“Time is life itself, and life resides in the human heart,” writes Michael Ende in the story of Momo. A child knows nothing of the everyday chores that adults must do; it simply listens and makes lifetimes for its friends, both young and old. A child notices the time thieves who would rob us of lifetimes, and who we might interpret as the tyrants of a science that wants to convince us that it alone knows the truth. But science is created by humans. It concerns each and every one of us and has no validity outside of us. It reflects our relationship to the world and to life, and our awareness thereof. It also shows us only what we are capable of seeing. Every scientific thesis should conclude with the same subordinate clause: “… but we don’t know for sure, because we are in time and do not search in the spheres beyond matter, because we have no organs of perception for that.” And yes, every serious scientist is well aware of this and conducts their research accordingly. Every astrophysicist and every biologist knows that there is magic in things. They probably chose their profession in order to capture this magic in a smaller field of perception.
But where is “beyond matter”? Perhaps it is where I escape being completely determined by matter, where I refuse to be exclusively measurable, countable, and weighable, or to have my life structured in units of time. It is like refusing to believe the time thieves, but going instead to the place of insight myself, naive as a child, open as a child, with the heart of a child and a love of truth.
Translation Laura Liska
Illustration Projective geometry by Christina Moratschke. More at: Aurora Impuls and The Goetheanum: Section for Mathematics and Astronomy
