Biodynamics: Pseudoscience or Prescience?
Against prejudice and for the future
Stewart Kahn Lundy and JPI Biodynamics
Apr 27
A peculiar modern phenomenon is that people do not suspend belief until something is “proven” but positively disbelieve anything in advance that lacks sufficient evidence, particularly if it is deemed “strange” enough or threatens inherited categories of thought. To disbelieve everything in advance is not healthy skepticism — nor is it particularly scientific — but it is nonetheless a pervasive prejudice of our era, so deeply ingrained that everyone feels like they arrived at it on their own. Skepticism can be pushed to such an extreme that it becomes cynicism. But underneath this pattern is a more fundamental problem.
In Rudolf Steiner’s terms, people these days tend to be unable to think what they do not already believe. Consider this carefully: many people are unable to entertain, even hypothetically, a strange new idea, and instead fall back on familiar patterns of dismissal. Without this capacity, there is a tendency for everything to degrade into a “war of all against all.” This closed-off attitude makes discovery more difficult than it otherwise would be, since anything worth finding must be new and is also often quite strange.
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During the Victorian era, which prided itself on overcoming “primitive” superstition, people found themselves translating old magical texts (grimoires); there was little incentive to take the included recipes and rituals seriously because it was a foregone conclusion among the translators that the subject matter they were translating was pure nonsense. Who in their right mind would seek clarity and precision when analyzing gobbledegook? The result, of course, was the widespread distortion of magical rituals, which is, at best, an inaccurate record. When skeptics subsequently took up some of these mistranslated rituals in order to “prove” their inefficacy, guess what? The rituals, of course, did not work. This is not to say they would have if done correctly and done sincerely, but they were both done incorrectly and insincerely. Because they had only engaged a mangled version of what they believed they were testing, they hadn’t actually tested anything other than the fact that a mistranslated procedure did not work.¹ Science is difficult enough without introducing prejudices that pollute its impartiality.
Similarly, there were even such staunch materialists who, seeking to overcome “outdated” beliefs, began proclaiming that the belief that the moon influenced tides was pure superstition. Talk about throwing out the baby with the bathwater! Yet this attitude is alive and well today. Straining out a gnat, we swallow a camel.
There are still further ways that genuine knowledge can become distorted. For example, it’s common knowledge that lemons treat scurvy because of the Vitamin C content, so it became popular for ships to stockpile lemons on long journeys to make sure the crew didn’t develop the disease that could be painful and even fatal. So, why did this effective practice discontinue? A misunderstanding. The belief arose that citrus fruits in general provided protection against scurvy — which was incorrect — and ships began stocking limes instead of lemons. By generalizing from “lemons” in particular to “citrus” the original practice was rendered useless. There are two problems with this: first, limes have approximately half the Vitamin C content of the original lemons, and second, the deficient substitute limes were often stored in copper vessels, which reacted with ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) and destroyed most of their value during storage. As a result, something true and verifiable became completely discontinued due to a widespread misunderstanding. With no ill will, people genuinely believed they were replicating the original process, but swapping out limes for lemons is like comparing apples and oranges.
Science is not some inexorable progressive movement, nor does it consistently welcome innovations. For example, Ignaz Semmelweis, a Hungarian doctor, noticed that two local birthing centers had dramatically different results. One center was run by midwives, another was run by male medical students. One had a dramatically higher death rate both for infants and for mothers, which might surprise you. The medical students had a far worse mortality rate, whereas the midwives consistently had healthier infants and mothers. Semmelweis studied this problem by observing what they were doing differently. The medical students had all the latest technology. The midwives had very little equipment.
Semmelweis noticed that the one thing the women did before deliveries was wash their hands. He made the batty decision to institute handwashing as a new rule for the medical students, and almost overnight, death rates plummeted. Who would have thought? But the scientific community did not embrace him for his discovery. Quite the contrary. They thought he was positively insane: the idea that something invisible could make anyone sick was not just laughed at — they stripped him of his medical license, persecuted him to the point of a mental breakdown, and then had him locked away in a mental asylum, which would turn out to be the rest of his life. He died there shortly after his imprisonment due to a severe beating from the guards.
Of course, the scientific community of today champions Semmelweis as always having been one of theirs, much the same way that the Catholic Church, whose members persecuted Saint Francis, nonetheless claims him — and so many others — as among their best saints.² Those we consider heroes today were often violently opposed in their own time. The old doctors of the Church and the new priesthood of the scientific community are not always as different as either might wish when it comes to their treatment of paradigm-shifting voices.
