Kirchhoff The other CoSMoS

Essays
1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-3-6957-0003-5
Verlag: BoD - Books on Demand
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 256 Seiten

"The other CoSMoS" presents a comprehensive alternative to the dominant mechanistic-materialistic world-picture of modernity. Drawing on Goethe, Nietzsche, Giordano Bruno, and his own "radial field theory", Kirchhoff argues that the universe is not an empty, dead space but a living, soul-imbued and spiritual organism in which humanity, as the "cosmic anthropos", remains essentially embedded. Key concepts include the "radial field" (in place of linear causality), the "light of nature" as the primordial source of consciousness, and the overcoming of the Copernican trauma that banished Earth and human beings from the centre of being. The book sharply critiques the reductionism of the natural sciences, the theory of relativity, the Big Bang hypothesis, and, above all, nuclear power as expressions of a Promethean, life-denying attitude. At the same time, it offers positive impulses for an expanded consciousness that regards art, music, and mystical experience as pathways to reclaiming the "other cosmos". The reader finds a passionate plea for a return to a holistic, meaning-giving understanding of the world that once again thinks nature, spirit, and cosmos together as a living whole.

Jochen Kirchhoff, born in 1944, lives and works in Berlin. From the 1990s to the early 2000s he delivered around 150 lectures on natural-philosophical themes, a number of which appear in this volume in revised form. Many of these talks are now available as podcasts and transcripts. Since 1980 he has given more than 400 public lectures on natural philosophy and topics of urgent social relevance. His teaching has been complemented by numerous seminars on geomantic subjects and on the holistic reception of classical music. His published work comprises a tetralogy of natural philosophy, books on the philosophy of music, monographs, essays in journals, and writings dedicated to the preservation, reappraisal, and creative continuation of the philosophical legacy of Helmut Friedrich Krause. Jochen Kirchhoff is recognised as one of the foremost authorities on the thought of Giordano Bruno, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Novalis, Friedrich Nietzsche, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Helmut Friedrich Krause, among many others. Through essays, interviews, and his YouTube channel he regularly contributes to contemporary discourse, offering philosophical perspectives on current phenomena and on the fundamental questions involved in overcoming the crisis of human consciousness.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kirchhoff, Jochen

Leseproben

The other Cosmos

Impulses for a lively cosmology and a reorientation of the natural sciences

What used to be called the cosmos, a harbouring place that completely flows through us, which "knows us” and which we can contact in our souls, minds and bodies, has long since vanished from our collective consciousness and is, as it were, radiating in our brains. What is now grinning at us "out there” seems more like a meaningless, monstrous spectacle, a gigantic, dreary event. Many turn away, but are still strangely fascinated at the same time, especially as there is hardly any serious alternative of observation in their field of vision. Ufology, astrology and science fiction have staked their claims and are enjoying increasing popularity. The matadors and adepts of mainstream cosmology care little about this. And in the apparatuses and institutions of the prevailing natural sciences, it is business as usual. It seems grotesque that the crusaders of the abstract, the fugitives from the Earth in hot pursuit of the world-dissolving world formula, have been talking about God with increasing frequency in recent years (the Big Bang fiction as proof of God, so to speak). Cosmologists and theologians, once enemies, are getting along better and better.

Where are we? What kind of place is this? Is modern cosmology – with its big bang, black holes and radiating hells – perhaps nothing more than a reflection of our own thoroughly schizoid and neurotic state of consciousness? Who really believes the cosmologists when they ply their media-effective trade? Couldn’t there be a completely different cosmos behind all this that has been overlooked so far, a different cosmos that is perhaps the real one and that could only be revealed from a form of consciousness that is not the dominant one? Don’t many, very many, realise that they are being deceived? Yet we thirst for reality. What else would be of any value and dignity but this – reality?

What do we actually about the reality of this all-encompassing place that we still call the "cosmos”? How intelligent are our interpretations of the radiation reaching us from the depths of space? Above all, because it touches centrally on the problem of the human being: Where are we and who are we? We locate ourselves according to our being. The holistically orientated spirits do this just as much as the reductionists of the prevailing natural sciences. Everyone lives, in their own way, a variation of the enigmatic relationship between man and the cosmos. And projective elements are always at play; the only decisive factor is what character they have, whether they are constructed to be more life-serving or more hostile to life. However, there cannot be the slightest doubt about the hostility to life of a considerable proportion of the projections in mainstream thinking about nature and the cosmos.

Why do the stars move?

