From experience to recognition: Research at the Nature Institute
For over 25 years, the US Nature Institute in Ghent (New York State) has been dedicated to researching and communicating Goethean science - an approach to nature based on intensive experience and holistic understanding. The program for the years 2025 to 2027 has a particularly topical focus: "Intelligence in nature". The institute's staff want to carefully and in detail work out how plant and animal forms of "intelligence" differ from those of humans - and what we can learn from this diversity for the human relationship with flora and fauna.
"As a non-university institution, the Nature Institute carries out independent research and educational work at a high level," says SAGST project manager Cornelius Tietz, explaining the long-standing funding partnership with the foundation. "It expands the conventional materialistic-reductionist view of the world by also taking spiritual aspects into account and incorporating the mutual interaction of plants, animals and their environment from an experiential perspective. In this way, it opens up paths to an understanding of nature that encourages a more mindful approach and can therefore perhaps also help to bridge the gap between humans and their environment."
Extensive adult education also contributes to this. Over 30 events a year - from lectures to intensive courses lasting several days - make the Institute's work accessible to scientists, teachers, agricultural practitioners and interested laypeople. For the first time, a PhD course for doctoral students is also being offered in cooperation with the California Institute of Integral Studies, which is recognized as coursework for the doctorate. All research results, podcasts and articles are also available on the institute's website.
