to adopt in order to consider as 
included in common physical phenomena many factors that mechanical 
science could not explain or rudely excluded for not fitting its own 
pet theories.

It was actually Le Bon who discovered radioactivity and atomic energy 
(BEFORE the Curies) and not Henry Becquerel; Mr. Becquerel (and you can 
verify this by reading his 1896 and 1897 articles in "Comptes Rendus") 
believed radioactivity actually to be a "form of light" which could 
undergo all phenomena (polarization, refraction, reflection, etc.) 
usually associated with light.  This will also show how the Nobel Prize 
is award and how only establishment-related people get it!

(6) Lecture No. 6 (3-6-1920)

Mr. Steiner begins by placing mercury within a tube and later placing 
the tube within a mercury-filled vessel, in the manner of the "open" 
thermometers of antiquity.  He does the same thing for three other 
liquids: water, alcohol and ether, and proceeds to heat the tube's 
upper portion to show how expanding gases push the liquid downwards and 
make the level of the vessel flow upwards.  He did so to show how heat 
changes the bodies and how cold returns them to their former state.  He 
proceeded by showing how ice can be melted and refrozen by means of a 
wire from which a weight is hung and which is placed upon the ice; by 
this method he also shows how the same effects can by attained through 
pressure.  He further mentions that three certain metals, when taken 
separately, only melt over +250 degrees C but when fused into an alloy 
they do so at +94 degrees C, to show how a synergistic effect happens.  
The main idea in this lecture is to show -- apart from synergistic 
effects -- how each state of matter is no more than the degree of 
packing of the constituting atoms and he ends by adding: 

	"In solids we have the images of the fluid state."
	"In liquids we have the images of the gaseous state."
	"In the gaseous we have the images of the warmth state."

He did this to have an image of the gaseous state that is accessible to 
human observation and to eliminate complicated theories that only 
confuse the issue, also to indicate that unknown factors are at work to 
maintain solids, liquids, gases, etc. as they actually appear to us.

(7) Lecture No. 7 (3-7-1920):

He begins by drawing the public's attention towards the words by 19th-
century physicist Edward von Hartmann - which were a product of the 
time they were issued, with all the deficiencies this entails - and how 
those OLD thoughts, with plenty of gaps within, had found their way 
into the physics of the time (1920). He indicated also the need to have 
research institutes foster the Anthroposophical viewpoint and how 
physicists should not strike out everything that cannot be expressed 
mathematically (remember Lecture No. 5).  By means of an experiment he 
leads the public into the knowledge that solids "take up" gravity into 
themselves to appear in such a state, water is a kind of "null point" 
for gravity only serves it to make it have a surface.  Mr. Steiner 
furthers this example by taking a solid tetrahedron and indicating that 
if he were to make it entirely disappear and that its occupied place 
would remain as such by any other matter or energy, actually within it 
we would have "reversed" physical laws other than those making the 
solid tetrahedron as such.  The sphere is the intermediate body between 
the solid and "empty" tetrahedrons.  His idea in this lecture is to set 
up a scale of values, from the greater to the lesser, for densities of 
different atomic realms and non-atomic ones and their associated 
effects, to wit:

X

Warmth

Gaseous (acoustical effects most pronounced)

Fluid

Solid (mechanical effects most pronounced)

(8) Lecture No. 8 (3-8-1920)

Continuing with the postulates by Edward von Hartmann, Mr. Steiner 
analyzes the so-called "warmth death" our universe is experiencing 
because of "unstoppable negative entropy" and draws his public's 
attention to the fact that the formulations belong to an age of history 
when science was not too developed and physicists considered only 
mechanical work and heat as the most basic factors of creation.  What 
Mr. Steiner asks his public is if the universe (or, in a lesser stage, 
the world) actually is a closed and negatively-entropic system as 19th-
century physicists believed (please notice that this assumption was 
never proved experimentally).  By analysis he reaches the conclusion 
that a "perpetuum mobile" is always trying to appear in Nature, but 
Nature itself prevents its formation as soon as this tendency appears.  
This is why solids exist, because Nature prevents the atoms from 
separating themselves totally from those of its own kin.  But, also 
with existing dissolving forces (to call them this term for the sake of 
identification), the form of the solid disappears in the fluid realm, 
which loses its attribute of surface when entering into the gaseous 
realm; and gases "lose themselves" into the heat zone.  In short, Mr. 
Steiner proposes the following stages and conditions for their 
individual existence and inter connections:

X                  	Becoming Spiritual (Rarefaction)

Heat

Gas (Negative Form)

Fluid				Becoming Material (Condensation)

Solids (Form)

In order to advance further, he looks into the "X" realm beyond 
rarefaction and condensation, for if these two conditions exist then 
matter is also present there, no matter how attenuated its condition of 
materiality.  Also, he looks into the opposite way within a realm of 
greater materiality (if this is not a prophecy of transuranic elements, 
I do not know what it is; it is even more impressing when he speaks 
about "negative matter" called "anti-matter: in the experimental 
Physics of today!), and binds both ways of looking when viewing the 
rainbow of the color spectrum; indicating the existence of vibrational 
realms beyond the Violet and before the Red, he ends with Goethe's 
theory of color that encompasses not only the colors themselves 
arranged circularly (thus making it easier to understand color) but 
also the invisible vibrational realms that contribute to their 
existence!

(9) Lecture No. 9 (3-9-1920)

By means of a simple experience, Mr. Steiner draws his public's 
attention towards the crudeness of the measuring instruments then 
existing.  Also indicating how Physics (then and now) separated the 
experience from the human being, and how it all originated in an 1842 
paper by Robert Julius Mayer on the theory of heat.  After emphasizing 
the nonsensical approach of the formerly-explained position, he 
proceeds to continue with the analysis of the different interconnected 
states, but with this new subdivision:

Z

Y

X   Materialization - Dematerialization

Heat Region

Gaseous Bodies    Rarefaction - Condensation

Fluid Bodies

Solid Bodies      Form

U

Mr. Steiner explains again how each realm (from solidity to 
disintegregation of atoms and beyond going upwards) foreshadows the 
features of the upward-existing one and postulates the existence of 
another realm called "U" by him those characteristics make it 
foreshadow the level of form and solids.  In the end, this "U" region 
is the one of formative forces for solids.  Continuing with the 
analysis, he passes into tone and there he discriminates the tone 
itself from the compression and rarefactions of atmospheric gases that 
accompany tone, but are NOT in it!  This he did in order to separate 
fantasies created by thought generated by the imperfect perception of 
an experimental result and by an excessive over-generalization of it.  
Mr. Steiner goes back to Goethe's theory of color and makes his public 
notice that the usual rainbow is associated by another one - of smaller 
size and reversed order of colors - that is usually passed over in 
Physics textbooks; the aim of this explanation is to "bind" into a 
circle the realms shown staged above as Goethe bound the colors, and to 
relate this new arrangement with cosmic order.

(10)  Lecture No. 10

Mr. Steiner begins by making a full-spectrum beam of light fall upon a 
goblet where a chemical is place by placing in the beam's path 
different chemical solutions he blocks selectively those different 
portions of the spectrum (either visible or invisible) that create 
different physical effects (chemical effects, heat effects, 
photoelectrical effects, etc.).  [As I state in the "note" before, this 
was explored much more in deep by Dr. Gustave Le Bon and I urge 
Steiner's followers to read him by any means!]  He further repeats the 
experience of increasing temperature by using an ice magnifying glass 
and indicates that "there are more things" in this fact than those 
dreamed by science, for the ice magnifies heat but is not affected by 
it!  He disproves the concept that heat transmits itself from particle 
to particle by hypothesizing that if you place a group of boys upon a 
metal beam and heat it so that each boy will yell when heat reaches his 
own place, you cannot state that the yell is transmitted because of 
this! (Personal note: actually heat is - like electricity - an external 
effect in metals as long as it does not penetrate its innermost 
portions and thus the metallic piece retains its shape; when heat 
penetrates into the metallic piece, it becomes fused. Jorge Resines).  
By placing five different metal rods into boiling water, by means of a 
dye, he shows his audience how not all metals transmit heat in the same 
proportion, backing experimentally his statements of Lecture No. 2 of 
how some fractionary quotients are eliminated in the general formula of 
heat.  Afterwards, he continues with the analysis of the different 
stages analyzed in the former lecture and how they apply to the human 
being, emphasizing that to each effect a counter effect is attached, 
indicating how they balance each other.  Extending his thought into the 
sphere of matter he states:  "Modern (1920) physics has not developed 
at all this concept of negative matter, related to external matter as a 
suction is to a pressure.  This is unfortunate for modern physics."

