Although the purpose of this work is not to be a book on anthroposophy, I believe it is important to provide you with some insight into the subject. This will undoubtedly allow you to more easily grasp the rationale in which biodynamic practices were developed.
First, let us look at the etymology of the term chosen by Rudolf Steiner: from Greek anthrôpos, man, and sophia, wisdom. It is indeed a philosophy centred on mankind, or stemming from mankind, to explain the world. Second, I offer you, though brief, I admit, the definition from the French dictionary, Le Robert:
Anthroposophy: doctrine established by Rudolf Steiner. Similar to the thinking of Goethe who strongly influenced him, Steiner’s doctrine seeks ‘a path of knowledge aiming to guide the spiritual element in the human being to the spiritual in the universe.’ Thus, going beyond the exclusively technical, materialist and destructive character of modern science which, since Kant, refuses to recognise the true place of human beings, anthroposophy offers an understanding of human nature capable of giving the individual his true place at the heart of the universe, ‘to expand and deepen our sense of social, pedagogical and medical activity.’
What does this mean in practice?
The following is the first important idea of Steiner: living beings are not composed of matter alone. A living organism is matter plus a certain form of energy. It is the latter which distinguishes, for example, a stone from a plant or an animal. A living organism is not governed by material laws alone (physics, chemistry), and is able to regenerate, or reproduce. Yet, this ‘energy’ that characterises life is not visible to the eye.
This leads us to Steiner’s second major idea regarding the sensible world (or material world) as our five senses perceive it and materialist science describes it. However, this is not the only world. There is also a world that Steiner calls supersensible (or spiritual), not directly perceptible by our senses, and which he said could be described by a science yet to be developed: spiritual science. This is the subject of his book, Esoteric Science, published in 1910. For Rudolf Steiner, this supersensible world was, for a long time, the realm of beliefs, often governed by religion. Yet, he considered that after the Age of Enlightenment and the tremendous development of rationalism, it was time for mankind to move on to a new phase. Every individual must find their own path to accessing the supersensible world, relying no longer on priests, magicians, or dogmas.
In Esoteric Science, Rudolf Steiner formalises a rational approach of the understanding of the supersensible world. He wrote:
The important point is that [this book] attempts to see into spiritual worlds by using means that are both possible and suitable for souls at this present stage of evolution, and that it considers the riddles of human destiny and of human existence beyond the limits of birth and death by these means. The point is not that this attempt bears some ancient name or other, but that it is aiming at the truth. (p. 430)
This spiritual science, as he calls it, bears the name ‘science’ as it involves an approach based on precise and reasoned knowledge of the subject one studies. However, contrary to material science which utilises conceptual thinking exclusively (the left brain), Steiner places importance on ‘imaginations’ and ‘inspirations’ (the right brain). More than proof obtained from causal links, he prefers the truth of individual, personal experience. His tools of investigation are human beings themselves, therefore, anthroposophy.