Now Available - Threefoldness in Humans and Mammals: Toward a Biology of Form March 29 2021
Waldorf Publications is pleased to announce the inclusion of Wolfgang Schad’s new edition of his masterwork: Threefoldness in Humans and Mammals (original editions in English titled: Understanding Mammals or Man and Animal) in our offerings. Anyone teaching fourth grade or High School, anyone interested in strengthening the relationship to the animal world must have this two-volume set! The photographs are compelling, the information is comprehensive and compassionate, and the shared connection between mammals and human beings is made crystal clear and movingly complete through this deep study. It is a necessarily expensive set, but the results are beyond ordinary value, and you will treasure the books for a lifetime!
Each encounter with a mammal evokes wonderment at its extraordinary characteristics and a deep sense of empathy and kinship. Wolfgang Schad's life's work has centered around unraveling the riddle of our enigmatic relationship with our closest animal relatives. His research follows Goethe's participatory method of observing the lawfulness inherent within the living organism itself.
As he demonstrates in this groundbreaking two-volume work, our relationship with the mammals rests upon the fact that we share the same threefold bodily organization: a nervous/sensory system, a metabolic/limb system, and a circulatory/respiratory system that mediates between the two. While our human organism features a delicate balance of these three systems, offering us the possibility of individual freedom, the striking diversity of the mammals arises through the one-sided domination of one or the other system.
The nerve-sense system dominates the relatively small rodents, with their weak metabolism, under-developed limbs, and nervous behavior. The mice are the extreme of this tendency, the beaver is at the opposite, the rodent spectrum's metabolic pole, and squirrels occupy the center. The carnivores emphasize the middle, rhythmical system and exhibit more divergent, expressive, yet harmonious forms. With their robust metabolic and limb systems, the large hoofed mammals have produced the most extraordinarily evolved species: their metabolism dominates ruminants, horses emphasize the limbs, and giraffes combine a strong metabolism with an equally strong emphasis on the limbs and senses.
One cannot overstate the methodical rigor, subtle insightfulness, and attention to detail. Schad interprets a mammal's form, dentition, coloration, embryological development, behavior, preferred habitat, diet, and yes: even its dung. Aided by Schad's beautiful descriptions, over 1,500 well-chosen photographs, and numerous diagrams, we gradually become able to "read" the characteristic features of the various groups and species of mammals as expressions of their unique threefold organization.