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Leonardo da Vinci is regarded as a "Renaissance man" and is one of the most recognisable polymaths.

A polymath (Greek: πολυμαθής, polymathēs, "having learned much")^[1] is a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas. In less formal terms, a polymath (or polymathic person) may simply be someone who is very knowledgeable. Most ancient scientists were polymaths by today's standards.^[2]

The common term Renaissance man is used to describe a person who is well educated or who excels in a wide variety of subjects or fields.^[3] The concept emerged from the numerous great thinkers of that era who excelled in multiple fields of the arts and science, including Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Galileo Galilei, Copernicus and Francis Bacon; the emergence of these thinkers was likewise attributed to the then rising notion in Renaissance Italy expressed by one of its most accomplished representatives, Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472): that "a man can do all things if he will."^[4] It embodied the basic tenets of Renaissance humanism, which considered humans empowered, limitless in their capacities for development, and led to the notion that people should embrace all knowledge and develop their capacities as fully as possible. Thus the gifted people of the Renaissance sought to develop skills in all areas of knowledge, in physical development, in social accomplishments, and in the arts. The term has since expanded from original usage and has been applied to other great thinkers before and after the Renaissance such as Aristotle, Johann Goethe, and Isaac Newton.

Related terms[link]

Hildegard of Bingen, a medieval polymath, shown dictating to her scribe in an illumination from Liber Scivias.

A different term for the secondary meaning of polymath is Renaissance man or woman (a term first recorded in written English in the early 20th century).^[5] Other similar terms also in use are Homo Universalis (Latin) and Uomo Universale (Italian), which translate to "universal person" or "universal man". These expressions derived from the ideal in Renaissance Humanism that it was possible to acquire a universal learning^[6] in order to develop one's potential, (covering both the arts and the sciences^[7] and without necessarily restricting this farewell learning to be the academic fields). When someone is called a Renaissance man or woman today, it is meant that they do not have only broad interests or a superficial knowledge of several fields, but rather that their knowledge is profound and often that they also have proficiency or accomplishments in at least some of these fields and in some cases even at a level comparable to the proficiency or the accomplishments of an expert.^[8] The related term Generalist is used to contrast this general approach to knowledge to that of the specialist. The expression Renaissance person today commonly implies only intellectual or scholastic proficiency and knowledge and not necessarily the more universal sense of "learning" implied by Renaissance humanism. Note, however, that some dictionaries use the term "Renaissance man" as roughly synonymous with polymath in the first meaning, to describe someone versatile with many interests or talents,^[9] while others recognize a meaning restricted to the Renaissance era and more closely related to Renaissance ideals.

A more colloquial term for such a person would be a jack of all trades, though this often refers to skill and not necessarily knowledge. The term "jack of all trades" also occasionally has negative connotation (see, for instance, jack of all trades, master of none); such a person may be labeled as a dilettante, while "polymath" typically has a positive connotation.

The term Universal Genius is also used, taking Leonardo da Vinci as a prime example again. The term seems to be used especially when a Renaissance man has made historical or lasting contributions in at least one of the fields in which he was actively involved, and when he had a universality of approach. Despite the existence of this term, a polymath may not necessarily be classed as a genius; and certainly a genius may not display the breadth of knowledge to qualify as a polymath. Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, and Marie Curie are examples of people widely viewed as geniuses, but who are not generally considered to be polymaths.

Renaissance ideal[link]

Many notable polymaths lived during the Renaissance period, a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th through the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. They had a rounded approach to education that was typical of the ideals of the humanists of the time. A gentleman or courtier of that era was expected to speak several languages, play a musical instrument, write poetry, and so on, thus fulfilling the Renaissance ideal. The idea of a universal education was pivotal to achieving polymath ability, hence the word university was used to describe a seat of learning. At this time universities did not specialize in specific areas, but rather trained their students in a broad array of science, philosophy and theology. This universal education, as such, gave them a grounding from which they could continue into apprenticeship to a Master of a specific field. It is important to note that a university education was highly regarded. A person was not considered to need this broad knowledge to apprentice as a carpenter, but to apprentice in the sciences or philosophy it contributed hugely to their being able to comprehend the universe as it was understood at the time. During the Renaissance, Baldassare Castiglione, in his guide The Book of the Courtier, wrote about how an ideal courtier should have polymathic traits.^[10]

Castiglione's guide stressed the kind of attitude that should accompany the many talents of a polymath, an attitude he called "sprezzatura". A courtier should have a detached, cool, nonchalant attitude, and speak well, sing, recite poetry, have proper bearing, be athletic, know the humanities and classics, paint and draw and possess many other skills, always without showy or boastful behavior, in short, with "sprezzatura". The many talents of the polymath should appear to others to be performed without effort, in an unstrained way, almost without thought. In some ways, the gentlemanly requirements of Castiglione recall the Chinese sage, Confucius, who far earlier depicted the courtly behavior, piety and obligations of service required of a gentleman. The easy facility in difficult tasks also resembles the effortlessness inculcated by Zen, such as in archery where no conscious attention, but pure spontaneity, produces better and more noble skill. For Castiglione, the attitude of apparent effortlessness should accompany great skill in many separate fields. In word or deed the courtier should "avoid affectation ... (and) ... practice ... a certain sprezzatura ... conceal all art and make whatever is done or said appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it".^[10][11]

This Renaissance ideal differed slightly from the "polymath" in that it involved more than just intellectual advancement. Historically (roughly 1450–1600) it represented a person who endeavored to "develop his capacities as fully as possible" (Britannica, "Renaissance Man") both mentally and physically, and, as Castiglione suggests, without "affectation".^[10] For example, being an accomplished athlete was considered integral and not separate from education and learning of the highest order. Leon Battista Alberti, who was a Roman Catholic priest, architect, painter, poet, scientist, mathematician, inventor, and sculptor, was in addition a skilled horseman and archer.^{[citation needed]}

Renaissance men[link]

The list above provides examples of notable polymaths (in the secondary meaning only, that is, Renaissance men). Caution is necessary when interpreting the word polymath (in the second meaning or any of its synonyms) in a source, since there is always ambiguity of what the word denotes. Also, when a list of subjects in relation to the polymath is given, such lists often seem to imply that the notable polymath was reputable in all fields, but the most common case is that the polymath made his reputation in one or two main fields where he had widely recognized achievements, and that he was merely proficient or actively involved in other fields, but, once again, not necessarily with achievements comparable to those of renowned experts of his time in these fields. The list does not attempt to be comprehensive or authoritative in any way. The list also includes the Hakeem of the Islamic Golden Age (also known as the "Islamic Renaissance"), and other polymaths from other parts of the world.

Polymath and polyhistor compared[link]

Many dictionaries of word origins list these words as synonyms or, as words with very similar meanings. Thomas Moore took the words as corresponding to similarly erudite "polys" in one of his poems titled The Devil Among Scholars:^[12]

Off I fly, careering far
In chase of Pollys, prettier far
Than any of their namesakes are
—The Polymaths and Polyhistors,
Polyglots and all their sisters.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the words mean practically the same; "the classical Latin word polyhistor was used exclusively, and the Greek word frequently, of Alexander Polyhistor", but polymathist appeared later, and then polymath. Thus today, regardless of any differentiation they may have had when originally coined, they are often taken to mean the same thing.

The root terms histor and math have similar meanings in their etymological antecedents (to learn, learned, knowledge), though with some initial and ancillarily added differing qualities. Innate in historíā (Greek and Latin) is that the learning takes place via inquiry and narrative. Hístōr also implies that the polyhistor displays erudition and wisdom. From Proto-Indo-European it shares a root with the word "wit". Inquiry and narrative are specific sets of pedagogical and research heuristics.

Polyhistoric is the corresponding adjective. The word polyhistory (meaning varied learning), when used, is often derogatory.

Notable polymaths[link]

Shen Kuo was a polymathic Chinese scientist and statesman of the Song Dynasty.

A number of people have been described as "polymaths" by reliable sources, fulfilling the primary definition of the term, although there may not be expert consensus that each is a prime example in the secondary meaning, as "Renaissance men" and "universal geniuses" (see the list of renaissance men above for prime examples of "renaissance men" or "universal geniuses").