11 (Lecture No. 11 (3-11-1920)

He continues, to a certain extent, the experiments of Lecture No. 10 
and indicates how because of earthly conditions the light spectrum as 
arranged by Goethe must be presented as an image.  By extending 
outwards this circular spectrum, he makes some colors disappear into 
the non-visible, reversing the original process of formation.  Because 
of earthly conditions, he explains, colors are made to arise from the 
invisible realms, and its circular Goethean arrangements broken into a 
straight line making some of them disappear.  By analyzing 
materialization and its opposite, he reaches the follow equations:

Rarefaction = Dematerialization = Brightening

Condensation = Materialization = Darkening

and also to the conclusion that some properties of one condition are 
present in the other and vice versa.  Dematerialization is equated with 
heat-produced effects and also with the fact that the transmission of 
heat produces an increased motion of atoms of intensive character (and 
not of extensive character, as I indicated in my note to Lecture No. 
10P).  Besides, in self-heated bodies such as mammal organisms, heat is 
a "borderline" of the following character"

Spaceless Suction / Heat Region / Space Pressure

Because our organism (for example) is kept together by pressure forces 
(as do all solids) and suction makes it tend towards dissolution, heat 
being the result of both forces in balance.  The remnant of the lecture 
was dedicated to examine, from Steiner's spiritual viewpoint, the 
conceptions of two famous physicists of his day, Max Planck and Ernest 
Mach, and the faults that plagued each in their respective judgements 
of experimental findings; adding in the end:  "If you consider how 
fruitful the one-sided (materialistic) concepts have been for 
technology, you can imagine how many technical consequences might flow 
from adding to the modern (1920) technology - which takes into account 
only pressure forces - the possibility of making these suction forces 
fruitful also; and by these I mean not only spatially-active suction, 
which is a manifestation of pressure, but suction forces qualitatively 
opposite to pressure forces".  And one wonders whether or not this 
conference and the former were attended by Austrian "Forestmaster 
called Viktor Schaubeger, who might have been greatly impressed by 
these wise words. 

(12) Lecture No. 12 (3-2-1920)

Steiner first makes reference to his "Course on Light" and to the 
theories that speak about "rays of light" and how transparency and 
opaqueness of bodies is referred to the amount of these theoretical 
"rays" that they do allow to flow through them, warning his public 
against taking too seriously what are only unproved theories.  Mr. 
Steiner goes on analyzing temperature difference between one cold and 
one hot zone and an intermediate region that serves as conductor, 
indicating that great care must be taken in the mathematical expression 
of this for the heat distribution is not uniform.  From this he goes 
back to the light spectrum with its zones of warmth and chemical 
effects indicating that if formulae are used to relate light and warmth 
and chemical effects, then imaginary numbers must enter into the 
calculations and how super imaginary numbers (originated by the late 
Paul A.M. Dirac) must be introduced when things get more complicated.  
But warning his public that as he did in Lecture No. 5 the limitations 
of mathematics leave plenty outside of consideration.  He ends the 
lecture by establishing the terms of "warmth ether", "chemical ether", 
and "light ether" as helpful in designating those subtle forces acting 
within the spectrum that create the forementioned respective effects 
and indicates that mathematics are to be reformulated in order to 
incorporate a broader range of factors not yet included.  

(13) Lecture No. 13 (3-13-1920)

Steiner makes some experiments by using the different portions of the 
light spectrum blocking them by the usage of the appropriate chemical 
solution, and returns to his old saying  see Lectures No. 8 and No. 9 
of how each realm foreshadows the qualities of the following one (when 
going upwards).  He relates gases with light, fluids with chemical 
effects and solids with life effects, making the heat realm act as a 
"balancer" in this scale of effects:

Z   	Life
Y	Chemical Effects
X	Light
Heat
Gaseous Realm
Fluid
Solid
U

To further indicate that, in the dim past when the planet was not 
totally solid, atoms and ether flows behaved in a different manner to 
today:  "At that time the entire Earth was not solid as we now 
understand the solid condition just as little as was the corpse of 
today to a corpse of five days ago.  Solids were not found in an 
independent state anywhere on the Earth and only occurred bound to the 
living; fluid existed only bound to chemical effects and gases only 
bound to light effects.  In other words, all gas had an inner 
glittering, an inner illumination, an illumination that showed a wave-
like phosphorescence and darkening as the gas was rarefied and 
condensed. Fluids were not as they are today but were permeated by a 
continuous living chemical activity.  And at the foundation of all was 
life, solidifying itself  as it solidifies now in the horn-formation in 
cattle, for instance and then passing back again into fluid or gas, 
etc.  In brief, we are forced by physics itself to admit a previous 
period of time when realms now torn apart on Earth existed together.  
The realms of the gaseous, the fluid, and the solid are now on one 
side, and on the other side realms of light, chemical effects and life.  
At that time they were within each other, not merely side by side, but 
actually within each other." (page 160)  Further indicating that in 
those times heat was the equilibrium condition between the etheric and 
the ponderable material realm, for he thinks of heat as being ether and 
matter at the same time.  Thinking of heat as a difference in level 
leads to a deeper level of analysis that makes one see how the "Second 
Law of Thermodynamics" has obviated  because of its fundamental flaws 
and its mechanistic foundation the interralationships above indicated, 
and that all different phenomena should be taken as part of a circle as 
was the light spectrum by Goethe, where one process actually feeds the 
others and vice versa.

(14) Lecture No. 14 (3-14-1920)

Mr. Steiner recapitulates some points of the former lecture and 
indicates to his public how the effects indicated in it actually happen 
at all levels of interrelation, but only by rising to a universal 
viewpoint is it  possible for the not-too-educated man or woman to 
apprehend this.  This is in entire agreement with the experimental 
findings of Dr. Le Bon, I permit myself to add, who obtained for 
example chemical effects on solids by making a beam of light fall up 
them!  Steiner continues by indicating to his audience to conceive of 
the periodic arrangement of elements in octaves, so that their 
combination and interrelated assorted phenomena may be conceived as an 
outer reflection of an inner cosmic music.  This is done to make 
different phenomena appear as the differences in levels of musical 
composition, therefore, simplifying the whole spectrum of chemistry and 
physics; so sadly confused in today's books.

Briefly, returning to the polar and material opposites of Lecture No. 
11, he makes his public consider spaces full of matter and those 
emptied of it, with transition zones in between.  This was done to make 
them understand that: "We would be much better off, however, conceiving 
of these things as they were thought of by the intuitive knowledge of 
former times.  Manifestations in matter, which are always accompanied 
by the imponderable, were then thought of as influenced by the whole 
cosmos instead of being misinterpreted as due to certain theoretical 
inner configurations." (page 171)  The idea behind this is to "tear 
space apart" in order to reveal what is behind each phenomenon instead 
of letting ourselves be dazzled by the event under manifestation. With 
this conception in mind, Mr. Steiner once again reminds his public of 
how deficient the quality of thinking  is during his time of life: 
"Nothing is sadder to contemplate than a future in which the way of 
thinking that has devastated the minds of educated people will be 
transmitted to people throughout the whole Earth by means of public 
school systems.  If one wishes to found schools for the people, we must 
be sure that there will be something to teach in them, something whose 
inner configuration represents an advance.  We first need the science 
that could be taught in these new schools." (page 175)  He continues by 
speaking against the over-specialization in science that today so 
deeply pervades our society  and that was widespread in his time, but 
not as deeply as today, considering it a terrible evil that people of 
different branches in science would not bother to listen to what others 
had to state, and if they did so, the specialized jargon prevented the 
mutual and necessary deep understanding.  He ended his lecture by 
asking his public not to surrender before the words "Build schools for 
people", but to fight for "First it is necessary to have something new 
to teach in these schools for "the people" (page 177); claiming also 
against "established scientific authorities: and for the need to cling 
to "rigorously exact science", which would lead to a mutual cross-
fertilization of all fields in science and the total benefit of all.


It was a great pleasure for this reviewer to have written this somewhat 
lengthy review, but I have been obliged to condense into a few words or 
sentences what Mr. Steiner explained in several paragraphs or pages.  
Because of space, much detailed explanation was left out, but the way 
of writing this review as it was done was in order not leave out 
reading the most fundamental concepts involved, so that those who later 
read the book will understand what Mr. Steiner said and also have a 
"travel guide" uniting all concepts into a comprehensible whole without 
gaps.  One warning, however; there are notes to the course in pages 
181-197 which should have been indicated through asterisks by the 
publisher; as this is not done, the reader must carefully look at the 
page indicated in search of them.