For something to be “scientific,” there are several requirements, not least of which is the criterion of falsifiability: any claim made must be able to be perceived empirically and judged true or false. If someone makes a claim that others cannot empirically perceive, this does not meet the basic premise of a viable scientific hypothesis. As such, much of life does not meet this criterion, but live we all must nonetheless.
In the case of Semmelweis, he hypothesized invisible entities that could cause infections, and for this hypothesis, not for any lack of evidence, was he ostracized.
The problem is that members of any community — scientific or otherwise — often look at something and decide, without sufficient testing, to write it off. The default attitude of serious science should be one of open unknowing, which is radically different from bigoted disbelief, not least because it is extremely difficult to prove the non-existence of anything definitively.
Most scientific studies, however detailed they are, will end with the bone-chilling “inconclusive” results even after years of research. Many of the most promising studies end with the tepid verdict that the subject “merits further research,” and most are soon dismantled due to flaws in their experiments.
And then, a point Rudolf Steiner himself makes, as precise and accurate as a scientific experiment may be, you then have to deal with the problem of interpretative conclusions. Here, errare est humanus reveals itself most clearly: just because someone can perform a technical experiment well does not mean they can draw the correct conclusions from their own data. Just because someone can build a plane does not mean they are automatically an excellent pilot, because these are two distinct skill sets, and this is why a technician is never automatically a licensed pilot. The problem of interpretation remains, and is as much of a nuanced skill as the entire scientific process. If this were developed as a rigorous, specialized field in itself, rather than merely being submitted to the meatgrinder of peer review, many overstated conclusions might be more consistently avoided before publication.
But if we wish to know anything deeply, we must not merely be looking at it with a utilitarian gaze. How many scientific discoveries were unintentionally uncovered by someone who simply loved contemplating the subject matter? We must practice studying phenomena for no particular purpose other than to know them better. Goethe once wrote about performing science “without hypotheses.” How is this possible? Science without hypotheses means looking, really looking, to observe what is going on without the desire to prove or disprove something, or to find something’s usefulness, but rather to get to know the phenomenon in front of you.
As the visionary agronomist George Washington Carver said, if you love anything enough, it will reveal its secrets. To study something with no hypothesis is to give it pure attention, simply to learn more about it for its own sake. What Goethe describes as science “without hypotheses” is the fertile soil from which hypotheses burst forth as intuitive flashes. Swami Chinmayananda observes, “Where there is love, there the mind rests.”³ Anyone who says you can study birds without spending any time out in wild nature observing the real creatures in their natural habitats, their songs, their flight patterns, and so forth, will rarely develop any hypothesis worth studying. The intimate aesthetic appreciation of life should be the beginning and end of science: the appreciation of what is alive put in service of all that will be alive in the future.
For example, with someone who’s never farmed, I have little reason to trust their advice about plants, no matter how much they may have read. They might often be technically correct, but only in abstraction. Book knowledge without practical experience is only a hand-me-down truth.
The alchemical maxim Lege Lege et Relege means read, read, and reread (the Book of Nature), and never stop at a mere gloss. Likewise, it is not enough to dismiss something as “pseudoscience” until it is tested, tested, and retested so thoroughly that a major body of work is established demonstrating its consistent inefficacy beyond any reasonable doubt. Such a conclusive body of work does not yet exist for biodynamics, so the aspersion of “pseudoscience” is, at best, premature. And if we extend our consideration to the positive research supporting biodynamic agriculture, we must regard that claim of “pseudoscience” itself as unscientific.
To hear anyone claim that the “directions for preparing the eight biodynamic compounds are complicated”⁴ is somewhat misleading. These are preparations that take little time on a diversified farm and require very little. Any illiterate peasant farmer can make these. As recipes go, the biodynamic preparations are considerably simpler than baking a cake, though the ingredients may require some creative sourcing. For example, to make horn manure, one simply inserts fresh cow manure into an empty horn, then buries the filled horn over winter. Wait. Dig up. The end. Of course, there are ways to get better or worse results, but a two-ingredient recipe is not particularly complicated.
Realistically, the amount of biodynamic horn manure needed for a 40-acre farm would be a couple of dozen horns at most: some otherwise discarded offal, and some wild plants that grow like weeds. If these recipes seem complicated, wait until you see how complicated science gets!