Other uses of "polymath"[link]

In Britain, phrases such as "polymath sportsman", "sporting polymath", or simply "polymath" are occasionally used in a restricted sense to refer to athletes that have performed at a high level in several very different sports. (One whose accomplishments are limited to athletics would not be considered to be a "polymath" in the usual sense of the word). Examples would include:

• Howard Baker – "Similar claims to the title of sporting polymath could be made for Howard Baker" (who won high jump titles, and played cricket, football, and water polo):^[13]
• Maxwell Woosnam – "Sporting polymath is a full-time post..."^[14]

The term can also be used loosely in other ways, for example, Rolf Harris (whose fame has come as a popular artist, television presenter and singer) has also been described by the Daily Mail as "the People's Polymath".^[15]

See also[link]

• Competent man
• List of people who have been called a "polymath"
• Opsimath
• Philomath
• Polyglot (person)
• Polymath (novel)

References and notes[link]

Further reading[link]

• Frost, Martin, "Polymath: A Renaissance Man"
• Mirchandani, Vinnie, The New Polymath: Profiles in Compound-Technology Innovations", John Wiley & Sons, 2010

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Ray Kurzweil
Ray Kurzweil
Born	(1948-02-12) February 12, 1948 (age 64) Queens, New York, United States
Occupation	Author, entrepreneur and futurist
Spouse	Sonya R. Kurzweil
Children	Ethan, Amy

Raymond "Ray" Kurzweil (/ˈkɜrzwaɪl/ KURZ-wyl; born February 12, 1948) is an American author, inventor and futurist. Aside from futurology, he is involved in fields such as optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology, and electronic keyboard instruments. He is the author of several books on health, artificial intelligence (AI), transhumanism, the technological singularity, and futurism.

Life, inventions, and business career[link]

Early life[link]

Ray Kurzweil grew up in the New York City borough of Queens. He was born to secular Jewish parents who had escaped Austria just before the onset of World War II, and he was exposed via Unitarian Universalism to a diversity of religious faiths during his upbringing. His father was a musician and composer and his mother was a visual artist. His uncle, an engineer at Bell Labs, taught young Ray the basics of computer science.^[1] In his youth, he was an avid reader of science fiction literature. In 1963, at age fifteen, he wrote his first computer program.^[2] Later in high school he created a pattern-recognition software program that analyzed the works of classical composers, and then synthesized its own songs in similar styles. In 1965, he was invited to appear on the CBS television program I've Got a Secret, where he performed a piano piece that was composed by a computer he also had built.^[3] Later that year, he won first prize in the International Science Fair for the invention;^[4] he was also recognized by the Westinghouse Talent Search and was personally congratulated by President Lyndon B. Johnson during a White House ceremony.

Mid-life[link]

In 1968, during his sophomore year at MIT, Kurzweil started a company that used a computer program to match high school students with colleges. The program, called the Select College Consulting Program, was designed by him and compared thousands of different criteria about each college with questionnaire answers submitted by each student applicant. When he was 20, he sold the company to Harcourt, Brace & World for $100,000 (roughly $500,000 in 2006 dollars) plus royalties.^[5] He obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science and Literature in 1970 from MIT.

In 1974, Kurzweil started the company Kurzweil Computer Products, Inc. and led development of the first omni-font optical character recognition system—a computer program capable of recognizing text written in any normal font. Before that time, scanners had only been able to read text written in a few fonts. He decided that the best application of this technology would be to create a reading machine, which would allow blind people to understand written text by having a computer read it to them aloud. However, this device required the invention of two enabling technologies—the CCD flatbed scanner and the text-to-speech synthesizer. Development of these technologies was completed at other institutions such as Bell Labs, and on January 13, 1976, the finished product was unveiled during a news conference headed by him and the leaders of the National Federation of the Blind. Called the Kurzweil Reading Machine, the device covered an entire tabletop. It gained him mainstream recognition: on the day of the machine's unveiling, Walter Cronkite used the machine to give his signature soundoff, "And that's the way it is, January 13, 1976." While listening to The Today Show, musician Stevie Wonder heard a demonstration of the device and purchased the first production version of the Kurzweil Reading Machine, beginning a lifelong friendship between himself and Kurzweil.

According to former Kurzweil Computer Products employees, the Kurzweil Reading Machine's designer was engineer Richard Brown, a KCP employee at the time^{[citation needed]}.

Kurzweil's next major business venture began in 1978, when Kurzweil Computer Products began selling a commercial version of the optical character recognition computer program. LexisNexis was one of the first customers, and bought the program to upload paper legal and news documents onto its nascent online databases.

Two years later, Kurzweil sold his company to Lernout & Hauspie. Following the bankruptcy of the latter, the system became a subsidiary of Xerox formerly known as Scansoft and now as Nuance Communications, and he functioned as a consultant for the former until 1995.

Kurzweil's next business venture was in the realm of electronic music technology. After a 1982 meeting with Stevie Wonder, in which the latter lamented the divide in capabilities and qualities between electronic synthesizers and traditional musical instruments, Kurzweil was inspired to create a new generation of music synthesizers capable of accurately duplicating the sounds of real instruments. Kurzweil Music Systems was founded in the same year, and in 1984, the Kurzweil K250 was unveiled. The machine was capable of imitating a number of instruments, and in tests musicians were unable to discern the difference between the Kurzweil K250 on piano mode from a normal grand piano.^[6] The recording and mixing abilities of the machine, coupled with its abilities to imitate different instruments made it possible for a single user to compose and play an entire orchestral piece.

Kurzweil Music Systems was sold to Korean musical instrument manufacturer Young Chang in 1990. As with Xerox, Kurzweil remained as a consultant for several years. Hyundai acquired Young Chang in 2006 and in January 2007 has appointed Raymond Kurzweil as Chief Strategy Officer of Kurzweil Music Systems.^[7]

Later life[link]

Concurrent with Kurzweil Music Systems, Kurzweil created the company Kurzweil Applied Intelligence (KAI) to develop computer speech recognition systems for commercial use. The first product, which debuted in 1987, was an early speech recognition program.

Kurzweil started Kurzweil Educational Systems in 1996 to develop new pattern-recognition-based computer technologies to help people with disabilities such as blindness, dyslexia and ADD in school. Products include the Kurzweil 1000 text-to-speech converter software program, which enables a computer to read electronic and scanned text aloud to blind or visually impaired users, and the Kurzweil 3000 program, which is a multifaceted electronic learning system that helps with reading, writing, and study skills.

Raymond Kurzweil at the Singularity Summit at Stanford in 2006

During the 1990s Kurzweil founded the Medical Learning Company.^[8] The company's products included an interactive computer education program for doctors and a computer-simulated patient. Around the same time, Kurzweil started KurzweilCyberArt.com—a website featuring computer programs to assist the creative art process. The site used to offer free downloads of a program called AARON—a visual art synthesizer developed by Harold Cohen—and of "Kurzweil's Cybernetic Poet", which automatically creates poetry. During this period he also started KurzweilAI.net, a website devoted towards showcasing news of scientific developments, publicizing the ideas of high-tech thinkers and critics alike, and promoting futurist-related discussion among the general population through the Mind-X forum.

In 1999, Kurzweil created a hedge fund called "FatKat" (Financial Accelerating Transactions from Kurzweil Adaptive Technologies), which began trading in 2006. He has stated that the ultimate aim is to improve the performance of FatKat's A.I. investment software program, enhancing its ability to recognize patterns in "currency fluctuations and stock-ownership trends."^[9] He predicted in his 1999 book, The Age of Spiritual Machines, that computers will one day prove superior to the best human financial minds at making profitable investment decisions. In 2001, Canadian rock band Our Lady Peace released an album, titled Spiritual Machines, based on Kurzweil's book. Kurzweil's voice was featured in the album, reading excerpts from his book.

In June 2005, Kurzweil introduced the "Kurzweil-National Federation of the Blind Reader" (K-NFB Reader)—a pocket-sized device consisting of a digital camera and computer unit. Like the Kurzweil Reading Machine of almost 30 years before, the K-NFB Reader is designed to aid blind people by reading written text aloud. The newer machine is portable and scans text through digital camera images, while the older machine is large and scans text through flatbed scanning.

Kurzweil made a movie called The Singularity Is Near: A True Story About the Future^[10] in 2010 based, in part, on his 2005 book The Singularity Is Near. Part fiction, part non-fiction, he interviews 20 big thinkers like Marvin Minsky, plus there is a B-line narrative story that illustrates some of the ideas, where a computer avatar (Ramona) saves the world from self-replicating microscopic robots.

