Laura Borghi is a physician and specialist in biochemistry and clinical chemistry. She collaborated with Weleda Italia as a consultant and scientific director. Daniele Nani is a physician and specialist in anaesthesia and intensive care medicine. He has published numerous works of both scientific and philosophical content along the lines of epistemology. They are both founding members of Imago Proxima Centauri, a non-profit medical association with the aim of promoting and safeguarding the freedom and autonomy of cultural life, particularly in the fields of health and medicine, following the principles of anthroposophical spiritual science as developed by Rudolf Steiner. They have medical practices in Milan.

"With its chronic replicabilty problem, John P. A. Ioannidis's famous paper 'Why most published research findings are false', and books with titles like Why So Much of Science Is Wrong (Barrie Condon), materialist science is clearly experiencing a possibly terminal existential crisis. Drawing on the neglected scientific studies of Goethe and Rudolf Steiner, this important paradigm-busting book presents a path towards a properly founded holistic science that transcends the intrinsic limitations of materialism and narrow scientific positivism. A must-read for all open-minded scientists, and philosophers and sociologists of science."Richard House Ph.D., co-author of Beyond Mainstream Medicine and editor of Humanising Science and Medicine: Critical Paradigmatic Conversations

• Preface7Proem9Explanation of the title 11Thought and Language, Subject and Object13Quantum Physics and the Measurements of the Invisible25The Atom and the Rose: the Living Being as an Abstract Multiplicity32Interlude – The Illusion of Technology41The Meaning of Knowledge43Preliminary matters 43From the universal to the individual 55Annotation on Goethe’s Theory of Colours67Introduction to a qualitative science of the inorganic 67Morphology and Morphodynamics69Metamorphosis: the world of plants and the essence of life 69On imagination 77Metamorphosis and synchronicity: the animal world and consciousness 78The human world and self-consciousness: The individual law 87Towards a New Paradigm for the Life Sciences and Medicine 89The complexity of the human   97Epilogue100Appendix ISome fundamental epistemological clarifications103Postscript to the English edition108Appendix II J.W. Goethe  The Metamorphosis of Plants109Appendix III J.W. Goethe  The Metamorphosis of Animals112Appendix IV Morphodynamic relationships between the skeleton and four key organs in vertebrates114The skeleton as an image114Morphodynamic relations of the four principal organs with the general structure of vertebrates124Appendix VStudy on leaf metamorphoses139Appendix VITrue knowledge of the human being as a foundation for the art of medicine141Notes151Bibliography168About the Authors174Index176