Claims that biodynamics is a “rejection of scientific objectivity in favor of a subjective, mystical approach means that many of Steiner’s biodynamic recommendations cannot be tested and validated by traditional methods” is puzzling for two reasons: firstly, that Steiner always told people “don’t believe what I say, think what I say”, and, secondly, why do biodynamic farms continue to do conventional soil tests if there is a widespread “rejection of scientific objectivity”? As Vincent Masson writes, “Biodynamic growers do not reject soil chemistry or scientific understanding, rather, they believe that science alone cannot fully explain the vitality of plants and landscapes.”⁵
One easy example that biodynamics does not reject science is the following chart assembled by NRCS, which demonstrates a biodynamic farm consistently in the top 1% of all soils tested nationwide:
“Sustainable Settings’ soil data is in the upper 1% of all the 220,000 farm soil tests we have run as far as gains in soil health. Their ten years of Haney and PLFA soil tests demonstrate that their soil life/health are improving, showing consistent gains each year in all 40 different forms of life metrics we measure. This is rock solid data, clear strong evidence that Sustainable Settings’ combined biodynamic and regenerative management strategies are effective. This is really awesome data, and is demonstrating what is possible in our effort to heal the land.”
– Rick Haney, Soil Chemist/Microbiologist and Research Farmer at the USDA-ARS Grassland Soil and Water Research Laboratory in Temple, TX and creator of the Haney Soil Health Test. Currently, Rick is Lead Scientist and Soil Data Analyst for Regen Ag Lab in Pleasanton, NE.
While Steiner himself, in the Agriculture Course, says that, to him, the biodynamic remedies he proposes are “true and correct” in themselves and that he would just start using them right away, he also consistently says that these methods should be tested. To quote Steiner verbatim, “I should be glad if my statements were tested, for if you subsequently test them you will certainly find them confirmed.”⁶
Similarly, Steiner said there’s nothing wrong with farming according to one’s feeling, but repeatable results will be necessary to convince anyone else. “My advice would be this. First go by your feelings, and once you have obtained satisfactory results begin to tabulate them in figures which can then be used by other people.”⁷ It is much for this reason that the original text of the Agriculture Course was not publicly released for 40 years: four decades of research went into demonstrating appropriate application rates for biodynamics, most of which seems to be either willfully ignored or people are simply unaware of it when biodynamics is accused of being “pseudoscience.” Even Steiner’s spiritual exercises require no belief and can be examined for oneself.
That anyone would claim that something like “chromatography” is “non-scientific” is like saying watercolors are unscientific. The tyranny of quantity insists that only what can be counted is valuable.⁸ But what of your life partner? Or your favorite pet? Or your best friend? Are these just numbers that can be swapped out for any other? Of course not. To claim that chromatography is “non-scientific” is like saying that a class on Renaissance art is “non-scientific” while analyzing brushstrokes, the effect of the painting, and the colors and contrasts in the picture.
On the contrary, soil chromatography is an aesthetic experience of the dynamics (“forces”) at work in the soil (enzymes, amino acids, proteins, organic matter, and soluble nutrients, etc.), intended to develop the instrument of the human being itself as a perceptive eye for depictions of harmony. Just as you can look at an apple and tell if it is healthy, so you can look at a chromatogram and get a good sense of the qualities of a soil. Similarly, the United Nations’ FAO recommends “visual soil assessment” (VSA) as a practical way to evaluate soil quality without chemical tests. Soil chromatography is part of this kind of approach to soil: you can see with your own eyes patterns that indicate specific qualities.
No amount of art contradicts science, and no amount of qualitative assessment contradicts quantitative testing. In fact, most farmers who go to the trouble of using soil chromatography already have regular Mehlich III tests performed on their soil to balance magnesium, calcium, pH, and trace minerals.
One approach is to pay attention to the living qualities of the soil; the other is to attend to the quantities of specific nutrients. This is hardly more of a contradiction than saying that using both your left and right hemispheres is “contradictory.” Biodynamics doesn’t tell anyone not to use our brain: biodynamics just suggests that we should perhaps consider using our whole brain.
Biodynamics is not a science. As such, biodynamics cannot rightly be labeled a pseudoscience either. The accusation against biodynamics as “pseudoscience” is a category error. It’s like going to a Monet exhibit and the only thing you have to say about his waterlilies is that “these are non-scientific practices.” The point of picture-forming methods is not a “science” as a one-eyed colorblind man can perceive⁹, but the fullness of the human being and the development of one’s aesthetic experience: meaning.
Of course, when anyone might claim that what has “muddied the discussion of biodynamics even further is the incorporation of organic practices,” this is also not particularly accurate. Steiner explicitly refused to address specific novel modes of composting or fertilizing. He said what works will prove itself in the end and refused to weigh in on this method versus that. He said to “continue manuring” as you already are. The biodynamic preparations and these other elements are only supplements. I would go further and suggest biodynamics is not, nor ever was intended to be, a totalizing system of agriculture, but rather a remedy to restore to the soil much of what has been lost due to the narrowing of what we consider to be real.