In addition to his movie, an independent, feature-length documentary was made about Kurzweil, his life, and his ideas called Transcendent Man. Filmmakers Barry Ptolemy and Felicia Ptolemy followed Kurzweil, documenting his global speaking tour. Premiered in 2009 at the Tribeca Film Festival,^[10] Transcendent Man documents Kurzweil's quest to reveal mankind's ultimate destiny and explores many of the ideas found in his New York Times bestselling book, The Singularity Is Near, including his concept of exponential growth, radical life expansion, and how we will transcend our biology. The Ptolemys documented Kurzweil's stated goal of bringing back his late father using AI. The film also features critics who argue against Kurzweil's predictions.

In 2010, an independent documentary film called Plug & Pray premiered at the Seattle International Film Festival, in which Kurzweil and one of his major critics, the late Joseph Weizenbaum, argue about the benefits of eternal life.^[11]

Kurzweil frequently comments on the application of cell-size nanotechnology to the workings of the human brain and how this could be applied to building AI. While being interviewed for a February 2009 issue of Rolling Stone magazine, Kurzweil expressed a desire to construct a genetic copy of his late father, Fredric Kurzweil, from DNA within his grave site. This feat would be achieved by exhumation and extraction of DNA, constructing a clone of Fredric and retrieving memories and recollections—from Ray's mind—of his father.^[12]

Family[link]

Kurzweil is married with two children. His wife, Sonya, is a child psychologist while his son works as a venture capitalist and his daughter as a choreographer.^[13]

Books[link]

Kurzweil's first book, The Age of Intelligent Machines, was published in 1990. The nonfiction work discusses the history of computer AI and also makes forecasts regarding future developments. Other experts in the field of AI contribute heavily to the work in the form of essays. The Association of American Publishers' awarded it the status of Most Outstanding Computer Science Book of 1990.^[14]

Next, Kurzweil published a book on nutrition in 1993 called The 10% Solution for a Healthy Life. The book's main idea is that high levels of fat intake are the cause of many health disorders common in the U.S., and thus that cutting fat consumption down to 10% of the total calories consumed would be optimal for most people.

In 1998, Kurzweil published The Age of Spiritual Machines, which focuses heavily on further elucidating his theories regarding the future of technology, which themselves stem from his analysis of long-term trends in biological and technological evolution. Much focus goes into examining the likely course of AI development, along with the future of computer architecture.

Kurzweil's next book published in 2004, returned to the subject of human health and nutrition. Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever was co-authored by Kurzweil and Terry Grossman, a medical doctor and specialist in alternative medicine.

The Singularity Is Near was published in 2005. The book was made into a movie starring Pauley Perrette (NCIS).^[15]

In February 2007, Ptolemaic Productions acquired the rights to The Singularity is Near, The Age of Spiritual Machines and Fantastic Voyage including the rights to Kurzweil's life and ideas for the film Transcendent Man. The feature length documentary was directed by Barry Ptolemy.

Transcend: Nine Steps to Living Well Forever,^[16] a follow-up to Fantastic Voyage, was released on April 28, 2009.

Kurzweil's newest book, How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed, is scheduled for release on October 2, 2012. ^[17]

Recognition and awards[link]

Kurzweil was referred to by Forbes as "the ultimate thinking machine."^[18]

Kurzweil has received many awards and honors, including:

• First place in the 1965 International Science Fair^[4] for inventing the classical music synthesizing computer.
• The 1978 Grace Murray Hopper Award from the Association for Computing Machinery. The award is given annually to one "outstanding young computer professional" and is accompanied by a $35,000 prize.^[19] Kurzweil won it for his invention of the Kurzweil Reading Machine.^[20]
• The 1990 "Engineer of the Year" award from Design News.^[21]
• The 1994 Dickson Prize in Science. One is awarded every year by Carnegie Mellon University to individuals who have "notably advanced the field of science." Both a medal and a $50,000 prize are presented to winners.^[22]
• The 1998 "Inventor of the Year" award from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.^[23]
• The 1999 National Medal of Technology.^[24] This is the highest award the President of the United States can bestow upon individuals and groups for pioneering new technologies, and the President dispenses the award at his discretion.^[25] Bill Clinton presented Kurzweil with the National Medal of Technology during a White House ceremony in recognition of Kurzweil's development of computer-based technologies to help the disabled.
• The 2000 Telluride Tech Festival Award of Technology.^[26] Two other individuals also received the same honor that year. The award is presented yearly to people who "exemplify the life, times and standard of contribution of Tesla, Westinghouse and Nunn."
• The 2001 Lemelson-MIT Prize for a lifetime of developing technologies to help the disabled and to enrich the arts.^[27] Only one is meted out each year to highly successful, mid-career inventors. A $500,000 award accompanies the prize.^[28]
• Kurzweil was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2002 for inventing the Kurzweil Reading Machine.^[29] The organization "honors the women and men responsible for the great technological advances that make human, social and economic progress possible."^[30] Fifteen other people were inducted into the Hall of Fame the same year.^[31]
• The Arthur C. Clarke Lifetime Achievement Award on April 20, 2009 for lifetime achievement as an inventor and futurist in computer-based technologies.^[32]
• Kurzweil has received seventeen honorary doctorates between 1982 and 2010.^{[citation needed]}
• In 2011, Kurzweil was named a Senior Fellow of the Design Futures Council.^[33]

Involvement with futurism and transhumanism[link]

Kurzweil is generally recognized as a public advocate for the futurist and transhumanist movements, due to his stances on life extension technologies, his efforts to forecast future advances in technology, and his interest in the concept of the technological singularity. At the same time, he has attracted significant criticism from scientists and thinkers.

Kurzweil's central argument is derived from the predictions of Moore's Law that the rate of innovation of computer technology is increasing not linearly but rather exponentially. According to Kurzweil's argument, since growth in so many fields of science and technology depends upon computing power, these improvements translate into exponentially more frequent advances in non-computer sciences like nanotechnology, biotechnology, and materials science. Kurzweil refers to this concept as the "Law of Accelerating Returns", and has asserted that this is supported by a number of metrics.

Kurzweil has forecast a number of specific technological advances with specific dates in his books, stating that before 2050 medical advances will allow people to radically extend their lifespans while preserving quality of life through the use of nanobots,^[3][34] that a computer will pass the Turing test by 2029, that the first strong artificial intelligence will be a computer simulation of a human brain generated by nanorobotic brain scanning, sentient artificial intelligences will exhibit moral thinking and respect humans, and that the line between humans and machines will blur as machines attain human-level intelligence and humans start incorporating more technology.

Kurzweil's application of his law to forecasting innovations have been disputed by other scientists and writers.^[35]

Kurzweil's standing as a futurist and Transhumanist has led to his involvement in several Singularity-themed organizations. In December 2004, Kurzweil joined the advisory board of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence.^[36] In October 2005, Kurzweil joined the scientific advisory board of the Lifeboat Foundation.^[37] On May 13, 2006, Kurzweil was the first speaker at the Stanford University Singularity Summit.^[38]

In February 2009, Kurzweil, in collaboration with Google and the NASA Ames Research Center, announced the creation of the Singularity University training center for corporate executives and government officials. The University's self-described mission is to "assemble, educate and inspire a cadre of leaders who strive to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies and apply, focus and guide these tools to address humanity’s grand challenges".^[39] Using Vernor Vinge's Singularity concept as a foundation, the University offered its first nine-week graduate program to forty students in June, 2009.

Stance on nanotechnology[link]

Kurzweil is on the Army Science Advisory Board, has testified before Congress on the subject of nanotechnology, and has advocated that nanotechnology could solve significant global problems such as poverty, disease, and climate change, viz. "Nanotech Could Give Global Warming a Big Chill ".^[40] In media appearances, Kurzweil has stressed the extreme potential dangers of nanotechnology,^[3] but argues that in practice, progress cannot be stopped, and any attempt to do so will retard the progress of defensive and beneficial technologies more than the malevolent ones, increasing the danger. He suggests that the proper place of regulation is to make sure progress proceeds safely and quickly.

