The Integrity of Animals

Understanding Mammals: Threefoldness and Diversity, by Wolfgang Schad. Adonis Press, 2018, www.adonispress.org; 1320 pages in two volumes.

review by Craig Holdrege

This book is a fruit of Wolfgang Schad’s many decades of research into the dynamic morphology of mammals. The first German edition was published in 1971, when Schad was 36 years old. An English translation, entitled Man and Mammals, was published in 1977. It became known as the “go to” book on mammals written by an anthroposophist and Goethean scientist. I’ve met many people whose eyes were opened to a fundamentally new and exciting way of understanding the forms and characteristics of mammals. This was also the case for me. Moreover, it inspired other researchers and helped them discover patterns in different groups of animals.

Schad never stopped researching, and his ability to hold innumerable facts and then weave them into a meaningful and coherent picture is truly remarkable. In 2012, the new German edition was published—two volumes totaling over 1200 pages! Truly, a lifetime achievement. Now, through the efforts of publisher John Barnes and editor Mark Riegner, we have an English translation that includes new material (Schad remains a tireless researcher at 83!) and many new illustrations. In the scope of its treatment of mammals and in the uniqueness of approach, the book is bound to become a classic.

Schad found a key to understanding mammalian form and patterns in Rudolf Steiner’s idea of threefoldness in the human being. In 1917 Steiner reported for the first time on his spiritual research into human physiology and psychology that revealed an intertwined threefoldness: A nerve-sense pole is focused anatomically in the head and psychologically in the ability to form thoughts and mental pictures based on sense experience. Here we are most awake. The metabolic-limb pole is focused anatomically, on the one hand, in the visceral organs such as the liver and digestive tract and, on the other hand, in the muscles and bones of the limbs. It is our will that works through this system and in our will, as Steiner often characterizes it, we are asleep—we have power to act and to transform, but our waking consciousness does not penetrate into the wisdom at work in the will. Mediating dynamically between these two poles is the rhythmic system. It is focused anatomically in the heart and lungs, and through rhythmic processes in the body we embody our life of feelings. Since childhood Schad was a keen observer of animals. When he later studied Steiner’s idea of threefoldness in the human being, he formed a mental lens that allowed him to see patterns in animals that had hardly been recognized before.

Animal form is usually interpreted through a Neo-Darwinian view of evolution. All characteristics, whether the color or patterning of the fur or the form of the teeth, are considered in terms of survival. How does the long neck of the giraffe, the flat tail of the beaver, the larger molars of a horse, or the horns of an antelope allow the animal to survive? The beaver’s teeth are good for gnawing wood, the large flat tail for swimming and as a paddle to slap against the water to alert other beavers about the presence of potential predators, and the high-set eye sockets for swimming inconspicuously with its head only slightly above the water surface. All these “explanations” make sense, but they are also quite speculative. Moreover, this way of looking leads us to mentally dissect the animal into different traits, each of which has its own type of survival value. The coherence and integrity of an animal dissolves into a collection of traits, and all of its characteristics are considered solely as adaptations that secure survival.

Long before Darwin, Goethe protested against trying to explain animal traits in terms of their utilitarian functions. He wrote, “We conceive of the individual animal as a small world, existing for its own sake, by its own means. Every creature is its own reason to be.... We will not claim that a bull has been given horns so that he can butt; instead, we will try to discover how he might have developed the horns he uses for butting.” (1) This means that we need to study the characteristics of an animal in relation to one another and see if we can discover how they fit together with the context of the animal as a whole. In this spirit, and with the lens of threefoldness, Wolfgang Schad builds up a comprehensive picture of the diversity of mammals.

A threefold pattern in mammals is perhaps most vividly displayed in the differences between rodents, carnivores, and hooved mammals (ungulates). Think of a mouse or a chipmunk. These small animals are nervous and keenly aware of every sound, smell, and movement in their environment. When awake, they are hardly still, scurrying around with their small and agile limbs; everything is done quickly. When resting and sleeping, they often seek hollows or make tunnels that form a kind of larger protective sheath around them. They are herbivores, but seek out mostly oil, fat, and starch-rich seeds and nuts that provide them with the sustenance they need for their active lives. They can manipulate their food with the nimble-fingered forepaws and assimilate nutrients rapidly.

In contrast, the hooved animals are large and more centered in themselves, think of a bison (buffalo) or a moose. Smaller ungulates such as deer or small antelopes are more outwardly sense oriented and can be skittish— size matters! The ungulates have highly specialized limbs that form long stable pillars, allowing extended periods of standing and endurance in running. (A horse can sleep while standing!) They have nothing of the agility of rodent limbs. Ungulates are also herbivores, but most feed on grass and leaves, which are hard to digest and not nearly as nutrient-rich as nuts and seeds. Especially the ruminants (think of cows, sheep, goats, but also deer and antelopes) have a highly differentiated digestive system. They grind and chew regurgitated cud for many hours a day and with the four-chambered stomach—which includes a rich microbial flora in the rumen—and a very long small intestine, they digest grass and create their large, stately bodies. As a rule, ungulates sleep very little.

Between these two starkly contrasting groups of animals there are the carnivores (think of lions, bobcats, wolves, or foxes). They are mid-sized animals and meat-eaters. Their lives oscillate between hunting and resting—between extreme focus and activity in the hunt and long periods of rest while digesting. In many ways, their characteristics lie between those of the more sensory oriented rodents and the metabolic-limb oriented hooved mammals. Schad speaks of carnivores as animals dominated by rhythmic processes—living between extremes (in-breath and outbreath; contraction and expansion).

Truly striking is how this threefoldness reveals itself in the details of anatomy, physiology, and behavior. Take the teeth. The rodents have very large front teeth—the incisors—that grow throughout life and are chiseled into shape through their gnawing activity. Rodents have no canine teeth and then a row of molars. They emphasize the front teeth, the ones that are most externally oriented. Ungulates emphasize the back teeth—the cheek teeth (premolars and molars) that form a long and uniform row of very tough grinding teeth. What’s remarkable is that ruminants have no upper incisors and canines at all, possessing front teeth only in the lower jaw. The emphasis is truly to the rear, where their food is ground and salivated, beginning the digestive process.

Lacking in these two groups are the canines, precisely those teeth that are emphasized in the carnivores. These are the teeth that lie between the incisors and the cheek teeth. Carnivores have small pointy incisors, long sharp canines, and sharp cheek-teeth with which they shear off the flesh. All the teeth carry the signature of piercing and shearing— not grinding. So in an impressive way, the teeth reveal the differences between these three groups of animals.

There are many subgroups of each these three types of mammals, and Schad shows how the lens of threefoldness can help us make sense of some of this variety. Take, for instance, the bear family. Bears are the largest of carnivores alive today and they tend to eat mostly plants. Moreover, their cheek teeth are flat and allow chewing. In these respects they have, in Schad’s terms, as carnivores a metabolic tendency. If one were to think schematically, then one could expect that bears would also have more specialized limbs. But this is not the case—they have quite unspecialized limbs, more like rodents and the smallest group of carnivores, the weasel family (e.g. weasels, martins, skunks). Schad concludes:

The entire bodily organization of the bear is based on the fact that, in a sense, it is a small carnivore grown large. The bear, therefore, is like a giant baby, large-headed and relatively short-legged, which never achieves the specialization of the cats, dogs, or seals. In its basic characteristics it most nearly resembles the badger, the metabolically oriented counterpart of the nerve-sensitive weasel.

Here we can see that Schad is not interested in fitting the diversity of mammals into rigid and neat system. Rather, he explores what kinds of relations the lens of threefoldness allows one to see. And many notable and surprising connections show themselves in the 1320 pages of the two volumes. Few readers will study the entire book page by page. But once you work enough with the book to gain a good sense of what Schad means by threefoldness, you can begin to see and appreciate the nuanced iterations in different groups. You begin to move in a world of dynamic connections. Then you can select individual chapters about, say, bats or whales, and not only learn interesting details about these animals, but also have your eyes opened to relationships you would have never thought of.

This book belongs in every good library. It will help animal lovers and educators gain a new way of looking at the diversity of mammals.

Craig Holdrege, PhD (craig@natureinstitute.org) is The Nature Institute’s director and spearheaded its founding in 1998. His passion is to develop what Goethe called “delicate empiricism” — an approach that learns from nature how to understand nature and is infused with a cautious and critical awareness of how intentions and habits of mind affect human understanding.