In his obituary for the late Ehrenfried Pfeiffer, J.I. Rodale described Pfeiffer’s work as integral to the “organic-biodynamic” movement. If J.I. Rodale considered organic agriculture and biodynamic agriculture not merely as kindred movements, but as a hyphenated singular entity, who are we to call this association “muddying”?
It is impossible to extricate “organic” from biodynamics in order to test the biodynamic aspect by itself because biodynamics is a holistic approach that includes organic agriculture and does not contradict it. Nonetheless, were one to try to isolate the biodynamic preparations themselves to determine their efficacy, one would want to try replicating Ehrenfried Pfeiffer’s Field and Garden Spray on dead adobe soil:
Ehrenfried Pfeiffer's research found that with a single application of the field spray, NPK levels increased significantly on adobe soil kept moist for six weeks. This is a dramatic demonstration of how biodynamics works with "forces" and not bulk applications of fertilizers. With a tiny amount of these carefully crafted living inoculants -- a mere 2 ounces per acre -- fertility can be increased year by year. With no other “organic” methods applied, the following results were obtained:
As a holistic approach, the Demeter standard has a baseline requirement that all inputs must, at a minimum, comply with organic standards and adds additional requirements: dedicated wildlife habitat, the prohibition of imported Chilean nitrate (with the aim of becoming fully nitrogen-independent), the regular use of the biodynamic preparations, and more. Many of these are now considered best management practices. The fact that organic agriculture has adopted many practices that were once laughed at before in biodynamics does not invalidate organic agriculture at all — nor does it make the relationship of organic agriculture and biodynamics “muddy.”
Biodynamics primarily approaches the farm as a living organic whole connected with the surrounding environment, the greater cosmos, and with specific additional remedies known as “preparations.” Any idea that a biodynamic approach as a whole minus “organic” measures, such as crop rotations, composting, etc., as a way to “test” the validity of biodynamics by using preparations on an otherwise conventional operation, fails to grasp that if something is integral to “organic” agriculture, it is also integral to biodynamics. It is like saying that, to test how the brain works, we must first remove the beating heart.
What continues to astonish is the aversion science has to the “weird” — as if something can ever be too strange to investigate. This kind of superstition, especially the kind that sees biodynamics as some kind of “witchcraft” and therefore dismisses it as ineffective, is anything but scientific. Moreover, as with any nascent field of science, there is usually a poverty of evidence. But lack of evidence, as anyone who has studied logic will know, does not prove the non-existence of anything. There are considerably more categories to human experience than “science” and “pseudoscience.” In fact, most of what inspires research in the first place is an epiphany that then must be tested. There are always prescientific imaginations that lead up to the threshold of something that can then be scientifically tested. That’s all biodynamics has ever been, which is why the inspiration came first in 1924, and the testing has been slowly developing since then.
The philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer writes, “There are intuitive anticipations of knowledge, like the knowledge of the salvation of the homo religiosus, which often has something to say to the doctor, or the ‘knowledge’ of the poet, which is able to outdistance that of the psychologist, sociologist, historian and philosopher.”¹⁰ As I have repeatedly articulated, biodynamics, as such, is not a material science but a clear-sighted picture of how to participate poetically with nature, the external benefits of which can nonetheless be empirically verified. As such, biodynamics is no more “pseudoscience” than is a painting or any other intuitive insight that later proves itself out through rigorous testing. The vision of biodynamics, as such, is a form of prescience — both in the sense of being prophetic and of being before statistical scientific verification that will continue to prove itself out over time with sufficient testing.
While biodynamics may be approached scientifically, the intuitive nature of these original creative pictures does not fall under the rubric of empirical science — but then again, neither does most of what makes life worth living.
1
While no endorsement of ritual magic from us, one can see where translator Dr. Steven Skinner expounds considerably more on this.
2
This is no aspersion against Science, nor against the Church itself, nor against St. Francis himself, whose monastery, La Verna, I have visited and where I have seen his relics.
3
Commentary on The Holy Geeta
4
Linda Chalker-Scott, Ph.D., The Myth of Biodynamic Agriculture, pg. 1
5
Monty Waldin Forward to Vincent Masson, Biodynamic Preparations Handbook, pg. 6.
6
R. Steiner, Agriculture Course, Lecture II (GA327, 10 June 1924, Koberwitz) https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA327/English/BDA1958/19240610p01.html
7
R. Steiner, Agriculture Course, Lecture IV (GA327, 12 June 1924, Koberwitz) https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA327/English/RSPC1938/19240612p02.html
8
Rene Guenon, The Reign of Quantity
9
Ernst Lehrs, Man or Matter
10
Hans-Georg Gadamer, The Enigma of Health, pg. 29.