[edit] The Law of Accelerating Returns

In his 1999 book The Age of Spiritual Machines Kurzweil proposed "The Law of Accelerating Returns", according to which the rate of change in a wide variety of evolutionary systems (including the growth of technologies) tends to increase exponentially.^[41] He gave further focus to this issue in a 2001 essay entitled "The Law of Accelerating Returns", which proposed an extension of Moore's law to a wide variety of technologies, and used this to argue in favor of Vernor Vinge's concept of a technological singularity.^[42]

Predictions[link]

[edit] The Age of Intelligent Machines

Kurzweil's first book, The Age of Intelligent Machines, presented his ideas about the future. It was written from 1986 to 1989 and published in 1990. Building on Ithiel de Sola Pool's "Technologies of Freedom" (1983), Kurzweil claims to have forecast the demise of the Soviet Union due to new technologies such as cellular phones and fax machines disempowering authoritarian governments by removing state control over the flow of information. In the book Kurzweil also extrapolated preexisting trends in the improvement of computer chess software performance to predict correctly that computers would beat the best human players by 1998, and most likely in that year. In fact, the event occurred in May 1997 when chess World Champion Garry Kasparov was defeated by IBM's Deep Blue computer in a well-publicized chess tournament. Perhaps most significantly, Kurzweil foresaw the explosive growth in worldwide Internet use that began in the 1990s. At the time of the publication of The Age of Intelligent Machines, there were only 2.6 million Internet users in the world,^[43] and the medium was unreliable, difficult to use, and deficient in content. He also stated that the Internet would explode not only in the number of users but in content as well, eventually granting users access "to international networks of libraries, data bases, and information services". Additionally, Kurzweil claims to have correctly foreseen that the preferred mode of Internet access would inevitably be through wireless systems, and he was also correct to estimate that the latter would become practical for widespread use in the early 21st century.

Kurzweil also claims to have accurately forecast that, by the end of the 1990s, many documents would exist solely in computers and on the Internet, and that they would commonly be embedded with sounds, animations, and videos that would inhibit their transfer to paper format. Moreover, he claims to have foreseen that cellular phones would grow in popularity while shrinking in size for the foreseeable future.

[edit] The Age of Spiritual Machines

In 1999, Kurzweil published a second book titled The Age of Spiritual Machines, which goes into more depth explaining his futurist ideas. The third and final section of the book is devoted to elucidating the specific course of technological advancements Kurzweil predicts the world will experience over the next century.

[edit] The Singularity is Near

While this book focuses on the future of technology and the human race as did The Age of Intelligent Machines and The Age of Spiritual Machines, Kurzweil makes very few concrete, short-term predictions in The Singularity Is Near, though longer-term visions are present in abundance. He recently discussed the singularity with Vice Magazine.^[44]

Solar Power and Grand Challenges of the 21st Century[link]

In 2008, Ray Kurzweil said in an expert panel in the National Academy of Engineering that solar power will scale up to produce all the energy needs of Earth's people in 20 years.^[45]

Work on nutrition, health, and lifestyle[link]

Kurzweil admits that he cared little for his health until age 35, when he was diagnosed with a glucose intolerance, an early form of type II diabetes (a major risk factor for heart disease). Kurzweil then found a doctor that shares his non-conventional beliefs to develop an extreme regimen involving hundreds of pills, chemical i.v. treatments, red wine and various other methods to attempt to live longer.

Kurzweil ingests "250 supplements, eight to 10 glasses of alkaline water and 10 cups of green tea" every day and drinks several glasses of red wine a week in an effort to "reprogram" his biochemistry.^[46] Lately, he has cut down the number of supplement pills to 150.^[47]

Kurzweil joined the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, a cryonics company. In the event of his death, Kurzweil's body will be chemically preserved, frozen in liquid nitrogen, and stored at an Alcor facility in the hope that future medical technology will be able to revive him.^{[citation needed]}

Kurzweil has authored three books on the subjects of nutrition, health and immortality: The 10% Solution for a Healthy Life, Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever and TRANSCEND: Nine Steps to Living Well Forever.^[48] In all, he recommends that other people emulate his health practices to the best of their abilities.

Kurzweil and his current "anti-aging" doctor, Terry Grossman, MD., now have two websites promoting their first^[49] and second book.^[50]

Stance on religion[link]

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Though Kurzweil's parents were Jewish, they raised him as a Unitarian Universalist and exposed him to many different faiths during his youth. Kurzweil presented sermons at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of San Diego in January 2000 upon publication of The Age of Spiritual Machines. He gave a 2007 keynote speech to the United Church of Christ in Hartford, Connecticut, alongside Barack Obama, who was then a Presidential candidate. In The Singularity is Near he expresses his belief in a need for a new religion based on the principle of mutual respect between sentient life forms, and on the principle of respecting knowledge. This religion would not have a leader, instead being purely personal to adherents.

The documentary Transcendent Man (2009) reveals some aspects of Kurzweil's spiritual beliefs. He discusses how he was raised, saying that recent exciting events, whether they were scientific discoveries, inventions, or something sociological or something else, were often topics that came up at the dinner table. He says that human knowledge was highly respected in his family, and particularly the ability for humans to overcome challenges. He says this respect for human knowledge was personalized even, and was part of the religion, if you will, of his family.

Parts of the film discuss the vast level of superiority computers already have versus humans at most basic tasks, such as math. Some say that the artificial intelligences we may build in the future will be gods, or god-like. Kurzweil seems to indicate however that the AIs paving the future will actually be us, man merged with machine, rather than (or perhaps in addition to) separate robot entities apart from ourselves.

At the end of the film, Kurzweil talks more about his ideas about the future and particularly about this unification of all people on Earth, followed by an expansion of our civilization and consciousness outward into the universe (after the singularity takes place), "waking up" things in its path (bringing consciousness).

His abridged way of saying it is that "it will be the universe waking up." After this, the loud, triumphant music that had been accompanying the scene cuts out, and the camera focuses back on Kurzweil, who then finishes the film by saying:

"So you might ask 'Does god exist?' Well, I would say not yet."

Criticism[link]

This article's Criticism or Controversy section may compromise the article's neutral point of view of the subject. Please integrate the section's contents into the article as a whole, or rewrite the material. (April 2010)

Kurzweil's ideas have generated much criticism within the scientific community and in the media. There are philosophical arguments over whether a machine can "think" (see Philosophy of artificial intelligence). Mitch Kapor, the founder of Lotus Development Corporation, has called the notion of a technological singularity "intelligent design for the IQ 140 people...This proposition that we're heading to this point at which everything is going to be just unimaginably different—it's fundamentally, in my view, driven by a religious impulse. And all of the frantic arm-waving can't obscure that fact for me."^[51]

VR pioneer Jaron Lanier has been one of the strongest critics of Kurzweil’s ideas, describing them as “cybernetic totalism”, and has outlined his views on the culture surrounding Kurzweil’s predictions in an essay for Edge.org entitled One Half of a Manifesto.^[52]

Pulitzer Prize winner Douglas Hofstadter, author of Gödel, Escher, Bach, has said of Kurzweil's and Hans Moravec's books: "It’s as if you took a lot of very good food and some dog excrement and blended it all up so that you can't possibly figure out what's good or bad. It's an intimate mixture of rubbish and good ideas, and it's very hard to disentangle the two, because these are smart people; they're not stupid."^[53]

Although the idea of a technological singularity is a popular concept in science fiction, some authors such as Neal Stephenson^[54] and Bruce Sterling have voiced scepticism about its real-world plausibility. Sterling expressed his views on the singularity scenario in a talk at the Long Now Foundation entitled The Singularity: Your Future as a Black Hole.^[55][56] Other prominent AI thinkers and computer scientists such as Daniel Dennett,^[57] Rodney Brooks,^[58] and David Gelernter^[59] have also criticized Kurzweil’s projections.