As sensory or corporeal beings, we live on the surface of a sphere that orbits another, larger sphere, the so-called Sun, the central star of the federation of stars that we call the solar system, at the considerable speed of 30 kilometres per second. In addition to the approximately spherical bodies, wildly shaped chunks in chaos zones also orbit the Sun, of which the asteroids close to the Earth pose a constant threat of impact to our home planet. What drives the stars forward, what makes them whirl around their axis, what bathes the Earth in light and night? Anyone who questions science here will be surprised to discover that it has no answer, even if it has skilfully managed to conceal this from the general public. Technical devices are sent far out into the solar system and the positions of the planets are calculated with astonishing precision, leading many to conclude that anyone who does and can do this must also know why the Earth moves or what causes it to move in space in the first place. Far from it!

What does the prevailing natural science have to offer here apart from the familiar mathematical formalisms, which, however, do not even touch the causal level? "Newtonian celestial mechanics”, which Einstein only modified but did not completely overturn, still prevails, at least in principle. What does this "celestial mechanics” say about the of the movements of the stars? The astonishing point: motion is understood as . There is no , no real and effective (e.g. force-related) "why”. The only thing that must be assumed is a kind of "primal impulse”, which is understood as the initial spark. Otherwise, it is assumed that the celestial bodies fall around each other in a blind interplay of gravity and inertia. Once bodies have been pushed, they should maintain their motion in a straight line and uniformly, . That’s what the physics textbooks say. The curvature of the orbits is caused by the gravity acting on them, which invites them to fall. The Earth chases around the Sun, not because there is a specific driving force (this is denied, the Earth does not need "fuel”), but because it actually wants to keep flying in a straight line, following its "inertia”. This ominous quantity – a pure fiction, as even physicists admit – now causes the movement without absurdly "really causing” it. It cannot, because then it would be a real cause of movement. Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker speaks here of the "causal paradox” of inertia. In addition to this causeless journey of the Earth into the straight and wide, there is the falling caused by the Sun’s gravity. The Earth falls ; it does not fall into the Sun because it has inertia. – The whole thing is an astonishing mental construct, basically a phantasm. Strangely enough, only a few people realise this. But there are certainly alternatives to this phantasm; I have shown one in my book [1].

The solar system itself moves at breakneck speed within a larger, more comprehensive system, the galaxy, the sheer dimensions of which go beyond all sensory-empirical relations and give us the idea, indeed the suspicion, that we can only approach and perhaps understand them meaningfully on a completely different level of consciousness. When viewed monologically, galaxies remain strangely surreal. Yet they are certainly islands of worlds pulsating with immense life, each of which represents its own individuality that cannot be approached by calculation and measurement. But because this is exactly what is constantly being attempted, large parts of modern astronomy seem so bleak and desolate, despite gigantic telescopes. Sometimes you get the feeling that the range of the super telescopes is intended to make up for, even conceal, on a technical level what is usually missing: the , and to the starry world and cosmic space. The abstract X-ray view of the universe as the only view that is permitted within the prevailing state of consciousness is subject-blind and blind to being right down to its foundations.

The technical-mental form of consciousness, which also only knows and recognises a technical-mental natural science, has taken two and a half millennia to finally become, megalomaniacally enriched, what it is today: the ruler of the Earth, who awards honours and money, the "great Pharaoh”, before whom almost everyone lies on their stomachs and who forces us to build ever new pyramids. Every computer freak serves the pharaoh in his own way, contributing to the technical-abstract dissolution of the world. What distinguishes this pharaoh from the ancient Egyptian pharaohs is this: back then, armies of peasants or slaves had to be recruited to erect the god-king’s buildings; today, people work on them voluntarily, even enthusiastically. Today’s slaves have long since made the Pharaoh’s cause their own. The spearheads of this apparatus are the sorcerer’s apprentices of the very great and the very small: the abstract natural scientists; no one enjoys greater prestige than they do. And they have long since laid down the guidelines according to which human processes are organised. They are the high priests and the Pharaoh’s closest advisors.

"Spatial revolution to the outside"

An important credo of these priests and counsellors is to understand outer space as a mere space, to deny it the dignity of the , to fundamentally disconnect it from mental and spiritual processes. Peter Sloterdijk rightly speaks here of the globally victorious "space revolution to the outside.” [2] "Suppress the gods and deny the souls: The stones are then our closest neighbours, and the difference between animate and dead bodies no longer means much.” [3] Just as apparatus-based medicine degrades the holistic to a , apparatus-based, mathematical natural science turns the heavenly bodies into dead bodies governed by blind random processes. Life, even intelligent life, may have strayed here and there – it must not have sprung from a higher or even divine will. The "methodical atheism” of natural science (Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker) prevails unbroken. The celestial bodies, insofar as they are regarded as "suns”, are imagined as glowing spheres of gas, which has never been proven in a direct sense and is also structurally unprovable. Nevertheless, in...