New Anthropological Perspectives to Extend Science

A study by Jürgen Fritz on the two biodynamic spray preparations takes an important step toward explaining their effects scientifically. New analytical techniques show that the preps have the same effect as soil inoculants, which promote the growth of microorganisms and thereby support plant growth.¹ But this is not enough for the critics of biodynamics. How can we bridge the gap between these different worldviews?

---

Despite serious scientific studies, critics of biodynamics continue to mock it and label it pseudoscience, especially in France. The “materialistic paradigm” cannot find an approach to characterize such practices. But a new trend in natural anthropology may offer a bridge. It has emerged in recent years in various countries: in the US and Canada with Donna Haraway and Eduardo Kohn, in Colombia with Arturo Escobar, in Brazil with Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, in Belgium with Vinciane Despret, and in France with Bruno Latour and Philippe Descola.

Italian philosopher Emanuele Cocia,² author of the remarkable book The Life of Plants: A Metaphysics of Mixture,³ describes this revolution: “Ecology must cease to see itself as part of the natural sciences . . . and instead transform itself into a phenomenology of the spirit beyond the human being alone. It must proceed, even if only implicitly, from the assumption that life thinks and speaks everywhere and that what used to appear to us as differences in Nature is only a multitude of cultural expressions of one and the same Nature.”

The well-known anthropologist Philippe Descola conducted a decisive experiment during a stay with the Achuar Indians in the Amazon region. When he realized that none of his anthropological concepts helped him to understand these people, he tried to develop his ideas from close observation of their way of life, very much in the spirit of Goethe. He described four “ontologies,” four ways of understanding the world: naturalism, animism, analogism, and totemism.⁴ A closer look reveals important similarities to the four stages of the evolution of consciousness described by Steiner in his Leading Thoughts.⁵

This work, together with that of Bruno Latour, provided an important basis for many young anthropologists to engage with biodynamics. For example, after studying traditional communities in Mexico, sociologist Jean Foyer immersed himself in the world of biodynamics in his native region of Anjou. His book, Les êtres de la vigne [The beings of the vineyard],⁶ is based on five years of field research. In it, he shows that biodynamic practitioners are by no means trapped in a single ontology. They can take a “naturalistic” approach by observing the world scientifically from the outside, then move on to considerations that can be classified as “analogism” when they see the macrocosm reflected in the microcosm. They can take an “animistic” approach when they talk to their plants and animals, or even a “totemic” perspective when they are interested in archetypes of animals and other beings. Is this freedom of thought? Learning to switch from one to the other depending on the situation and giving each ontology its value?

Anthropologist Stéphanie Majerus has just published a research paper in which she examines the development of biodynamics in Germany and Switzerland, focusing on the socio-political peculiarities, the phenomenological dynamics of consciousness, the interactions between humans and animals, and the unique understanding of science held by anthroposophists.⁷ She shows that we are inextricably linked to a network of human and non-human actors, and concludes her article with a reference to Donna Haraway, who explored these “alliances” between species in her work When Species Meet.⁸ Alexandre Grandjean, a young religious scholar who has also studied biodynamics, expands on the topic: “New voices and new ways of talking about ecosystems are emerging in the West. . . . In these voices, environmental and ecological issues are both political and moral issues. They have to do with values, meanings, and the way we view ourselves and our surroundings.”⁹

Thanks to these thought-provoking ideas from environmental science, especially from people like Baptiste Morizot, Estelle Zhong-Mengual, Corine Pelluchon, and Gérald Hess, who are working on sensitive approaches to living things, a new space is emerging. An important challenge is to develop a fruitful dialogue between these sensitive approaches and the agricultural sciences in order to develop postmodern perspectives that do not remain stuck in naturalistic ontology. Thus, the first contours of a new modernity are emerging—one that is more sensitive and respectful of living beings and to which the biodynamic movement is contributing.¹⁰

---

Original French to German Translation Louis Defèche
German to English Translation Joshua Kelberman
Photo Xue Li

1. F. Milke et al., “Enrichment of Putative Plant Growth Promoting Microorganisms in Biodynamic Compared with Organic Agriculture Soils,” International Society for Microbial Ecology (ISME) Communications 4, no. 1 (February 5, 2024).
2. Bruce Albert and Davi Kopenawa, Yanomami, l’esprit de la forêt [Yanomami, the spirit of the forest], with a foreword by Emanuele Coccia (Arles: Actes Sud, 2022).
3. Emanuele Coccia, The Life of Plants: A Metaphysics of Mixture (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2019); first published as La vie des plantes: Une métaphysique du mélange (Paris: Rivages, 2016).
4. Philippe Descola, Beyond Nature and Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013); first published as Par-delà nature et culture (Paris: Gallimard, 2005).
5. Rudolf Steiner, Leitsätze—Leading Thoughts. Bilingual Edition, CW 26 (Arlesheim, Switzerland: Ita Wegman Institute, 2024).
6. Jean Foyer, Les êtres de la vigne: Enquête dans les mondes de la biodynamie [The beings of the vineyard: An investigation into the world of biodynamics] (Pairs: Éditions Petra, 2024), p. 320.
7. Stéphanie Majerus, Ackerbau des Lebendigen: Tiere, Wissenschaft und Anthroposophie in der biodynamischen Landwirtschaft [Farming the living: Animals, science, and anthroposophy in biodynamic agriculture] (Bielefeld: Transcript-Verlag, 2024).
8. Donna J. Haraway, When Species Meet. Posthumanities series. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008).
9. Alexandre Grandjean, Arborescence: Les voix spirituelles de l’écologie [Arborescence: The spiritual voices of ecology] (Vevey, Switzerland: Hélice Hélas, 2022).
10. In order to contribute to the development of such a new modernity in France and French-speaking countries, a group of individuals, researchers, farmers, educators, and activists came together in the fall of 2024 to found the Institut du Vivant et des communs.