Bill Joy, cofounder of Sun Microsystems, agrees with Kurzweil's timeline of future progress, but thinks that technologies such as AI, nanotechnology and advanced biotechnology will create a dystopian world.^[60]

Daniel Lyons, writing in Newsweek, criticized Kurzweil for some of his predictions which turned out to be wrong; such as the economy continuing to boom from the 1998 dot-com through 2009, a US company having a market capitalization of more than $1 trillion, a supercomputer achieving 20 petaflops, speech recognition being in widespread use and cars that would drive themselves using sensors installed in highways; all by 2009.^[61] To the charge that a 20 petaflop supercomputer was not produced in the time he predicted, Kurzweil responded that he considers Google a giant supercomputer, and that it is indeed capable of 20 petaflops.^[61] In 2009 however IBM announced the commencement of its development of the IBM Sequoia for the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administrations, which is capable of 20+ petaflops and is expected to be delivered in 2011,^{[non-primary source needed]} two years after Kurzeil's prediction.^[62]

Biologist P. Z. Myers has criticized Kurzweil's predictions as being based on "New Age spiritualism" rather than science and says that Kurzweil does not understand basic biology.^[63][64]

See also[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

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• Kurzweil Companies web site
• Raymond Kurzweil's IP – all of Raymond Kurzweil's US patents & patent applications
• Appearances on C-SPAN
  • In Depth interview with Kurzweil, November 5, 2006
• Ray Kurzweil on Charlie Rose
• Raymond Kurzweil at the Internet Movie Database
• Ray Kurzweil at the Notable Names Database
• Works by or about Ray Kurzweil in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• 2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal, Lev Grossman, Time, February 10, 2011

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Rudolf Steiner

Born	Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner 25(27?) February 1861 Murakirály, Austria-Hungary (now Donji Kraljevec, Croatia)
Died	30 March 1925 (aged 64) Dornach, Switzerland
Era	20th-century philosophy
Region	Western Philosophy
School	Phenomenology, Holism, Monism
Main interests	Metaphysics, Epistemology, Philosophy of science, Esotericism, Christianity, Spiritual Science, Freemasonry
Notable ideas	Anthroposophy, Anthroposophical Medicine, Biodynamic Agriculture, Eurythmy, Spiritual Science, Waldorf Education
Influenced by Helena Blavatsky, Franz Brentano, Wilhelm Dilthey, Fichte, Eduard von Hartmann, Hegel, Goethe, Nietzsche, Schiller, Schopenhauer, Max Stirner
Influenced Owen Barfield, Hugo Bergmann, Josef Beuys, Martin Buber,[1] Alan Chadwick, Wassily Kandinsky, Albert Schweitzer, Richard Tarnas

Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner^[2] (25/27 February 1861^[3] – 30 March 1925) was an Austrian philosopher, social reformer, architect, and esotericist.^[4][5] Steiner gained initial recognition as a literary critic and cultural philosopher. At the beginning of the 20th century, he founded a spiritual movement, Anthroposophy, as an esoteric philosophy growing out of idealist philosophy and with links to Theosophy.

Steiner led this movement through several phases. In the first, more philosophically oriented phase, Steiner attempted to find a synthesis between science and mysticism;^[6] his philosophical work of these years, which he termed spiritual science, sought to provide a connection between the cognitive path of Western philosophy and the inner and spiritual needs of the human being.^[7]:291 In a second phase, beginning around 1907, he began working collaboratively in a variety of artistic media, including drama, the movement arts (developing a new artistic form, eurythmy) and architecture, culminating in the building of a cultural centre to house all the arts, the Goetheanum. After the First World War, Steiner worked with educators, farmers, doctors, and other professionals to develop numerous practical initiatives, including Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture, anthroposophical medicine.^[8]

Steiner advocated a form of ethical individualism, to which he later brought a more explicitly spiritual component. He based his epistemology on Johann Wolfgang Goethe's world view, in which “Thinking … is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colours and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas.”^[9] A consistent thread that runs from his earliest philosophical phase through his later spiritual orientation is the goal of demonstrating that there are no essential limits to human knowledge.^[10]

Biography[link]

Childhood and education[link]

Steiner's father, Johann(es) Steiner (23 June 1829, Geras or Trabenreith, Irnfritz-Messern and lived Geras Abbey, Waldviertel – 1910, Horn), left a position as a gamekeeper^[11] in the service of Count Hoyos in Geras, northeast Lower Austria to marry one of the Hoyos family's housemaids, Franziska Blie (8 May 1834, Horn, Waldviertel – 1918, Horn), a marriage for which the Count had refused his permission. Johann became a telegraph operator on the Southern Austrian Railway, and at the time of Rudolf's birth was stationed in Kraljevec in the Muraköz region, then part of the Austrian Empire (present-day Donji Kraljevec, Međimurje region, northernmost Croatia). In the first two years of Rudolf's life, the family moved twice, first to Mödling, near Vienna, and then, through the promotion of his father to stationmaster, to Pottschach, located in the foothills of the eastern Austrian Alps in Lower Austria.^[8]

Steiner entered the village school; following a disagreement between his father and the schoolmaster, he was briefly educated at home. In 1869 the family moved to the village of Neudörfl (near Wiener Neustadt), and in 1879 to Inzersdorf. The latter move was to enable Steiner to attend the Vienna Institute of Technology, where he studied mathematics, physics, chemistry, botany, biology, literature, and philosophy on an academic scholarship from 1879 to 1883, at the end of which time he withdrew from the university.^{[12]:446[13]:29} In 1882, one of Steiner's teachers, Karl Julius Schröer, suggested Steiner's name to Joseph Kürschner, chief editor of an important new edition of Goethe's works,^[14] who asked Steiner to become the edition's natural science editor,^[15] a truly astonishing opportunity for a young student without any form of academic credentials or previous publications.^[13]:43

The house where Rudolf Steiner was born, in modern Croatia

In 1891, Steiner earned a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Rostock in Germany with a thesis based upon Fichte's concept of the ego,^[7] later published in expanded form as Truth and Knowledge.^[16]

Early spiritual experiences[link]

At about nine years Steiner experienced seeing the spirit of an aunt who had died in a far-off town asking him to help her; neither he nor his family knew of the woman's death at this time.^[17] At 21, on the train between his home village and Vienna, Steiner met a herb gatherer, Felix Kogutzki, who spoke about the spiritual world "as one who had his own experience therein...".^[18]:39–40 Kogutzki conveyed to Steiner a knowledge of nature that was non-academic and spiritual; soon thereafter Steiner began to read Goethe's works on natural science. According to Steiner, he also introduced Steiner to a person that Steiner only identified as a “Master”, and who had a great influence on Steiner's subsequent development, in particular directing him to study Fichte's philosophy.^[19]

Writer and philosopher[link]

Rudolf Steiner 1900

In 1888, as a result of his work for the Kürschner edition of Goethe's works, Steiner was invited to work as an editor at the Goethe archives in Weimar. Steiner remained with the archive until 1896. As well as the introductions for and commentaries to four volumes of Goethe's scientific writings, Steiner wrote two books about Goethe's philosophy: The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conception (1886)^[20] and Goethe's Conception of the World (1897).^[21] During this time he also collaborated in complete editions of the works of Arthur Schopenhauer and the writer Jean Paul and wrote numerous articles for various journals.

During his time at the archives, Steiner wrote what he considered to be his most important philosophical work, Die Philosophie der Freiheit (The Philosophy of Freedom or The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity—Steiner's preferred English title) (1894), an exploration of epistemology and ethics that suggested a path upon which humans can become spiritually free beings.

In 1896, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche asked Steiner to help organize the Nietzsche archive in Naumburg. Her brother by that time was non compos mentis. Förster-Nietzsche introduced Steiner into the presence of the catatonic philosopher; Steiner, deeply moved, subsequently wrote the book Friedrich Nietzsche, Fighter for Freedom. Steiner later related, "Nietzsche's ideas of the 'eternal recurrence' and of 'Übermensch' remained long in my mind. For in these was reflected that which a personality must feel concerning the evolution and essential being of humanity when this personality is kept back from grasping the spiritual world by the restricted thought in the philosophy of nature characterizing the end of the 19th century....What attracted me particularly was that one could read Nietzsche without coming upon anything which strove to make the reader a 'dependent' of Nietzsche's."^[18]

In 1897, Steiner left the Weimar archives and moved to Berlin. He became part owner, chief editor, and an active contributor to the literary journal Magazin für Literatur, where he hoped to find a readership sympathetic to his philosophy. Many subscribers were alienated by Steiner's unpopular support of Émile Zola in the Dreyfus Affair^[22] and the journal lost more subscribers when Steiner published extracts from his correspondence with anarchist John Henry Mackay.^[22] Dissatisfaction with his editorial style eventually led to his departure from the magazine.

In 1899, Steiner married Anna Eunicke; the couple separated several years later. Anna died in 1911.

The Theosophical Society[link]

Marie Steiner 1903

In 1899, Steiner published an article, “Goethe's Secret Revelation”, discussing the esoteric nature of Goethe's fairy tale The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily. This article led to an invitation by the Count and Countess Brockdorff to speak to a gathering of Theosophists on the subject of Nietzsche. Steiner continued speaking regularly to the members of the Theosophical Society, becoming the head of its newly constituted German section in 1902 without ever formally joining the society.^[7][23] By 1904, Steiner was appointed by Annie Besant to be leader of the Theosophical Esoteric Society for Germany and Austria. It was also within this society that Steiner met and worked with Marie von Sivers, who became his second wife in 1914.

