What is 'dead thinking'?

What is 'dead thinking'?

Thinking that can only recognise that which is measurable, and which excludes anything that might be influencing what is measured (especially that which influences that can never be measured - but can be perceived and understood quite logically.

I see it also as thinking that relies on snapshots. Even in the social sciences there is a reliance on data snapshots (surveys, interviews etc). Longitudinal studies go some way to counter this, although they are still usually founded on the underlying assumption that they are dealing with the subjective realm (as separate from the objectively measurable external physical world).
To be clear I am not suggesting that these snapshots are 'wrong', rather that they are a limited view. The problem is that our modern scientific view has extrapolated these partial truths onto the whole (derived from snapshots that are based on what is left behind by life - by what is dead).

There are some deep, strong and (largely) unexamined assumptions (there are more but I'll keep it to 3):
1. that the objective and subjective worlds are divided (so for example in medicine there is work on symptoms more than causes - because if the causes lie outside of the measurable, then they 'don't exist' - and if you suggest otherwise you're a quack).
2. that by understanding the physical world we can understand reality (e.g. because we can't measure it, there isn't such a thing as a spiritual dimension, or if there is, we can't study it scientifically)
3. that we can understand reality through the cognitive faulty alone (emotion and feeling play no role in science and knowledge-formation, only theory is valid for forming insights to act upon in society). We of course study emotion, but don't see it as a valid instrument of scientific inquiry. Dead thinking tends to be mono-perspectival (even if it is a meta-view) and to seek conclusions (just look at the chaos of the COVID 19 saga). We end up with a 'war of all against all' - a battle of premature certainties.

Conclusions lead to certainty, and certainty enables one to coerce and control - even destroy, in good conscience.

In the following excerpt Rudolf Steiner is describing dead thinking in quite a clear way (the context is important to note - this was written in 1923, so the fields he discusses have moved forward (e.g. quantum physics), but I think the essence still largely remains true - that the world is run on dead thinking, and that until we re-enliven it, we cannot hope to become regenerative as opposed to destructive.

Living Thinking (which be explored in another article) is dynamic and fluid, characterised by creativity, imagination, and an openness to new possibilities. It embraces the ever-changing nature of reality, allowing thoughts to evolve and connect with feelings and experiences. This type of thinking encourages a deep, intuitive understanding of life and fosters a sense of connection with the world.

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Rudolf Steiner:

"Now we must call to mind what is needed, on the one hand for physics and chemistry, and on the other for psychology and pneumatology, in order to develop them further in a conscious way, since man today finds himself in the age of the development of the consciousness soul. Take physics, for example, which in recent times has become mostly abstract and mechanical. From all that I have said you will have seen that the scientific age has increasingly felt impelled to restrict itself to the externally observed mechanics of space. Long ago, man accompanied motion by means of inward experience and judged it according to what he felt within as movement. Observing a falling stone, he experienced its inner impulse of movement in his own inner human nature, in his physical body. This experience, after the great casting out, led to the measuring of the rate of fall per second. In our attitude toward nature, the idea prevails that what is observed is what is real.

What can be observed in the outer world? It is motion, change of position. As a rule, we let velocity vanish neatly in a differential coefficient. But it is motion that we observe, and we express velocity as movement per second, hence by means of space. This means, however, that with our conscious experience, we are entirely outside the object. We are not involved in it in any way when we merely watch its motion, meaning its change of position in space. We can do that only if we find ways and means to inwardly take hold of the spatial, physical object by an extending of the same method with which we separated from it in the first place. Instead of the mere movement, the bare change of position, we have to view the velocity in the objects as their characteristic element. Then we can know what a particular object is like inwardly, because we find velocity also within ourselves when we look back upon ourselves.

This is what is necessary. The trend of scientific development in regard to the outer physical world must be extended in the direction of proceeding from mere observation of motion to a feeling for the velocity possessed by a given object. We must advance from motion to velocity. That is how we enter into reality. Reality is not taken hold of if all we see is that a body changes its position in space. But if we know that the body possesses an inner velocity-impulse, then we have something that lies in the nature of the body. We assert nothing about a body if we merely indicate its change of position, but we do state something about it when we say that it contains within itself the impulse for its own velocity. This then is a property of it, something that belongs to its nature. You can understand this by a simple illustration. If you watch a moving person, you know nothing about him. But if you know that he has a strong urge to move quickly, you do know something about him. Likewise, you know something about him, when you know that he has a reason for moving slowly. We must be able to take hold of something that has significance within a given body. It matters little whether or not modern physics speaks, for example, of atoms; what matters is that when it does speak of them it regards them as velocity charges. That is what counts.

Now the question is: how do we arrive at such a perception? We can discuss the best in the case of physics, since today's chemistry has advanced too little. We have to become clear about what we actually do when, in our thinking, we cast inwardly experienced mechanics and physics into external space. That is what we are doing when we say: The nature of what is out there in space is of no concern to me; I observe only what can be measured and expressed in mechanical formulas, and I leave aside everything that is not mechanical. Where does this lead us? It leads us to the same process in knowledge that a human being goes through when he dies. When he dies, life goes out of him, the dead organism remains. When I begin to think mechanistically, life goes out of my knowledge. I then have a science of dead matter. We must be absolutely clear that we are setting up a science of dead matter so long as the mechanical and physical aspect is the sole object of our study of nature. You must be aware that you are focusing on what is dead. You must be able to say to yourself: The great thing about science is that it has tacitly resolved that, unlike the ancient alchemists who still saw in outer nature a remnant of life, it will observe what is dead I minerals, plants, and animals. Science will study only what is dead in them, because it utilizes only ideas and concepts suitable for what is dead. Therefore, our physics is dead by its nature.

Science will stand on a solid basis only when it fully realizes that its mode of thinking can take hold only of the dead."

Rudolf Steiner - The origins of natural science