When Healing Becomes Educating, Vol. 1 - Waldorf Research Institute

the genomes, which are the same everywhere. This regulation of genes occurs
through the mediation of specific enzymes. These enzymes are catalysts for
the realization of structural or functional gene information and one can
therefore call them the carriers of this information. But as said before,
en zymes only become carriers of specific information if they are brought
into a certain configuration. And as the example of gene recombination
shows, there obviously are enzymes which can become carriers of different
regulatory information. According to what has been said so far, where does
all the information for gene regulation, and for the planning of all these
new organic forms, and for organic growth in general, come from? These
items of information come from a plane which is superordinate to organic
material (which includes protein and nucleic acids) and it is therefore a
non-material plane. This simply follows from the facts if one relates the
findings of contemporary molecular biology to those of embryology and of
regeneration research in a consequent way.
10. Such a statement about the non-material planning of organic
events may sound strange to a modern scientist at first, and make him feel
slightly uncomfortable. But this is only true of someone who never stopped
to think what information really is. In connection with what we said in the
begin ning let’s make it quite clear to ourselves that it is only the information
car rier which is material, but not the information. We can only look at the
carrier or the genetic material and proteins outwardly and physically with
the aid of our sense organs and other apparatus. But we cannot see the
con tent of information in this way. We can only look at it inside us (that
is, spiritually) by grasping it with our thinking. Information is not material
by nature. It is ideal. Unfortunately, there are few scientists who really want
to understand this fact. But one of them is none other than the father of
modern cybernetics, Norbert Wiener (1948), who says that “Information is
information, not matter or energy. No materialism which does not admit
this can survive today.” 34 One could hardly point to the non-material nature
of information more succinctly. But what does “ideal” mean here?
This question is of the greatest importance for modern natural
science, even though this may seem paradoxical to someone who’s trying
to investigate the material foundations of life phenomena and not their
spiritual ones. But since it was precisely through genetics that molecular
biology has become aware of the significance of so-called information for the
realm of the living, one can no longer avoid dealing with the fundamental
question about the nature of information and about the nature of the ideal
in general. So please bear with me as we make a brief digression into this
area.
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