The German Section of the Theosophical Society grew rapidly under Steiner's leadership as he lectured throughout much of Europe on his spiritual science. During this period, Steiner maintained an original approach, replacing Madame Blavatsky's terminology with his own, and basing his spiritual research and teachings upon the Western esoteric and philosophical tradition. This and other differences, in particular Steiner's vocal rejection of Leadbeater and Besant's claim that Jiddu Krishnamurti was the vehicle of a new Maitreya, or world teacher,^[24] led to a formal split in 1912/13,^[7] when Steiner and the majority of members of the German section of the Theosophical Society broke off to form a new group, the Anthroposophical Society.

The Anthroposophical Society and its cultural activities[link]

English sculptor Edith Maryon belonged to the innermost circle of founders of anthroposophy and headed the Section of Fine Arts at the Goetheanum

The Anthroposophical Society grew rapidly. Fueled by a need to find a home for their yearly conferences, which included performances of plays written by Eduard Schuré as well as Steiner himself, the decision was made to build a theater and organizational center. In 1913, construction began on the first Goetheanum building, in Dornach, Switzerland. The building, designed by Steiner, was built to a significant part by volunteers who offered craftsmanship or simply a will to learn new skills. Once World War I started in 1914, the Goetheanum volunteers could hear the sound of cannon fire beyond the Swiss border, but despite the war, people from all over Europe worked peaceably side by side on the building's construction.

Beginning in 1919, Steiner was called upon to assist with numerous practical activities (see below), including the first Waldorf school, founded that year in Stuttgart, Germany. His lecture activity expanded enormously. At the same time, the Goetheanum developed as a wide-ranging cultural centre. On New Year's Eve, 1922/1923, the building burned to the ground; contemporary police reports indicate arson as the probable cause.^{[8]:752[25]:796} Steiner immediately began work designing a second Goetheanum building –this time made of concrete instead of wood – which was completed in 1928, three years after his death.

In 1923, Steiner founded a School of Spiritual Science, intended as an "organ of initiative" for research and study and as "the soul of the Anthroposophical Society".^[26] This included a general course of study based on meditative exercises (intended to guide a meditant from «the spiritual in the human being to the spiritual in the universe.»)^[27] and research departments focusing on areas such as education, medicine, agriculture, art, natural science, social science, and literature. Steiner spoke of laying the Foundation Stone of the new society in the hearts of his listeners.

Social reform[link]

Steiner became a well-known and controversial public figure during and after World War I. In response to the catastrophic situation in post-war Germany, he proposed extensive social reforms through the establishment of a Threefold Social Order in which the cultural, political and economic realms would be largely independent. Steiner argued that a fusion of the three realms had created the inflexibility that had led to catastrophes such as World War I. In connection with this, he promoted a radical solution in the disputed area of Upper Silesia, claimed by both Poland and Germany; his suggestion that this area be granted at least provisional independence led to his being publicly accused of being a traitor to Germany.^[28]

In 1919, Steiner's chief work on social reform (English title: Toward Social Renewal) was released simultaneously in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland and sold some 80,000 copies in the first year.

Attacks, illness, and death[link]

Right-wing groups had been rapidly gaining strength in Germany. In 1919, the political theorist of the National Socialist movement in Germany, Dietrich Eckart, attacked Steiner and suggested that he was a Jew.^[29] In 1921, Adolf Hitler attacked Steiner in an article in the right-wing Völkischer Beobachter newspaper that included accusations that Steiner was a tool of the Jews,^[30] and other nationalist extremists in Germany called up a "war against Steiner". In 1922 a lecture in Munich was disrupted when stink bombs were let off and the lights switched out.^[31][32] Unable to guarantee his safety, Steiner's agents cancelled a next lecture tour.^[22]:193[33] The 1923 Beer Hall Putsch in Munich led Steiner to give up his residence in Berlin, saying that if those responsible for the attempted coup [Hitler and others] came to power in Germany, it would no longer be possible for him to enter the country;^[34] he also warned against the disastrous effects it would have for Central Europe if the National Socialists came to power.^[29]:8

The loss of the Goetheanum affected Steiner's health seriously. From 1923 on, he showed signs of increasing frailness and illness. He continued to lecture widely, and even to travel; especially towards the end of this time, he was often giving two, three or even four lectures daily for courses taking place concurrently. Many of these were for practical areas of life; simultaneously, however, Steiner began an extensive series of lectures presenting his research on the successive incarnations of various individualities, and on the technique of karma research generally.^[35]

Increasingly ill, his last lecture was held in September 1924. He continued work on his autobiography during the last months of his life; he died on 30 March 1925.

Spiritual research[link]

From 1899 until his death in 1925, Steiner articulated an ongoing stream of experiences that he claimed were of the spiritual world – experiences he said had touched him from an early age on.^[22] Steiner aimed to apply his training in mathematics, science, and philosophy to produce rigorous, verifiable presentations of those experiences.^[36]

Steiner believed that through freely chosen ethical disciplines and meditative training, anyone could develop the ability to experience the spiritual world, including the higher nature of oneself and others.^[22] Steiner believed that such discipline and training would help a person to become a more moral, creative and free individual – free in the sense of being capable of actions motivated solely by love.^[37]

Steiner's philosophical ideas were influenced by Franz Brentano,^[22] with whom he had studied, and Wilhelm Dilthey, both founders of the phenomenological movement in European philosophy, as well as Fichte, Hegel, and Schelling. Steiner was also strongly influenced by Goethe's phenomenological approach to science.^[22][38][39]

Steiner led the following esoteric schools:

• His independent Esoteric School of the Theosophical Society, founded in 1904. This school continued after the break with Theosophy but was disbanded at the start of World War I.
• A lodge called Mystica Aeterna within the Masonic Order of Memphis and Mizraim, which Steiner led from 1906 until around 1914. Steiner added to the Masonic rite a number of Rosicrucian references.^[40] The figure of Christian Rosenkreutz also plays an important role in several of his later lectures.
• The School of Spiritual Science of the Anthroposophical Society, founded in 1923 as a further development of his earlier Esoteric School. The School of Spiritual Science was intended to have three “classes”, but only the first of these was developed in Steiner's lifetime. All the texts relating to the “School of Spiritual Science” have been published in the full edition of Steiner's works.

Breadth of activity[link]

After the First World War, Steiner became active in a wide variety of cultural contexts. He founded a number of schools, the first of which was known as the Waldorf school,^[41] and which later evolved into a worldwide school network. He also founded a system of organic agriculture, now known as Biodynamic agriculture, which was one of the very first forms of, and has contributed significantly to the development of, modern organic farming.^[42] His work in medicine led to the development of a broad range of complementary medications and supportive artistic and biographic therapies.^[43] Homes for children and adults with developmental disabilities based on his work (including those of the Camphill movement) are widespread.^[44] His paintings and drawings influenced Joseph Beuys and other modern artists. His two Goetheanum buildings are generally accepted to be masterpieces of modern architecture,^[45][46] and other anthroposophical architects have contributed thousands of buildings to the modern scene. One of the first institutions to practice ethical banking was an anthroposophical bank working out of Steiner's ideas.

Steiner's literary estate is correspondingly broad. Steiner's writings, published in about forty volumes, include books, essays, four plays ('mystery dramas'), mantric verse, and an autobiography. His collected lectures, making up another approximately 300 volumes, discuss an extremely wide range of themes. Steiner's drawings, chiefly illustrations done on blackboards during his lectures, are collected in a separate series of 28 volumes. Many publications have covered his architectural legacy and sculptural work.

Education[link]

The Waldorf school in Verrières-le-Buisson (France)

As a young man, Steiner already supported the independence of educational institutions from governmental control. In 1907, he wrote an essay on "Education in the Light of Spiritual Science", in which he described the major phases of child development that were later to form the foundation of his approach to education.

In 1919, Emil Molt invited him to lecture to his workers at the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory in Stuttgart. Out of these lectures came a new school, the Waldorf school. In 1922, Steiner brought these ideas to Oxford at the invitation of Professor Millicent Mackenzie and the Oxford Conference led to the founding of Waldorf schools in Britain.^[47] During Steiner's lifetime, schools based on his educational principles were also founded in Hamburg, Essen, The Hague and London; there are now more than 1000 Waldorf schools worldwide.

Social activism[link]

For a period after World War I, Steiner was extremely active as a lecturer on social reform. A petition expressing his basic social ideas (signed by Herman Hesse, among others) was very widely circulated.

His chief book on social reform, Toward Social Renewal, sold tens of thousands of copies in his lifetime. In this, Steiner suggested that the cultural, political and economic spheres of society need to work together as consciously cooperating yet independent entities. Each of these three realms has a particular task: political institutions should establish political equality and protect human rights; cultural institutions should cultivate the free and unhindered development of such realms as science, art, education and religion; and economic institutions should encourage producers, distributors and consumers to cooperate to provide for society's needs.^[48] He saw the establishment of what he called Threefold Social Order as a vital response to what he saw as an already visible trend toward the mutual independence of these three realms. Steiner saw theocracy, conventional shareholder capitalism, and state socialism as attempts by, respectively, cultural, economic, and governmental institutions to dominate the others. In the present day, he suggested, such attempts by any one of these spheres to manipulate another would be contrary to society's interests; such negative mutual influences would include e.g. corporate pressure on governments, state attempts to interfere with science, education, or religion, or religious influences on governmental entities.

• The cultural realm (science, art, religion, education, and the press) requires and fosters freedom;
• The political realm requires and fosters equality;
• The economic realm requires and fosters cooperation and solidarity.

Steiner also gave suggestions for many specific social reforms.

Architecture and visual arts[link]

First Goetheanum

Steiner designed 17 buildings, including the First and Second Goetheanums. These two buildings, built in Dornach, Switzerland, were intended to house significant theater spaces as well as a School for Spiritual Science. Three of Steiner's buildings have been listed amongst the most significant works of modern architecture.^[49]

His primary sculptural work is The Representative of Humanity (1922), a nine-meter high wood sculpture executed as a joint project with the sculptor Edith Maryon and now on permanent display at the Goetheanum.

Steiner's blackboard drawings were unique at the time and almost certainly not originally intended as art works. Josef Beuys' work, itself heavily influenced by Steiner, has led to the modern understanding of Steiner's drawings as artistic objects.^[50]

Performing arts[link]

Together with Marie Steiner-von Sivers, Rudolf Steiner developed the art of eurythmy, sometimes referred to as "visible speech and visible song". According to the principles of eurythmy, there are archetypal movements or gestures that correspond to every aspect of speech – the sounds (or phonemes), the rhythms, and the grammatical function – to every "soul quality" – joy, despair, tenderness, etc. – and to every aspect of music – tones, intervals, rhythms, and harmonies.

As a playwright, Steiner wrote four "Mystery Dramas" between 1909 and 1913, including The Portal of Initiation and The Soul's Awakening. They are still performed today by Anthroposophical groups.^[51]

Steiner also founded a new approach to artistic speech, or "speech formation", and drama. Michael Chekhov took up and extended Steiner's approach in what is now known as the Chekhov method of acting.^[52]

Anthroposophical medicine[link]

From the late 1910s, Steiner was working with doctors to create a new approach to medicine. In 1921, pharmacists and physicians gathered under Steiner's guidance to create a pharmaceutical company called Weleda which now distributes natural medical products worldwide. At around the same time, Dr. Ita Wegman founded a first anthroposophic medical clinic (now the Ita Wegman Clinic) in Arlesheim.

Biodynamic farming and gardening[link]

In 1924, a group of farmers concerned about the future of agriculture requested Steiner's help. Steiner responded with a lecture series on an ecological and sustainable approach to agriculture that increased soil fertility without the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.^[53] Steiner's agricultural ideas promptly spread and were put to the test internationally^[54] and Biodynamic agriculture is now practiced widely in Europe,^[55] North America, Asia^[55] and Australasia.^[56][57][58]

A central aspect of biodynamics is that the farm as a whole is seen as an organism, and therefore should be a largely self-sustaining system, producing its own manure and animal feed. Plant or animal disease is seen a symptom of problems in the whole organism. Steiner also suggested timing agricultural activities such as sowing, weeding, and harvesting to utilize the influences on plant growth of the moon and planets; and the application of natural materials prepared in specific ways to the soil, compost, and crops, with the intention of engaging non-physical beings and elemental forces. He encouraged his listeners to verify his suggestions empirically, as he had not yet done.^[56]

Philosophical development[link]

Goethean science[link]

In his commentaries on Goethe's scientific works, written between 1884 and 1897, Steiner presented Goethe's approach to science as essentially phenomenological in nature, rather than theory- or model-based. He developed this conception further in several books, The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conception (1886) and Goethe's Conception of the World (1897), particularly emphasizing the transformation in Goethe's approach from the physical sciences, where experiment played the primary role, to plant biology, where imagination was required to find the biological archetypes (Urpflanze), and postulated that Goethe had sought but been unable to fully find the further transformation in scientific thinking necessary to properly interpret and understand the animal kingdom.^[59]

Steiner defended Goethe's qualitative description of color as arising synthetically from the polarity of light and darkness, in contrast to Newton's particle-based and analytic conception. He emphasized the role of evolutionary thinking in Goethe's discovery of the intermaxillary bone in human beings; Goethe expected human anatomy to be an evolutionary transformation of animal anatomy.^[59]

Knowledge and freedom[link]

Steiner approached the philosophical questions of knowledge and freedom in two stages. The first was his dissertation, published in expanded form in 1892 as Truth and Knowledge. Here Steiner suggests that there is an inconsistency between Kant's philosophy, which posits that knowledge is representation and that the essential verity of the world is inaccessible to human consciousness, and modern science, which assumes that all influences can be found in what Steiner termed the “sinnlichen und geistlichen” (sensory and mental/spiritual) world to which we have access. Steiner terms Kant's “Jenseits-Philosophie” (philosophy of an inaccessible beyond) a stumbling block in achieving a satisfying philosophical viewpoint.^[60]

Steiner postulates that the world is essentially an indivisible unity, but that our consciousness divides it into the sense-perceptible appearance, on the one hand, and the formal nature accessible to our thinking, on the other. He sees in thinking itself an element that can be strengthened and deepened sufficiently to penetrate all that our senses do not reveal to us. Steiner thus explicitly denies all justification to a division between faith and knowledge; otherwise expressed, between the spiritual and natural worlds. Their apparent duality is conditioned by the structure of our consciousness, which separates perception and thinking, but these two faculties give us two complementary views of the same world; neither has primacy and the two together are necessary and sufficient to arrive at a complete understanding of the world. In thinking about perception (the path of natural science) and perceiving the process of thinking (the path of spiritual training), it is possible to discover a hidden inner unity between the two poles of our experience.^{[37]:Chapter 4}

Truth, for Steiner, is paradoxically both an objective discovery and yet "a free creation of the human spirit, that never would exist at all if we did not generate it ourselves. The task of understanding is not to replicate in conceptual form something that already exists, but rather to create a wholly new realm, that together with the world given to our senses constitutes the fullness of reality."^[61]

A new stage of Steiner's philosophical development is expressed in his Philosophy of Freedom. Here, he further explores potentials within thinking: freedom, he suggests, can only be approached asymptotically and with the aid of the "creative activity" of thinking. Thinking can be a free deed; in addition, it can liberate our will from its subservience to our instincts and drives. Free deeds, he suggests, are those for which we are fully conscious of the motive for our action; freedom is the spiritual activity of penetrating with consciousness our own nature and that of the world,^[62] and the real activity of acting in full consciousness.^[37]:133–4 This includes overcoming influences of both heredity and environment: "To be free is to be capable of thinking one's own thoughts – not the thoughts merely of the body, or of society, but thoughts generated by one's deepest, most original, most essential and spiritual self, one's individuality."^[7]

Steiner affirms Darwin's and Haeckel's evolutionary perspectives but extends this beyond its materialistic consequences; he sees human consciousness, indeed, all human culture, as a product of natural evolution that transcends itself. For Steiner, nature becomes self-conscious in the human being. Steiner's description of the nature of human consciousness thus closely parallels that of Solovyov:^[63]

In human beings, the absolute subject-object appears as such, i.e. as pure spiritual activity, containing all of its own objectivity, the whole process of its natural manifestation, but containing it totally ideally – in consciousness....The subject knows here only its own activity as an objective activity (sub specie object). Thus, the original identity of subject and object is restored in philosophical knowledge.^[64]

Spiritual science[link]

In his earliest works, Steiner already spoke of the "natural and spiritual worlds" as a unity.^[22] From 1900 on, he began lecturing about concrete details of the spiritual world(s), culminating in the publication in 1904 of the first of several systematic presentations, his Theosophy: An Introduction to the Spiritual Processes in Human Life and in the Cosmos, followed by How to Know Higher Worlds (1904/5), Cosmic Memory (a collection of articles written between 1904 and 1908), and An Outline of Esoteric Science (1910). Important themes include:

• the human being as body, soul and spirit;
• the path of spiritual development;
• spiritual influences on world-evolution and history; and
• reincarnation and karma.

Steiner emphasized that there is an objective natural and spiritual world that can be known, and that perceptions of the spiritual world and incorporeal beings are, under conditions of training comparable to that required for the natural sciences, including self-discipline, replicable by multiple observers. It is on this basis that spiritual science is possible, with radically different epistemological foundations than those of natural science.

For Steiner, the cosmos is permeated and continually transformed by the creative activity of non-physical processes and spiritual beings. For the human being to become conscious of the objective reality of these processes and beings, it is necessary to creatively enact and reenact, within, their creative activity. Thus objective spiritual knowledge always entails creative inner activity.^[22] Steiner articulated three stages of any creative deed:^{[37]:Pt II, Chapter 1}

• Moral intuition: the ability to discover or, preferably, develop valid ethical principles;
• Moral imagination: the imaginative transformation of such principles into a concrete intention applicable to the particular situation (situational ethics); and
• Moral technique: the realization of the intended transformation, depending on a mastery of practical skills.

Steiner termed his work from this period on Anthroposophy. He emphasized that the spiritual path he articulated builds upon and supports individual freedom and independent judgment; for the results of spiritual research to be appropriately presented in a modern context they must be in a form accessible to logical understanding, so that those who do not have access to the spiritual experiences underlying anthroposophical research can make independent evaluations of the latter's results.^[37] Spiritual training is to support what Steiner considered the overall purpose of human evolution, the development of the mutually interdependent qualities of love and freedom.^[7]

Steiner and Christianity[link]

In 1899 Steiner experienced what he described as a life-transforming inner encounter with the being of Christ; previously he had little or no relation to Christianity in any form. Then and thereafter, his relationship to Christianity remained entirely founded upon personal experience, and thus both non-denominational and strikingly different from conventional religious forms.^[7] Steiner was then 38, and the experience of meeting the Christ occurred after a tremendous inner struggle. To use Steiner's own words the "experience culminated in my standing in the spiritual presence of the Mystery of Golgotha in a most profound and solemn festival of knowledge."^[65]

Christ and human evolution[link]

Steiner describes Christ's being and mission on earth as having a central place in human evolution:^[66]

The being of Christ is central to all religions, though called by different names by each.

Every religion is valid and true for the time and cultural context in which it was born.

Historical forms of Christianity need to be transformed considerably in our times in order to meet the on-going evolution of humanity.

Steiner saw this being that unifies all religions – and not a particular religious faith – as the central force in human evolution. He understood Christ's incarnation as a historical reality, and a pivotal point in human history, however. The "Christ Being" is for Steiner not only the Redeemer of the Fall from Paradise, but also the unique pivot and meaning of earth's "evolutionary" processes and of all human history.^[66] In Steiner's esoteric cosmology, the spiritual development of humanity is interwoven and inseparable from the cosmological development of the universe. Continuing the evolution that led to humanity being born out of the natural world, the Christ being brings the impulse enabling humanity's conscious ascent into the spiritual worlds. ^[67]

To be "Christian" is, for Steiner, a search for balance between polarizing extremes^[66]:102–3 and the ability to manifest love in freedom.^[7]

Divergence from conventional Christian thought[link]

Steiner's views of Christianity diverge from conventional Christian thought in key places, and include gnostic elements.^[59] One of the central points of divergence is found in Steiner's views on reincarnation and karma.

Steiner also posited two different Jesus children involved in the Incarnation of the Christ: one child descended from Solomon, as described in the Gospel of Matthew; the other child from Nathan, as described in the Gospel of Luke.^[48] He references in this regard the fact that the genealogies in these two gospels list twenty-six (Luke) to forty-one (Matthew) completely different ancestors for the generations from David to Jesus. See Genealogy of Jesus for alternative explanations of this radical divergence.

Steiner's view of the second coming of Christ is also unusual. He suggested that this would not be a physical reappearance, but rather, meant that the Christ being would become manifest in non-physical form, in the "etheric realm" – i.e. visible to spiritual vision and apparent in community life – for increasing numbers of people, beginning around the year 1933. He emphasized that the future would require humanity to recognize this Spirit of Love in all its genuine forms, regardless of how this is named. He also warned that the traditional name, "Christ", might be used, yet the true essence of this Being of Love ignored.^[59]

The Christian Community[link]

In the 1920s, Steiner was approached by Friedrich Rittelmeyer, a Lutheran pastor with a congregation in Berlin. Rittelmeyer asked if it was possible to create a more modern form of Christianity. Soon others joined Rittelmeyer – mostly Protestant pastors and theology students, but including several Roman Catholic priests. Steiner offered counsel on renewing the sacraments of their various services, combining Catholicism's emphasis on the rites of a sacred tradition with the emphasis on freedom of thought and a personal relationship to religious life. He dubbed this "modern, Johannine Christianity".^[48]

Steiner made it clear, however, that the resulting movement for the renewal of Christianity, which became known as "The Christian Community", was a personal gesture of help to a movement founded by Rittelmeyer and others independently of the Anthroposophical Society.^[48] The distinction was important to Steiner because he sought with Anthroposophy to create a scientific, not faith-based, spirituality.^[66] For those who wished to find more traditional forms, however, a renewal of the traditional religions was also a vital need of the times.

Reception and controversy[link]

Steiner's work has influenced a broad range of noted personalities. These include the philosophers Albert Schweitzer, Owen Barfield and Richard Tarnas;^[22] the writers Saul Bellow,^[68] Michael Ende,^[69] Selma Lagerlöf,^[70] Andrej Belyj,^[71][72] David Spangler,^{[citation needed]} and William Irwin Thompson;^[22] the artists Josef Beuys,^[73] Wassily Kandinsky,^[74][75] and Murray Griffin;^[76] actor and acting teacher Michael Chekhov;^[77] cinema director Andrei Tarkovsky;^[78] and conductor Bruno Walter.^[79] Olav Hammer, though sharply critical of esoteric movements generally, terms Steiner "arguably the most historically and philosophically sophisticated spokesperson of the Esoteric Tradition."^[80]

Albert Schweitzer wrote that he and Steiner had in common that they had "taken on the life mission of working for the emergence of a true culture enlivened by the ideal of humanity and to encourage people to become truly thinking beings".^[81]

Robert Todd Carroll has said of Steiner that "Some of his ideas on education – such as educating the handicapped in the mainstream – are worth considering, although his overall plan for developing the spirit and the soul rather than the intellect cannot be admired".^[82]

Scientism[link]

Olav Hammer critiques as scientism Steiner's claim to use a scientific methodology to investigate spiritual phenomena based upon his claims of clairvoyant experience.^[80] Steiner regarded the "observations" of spiritual research as more dependable (and above all, consistent) than observations of physical reality yet considered spiritual research as fallible^[12] and, perhaps surprisingly, held the view that anyone capable of thinking logically was in a position to correct errors by spiritual researchers.^[83]

Race and ethnicity[link]

Steiner's work includes both universalist, humanist elements and historically influenced racial assumptions.^[84] Due to the contrast and even contradictions between these elements, "whether a given reader interprets Anthroposophy as racist or not depends upon that reader's concerns."^[85] Steiner considered that every people, by dint of a shared language and culture, has a unique essence, which he called its soul or spirit,^[80] saw race as a physical manifestation of humanity's spiritual evolution and at times discussed race in terms of complex hierarchies largely derived from nineteenth century biology, anthropology, philosophy, and Theosophy, yet he consistently and explicitly subordinated race, ethnicity, gender—indeed, all hereditary factors—to individual factors in development.^[85] For Steiner, human individuality is centered in a person's unique biography, an individuality's experiences and development not bound by a single lifetime, not the qualities of the physical body.^[23] More specifically: