Goethe and The Sciences: A Reappraisal
Goethe and The Sciences: A Reappraisal
Goethe and The Sciences: A Reappraisal
VOLUME 97
GOETHE
AND THE SCIENCES:
A REAPPRAISAL
Edited by
FREDERICK AMRINE,
FRANCIS J . ZUCKER
and
HARVEY WHEELER
DORDR EC HT I BO TO I LA A T 6R/TOKYO
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
INTRODUCTION xi
of him in like measure within myself, that is my highest wish. This noble individual was
not conscious of the fact that at that very moment the divine within him and the divine of
the universe were most intimately united.
So, for Goethe, the resonance with a natural rationality seems part of
the genius of modern science. Einstein's 'cosmic religion', which reflects
Spinoza, also echoes Goethe's remark (Ibid., Item 575 from 1829):
Man must cling to the belief that the incomprehensible is comprehensible. Else he would
give up investigating.
But how far will Goethe share the devotion of these cosmic rationalists
to the beautiful harmonies of mathematics, so distant from any pure and
'direct observation'? Kepler, Spinoza, Einstein need not, and would not,
rest with discovery of a pattern within, behind, as a source of, the
phenomenal world, and they would not let even the most profound of
descriptive generalities satisfy scientific curiosity. For his part, Goethe
sought fundamental archetypes, as in his intuition of a Urpjlanze, basic
to all plants, infinitely plastic. When such would be found, Goethe would
be content, for (as he said to Eckermann, Feb. 18, 1829):
... to seek something behind (the Urphaenomenon) is futile. Here is the limit. But as a
rule men are not satisfied to behold an Urphaenomenon. They think there must be
something beyond. They are like children who, having looked into a mirror, turn it around
to see what is on the other side.
But, of course, the conflict cannot occur without what is new, and seen
to be so (Ibid., later):
In the sciences, everything depends on what one calls an apert;u - the discovery of
something that is at the bottom of phenomena. Such a discovery is infinitely fruitful.
Hypotheses are scaffoldings that one erects in advance of the building and that one takes
down when the building is finished. The worker cannot do without them. But he must be
careful not to mistake the scaffolding for the building.
NOTES
1 Introduction to Goethe: Wisdom and Experience, edited by Hermann Weigand
(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1949), p. 26.
2 Ibid., p. 37.
sent the formal aspects even of a primal phenomenon. Given his fear
and distrust of the abstract, Goethe might well have denied any
relevance to this convergence; and while this matter was discussed at
the Round Table, no consensus was reached.
(3) Goethe's empiricism diverges even more from mainstream
empiricism by calling for the development of our perceptual faculties
on all levels - including our aesthetic and emotive 'antennae' - with
the goal of elevating the primal to an 'archetypal' phenomenon, i.e. to
the level of a symbol. Modem science must view this activity as lying
entirely outside its province, as 'purely poetic.' This gap between the
"two cultures" arose because empiricism adopted an ontology of
physical reductionism; Goethe's "gentle empiricism," on the other hand,
does not allow so wide a gap to open up in the first place.
(4) Goethe invests the symbol with an active, dynamic component;
in other words, he views it as a Platonic 'Idea' that informs the
phenomena and can be read out of them in tum. In modem science,
physical forces are all that remains of the activity of the Platonic Idea;
but Goethe invokes 'forces' on all levels of experience. Does the model
theory mentioned in item (2) above, which is in principle capable of
defining a dynamics on each level of complexity, provide a bridge? Our
tentative answer was again yes and no: yes, as a promissory note for the
formal side of a Goethean science; no, in that no formal statements
seem capable of capturing the aliveness of nature, of natura naturans,
which Goethe saw as the true goal of science. Here our concept of
'reality' receives a further jolt, and it was left open whether an adequate
philosophical framework for its clarification can be constructed within
any formal or discursive context at all.
FREDERICK AMRINE
FRANCIS J. ZUCKER
ABBREVIA TIONS
xvii
PART I
Having to deal with just one problem out of the vast spectrum of
Goethe's works, of which those concerning the natural sciences repre-
sent again only a small part, calls for some explanation.
Goethe himself would certainly be pleased with the attention given
to those of his thoughts and works devoted to the natural sciences, for
during his lifetime they did not receive the understanding and respect
for which he had hoped. Indeed, even if one could hope that Goethe
would applaud at least one's good intentions, it is still rather a difficult
task to discuss his scientific studies and ideas.
First of all, there is the purely quantitative problem: his own writings
in the natural sciences are amazingly extensive. The voluminous edition
being published by the German Academy of Natural Scientists
[Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher], Leopoldina and called, there-
fore, the Leopoldina edition, contains eleven weighty volumes of texts.
This edition had been planned almost half a century ago. The work was
begun forty years ago by the late Wilhelm Troll and Karl Lothar Wolf
with the assistance of Gunter Schmid and Rupprecht Matthaei. Today,
Wolf von Engelhardt and I, as editors, together with several colleagues,
continue work on the edition. In addition to the eleven volumes of texts
there will now be a number of volumes of commentary, five of which
have already been published. These supplemental volumes will contain
not only commentary but also Goethe's own working notes on which
they are based: notes on books which he read, subjects he had reflected
on, objects he had observed. His outlines for essays are printed there,
as are the drafts to his scientific writings, i.e. material that had remained
among Goethe's papers in the Goethe and Schiller Archives in Weimar.
Additionally, these volumes of commentary in the Leopoldina
edition include Goethe's remarks on scientific topics from his diaries,
letters, and autobiographical writings, as well as the pertinent comments
by Goethe's contemporaries and letters addressed to Goethe: conversa-
tions, reviews, and the like.
Endless sources and references are presented. It is not enough that
there is this much material by and addressed to Goethe. In 1940 when
3
F. Amrine, F. 1. Zucker, and H. Wheeler (eds.), Goethe and the Sciences:
ARe-appraisal, 3-15.
4 DOROTHEA KUHN
Gunter Schmid compiled his bibliography there were already more than
4,500 titles of literature about Goethe as a natural scientist. In the
meantime the 5,000th title has probably long since been passed.
Aside from the sheer quantity, the diversity of its content and its
interpretation is also intimidating. Is there anything left to be said on
this topic? In the 150 years,since Goethe's death one would think that
all of the problems should have been solved long ago. Only the fact that
there are still open questions and controversies, and that the history of
science offers new perspectives for solutions, encourages a contribution
concerning the question of the theories of evolution at the time of
Goethe.
The question of Goethe's position regarding the theories of evolution
in his day is being answered in very different and even controversial
ways. On the one hand, it is said that Goethe had ignored the question
of evolution in so far as it went beyond individual development. His
concept of type had been a rigid idea; the morphological method had
been an idealistic morphology and, therefore, far from evolutionary
concepts of a more general nature. On the other hand, Goethe has
repeatedly been regarded as the precursor of Darwin's theory of
evolution and as the prophet of the notion of actual descent. All
possible variations occur between these extremes.
I would like to try to take a position on this based on my work with
the Leopoldina edition. Working with Goethe's material and with the
references by him and his contemporaries has inspired me to reflect on
the connections between Goethe's perceptions and those current in his
time, and to assess their place in the process of the history of science.
In doing so, I will limit the scope of this paper by choosing examples
only from my field of research; namely, the history of biology. I must
omit the equally interesting problems of development in the geo-
sciences.
I will explore three questions. First, what was the young Goethe's
attitude toward natural history? Then, which theories of evolution did
he encounter? And, finally, how did he perceive them and integrate
them into his own perceptions of the natural sciences?
Quotations and bibliographical references can be found in Volume
9A of the commentary of the Leopoldina edition (Weimar, 1977).
The first question which comes to mind is how did Goethe, the
urbanite, the student of law, the writer, poet, painter, but also the
administrator and minister in Weimar, happen to immerse himself in
research of the natural sciences?
GOETHE AND THEORIES OF DEVELOPMENT 5
During his childhood he heard very little about the study of nature.
His notebooks list plants and animals by their Latin names. In Latin
and German he wrote that there is nothing more beautiful than nature
with its flowers, herbs, berries, stones, and minerals because the hand
of the Lord, God's hand, had brought it all forth. Even such general
statements appear in the context of vocabulary and translation exer-
cises. They have little to do with 'contemplation' [Anschauung] of
nature. In no way do they deal with scientific concerns.
Yet, the association of nature with God reminds one of an incident
which Goethe related in his autobiography Dichtung und Wahrheit
[Poetry and Truth]. The boy erected an altar to nature on his father's
music stand with pieces from his mineral collection because he wanted
to make an offering to God as the creator of nature by burning incense.
As a student in Leipzig and Strassburg, Goethe had attended
lectures in physics and anatomy. He was also engaged in a discussion
with students of medicine about specific and general questions of
nature. When the students came upon the Systeme de la Nature by
Baron Holbach, they expected a vivid depiction of nature as a whole.
They wanted to know something about its interconnections and were
disappointed by the mechanistic view of nature of this French materi-
alist who described nature as a machine. Goethe spoke in Dichtung und
Wahrheit of Holbach's 'atheistic halfnight' and of the insipid, senile, and
deathlike style and content of the book which aroused his opposition in
every way and which even drove him, so he said, away from French
literature to Shakespeare. In Shakespeare's work, then, Goethe dis-
covered the question of genius and of the creative spirit of man, and
this question guided him back to creation in nature.
He studied the views of nature by the three great natural scientists of
the eighteenth century, Carl von Linne, Georges Buffon, and Albrecht
von Haller, who were all born in the year 1707.
Linne's classification system fascinated Goethe. This great and
consistent system was an ordered depiction of nature, even though, at
first, Goethe could not make it come alive within the conceptualization
and nomenclature employing the criteria of separate parts of natural
objects in their artificial order. Goethe struggled for a time with Linne,
now in acceptance, now in opposition, and he even named Linne's
works, with those of Spinoza and Shakespeare, among the ones that
had the greatest influence and effect on him. Linne's Fundamenta
botanica was among the few books which Goethe took with him to
Italy.
6 DOROTHEA KUHN
The genetic difference between man and animal already distinguishes itself vividly in
the bone structure ... How the whole body serves as the pillar to the vault in which
heaven is to be reflected! How our skull rises and rounds itself like the sky above us to
allow the pure image of the eternal spheres to circle within it!
roads, in forests and mines, he had dealt more intensively with the
natural sciences. In Jena he attended lectures on anatomy and seminars
on dissection by the anatomist Justus Christian Loder. In the Weimar
school of drawing he gave instruction in anatomy himself in order to
further his knowledge. There, he traced the structure and function of
the intermaxillary bone which in vertebrates holds the incisors in the
upper jaw. Convinced of the of a general design, he insisted
on the presence of this bone in man too. Among contemporary
anatomists he encountered the opinion that man differed from the
animals, and especially from the monkey, precisely on account of that
missing intermaxillary bone. He did not rely on the contradictory
literature on anatomy and on its prejudice that man's ability for
language depended on the very absense of just that bone. He dissected
on his own and had prepared specimens sent to him: the skull of a
giraffe from Darmstadt, the skull of an elephant from Kassel; others
were available to him in Jena. He also conducted comparative studies.
After he arrived at the now well-known result, that man "like the other
animals" had an intermaxillary bone, he wrote to Knebel on November
17, 1784 about the conclusion he had drawn from his discovery,
namely that one "cannot find the difference between man and animal in
any specific detail. Rather, man is most closely related to the animals."
That similarity which was consistent throughout the chain of being
confirmed for him the fact of the consistency and harmony of nature,
the accordance of the whole of nature which assigns as identity to every
creature in its place within the whole order, to man as well as to every
other creature.
Goethe expressed his great satisfaction with his discovery even more
vividly when he wrote to Herder on May 24, 1784: "I finally found -
not gold or silver, but something that gives me boundless pleasure -
the os intermaxillare in man. It should please you greatly as well,
because it is the final link to man. It is not missing; it is there too!"
With those words, Goethe was referring to Herder's work on the
Ideas Concerning the Philosophy of the History of Mankind [Ideen zur
Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit], which began with a history
of nature, and in which Goethe actively participated. The Ideas offer a
world view [Weltbild] which is based, in every phase of the history of
nature and culture, on a differentiated theory of gradation. Herder's
thought on the 'gradation of organization,' or, as he also put it, the
"series of rising forms and forces," which is developed in the Ideas, led
GOETHE AND THEORIES OF DEVELOPMENT 11
mountains, plants, animals, and men. However, it did not develop into a
clearly defined concept. He observed especially the changeability of the
species in the alpine and maritime environments, and in the luxurious-
ness and multiplicity of the southern flora he searched for his Urp[lanze
[archetypal plant]. But since he only expressed himself regarding the
Urp[lanze in letters and autobiographical writings, and while admitting
that he had not found it, he never described in detail what he had
envisioned by such a plant. The Urp[lanze is often understood as a
simplification which could stand at the beginning of the descent of a
species [Stammesentwicklung].
Analogous to the concept of the intermaxillary bone it can be
assumed, however, that Goethe was looking for a generalization which
could represent the realm of plants in its place in the overall order of
nature. As Goethe later stated, a plant could be seen as a symbol for
the entire plant world. Genetic, even morphogenetic [realgenetisch]
concepts were touched upon when Herder spoke of gradation by steps,
or when Goethe spoke of relationship [Verwandtschaftl and the chain
of being. "If we had a sense to see the primal forms and the first germs
of things, then we could possibly perceive in the smallest point the
whole progression of the entire creation," says Herder in the Ideas. At
the same time, Goethe reflected on creatures which 'develop' from the
primal beginnings of the 'water-earth' [Wassererde] to land and air
inhabitants. A letter by Charlotte von Stein of May 1, 1784 to Knebel
relates to this, wherein she wrote: "Herder's latest writing makes it
probable that we were first plants and animals; what nature will make
of us will remain unknown to us: Goethe expends much profound
thought on these things."
At this point, it is difficult for our later scientific thinking to refrain
from postulating morphogenesis [Realgenese],which seems to be hinted
at everywhere. We find traces of genetic conceptions which were,
already in Buffon's molds, pre-formed to his 'dessin primitif et general'
as the foundations of a primal form, and which Herder used in terms of
the prototype (also used by Robinet) or the main form. In Goethe's
writings, the terms development and relation appear. But nowhere did
he leap into a theory of descent. On the one hand, the barrier of
Christian dogma must have been too prohibitive. Buffon's difficulties
with church censorship when he saw nature and not God as the acting
force are well known. Herder, as a theologian, avoided such difficulties
from the start by emphasizing in his introduction that he always meant
GOETHE AND THEORIES OF DEVELOPMENT 13
such that it fit every genus and every species, since nature can produce its genera and
species only because type, which is prescribed to it by eternal necessity, is such a
proteus that it escapes the keenest of the comparing senses and can scarcely be caught
in part, and even then, only by contradictions.
has been started by nature from the beginning, that is, with an entirely
new plan." Goethe himself took as his point of departure what he found
in nature and in literature. But those names which, for us, are con-
nected with the theories of descent, such as de Maillet, or Robinet, or
Lamarck, do not appear among his extensive writings. It appears as if
after his travels to Italy he. totally abandoned his approach to an actual
concept of descent which he had worked out earlier along with Herder.
In a sketch of 'genetic treatment' in the natural sciences Goethe
noted that he would like to observe the development of an individual in
the smallest possible intervals, in order, finally, to be able to recognize
not just the single phases of development, but, rather, the development
itself, which is a sort of integral method. This means that he could
represent as a whole that which had been developed by steps in time
[das zeitlich nacheinander Entstehende], which he then called the ideal
whole. This kind of genetic observation is connected only to actual
descent in so far as Goethe included in the total picture what he had
found earlier by comparing and observing development and relation-
ship. The type, then, contains the development. With this, however, he
was not pursuing the question of descent, but, rather, the question of
appearance, of the phenomenon.
Goethe. maintained this point of view, which he had already reached
before the turn of the century, even if do exist later remarks by
him, especially in an exchange of ideas with d'Alton, Carus, and Ernst
Meyer, which presuppose polygenesis as being self-evident in terms of
the limited boundaries in the relationships between plants and animals.
Among Goethe's papers there is an article by the Jena botanist,
Friedrich Siegmund Voigt, with whom Goethe had often worked. In
1816 Voigt had written a paper about the colors of plants in connec-
tion with Goethe's color theory. In it he included a paragraph in which
he states that plants could not have stemmed from the hand of God as
they appear today, but, rather, that simpler forms had been created and
that then a further development took place up to our current species.
Goethe crossed out this paragraph and took pains to rewrite the
surrounding text so that everything would fit back together. He did this
possibly just because, in his judgment, this excursion did not seem to fit
in with the explanations concerning the colors of plants, or, then again,
possibly because of fundamental disagreement. In any case, Voigt
emphasized in his next work, the Fundamentals of a Natural History
[Grundziige einer Naturgeschichte] of 1817, that those cosmogonies are
GOETHE AND THEORIES OF DEVELOPMENT 15
wrong which are based on the idea that gradual developments create
organisms by descent. He also criticized works from de Maillet to
Lamarck, and took a stand against a continuous change or a gradual
degeneration of organisms.
What speaks even more clearly against Goethe's participation in
phylogenetic thinking is the fact that he, as intensely involved in the
debate of the two French anatomists Cuvier and Geoffroy de Saint-
Hilaire as he was, and to whom he dedicated his last publication in
1832, did not discuss that part of the debate which concerned the
development of the species of animals, but adhered strictly to questions
of structure and type.
For part of the way in his investigative journey in the natural
sciences Goethe had followed the paths of contemporary theorists of
development. He had integrated these thoughts into his own ideas of
type. Therefore, one cannot say that type was a mere idea and
morphology only an idealistic morphology. However, the ideas of actual
descent, as developed by Darwin, were still blocked by barriers which
were difficult to overcome for Goethe and his contemporaries, and
Goethe was not interested in surmounting them. He let this problem
remain an enigma. In 1826 in a letter to Carl Gustav Carus he wrote,
"of a secret, according to which nothing originates except what has
already been announced, and that prediction becomes clear only
through the result, as does prophecy through fulfillment."
NOTE
* Translated from the German by Frauke von der Horst, with the financial assistance
of the Goethe Institute, San Francisco. Originally presented at the symposium 'Goethe
as a Scientist' held at the University of California at Los Angeles and the California
Institute of Technology, 12-13 April 1982, and initially published in the Journal of
Social and Biological Structures 7 (1984)307-324; 345-356. It appears with the
kind permission of the editors of JSBS.
Schiller-Nationalmuseum
D-7142 Marbach am Neckar
B.R.D.lFederal Republic of Germany
TIMOTHY LENOIR
INTRODUCTION
17
F. Amrine,"P, 1, Zucker, and H. Wheeler (eds.), Goethe and the Sciences:
ARe-appraisal,17-28.
18 TIMOTHY LENOIR
The first principle required for the notion of an object conceived as a natural purpose is
that the parts, with respect to both form and being, are only possible through their
relationship to the whole .... Secondly, it is required that the parts bind themselves
into the unity of a whole in such a way that they are mutually cause and effect of one
another (Kant, 1908, p. 373; Kant, 1951, p. 219).
Goethe's Morphology
From his heavily annotated copies of Kant's Critique of Judgement we
know that Goethe himself found these passages immensely stimulating.
He later acknowledged that he owed a joyful period of his life to
the ideas expressed by Kant herein (Goethe, 'Einwirkung der neuern
Philosophie': HA 13, pp. 26-29). Indeed Kant's work fell on soil well
prepared not only to appreciate but to further expand its more
interesting features. For when he read Kant, Goethe was already well
along in his own development of the notion of the morphotype
(Brauning-Oktavio, 1956; Gauss, 1970). In 1786 he had circulated his
work on the intermaxillary bone in which the notion of a vertebrate
skull morphotype is implicit; and in 1790, just a few weeks before the
appearance of Kant's Critique, Goethe had published his work on the
22 TIMOTHY LENOIR
like Blumenbach, Wolff and Kant, called the Bildungstrieb, the organic
forces giving rise to nutrition, growth and reproduction (Lenoir, 1981;
Lenoir, 1980). They are similar to what Buffon described as the "mollie
interieur." In the "Paralipomena" to the plan for a general morphology
written in 1795 Goethe provides us with a clue to his conceptualization
of this issue. He writes that the type has associated with it a domain of
forces. The total quantity of available force is limited for a specific
organizational plan, such as the vertebrates. But a very important law,
the law of compensation, controls the distribution and expenditure of
this total reservoir of force. An organism, in response to external
factors defining the conditions of its existence, can expend more of this
'force' on developing certain structures, making them more complex
and efficient for the ends life; but at the same time this can only be
accomplished at the expense of other systems, which must compensate
by becoming less complex (Goethe, WA IT.8, p. 316). The morphotypes
provide - in a phrase used by Goethe - the Bauprincipien in terms of
which the forces of the organic world are to operate.
In his Metamorphosis of Plants in 1790 Goethe specifically advo-
cated the attempt to construct a physiology based on improved under-
standing of the physico-chemical basis of life. But he immediately went
on to point out that while life makes use of physico-chemical forces in
achieving its ends, the fact of the matter is that it cannot be reduced to
these forces pure and simple (Goethe, 'Betrachtung iiber Morphologie':
HA 13, pp. 124-125). If one could indulge in an anachronistic
analogy, Goethe's view is that biological organization can be analyzed
in terms of 'levels' similar to a computer. The computer makes use of
physico-chemical laws and processes in carrying out its program, but
the program itself is not a set of physico-chemical laws, nor can it be
reduced to them. Goethe's morphotypes are like that. They are the
biological laws, the programs, guiding the Bildungstrieb in its produc-
tion, of, in Goethe's phrase, "little worlds closed within themselves"
(Goethe, 'Erster Entwurf .. .':HA 13, p. 176). Morphology is the
scientific study of those internal laws of biological organization.
If one inquires into the causes that bring such a manifold of determinations to light,
then we answer above all: the animal is formed by external conditions for external
conditions; thus its inner perfection and its external purposiveness ('Erster Entwurf .. .':
HA 13, p. 177).
Although Goethe did not follow up this idea in his own researches,
its implications were clearly spelled out by him. Once the internal laws
of organization as revealed by the science of morphology had been
delineated, Goethe viewed the task of Zoonomie to investigate the
law-like relationships in the external environment that condition the
transformation of structure:
First the Type should be investigated with respect to the effect upon it of the different
elementary natural forces, and how to a certain degree it must conform to general
external law (,Erster Entwurf: HA 13, p. 178).
If, however, we want to form a basic judgement of this change of form and understand
its actual cause, then we must admit, in good old fashion, the special influence of the
four elements (Goethe, 'Die Skelette der Nagethiere': HA 13, p. 214; Goethe, 'Erster
Entwurf .. .': HA 13, p. 178).
An internal and original community lies at the basis of all organization; the difference
of forms on the other hand arises out of the necessary relationships to the external
world, and it may be justified therefore to assume an original simultaneous difference
and [at the same time] a continuous progressive transformation in order to understand
the constant as well as the divergent phenomena ('Die Skelette .. .': HA 13, p. 218).
Conclusion
Goethe's conception of biology was that of a functional morphologist,
and, accordingly, whatever similarities persons like Haeckel have sought
to detect between Goethe's views and Darwin's theory of evolution are
purely superficial. Goethe shared the viewpoint of his contemporaries
such as Kant, that a specific discipline is possible only in so far as it
designates the domain of applicability of a seCof necessary laws. For
Goethe, even though it is not possible to reduce life to strict
mechanistic laws, a science of life is possible nonetheless because there
are internal laws of biological organization. These laws are expressed
phenomenologically as morpho types and Baupliine, and they are the
GOETHE'S BIOLOGICAL THOUGHT 27
essential core of the animal. For Darwin, on the other hand, morpho-
types are not the manifestation of biological laws at all; they are simply
the effects of natural selection operating on the descendants of a
common ancestral form. The search for internal laws of organization
tum out to be an illusion in Darwin's view. By invoking community of
descent to explain commonality of form the 'biological laws' of the
morphologist are simply dismissed by Darwin.
Nor can Goethe's of biology be turned into Darwin's by
simply redefining Goethe's morphotype as Darwin's ancestor. Goethe's
conception of life is fundamentally teleological. The morpho type is a set
of means organized for the purpose of adapting to the conditions of life.
Surprisingly, in spite of language like the "struggle for existence," for
Darwin, organisms are far more passive and less tenacious in their grip
on life: they simply vary - spontaneously. Natural selection does all the
work of adapting populations of descendants to their changing circum-
stances. Not so for Goethe. Not only does the Bauplan of an organism
provide the material for adaptation but the organism is controlled by
internal laws, such as the law of compensation, which adjust means to
ends in order to produce a functional whole organism. Goethe's
universe is based on the rational relationship of ends to means. To
argue that the principal source of change in organic nature is ultimately
dependent on chance is, in Goethe's view, to surrender the goal of
achieving a scientific treatment of biological organization.
NOTES
in the end, he must attribute the imposition of the original purposive organization to
each of these creatures to the Mother herself' (Kant, 1908, p. 419; Kant, 1951, p. 268).
4 Goethe, WA Il.8, p. 39-41; see also expaned version of the Entwurf of 1796, WA
II.8, p. 86 and elsewhere.
5 See Goethe, 'Dem Menschen wie den Thieren ist ein Zwischenknochen oder obern
Kinnlade Zuzuschreiben' (HA 13, p. 185).
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MacFarland, J. D.: Kant's Concept of Teleology, Univ. of Edinburgh Press, Edinburgh,
1970.
Mayr, E.: 'Illiger and the Biological Species Concept', Journal of the History of Biology
1 (1968) 163-178.
Mayr, E.: Populations, Species and Evolution, Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, Mass.,
1970.
Mayr, E.: 'Species Concepts and Definitions', in The Species Problem (ed. by E. Mayr),
American Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington, 1957, pp.
1-22.
Riedl, R.: Order in Living Organisms, John Wiley, New York, 1978.
Roe, S. A.: Matter, Life and Generation. 18th Century Embryology and the Haller- Wolff
Debate, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1981.
Russell, E. S.: Form and Function, Murray, London, 1916.
Uschmann, G.: Der morphologische Vervollkommnungsbegrijf bei Goethe und seine
problemgeschichtliche Zusammenhiinge, Fishcher, J ena, 1939.
godfather of the entoptics because of his active part in the birth and
christening, when Thomas Seebeck constructed his double-mirrored
apparatus and "erblickte ... in diesen am 21. Februar 1813 zum
erstenmal die vollstfuldigen entoptischen Figuren" (Seebeck, 'Geschichte
der entopischen Farben': WA 11.5, pp. 229-238). Together with a copy
of his essay on entoptics in Zur- Naturwissenschaft iiberhaupt (1820),
Goethe sent to Hegel a letter of appreciation: "Sie haben in Niirnberg
dem Hervortreten dieser schonen Entdeckung beigewohnt, Gevatter-
stelle iibernommen und auch nachher geistreich anerkannt was ich
getan, urn die Erscheinung auf ihre ersten Elemente zuriickzufiihren"
(Goethe and Hegel, 1970, pp. 16-17). After his move from Niirnberg
to Heidelberg, Hegel wrote his Enzyklopiidie der philosophischen
Wissenschaft (1817). Here he took the occasion to repeat the attack on
Newton: "Uber die Barbarei vors erste der Vorstellung, dass auch beim
Lichte nach der scWechtesten Reflexionsform der Zusammensetzung,
gegriffen worden ist, und das Helle hier sogar aus sieben Dunkelheiten
bestehen solI, wie man das klare Wasser aus sieben Erdarten bestehen
lassen Konnte, kann man nicht stark genug ausdriicken." After summa-
rizing Goethe's argument that color arises from the opposition of light
and darkness, Hegel concludes: "Ein Hauptgrund, warum die ebenso
klare als griindliche und gelehrte Goethesche Beleuchtung dieser
Finsternis im Lichte nicht eine wirksamere Aufnahme erlangt hat, ist
ohne Zweifel dieser, well die Gedankenlosigkeit und Einfaltigkeit, die
man eingestehen sollte, gar zu gross ist" (Hegel, 1817, §§21 0-215).
As Goethe himself explained the Newtonian 'FeWer,' the error had
persisted because of the mechanistic presumptions of the corpuscular
theory. Goethe's part in the Newtonian controversy was not motivated
by the issue central to the debate over the Opticks, but by a larger
concern with the scientific method. As far as Newton's Opticks were
concerned, the debate was waged by the proponents of the wave theory
against Newton's contention that light was the rectilinear emission of
corpuscular matter. The account of interference, in Thomas Young's
Bakerian lecture to the Royal Society of London in 1801, gave con-
siderable strength to the argument against Newto!\s theory. It may
seem strange, then, that Goethe did not take up the wave theory in his
own case against Newton; or stranger still, that Goethe opposed the
most convincing evidence being assembled by Young, W. H. Wollaston,
Etienne Malus, and Augustin Fresne1.2 The wave theory, as it was being
presented, Goethe considered flawed by the same mechanical pre-
32 FREDERICK BURWICK
in the dioptric "Saume" of the shadow (WA II.1, pp. 29-38). In the
contest of light and darkness, Goethe saw color as determined by
brightness and contrast; his key terms are klar and trube, hell and
dunkel. Color is produced by the interaction: "Die Farben sind Taten
des Lichtes, Taten und Leiden" (WA II.1, p. ix). It should be apparent,
here, that Goethe's scheme is actually bipolar rather than polar. Indeed,
Goethe himself represented it as such in his outline to the 1820 edition
of the Farbenlehre. The entoptic figure now informs the scheme. The
eye functions, "empfanglich und gegenwirkend," responsive to the
"Taten und Leiden" of "Licht und Finsternis," the dynamic modality of
energy, and "Weiss und Schwarz," the atomic substantiality of matter.
Even before Malus excited the interest in polarized light with his
papers on reflection and double refraction,3 Goethe had already formed
a theory of polarity. When his correspondence with Seebeck brought
him to the study of entoptics, he found that he once again had to war
with the Newtonian "Fehler." That light passing through a rhomboid
crystal of spar refracts in two directions was first discribed by Erasmus
Bartholinus in 1669. Christian Huygens demonstrated that these rays
could be shut off and then restored by rotating one of two super-
imposed crystals a quarter-turn. 4 Newton, who had already added an
account of fits t6 his theory of 'corpuscular emission' of light to explain
why some light penetrated (refracted) and some light bounced off
(reflected) a surface of water or glass, also had to provide his
'corpuscles' with 'sides' to explain why they were blocked by the turning
of a crystaLS Malus found he could block the light with a single crystal
and a mirror; he observed, as well, that the double refracting crystal
reversed the prismatic colors. The concept of 'sides' was therefore
augmented into a theory of polarity. When Goethe learned of this new
arena of optics, he began his own series of experiments. He dismissed
the account of "Schwingungen" forwarded by the dynamists, and
"Kiigelchen p0larisieren" is one of the Newtonian "Schwanke" he
ridicules in the introductory Streitgedicht (WA II.S, p. 223) to
Elemente der entoptischen Farben (1817). In the Farbenlehre Goethe
had classified color phenomena into the subjective physiological colors,
the objective chemical colors, and the subjective"'::"objective physical
colors; he identified entoptics as subjective-objective, to be added to
his earlier discussion of dioptric, catoptric, paroptic, and epoptic.
Repeating his formula of Licht and Finsternis, he describes the effects
of entoptic color apparent in the turn of the crystal of spar:
34 FREDERICK BURWICK
Finsternis und Licht stehen einander uranfiinglich entgegen, eins dem and ern ewig
fremd; nur die Materie, die in und zwischen beide sich stellt, hat, wenn sie korperhaft
undurchsichtig ist, eine beleuchtete und eine finstere Seite, bei schwachem Gegenlicht
aber erzeugt sich erst der Schatten. 1st die Materie durchscheinend, so entwickelt sich
in ihr im HeUdunkeIn, Triiben in bezug aufs Auge das, was wir Farbe nennen. Diese,
sowie Hell und Dunkel, manifestiert sich iiberhaupt in polaren Gegensiitzen. Sie konnen
aufgehoben, neutralisiert, indifferenziert werden, so dass beide zu verschwinden
scheinen; aber sie lassen sich auch urnkehren, und diese Umwendung ist aIlgemein bei
jeder Polaritiit die zarteste Sache von der Welt. Durch die mindeste Bedingung kann
das Plus in Minus, das Minus in Plus verwandelt werden. DasseIbe gilt also auch von
den entoptischen Erscheinungen. Durch den geringsten Anlass wird das weisse Kreuz
in das schwarze, das schwarze in das weisse verwandelt und die begleitenden Farben
gleichfaUs in ihre geforderten Gegensiitze umgekehrt. (WA 11.5, p. 244).
The glass is only the meeting place where the eyes, "die liebe kleinen
Welten," encounter in Taten und Leiden, not simply the "spenstische
Gestalten," the shadowy tetractys of the macrocosm, but a mirror of
their own capacity of perception. Perhaps this may seem just another
animadversion on the subjective-objective nature of physical phenom-
ena; nevertheless, Goethe insists that the entoptic figure manifests
something more than reflective reciprocity: "Aug in Auge sieht der-
gleichen/Wundersamen Spiegelungen." The eye looking into the tem-
pered glass sees another eye, not its own image, looking back. Nor does
Goethe simply mean that the eye will find the staring "Pfauenaugen";
rather, the "Wundersame Spiegelungen" of the "Pfauenaugen" recreate
the physiological activity of the eyes responding to the exterior world:
36 FREDERICK BURWICK
Was in der Atmosphiire vorgeht, begibt sich gleichfalls in des Menschen Auge, und der
entoptische Gegensatz ist auch der physiologe. Man schaue in dem obern Spiegel des
dritten Apparates [Seebeck's device for holding tempered glass between two black
mirrors] das Abbild des untenliegenden Kubus; man nehme sod ann diesen schnell
hinweg, ohne einen Blick vom Spiegel zu verwenden, so wird die Erscheinung, die helle
wie die dunkle, als gespenstiges Bild umgekehrt im Auge stehen und die Farben
zugleich sich in ihre Gegensiitze verwandeln, das Briiunlichgelb in Blau, und umgekehrt,
dem natursinnigen Forscher zu grosser Freude und Kriiftigung (WA II.S, p. 293).
es gabe dann ohnehin keine schlechtern Ichs als feine, von Materialisten gearbeitete,
mit Gehirnfibern und deren Longitudinal- und Transversalschwingungen bezogene Ichs
- ja die Sache ware iibermenschlich herrlich, und die natura natwans ware verraucht,
und nur die natura naturata ware auf dem Boden geblieben, und die Maschinenmeister
wiirden seIber zu Maschinen (1959-63, 4, pp. 906-907).
In this explanation, the active is the creative essence and the passive is
the created substance.
In Coleridge's adaptation of Spinoza in his Logic, experience is
defined as physical and metaphysical:
Tieck and Tulk. Goethe, however, refrained from any discussion of the
biaxial dimensions of color because bipolarity remained for him an Idee
rather than an Eifahrung until the entoptic phenomena provided him
with physical evidence.
For Goethe, then, the entoptic figure defined a coincidence of the
tetractys: a black cross and a' white cross. Through the "geringste
Anlass," the one became the other. The Phiinomen and the Urphiinomen
could be seen as copresent. As tetractys, the line of energy intersects
with the line of matter, mode with substance, the TO ()t:fov with the cO
The entoptic figure thus gave visual confirmation to that argu-
ment of Taten und Leiden which pervades Goethe's works. The course
of Goethe's study of Spinoza apparently commenced about the time of
his confession to Jacobi (9 June 1785):
Ich kann nicht sagen, dass ich jemals die Schriften dieses trefflichen Mannes in einer
Folge gelesen habe, dass mir jemals das ganze Gebaude seiner Gedanken viillig
iiberschaulich vor der Seele gestanden hatte .... Aber wenn ich hinein sehe, glaub ich
ihn zu verstehen, das heisst: er ist mir nie sich selbst in Widerspruch, und ich kann fUr
meine Sinnes- und Handelnsweise sehr heilsame Einfliisse daher nehrnen (WA IV.7,
pp.62-64).
As Goethe told Eckermann forty years later: "Hatte ich nicht die Welt
durch Antizipation bereits in mir getragen, ich ware mit sehenden
Augen blind geblieben, und alle Erfahrung ware nichts gewesen als ein
ganz totes und vergebliches Bemuhen (Eckermann, 1948, 25 Feb.
1825). Spinoza's Idee, and Schelling's, enabled Goethe to recognize the
significance of the entoptic figure as "wundersame Spiegelungen."
Johannes Muller developed his doctrine of specific energy with
appeal to the testimony of Goethe: "Wir bewundem die hochste
Vemunft in dem Bau des Auges wie in jedem Teile des Knochen-
geriistes; in dem Muskelbau jedes Gliedes." 12 The sensory experience
reveals the Vernunft in the affinity of mind and nature, subject and
object, idea and instinct. As Muller reasserted in his physiology, the
antimonies define organic affinity. "Sie sehen," Goethe told Eckermann
(Eckermann, 1948, 1827), "es ist nichts ausser uns,.was nicht zugleich
in uns ware, und wie die aussere Welt ihre Farben hat, so hat auch das
Auge." This affinity of antinomies Goethe expressed in his definition of
the eye as 'ein Geschopf des Lichtes': "War' nicht das Auge sonnenhaft,
/Wie konnten wir das Licht erblicken?" 13 From his account of the
entoptic phenomena, I have already quoted his insistence on such
42 FREDERICK BURWICK
NOTES
Physiologie der Sinne (1823-1826); Johannes Muller, Handbuch der Physiologie des
Menschen, 2 vols. (1833-1840); Hering (1878); Land (1959). Although both Purkynje
and Muller have been named among those who endorsed Goethe's physiological
approach to color, there has been no attempt to trace the succession of Goethe's
Farbenlehre in the physiology of color vision; see Kanajew (1977).
7 Coleridge (1967), pp. 99-100. In his 1797 note to the poem, Coleridge attributed
the action to organic galvanism: "From the rapidity of the flash, ... it may be
conjectured that there is something of electricity in this phenomena." Writing to C. A.
Tulk (Sept. 1817), Coleridge reaffirms that "odorous EflIuvia of several Flowers have
been found inflammable, and combined with positive Electricity" (1959, 4, p. 774).
8 Hooke, Micrographica (1665) and Lecture on Light, in'Posthumous Works (1705);
Jean Paul also cites the posthumous Philosophical Experiments (1726) in Hesperus
(1959-1963,1, p. 706). See also Jean Paul (1814).
9 Coleridge (1981), pp. 44-45. In a letter to Dr. R. H. Brabant (10 March 1815),
Coleridge maintains that Spinoza's "iron Chain of logic" could posit, not demonstrate,
bipolarity: "Spinoza's is a World with one Pole only, & consequently no Equator. Had
he commenced either with the natural naturata, as the Objective Pole, or at the 'I per se
GOETHE'S ENTOPTISCHE FARBEN 43
I' as the Subjective Pole - he must necessarily in either case have arrived at the
Equator, or Identity of Subjective and Objective" (1959, 4, pp. 548-549).
10 'Notes on the Pilgrim's Progress': Coleridge, 1853, 5, p. 256; Aids to Reflection:
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Land, E.: 'Experiments in Color Vision', Scientific American, May (1959) 84-99.
Matthaei, R.: Goethes Farbenlehre, Otto Maier Verlag, Ravensburg, 1971.
Newton, I.: Opticks: Or, a Treatise on the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections and
Colours of Light, E. T. Whittaker, New York, 1931.
Ott, G.: 'Die Versuche von Land. Ansatze zu ihrer goetheanistischen Deutung', in
Goethes Farbenlehre (ed. by J. Proskauer and G. Ott), Verlag Freies Geistesleben,
Dornach, 1980, VoL 3, pp. 283-289.
Ronchi, V.: The Nature of Light (trans. by V. Barocas), Harvard Univ. Press, Cam-
bridge, Mass., 1970.
Schelling, F. W. J.: Werke, 6 vols. (ed. M. Schriiter), Beck, Miinchen, 1958.
Schipperges, H.: Welt des Auges. Zur Theorie des Sehens und Kunst des Schau ens,
Herder, Freiburg i. Br., 1978.
Wetzels, W.: Johann Wilhelm Ritter: Physik im Wirkungsfeld der deutschen Romantik,
Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, Berlin, 1973.
Department of English
University of California
Los Angeles, CA 90024
U.S.A.
JEFFREY BARNOUW
But conversely one must consider that these activities, in a higher sense, cannot be
regarded as isolated, but rather that they mutually aid one another, and that a man can
enter into an alliance with himself just as he can with others. Thus he is to divide
himself among many skills and exert himself in many endeavors.
none of the human faculties should therefore be excluded from scientific activity. The
dark depths of prescience, a sure intuition of the present, mathematical profundity,
physical accuracy, the heights of reason, an acute understanding, a versatile and ardent
imagination, a loving delight in the world of the senses - they are all essential for a
lively and productive apprehension of the moment ... 3
thinks he still has his feet on earth" (HA 13, p. 15). Thus we must
repeat and vary each experiment and guard against a tendency to join
them together more intimately than is justified. This is a common error
which is closely related to and usually results from another:
Man derives greater enjoyment from the conception than the thing, or rather we should
say, man derives enjoyment from a thing only insofar as he conceives it, it has to fit in
with his mode of apprehension [Sinnesart], and he may raise his mode of conception
[ Vorstellungsart] as high above the common sort as he can, purify it as much as
possible, still it usually remains simply a mode of conception.6
In this way anyone will have the possibility of combining them according to his own
manner [Art] and forming them to a whole that should be more or less comfortable and
pleasing to the human mode of conception in general. [der menschlichen Vorstellungsart
iiberhaupt] (RA 13, p. 16-20).
Now "prior" and "better known" are ambiguous terms, for there is a difference between
what is prior and better known in the order of being and what is prior and better
known to man. I mean that objects nearer to sense are prior and better known to man;
objects without qualification prior and better known are those further from sense. Now
the most universal causes are furthest from sense and particular causes are nearest to
sense, and they are thus exactly opposed to one another (71 b 33-72 a 5)
Aristotle thus suggests that demonstration from premises that are prior
for us but not of themselves should not be considered demonstration in
a strict sense. It does not truly involve knowing the cause on which a
fact depends, "as the cause of that fact and of no other, and, further,
that the fact could not be other than it is" (71 b 10-12).
This corresponds to Goethe's rejection of the exclusive orientation to
causal explanation. As he wrote in 'Experience and Science,' with
regard to grasping the 'pure phenomenon,'
Here lies perhaps the ultimate goal of our powers, if man had the sense to be modest.
For we do not seek after causes here, but rather after conditions under which the
phenomena appear; their consistent succession [konsequente Folge], their eternal
recurrence in ever-various circumstances, ... is seen and accepted [angeschaut und
angenommen], their determinacy recognized and determined again through the human
mind (HA 13, p. 25).
What we become aware of in experience is for the most part simply instances which,
with some degree of attention, can be grouped under general empirical rubrics. These
can in turn be subordinated to scientific rubrics which lead further, to the point where
certain indispensable preconditions of appearance [Bedingungen des Erscheinenden]
become more intimately known to us. From this point on everything is gradually
ordered under higher rules and laws, which reveal themselves, however, not through
words and hypotheses to the understanding, but through phenomena to intuition
[Anschauung]. We call them primal phenomena because nothing within appearance lies
above them, while they are perfectly suited to allow us to descend, just as we had
ascended, step by step from them to the most common instance of daily experience
(HA 13, pp. 367-368; cf.HA 13, pp. 482-483).
The ramifications of this approach are myriad, not only as it feeds into
the theme of Vorstellungsarten, understood as ''words and means," but
recognizing that the epistemological issues of the Urphiinomen are also
addressed by Goethe in the concept of the type in his morphological
writings. In this way the common translation of 'Urphiinomen' as
'archetypal phenomenon' or 'archetype' has a certain justification.
Moreover, this resonance of the Urphiinomen as representing or
presenting the universal or the class in and through the individual
brings that concept into close proximity with the symbolP These
further dimensions of the 'basic phenomenon' as type and symbol
cannot be explored here but should be noted for their later relevance in
Helmholtz.
We have been primarily concerned with Goethe's methodology here,
not his method as he followed it in practice. The contents and conten-
tions of the Farbenlehre proper and the related polemic against
Newton's theory of light have been kept in the background, but it should
be remarked that quite a different methodology, focused in what Goethe
called "the apercu," might be elicited from Goethe's actual way
58 JEFFREY BARNOUW
the Investigation of the Retina in the Living Eye" (1851). But the work
on light and color marked the beginning not only of his university
career but of the research that culminated in his major Treatise on
Physiological Optics.
The nature of this work unavoidably engaged him in discussion of
Goethe's Farbenlehre in several ,connections. In the inaugural disserta-
tion he offered a critique of ideas forward by Sir David Brewster, a
foremost English physicist who was also the leading authority of the
time on Newton. In his analysis of solar light Brewster had disagreed
with Newton, however, and agreed with Goethe, in arguing that it was
not the differing refrangibility of the rays that determined the colors of
the prismatic image. Brewster affirmed rather that there were three
different kinds of light, red, yellow, and blue, each exhibiting every
degree of refrangibility. The spectrum looks the way it does because red
light has a preponderance of rays of less refrangibility, yellow more of
mean refrangibility, and blue more of greater refrangibility.
In the course of testing the validity of Brewster's experiments,
Helmholtz discovered a number of errors, most of them involving the
projection of physiological or psychological events onto external
physical ones, which accounted for his erroneous findings, but he also
made a positive, discovery: that the mixture of coloring substances often
had quite different results from the blending of spectral colors. The
notion of the three primary colors, that had been developed on the
basis of work with pigments, as in the mixing of paint, did not apply to
the composition of color in light. Blue and yellow pigment mixed make
green; blue and yellow light give white light.
In fact various combinations of colored light produce white, just as
other combinations produce varieties of orange light which are indistin-
guishable to the naked eye. With vision not aided by technical means
we have no way of telling what the spectral composition of any given
compound color is, nor even of telling that it is compound, i.e.
produced by the concurrence of rays of varying wave lengths. This
would seem to separate the objective make-up of light even more
radically than Newton had from the subjective appearance or sensation
of light. Helmholtz' discovery would then represent an even greater
affront to Goethe's Farbenlehre in its innermost motivation.
Early in 1798 Schiller had offered Goethe critical suggestions about
the organization of Goethe's work on the theory of color, including the
observation that a confusion arises from his tacitly changing his subject,
60 JEFFREY BARNOUW
such that he sometimes evidently has light in mind, at other times color.
This criticism led Goethe to set up his fundamental distinction of
physiological, physical and chemical colors (Goethe and Schiller, 1966,
p. 577 and p. 579). This differentiation did not get at the heart of the
problem, but by giving special prominence to the first category,
physiological colors, it opened up a line of research which constituted a
second connection through "which Goethe's work had to impinge upon
that of Helmholtz in the early 1850s, in that his teacher, Johannes von
Muller, was here a follower of Goethe. 14
Helmholtz also gave an inaugural lecture at Konigsberg in 1852, 'On
the Nature of Human Sensations' (1883, 2, pp. 591-609), in which he
expanded in a more popular vein on the ideas of the dissertation. After
giving a summary of his critique of Brewster, Helmholtz adds,
Light and color sensations are only symbols for relations of reality; they have just as
little and just as much similarity or connection with them as the name of a man ... with
the man himself. They inform us by the sameness or difference of their appearance as
to whether we are dealing with identical or distinct objects and properties or reality.
known to the senses. The idea of sensations as the signs of their own
otherwise unknown causes has proved problematic at several points in
the history of epistemology. Helmholtz will resolve this impasse by
giving a different turn to the idea of sensations as signs, and it is here
that Goethe's writings will give him most support.
Helmholtz's first public lecture on Goethe, 'The Scientific Re-
searches of Goethe,' given in January 1853, begins by balancing his
achievements in the descriptive sciences, botany and anatomy, against
what is seen as his failure in areas of physics, including optics, which
call for causal explanation. He is credited with two ideas of great
fruitfulness in the former sciences. The first is that "differences in the
anatomical structure of different animals are to be looked upon as
variations of a common plan or type, . . . variations of a single basic
type, induced by the coalescence, transformation, increase, diminution,
or even complete removal of single parts." 16
A second related idea is the "similar analogy between the different
parts of one and the same organic being," complications of structure
arising through variation and differentiation. Goethe discovered transi-
tions from stem-leaves to sepals and petals, and from them to stamens,
nectaries and ovaries, "thus arriving at the doctrine of the meta-
morphosis of plants." His discoveries in comparative anatomy are
recognized on the same footing, the key concepts again being analogy
and type.
In sum, Goethe is credited with "having caught the first glimpse
of the guiding ideas to which the sciences of botany and anatomy
were tending and by which their present form is determined." In an
addendum written in 1875 Helmholtz writes that Darwin's theory of
the transformation of organic forms is unmistakably based on the same
analogies and homologies that Goethe had been the first to recognize.
Darwin, however, was able to supply a causal nexus [ursiichlichen
Zusammenhang] which can conceivably have brought about such
correspondences in type between the most various organisms and
thereby was able "to develop poetic intuition [Ahnung] to the maturity
of the clear concept." 17
In the latter parts of the 1853 essay Helmholtz does show some
reservations - and irony - about the epistemological value of Goethe's
morphological ideas where they involve such broad quasi-metaphorical
extensions of terms like 'leaf and 'vertebra' that the gain in range of
analogy is achieved only by a sacrifice of'specifying content. Here again
64 JEFFREY BARNOUW
external world," as if this too bore witness that "science has arrived at
an estimation of sense completely opposed to the poet's."
Helmholtz's idea of 'Goethe the poet' with his artistic commitment to
sensuous representaion is often close to caricature here. His interpreta-
tion of Goethe's conception of how science is related to sensation, or
should be, is derived wholly, and loosely, from the confrontation with
Newton's color theory, no attention being given to Goethe's plentiful
writings on method. In the addendum appended to the essay in 1875,
however, he followed his remarks on Goethe's anticipations of Darwin
with a more sweeping acknowledgement of Goethean seeds that had
come to fruition in the meantime: "those in natural scientific circles
have also unmistakably come closer to the ideas which Goethe had
formed of the ways which investigators of nature were to take and the
goals they were to pursue."
What Goethe sought was the law-like [das Gesetzliche] in phenomena; that was the
main thing, which he did not want to have muddled with metaphysical figments of
thought. If the natural scientists for their part are now coming to regard force as the
law, purified of all accident of appearance, that is objectively recognized in its rule
over reality, there will scarcely be a significant divergence of opinion any more
regarding ultimate aims. This view received decided expression in Kirchhoff's lectures
on mathematical physics, where mechanics is included among the descriptive natural
sciences (Philosophische Vortriige (1971), p. 389. cf. pp. 277 and 354).
We never perceive the objects of the external world immediately, but rather perceive
the effects of these objects on our nerve apparatus, and this has been so from the first
moment of our life. In what way, then, did we first cross over [hiniibergelangtJ from the
world of the sensations of our nerves into the world of reality? Obviously only by way
of an inference [SchluftJ; we must presuppose the presence of external objects as the
cause of our nervous excitation; for there can be no effect without a cause. IS
assumes that none of our sensations gives us anything more than signs for external
objects and movements and that we can learn how to interpret these signs only through
experience and practice. For example, the perception of differences in spatial location
can be attained only through movement; in the field of vision it depends upon our
experience of the movements of the eye (Selected Writings (1971 ), p. 196).
As soon as we have gained a correct notion of the shape of an object, we have the rule
for the movements of the eyes which are necessary for seeing it. In carrying out these
movements and thus receiving the visual impressions we expect,... we become
convinced of the accuracy of our conception.
This last point is, I believe, of great importance. The meaning we assign to our
sensations depends upon experiment, not upon mere observation of what takes place
around us. We learn by experiment that the correspondence between two processes
takes place at any moment which we choose and under conditions which we can alter
as we choose. Mere observation would not give us the same certainty, even though
often repeated under different conditions (Selected Writings (1971), p. 210).
memory and also did not necessarily enter our consciousness formulated in words as a
sentence, but only in the form of an observation of the senses .... More recently I have
avoided the name "unconscious inferences," in order to escape confusion with the - as
it seems to me - wholly unclear and unjustified conception thus named by Schopen-
hauer and his followers. Yet evidently we are dealing here with an elementary process
lying at the foundation of everything properly termed thought (1977, pp. 131-132;
Philosophische Vortriige (1971), pp. 266-267; and Selected Writings (1971), pp. 380-
381).
whereas after all these qualities of sensation belong only to our nervous system and do
not reach out at all into external space. The semblance does not cease even when we
know this, because in fact this semblance is the original truth: it is indeed sensations
which first offer themselves to us in a spatial order. 25
I need not explain to you that it is a contradictio in adjecto to want to represent the
real, or Kant's "thing in itself," in positive terms but without absorbing it into the form
of our manner of representation .... What we can attain, however, is a knowledge
[Kenntnis, acquaintance] of the lawlike order in the realm of the real [des Wirklichen,
the actual, that which acts and has effect, wirktJ, admittedly only as presented
[dargestellt] in the sign system of our sense impressions:
Everything transitory Alles Vergangliche
Is but an analogy 1st nur ein Gleichnis.
I take it as a favorable sign that we find Goethe, here and further on, together with
us on the same path. Where it is a matter of broad outlook, we may well trust his clear
and unconstrained eye for truth.
If at last I let my mind come t6 rest with some archetypal phenomenon, it is never-
theless only resignation. There is a great difference, however, in whether I resign myself
at the limits of human endeavor or within some hypothetical limitation of my own
narrow individualism (Selected Writings (1971), p. 493; Philosophische Vortriige
(1971), p. 356).
The epistemological counterpart of this scene lies in the fact that the efforts of the
various schools of philosophy to find a foundation for the conviction of the existence of
reality had to remain unsuccessful as long as they took passive observation of the
external world as their point of departure. They could not emerge from their world of
analogies [Gleichnissen 1 as they failed to recognize that the actions which man initiates
through his own will are an indispensable part of his source of knowledge.
78 JEFFREY BARNOUW
NOTES
* Originally read at a joint symposium sponsored by the Boston Colloquium for the
Philosophy of Science and the Departments of Germanic Languages and History of
Science at Harvard University, 3-4 December 1982.
[ See Eckermann (1948), p. 89: May 2, 1824. For Goethe's conviction that his
Farbenlehre was more significant than his poetic works, see p. 235, conversation of
February 19, 1829, conclusion.
2 HA 14, p. 10. Translations are my own unless the notes specify otherwise. On
individuality in science, see HA 13, p. 272.
GOETHE AND HELMHOLTZ 79
3 HA 14, pp. 251-252 and 41. Translation of the latter taken from Nisbet (1972), pp.
develop a "rational empiricism" and thus with his own renewed interest in Bacon (see
below), "Nature is unfathomable because it cannot be grasped by a single man, although
humanity as a whole could certainly grasp it." Goethe recalls and varies this idea in his
letter of May 5, 1798, as part of the argument against Fichte's claims for a priori ideas.
Goethe, "the practical skeptic," as he characterizes himself, sees "empirical influences
strongly affecting" Fichte's supposedly purely rational and universal principles, making
them "only the utterances of an individuality." "Only all men together know nature, only
all men live what is human" (Goethe and Schiller, 1966, pp.587 and 624, cf. 584 and
Schiller's response of February 27, 1798. For a similar configuration of ideas in Bacon,
see Barnouw (1977).
5 See Nisbet (1972), pp. 26-27 and 42. Independently of Nisbet, I called attention to
the Baconian character of 'Der Versuch' in a review (Barnouw, 1980-1981). Goethe's
maxims show his Baconianism, e.g. Nosk. 490 and 501, HA 12, 433-434. For a
closely related view of Bacon, see Barnouw, 'Bacon and Hobbes .. .' (1979).
6 HA 13, p. 15. Gogelein (1972), a disappointing work, notes the connection with
Bacon, p. 44, but treats it as something Goethe soon recovered from. Gogelein seems
to have expected a correlation between Goethe's' Vorstellungsarten' and Bacon's 'idols',
and, not finding one, rejects the idea of continued affinity, p. 85.
7 Goethe to Schiller, January 13, 1798 (Goethe and Schiller, 1966, p. 543). In a letter
of January 6, 1798 (Goethe and Schiller, 1966, pp. 537-538), Goethe had written to
Schiller, with regard to Schelling's Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur, "I gladly grant
that it is not simply nature that we know but that nature is apprehended by us only in
accord with certain forms and capacities of our mind. Still, from the appetite of a child
for the apple in the tree, to its fall that supposedly aroused in Newton the idea for his
theory, there are certainly many levels of sensation [Anschauung, intuitionj .... The
transcendental idealist believes, no doubt, that he stands at the very top; but one thing
about him that does not please me is that he quarrels [streitetj with the other
Vorstellungsarten, for one cannot really argue with a mode of conception."
8 In a letter of February 21,1798 (Goethe and Schiller, 1966, p. 584), Goethe tells
Schiller he wants to work through their ideas about rational empiricism before going
back to Bacon, "in whom I have again great confidence." On February 10, 1798
(Goethe and Schiller, 1966, p. 572), Goethe had praised Boyle as the only investigator
of color phenomena to follow the good counsel of Bacon, which was soon swamped by
the influence of Newton. Boyle's liberality "allows him to recognize that for other
phenomena other Vorstellungsarten may be more fitting."
9 Schiller to Goethe, January 19, 1798 (Goethe and Schiller, 1966, pp. 546-549). Cf.
Nisbet (1972), pp. 52-53, who also quotes a passage including the following: "where
so many entities are interacting with one another, how are we finally to know or to
decide ... what is meant to lead and what is compelled to follow?" Nietzsche too will
pick this up.
10 Quoted, in a different connection, in the notes to HA 13, p. 626.
II Quoted from Gogelein (1972), p. 79. The topic of Vorstellungsarten is taken up at
length in Kleinschneider (1971), who points up the ambivalence: Vorstellungsarten can
be used as mere words and means ("bloB als Wort und Mittel brauchen") and they can
80 JEFFREY BARNOUW
also be deeply rooted and mutually exclusive. On hypotheses, see maxim No. 554, HA
12, p. 441: "Hypotheses are scaffolding that you set up in front of the building and take
down when the building is finished. They are indispensable for the worker, but he must
not take the scaffolding for the building." Many other maxims are less sympathetic to
"hypotheses."
12 See, for example, what Goethe writes about objects that become "symbolic" through
and for ills "quiet and cold way. of observing," in the letter to Schl1ler of August 16,
1797 (Goethe and Schl1ler, 1966, pp. 439-440), "they are eminent cases willch stand
as representatives of many others in a characteristic manifold, and enclose a certain
totality within themselves, promote a certain series, excite similar and disparate things
in my mind, and thus from outside as well as within make claim to a certain unity and
universality." Gogelein (1972, p. 93) writes that from 1797 Goethe spoke of natural
science being in need of a "Symbolik" willch would show every phenomenon in nature
to be "symbolisch" through inherent reference to other phenomena. The Urphiinomen
would be symbolic in a illgher power, willch might justify the common translation
'archetypal phenomenon.' 'Type' is of course the concept willch plays a role analogous
to 'Urphanomen' in anatomy.
13 Helmholtz, 'Uber Goethes naturwissenschaftliche Arbeiten' (1971), pp. 21-44), p.
40. The standard translation injects a phony pathos: "as a forlorn hope, as a desperate
attempt to rescue from the attacks of science the belief in the direct truth of our
sensations" (1962, p. 17). Russel Kahl revised tills translation when he included it in ills
edition (1971), but let this passage stand (p. 71). I have revised or replaced the existing
translations of Helmholtz where necessary.
14 Miiller's major work, On the Comparative Physiology of the Visual Sense in Man
and Animals, includes in its introduction a statement of allegiance to Goethe's theory of
color insofar as it "simply presents the phenomena and does not involve itself in any
explanations," and devotes the eighth chapter to Goethe's theory.
15 Helmholtz (1883),2,605. No English translation exists.
16 Helmholtz, Philosophische Vortriige (1971, pp. 21-44), pp. 22-23. Subsequent
quotations pp. 24, 26, 34, 36, 37-38 and 39. The translation from Popular Scientific
Lectures reprinted in Selected Writings translated "Bauplan" as "phase."
17 Philosophische Vortriige (1971), p. 388; cf. p. 351. The addendum is not included in
the standard translation or its revised version in Selected Writings.
18 Philosophische Vortriige (1971), p. 76. The analogy to juggling, p. 75. A similar
20 Dilthey, 'Beitriige zur Losung der Frage vom Ursprung unseres Glaubens an die
Realitiit der Au,Benwelt und seinem Recht' (1957), 5, pp. 93-95; pp. 97-98. Cf.
Preface to Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften (1957), 1, p. xix; and 'Breslauer
Ausarbeitung' (1957),19, pp. 72-74.
21 Cf. Philosophische Vonrage (1971), p. 73, where he contrasts the to some extent
conventional signs on which theatrical illusion is based, its limiting case being the
"natural connection of feeling and its signs," with the unvarying "connection of ideas
conditioned by the nature of our senses" in perception, which is no longer construed in
terms of symbols and not yet in terms of signs.
22 Philosophische Vortrage (1971), p. 84, cf. p. 86, where the influence of Hegel and
Schelling on the Geisteswissenschtiften is taken as showing that their efforts in phi-
losophy "were not completely in vain." Cf. Dilthey's inaugural lecture in Basel in 1867,
'Die dichterische und philosophische Bewegung in Deutschland 1770 bis 1800' (1957),
5,12-27.
23 The human sciences, moreover, cannot be simply opposed to the natural sciences.
As part of the cultural institution 'science,' they share in the same ethos of individual
service to and participation in a tradition spanning the generations, which ethos owes
something to Goethe in its formulation. Helmholtz sees it as the common task of all the
sciences "to make human intellect rule the world," p. 106, since each branch exem-
plifies in its way the truth that "knowledge is power," p. 102, and nations are now
turning to science in their concern for national self-preservation, p. 103. In line with
this Hobbesean approach, Helmholtz also holds that the natural sciences owe their
advance on the human sciences with regard to rigor (or demonstrability) of knowledge
to the nature of their matter, which is further abstracted from the interests of men.
Indeed, the interests· of men constitute the matter of the Geisteswissenschaften, which,
while they must strive for functional objectivity, must not deny their intimate involve-
ment in the practical aims of human society. These views, akin to those of Dilthey into
the 1880s, inform the ethos of the dedication to 'science.'
24 1977, p. 122, which unfortunately sometimes translates 'Zeichen' as 'symbol.' (NB:
the standard translation of Helmholtz's Treatise occasionally uses the cognate term
'token' to render 'Zeichen.') Cf. Philosophische Vortrage (1971), pp. 255-256, and
Selected Writings(1971),p. 372.
25 1977, p. 128; cf. Philosophische Vonrage (1971), p. 262. Kahl's translation (1971),
p. 377, is incorrect, misled by his own rendering of 'Schein' as 'illusion' rather than, for
instance, 'semblance.'
26 1977, p. 139. Translation altered. 'Wechsel' does not mean 'alternation' here. Cf.
Selected Writings (1971 ), p. 387, and p. 525 on cause as Ur-sache.
27 1977, pp. 140-141; Philosophische Vortrage (1971), pp. 276-277, cf. p. 354;
Selected Writings (1971), pp. 388-389; cf. pp. 491-492, for the Urphanomen com-
parison.
28 1977, p. 142; Philosophische Vortrage (1971), p. 278; Selected Writings (1971), p.
390. Helmholtz says this is the answer we must give to the question "What is truth in
our representations [Vorstellen]?" He claims that this answer agrees with the foundation
of Kant's doctrine, but he seems to anchor it even more deeply in the physiological
arguments which he says have gone beyond Kant, "analyzing the concept of intuition
[Anschauung] into the ultimate elementary processes of thought," those "not to be
82 JEFFREY BARNOUW
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Department of English
University of Texas
Austin, TX 78712
U.S.A.
JOSEPH MARGOLIS
affective ties of human creatures ... that these perennial first inclina-
tions take figures from one's own family circle as their object" (1953f,
21, p. 209); secondly, that Goethe recognized dreaming as "the
continuation of our mental activity into the state of sleep - combined
with the recognition of the unconscious," though Goethe apparently did
not master "the riddle of dream-distortion" (1953f, 21, p. 209); thirdly
(as noted in certain letters and the Campaign in France), "he himself
repeatedly made attempts at giving psychological help" (for instance to
a certain Krafft and to Professor Friedrich Plessing), applying a
procedure that "goes beyond the method of the Catholic Confessional
and approximates in some remarkable details to the technique of our
psycho-analysis" (1953f, 21, p. 210) - which Goethe also dramatizes
in Iphigenie, which he even deliberately and experimentally practiced as
a jest (as reported in one of his letters), and which, judging from
The Elective Affinities, he actually theorized about in terms of certain
chemical analogies - here, Freud notes that the very name 'psycho-
analysis' bears witness to a similar speculation of his own, which we
know, on independent grounds, to have been absolutely fundamental to
his formulation of the Scientific Project (that crucial essay that he could
not bring himself to destroy). Freud concludes his address with the
tactful admission that, although it cannot explain artistic creativity or
even the value and effect of artistic work, nevertheless "psycho-analysis
in the service of biography" helps to bring the artist nearer to us by
supplying "information which cannot be arrived at by other means" and
thus indirectly informs our understanding of his gifts and his work
(1953f, 21, p. 212). Freud thereby confirms again the threefold
connection between Goethe's life and work and psychoanalysis. He
does this, it should be said, in a way that indicates his genuine
admiration for Goethe - not simply as an academic courtesy - very
much in the same spirit in which, under quite other circumstances, he
was so annoyed to be deprived of an answer from the Danish-German
writer Wilhelm Jensen (the author of the novella, Gradiva) as to
whether Jensen had already been familiar with his own psychoanalytic
writings or whether Jensen was himself a neurotic author or a remark-
ably intuitive and independent proto-psychoanalyst. But once all these
rather pretty linkages are laid out, one wonders whether there is any
deeper significance for psychoanalysis in Goethe's speculations or
mode of speculation.
There is, in fact, a peculiarly noticeable pointlessness about Freud's
GOETHE AND PSYCHOANALYSIS 85
between them, and leave it to the reader, or the pupil, to form his own
convictions. But the mere looking at a thing is of no use whatsoever.
Looking at a thing gradually merges into contemplation, contemplation
into thinking, thinking is establishing connections, and thus it is possible
to say that every attentive glance which we cast on the world is an act
of theorizing."2 This is a profoundly important philosophical thesis, but
it is altogether too easy to miss its full force in Goethe's own hands.
First of all, Goethe goes beyond it in questionable ways. Secondly, its
full import is really unnoticed - often not even mentioned - by those
who fully understood, even within the next generation, the utter
untenability of Goethe's special attack on Newton (for example, by such
an empiricist as Helmholtz). Thirdly, it is still very difficult to be clear
about the nature of science as such - perhaps even more difficult than
in Goethe's and Helmholtz's day - so it cannot be easy to appraise the
full import of Goethe's conception, nor, of course, its bearing on
psychoanalysis. Let us, then, keep it in mind for a moment.
Other of the themes broached in the Preface are usually taken to be
rather more idiosyncratic of Goethe's conception of science. For
instance, in the Preface, Goethe says that it is "nature as a whole" that
manifests itself through light and color in a way that is particularly
accessible to the sense of sight. The point at stake is that, for Goethe, it
is not a mere flourish or figure of speech to speak either of how nature
as a whole manifests itself to us or that the ways in which it does so, as
through light and color, are peculiarly apt for the normal human being
to discern. Also, this theme, rather like Goethe's thesis of the Urpf!anze
(if one thinks about it) is not intended to be a mere tautology and need
not be so construed. Perhaps it is fair to say, as at least a first
approximation - one in fact that Goethe encourages in a well-known
letter to Jacobi (as well as in Dichtung und Wahrheit) - that, in a
Spinozistic sense, nature is a unity, that the aptness of our under-
standing of nature requires both a grasp of that supreme fact as well as
resistance against the compartmentalization of "reason, sensuality,
feeling, will." This, of course, is what Nietzsche perceived in Goethe 3
and what helps to account for Goethe's profound and otherwise almost
inexplicable opposition to Newton - and Kant -, to the supposed
sundering of the whole man as well as of the whole of nature.
Now then, it is probably truer to say that Goethe construed his
experiments and studies of the actual perception of color as more
closely linked to vindicating and instantiating this conception of nature
88 JOSEPH MARGOLIS
and man and science (at least roughly Spinozistic) than as disconfirming
Newton's specific theory of light within the constraints of Newton's own
experimental practice - though there cannot be the least doubt that
Goethe believed (rather blindly) that he had refuted Newton experi-
mentally (and even that Newton had cheated and lied in formulating his
findings). What Goethe seems to have intended - to put the best
construction on what he says - is simply that Newton's entire effort is
false to the conditions under which a genuinely human science could be
rightly pursued, that is, a human science even about color and light. In
Newton's frame of reference, Goethe is flatly mistaken; the physics of
color will not support his fancies about the interplay of light and dark.
Nevertheless, in the Introduction to the Farbenlehre, Goethe is much
more explicit and much more telling in his objection to Newton; for
there, he says that "Newton had based his hypothesis [regarding light
and the classification of colors] on a phenomenon exhibited in a
complicated and secondary state" (Goethe, 1967, p. xxxviii, italics
added). The point is certainly an intriguing and potentially valuable one:
light and color are phenomena - "effects," Goethe actually says, in the
Preface - which are first discriminated in the natural way in which
humans interact with the other parts of nature. Consequently, at best,
Newton's.experiments involve a restriction, even a distortion, certainly
a dependent abstraction from the normal conditions under which these
phenomena or effects are actually perceived. Since his method
addressed what is both "a complicated and secondary state" of the
phenomena, his findings cannot possibly be correct with regard to a
science rightly addressed to what human beings normally perceive. What
this means is simply that whatever Newton may be thought to have
discovered about color through his study of the effects of the prism
must, given the constraints of a suitably principled science, be sub-
mitted to interpretation! first grounded in experimental and observa-
tional findings addressed to relatively undistorting perceptual contexts.
In a word, the point Goethe is insisting on is precisely the same one
convincingly put to those who would generalize about normal vision
from experiments with a tachistoscope for subjects strapped in a fixed
seat, blindered, sometimes even commissurotimized: the uniformities
observed, however well confirmed empirically, may well be artifacts of
the experimental context, not therefore straightforwardly instructive
about universal lawlike regularities in themselves; also, though mathe-
matized or abstracted uniformities regarding any range of phenomena
GOETHE AND PSYCHOANALYSIS 89
ably relied on. So seen, the intellectual power - not merely the quaint
charm - of Goethe's approach lies, quite simply, in what we may call
his ecological conception of science. It is that conception rather than the
contingent and quarrelsome details that arise out of his peculiar biases
regarding Newton and Kant and Schiller and Spinoza at least, and that
color in a concrete way the various versions of that conception, that we
should try to save; the rest may continue to infuriate and bore his critics
by tum. So seen, the charge against Newton is that the "complicated
and secondary state" of the phenomena he investigates - viewing light
through a fixed and narrow and deliberately isolating slit - misleads us
regarding the way vision actually operates: (i) with respect to the
relation between sight and whatever other powers normally co-function
with sight to facilitate sight in the molar life of man; (ii) with respect to
whatever constitutes the range of normal ecological niches in which
man moves and exercises sight; (iii) what respect to whatever engages
man in the best and fullest sense of his own integrated powers; and (iv)
with respect to what, under those conditions, he can best claim,
reflexively, accord with his most disciplined perception and experience.
Goethe takes these conditions to be ubiquitous.
These constraints, which there is every reason to believe Goethe
wished tO,champion, are, one may say, the right constraints (as Goethe
saw things) by which a 'truthful' science (as he often, now no longer
paradoxically, says) should be guided. Newton pretends to do without
hypotheses, and Kant simply favors cognitive conditions that utterly
distort the work of the ecologically oriented scientist. What, therefore,
Goethe makes clear (not in so many words of course) is the profoundly
important philosophical thesis that we cannot secure first-order science
without second-order foundations (the denial of which, for instance,
Richard Rorty (1979) has recently made so fashionable); that the best
second-order foundations are ecologically construed and, as such, are
both interpretively rich and ineliminably normative in nature (which,
for instance, is largely opposed, even within the ecological orientation,
by J. J. Gibson (1966; 1979»; and that the vision of what the human
ecology entails cannot be separated from the contingencies of any
currently historically convincing or compelling doctrines of how human
life is and ought to be construed (which Goethe confirms by his own
example and that of those whom he opposes). Thus characterised,
Goethe's theory of science is bound to strike the modem reader as
extraordinarily up-to-date and enlightened, even if his particular experi-
GOETHE AND PSYCHOANALYSIS 91
Fliess (Freud, 1977: letter no. 28). It is surely not unreasonable to see,
here, Freud's worry, never fully articulated - certainly, never con-
vincingly addressed - regarding the fundamental divergence between
the scientific methodology of the Project (accommodating his incipient
theory of psychoanalysis and the clinical experience he had shared with
Breuer) and the implicit methodological requirements of that very
psychoanalysis as it matured. This is what Goethe would have reacted
to.
Now, in a very real sense, the middle term between Goethe and
Freud is Helmholtz. Everything we have so far considered comes down
to this: on the one hand, Helmholtz confronts, attempts to appreciate,
and finally rejects much of Goethe's science; at the same time he
concedes the genuine if limited merit of certain of Goethe's observa-
tions and experiments; and, on the other, Helmholtz's is the largest and
most influential conception of science that Freud came to know in his
most formative years and to which he clearly remained devoted in spite
of the diverging signals he sensed in his developing psychoanalytic
work. Also, quite interestingly, Helmholtz knew neither Goethe nor
Freud, but missed knowing both by a hair; and all three hold strikingly
similar views about the special scientific intuition open to artists.
Freud's opening statement, in the Project, deserves to be explicitly
noted; its affinity for Helmholtz's conception of science is plain on its
face: "The intention is to furnish a psychology that shall be a natural
science: that is, to represent psychical processes as quantitatively
determinate states of specifiable material particles, thus making those
processes perspicuous and free from contradiction. Two principal ideas
are involved: [1] What distinguishes activity from rest is to be regarded
as Q [that is, the energy of the system], subject to the general laws of
motion. (2) The neurones are to be taken as the material particles." 9
Helmholtz returned, in fact, in his later years, to give a second
account of Goethe's scientific ideas, in a paper before the Goethe
Society, in Weimar, in 1892. There, in a rather sketchy way, he seems
to have wished to redeem Goethe's investigations, by suggesting that
Goethe was not disposed toward vitalism or the heavily metaphysical
and abstractive tendencies of those who pretended to pursue science
without relying centrally on experience. In fact, what Helmholtz
manages (rather gymnastically) to demonstrate is that, contrary to
Goethe's own intuition, the very model of science reaching from
Newton to his own physics and physiological optics was completely
GOETHE AND PSYCHO ANAL YSIS 95
reconcilable with the other's theory, and that even Kant's conception of
the conditions of science could be reinterpreted in the empiricist
manner and liberated from the a priori that Goethe abhorred
('Goethe's Anticipation of Subsequent Scientific Ideas': Helmholtz,
1971). Helmholtz goes so far as to suggest that the artist (Goethe,
preeminently) is marked by his "wit," in being able to seize at a glance
hitherto unsuspected similarities among things that could support the
scientist's discovery of invariant laws. This, Helmholtz believes, is
the key to Goethe's notion of the 'archetypal phenomenon', the
Urphiinomen, that, through "artistic intuition," is drawn out from some
marvellously apt observable phenomenon, leading us more quickly then
would otherwise be possible to the underlying laws of an entire range of
related phenomena - Goethe's discovery of the intermaxillary bone in
man is the paradigm, and Darwin (on Helmholtz's view) is the scientist
who both confirms Goethe's intuition and places it correctly in terms of
the actual, underlying, and lawlike forces that explain it and other
systematically linked similarities. In short, Goethe (Helmholtz con-
jectured) viewed science as concerned with the discovery of '.'a common
architectonic plan, one which is consistently carried out even in
apparently insignificant details" (Helmholtz, 1971, p. 489). This, then,
is the empiricist's interpretation of Goethe's unity of idea and
experience.
Helmholtz, however, has drawn several dubious inferences here.
First of all, the sense in which Goethe believed that natural phenomena
were subject to universal law could hardly be captured by Helmholtz's
insistence on invariant, neutral, quantified forces uniformly explaining
the entire range of phenomena of a given domain; forces were certainly
telic in some sense (for Goethe) and linked primarily to the ecological
concerns of living forms - probed essentially by man, of course, who
exhibits such concerns preeminently. Secondly, there is not the slightest
reason to believe that, regarding the natural concerns of man, Goethe
would have been anything but contemptuous of the suggestion that
regularities of the sort Helmholtz was chiefly concerned with could lead
to the higher laws of human nature. It is surely obvious that Goethe
thought of the laws of human nature in terms of social duty - hardly as
Newtonian; also, that one could not really know oneself except as
reflected in the social perception of others, and that one's unity with
nature was ultimately unfathomable but essential. This accounts for
Goethe's many deprecating reflections on the Socratic maxim.lO
96 JOSEPH MARGOLIS
The upshot is that, at the very least, Goethe had some notion of the
hierarchical ordering of the sciences, so that the lower were thought to
be entirely dependent on the higher (in a methodological sense that
bears on the likelihood of hitting on the Urphiinomen: the point of
Goethe's quarrel with Newton), and so that the laws of the higher could
not possibly be discerned .merely by adding to the kind of uniformities
accessible among the lower. Curiously, Helmholtz confirms this in spite
of his Newtonian spirit - but only at the price of threatening his own
vision of science. For he says, first of all, following Goethe: "a theory of
human knowledge based solely upon the physiology of the senses is
inadequate; men must act in order to be sure of reality" (1971, p. 499);
and secondly, rather more surprisingly: "our sense impressions are only
a language of signs which inform us about the external world" (1971,
p. 498). Of course, Helmholtz means this in the empiricist spirit we
have just considered. But Goethe meant it in some more profound
(undoubtedly fanciful) sense in which the ability to glimpse the
archetypal unity of idea and experience was: (1) available, to the extent
that it is, only to those who integrate all their natural powers in a
proper harmony with great Nature; (2) such that the study of man
remains unique and requires special constraints of a reflexive sort -
both pers,onal and social - which affect (as well) the validity of
whatever science can discern among lesser phenomena; and (3) always
a sign of a higher order of relations that eludes us but to which we
adjust in the best way possible (and adequately) in broadly ecological
terms. What Goethe apparently meant was that to the extent that we
discover the Urphiinomen of any sector of nature, we see (in it) the
archetypal order governing an entire range of related phenomena. The
discovery of that order is not inductive, though also not inimical to
induction (Goethe's adjustment of the Baconian theme); and the
discovery itself is not necessarily causal (as it is not in Goethe's own
morphological studies), though it is also obviously congruent with the
discovery of suitable causal processes and may even be focused (as in
Goethe's mistaken speculations about color) on causal processes
themselves. What is important, here, for the methodology of science
concerns the conceptual properties of the idealized - but not merely
abstracted or averaged or generalized - ordering principle that Goethe
believes to be at work in the Urphiinomen, in virtue of which it is at
once experienced as itself a theory of the phenomena that embody (but
do not fall under) an archetype. It is, to be sure, a sign or symbol of the
GOETHE AND PSYCHOANALYSIS 97
NOTES
* Originally read at a joint symposium sponsored by the Boston Colloquium for the
Philosophy of Science and the Departments of Germanic Languages and History of
Science at Harvard University, 3-4 December 1982.
J I have explored what such a revision would have to accommodate in 'Relativism,
History, and Objectivity in the Human Studies,' forthcoming.
GOETHE AND PSYCHOANALYSIS 99
2 The translation is Heller's (1975, p. 25). There is an oddly silly discussion of Goethe,
one is tempted to say very much indebted to Heller's essay, offered by Walter
Kaufmann (1980f, 1, Ch. 1), particularly §§ 11-12, in which this theme is taken up.
3 From Nietzsche's Gotzen-Diimmerung, cited in Heller, 'Nietzsche and Goethe,'
(1975, p. 100). (The English is Heller's.)
4 For the historical details, I have relied upon Ernst Kris's Introduction to Freud,
1977. The connection I suggest between Freud and Goethe is not taken up there at all.
But see, also, Bernfeld (1944) and Jones (1953,1. Chs. 4-5).
5 The phrase is provided by Bernfeld (1944); "Far East" is unaccountably replaced by
"Vienna" by Kris (Freud, 1977, p. 22).
6 Freud (1977, p. 25). Siegfried Bernfe1d, whose account (1944) appears to be the
single most influential discussion, in psychoanalytic circles, of Freud's early views on
science, gives rather a detailed account of Breuer's theories - which are clearly
committed to a close connection between brain neurophysiology and psychical pro-
cesses. Bernfeld also treats Freud and Breuer - contrary to Kris who really depends on
Bernfeld, here - pretty much as equals at this point. For a larger overview of the
Freud-Breuer and Freud-Fliess relationships (which, incidentally, shows Breuer in a
quite agreeable - and convincing - light), see Sulloway (1979), esp. Chs. 2, 5, 6, and
Appendices A and B; note pp. 78-80.
7 Cf. letters nos. 65ff, to Fliess, as well as no. 69, in Freud (1977), in which Freud
declares openly: "I no longer believe in my neurotica" (p. 215).
8 Studies on Hysteria, in Freud (1953f, 2, pp. 160-161). The passage is cited but not
analyzed by Kris (Freud, 1977); also, in Sulloway (1979), also without close attention.
9 Project for a Scientific Psychology, in Freud (1953f, 1, p. 295). Also of interest is
Freud's early objeotion to one of Charcot's hypotheses - on the grounds that it was
incompatible with the Helmholtz-Young theory of color vision; cf. 'Charcot,' Freud
(1953f, 3, p. 139).
10 A great many pertinent references are collected by Eissler (1963, 2, Ch. 3).
11 The text is given in Wittels (1931, cf. particularly ch. 1). It is also given in Walter
Kaufmann (1980, 3, cf. particularly Ch. 1).
12 For instance, in New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (Freud, 1953f, 22, p.
159). There is a cranky but not uninstructive discussion of this matter, comparing
Freud and Brentano, by Heaton (1981).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bernfeld, S.: 'Freud's Earliest Theories and the School of Helmholtz', Psychoanalytic
Quarterly 13 (1944) 341-362.
Derrida, J.: Of Grammatology (trans. by G. C. Spivak), Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore,
1976.
Eissler, K. R.: Goethe. A Psychoanalytic Study, 2 vols., Wayne State Univ. Press,
Detroit, 1963.
Freud, S.: The Origins of Psychoanalysis. Letter to Wilhelm Fliess. Drafts and Notes:
1887-1902 (ed. by M. Bonaparte, A. Freud, E. Kris; trans. by E. Mosbacher and J.
Strachey), Basic Books, 1977.
100 JOSEPH MARGOLIS
Freud, S.: Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, 19
vols. (trans. by J. Strachey et al.), Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis,
London, 1953f.
Gibson, J. J.: The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, Houghton Mifflin, Boston,
1979.
Gibson, J. J.: The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems, Houghton Mifflin, Boston,
1966.
Goethe, J. W. von: Theory of Colours (trans. by C. L. Eastlake), Frank Cass, London,
1967.
Grene, M.: The Understanding of Nature, D. Reidel, Dordrecht, 1974.
Habermas, J.: Science and Human Interests (trans. by J. J. Shapiro), Beacon Press,
Boston, 1968.
Heaton, J. M.: 'Brentano and Freud', in Structure and Gestalt: Philosophy and Litera-
ture in Austria-Hungary and Her Successor States (ed. by B. Smith), John Benjamins,
Amsterdam, 1981,pp. 161-193.
Heller, E.: 'Goethe and the Idea of Scientific Truth', in The Disinherited Mind, expo ed.,
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1975, pp. 3-34.
Helmholtz, H. von: Epistemological Writings (trans. by M. F. Lowe; ed. by R S. Cohen
and Y. Elkana), D. Reidel, Dordrecht, 1977.
Helmholtz, H. von: Selected Writings of Hermann von Helmholtz (ed. by R Kahl),
Wesleyan Univ. Press, Middletown, Conn., 1971.
Jones, E.: The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, 2 vols., Basic Books, New York, 1953.
Kaufmann, W.: Discovering the Mind, 3 vols., McGraw-Hill, New York, 1980f.
Land, E. H.: 'The Retinex', American Scientist 52 (1964) 247-264.
Margolis, J.: :Reconciling Freud's Scientific Project and Psychoanalysis', in Morals,
Science and Sociality, Vol. 3 of The Foundations of Ethics and its Relationship to
Science (ed. by H. T. Engelhardt and D. Callahan), The Hastings Center, Hastings-
on-Hudson, 1978, pp. 98-118.
Ricoeur, P.: Freud and Philosophy (trans. by D. Savage), Yale Univ. Press, New Haven,
1970.
Rorty, R: Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton, 1979.
Sulloway, F. J.: Freud, Biologist of the Mind, Basic Books, New York, 1979.
Wittels, F.: Freud and his Time, Liveright, New York, 193.1.
Department of Philosophy
Temple University
Philadelphia, PA 19122
u.s.A.
DOUGLAS E. MILLER
Loving and hating, hoping and fearing, are only different states of our beclouded inner
life through which the spirit casts its gaze upon the side of light or that of shadow.
When we look through this turbid organic atmosphere toward the light we will love and
hope; when we look toward the dark we will hate and fear (Goethe, HA 6, p. 655: May
25,1807).
It is plain that in his own view Goethe's poetic work was intimately
related to his "ongoing research in physical science" [Goethe, HA 6, p.
621]. His course as a scientist took him not only on a search for data,
but also on an active and imaginative quest for relationships in man and
in nature.
The mode of thought characteristic of Goethe's science presents
special problems the translator must resolve if he is to succeed in
recreating a work like Die Farbenlehre in the "fresh and new" perspec-
tive English can provide. The standard translation of Die Farbenlehre
into English has been the one published by Sir Charles Eastlake in
1840 under the title Goethe's Theory of Colours. Eastlake's interest lay
principally in the application of color theory to the arts, although he
also had a strong interest in optics and was a founder of the Royal
Photographic Society in 1853. His translation has recently been
available in a 1970 edition from the MIT Press (with an introduction by
Deane Judd) (Goethe, 1970), and a 1971 edition from Van Nostrand
Reinhold containing extensive illustrations, a translation by Herb Aach
of associated works such as "Beitrage zur Optik" (1791), and a
selection from Die Farbenlehre as edited by Rupprecht Matthaei
(Goethe, 1971). The translations from Die Farbenlehre are based on
Eastlake, and a facsimile reproduction of his 1840 edition has been
appended.
The MatthaeilAach edition is extremely helpful in its notes and the
accompanying illustrations, but the wisdom of condensing the didactic
DIE FARBENLEHRE IN ENGLISH 103
For the purposes of our didactic discussion we set up distinctions within this natural
order and maintained these distinctions as clearly as possible, but we also succeeded in
presenting them in a continuous series, connecting the ephemeral with the transient and
both of these with the permanent. Thus we were able to move beyond the divisions we
had made so carefully at the beginning, and achieve a more comprehensive view
(Goethe, HA 13, p. 325).
Finding, however, that the alterations this would have involved would have been
incompatible with a clear and connected view of the author's statements, he [the
translator] preferre.d giving the theory itself entire, reflecting, at the same time, that
some scientific readers may be curious to hear the author speak for himself even on the
points of issue (Goethe, 1970, p. xxxviii).
bleiben, so wie mir ununterbrochen alles das mannigfaltige Gute vorschwebt, das ich
seit liingerer Zeit und in den bedeutendsten Augenblicken meines Lebens mit und vor
vielen andern Ew. Durchlaucht verdanke (Goethe, HA 13, p. 314).
Not only is the clarity and grace of the original text missing, but the
courtly phrase "Hochstdieselben" has been transformed into an address
to the "highest self' of the Duchess. A more accessible English
translation of the passage might be as follows:
An oral presentation makes it possible to bring the phenomena directly before the
viewer's eyes and to repeat the presentation of many subjects in different contexts. This
is admittedly a great advantage denied the printed page. May it nonetheless please Your
Grace to accept what can be communicated on paper as a reminder of those hours
which will remain forever in my memory. By the same token I am always mindful of the
debt of gratitude lowe to numerous friends and above all to Your Grace for the many
favors shown me over the years and in particular at the most decisive moments of my
life.
Das Auge hat sein Dasein dem Licht zu danken. Aus gleichgiiltigen tierischen Hiilfsor-
ganen ruft sich das Licht ein Organ hervor, das seinesgleichen werde, und so bildet
sich das Auge am Lichte furs Licht, damit das innere Licht dem auBeren entgegentrete
(Goethe, HA 13, p. 323).
DIE FARBENLEHRE IN ENGLISH 105
In Eastlake:
The eye may be said to owe its existence to light, which calls forth, as it were, a sense
that is akin to itself; the eye, in short, is formed with reference to light, to be fit for the
action of light; the light it contains corresponding with the light without (Goethe, 1971,
p.liii).
"Colours are the acts of light; its active and passive modifications"
(Goethe, 1970, p. xxxvii). In a treatise of a scientific nature it is startling
to find light endowed with the qualities usually associated with living
organisms. A translation of the word Leiden appropriate, for example,
to the title of Goethe's novel Die Leiden des jungen Werther would
clearly be inappropriate here; the objectivity cultivated by Goethe
throughout the Farbenlehre would not be well served by such a
translation. Eastlake's rendering, however, entirely removes the living,
orgruuc quality from Goethe's statement and gives only the
of an inert physical phenomenon, as though light were a piece of clay to
be worked upon. Goethe's point in this section is that the inner essence
of the phenomenon is inaccessible to us, that we cannot define it but
only characterize it through a kind of 'biography.' The phrase "passive
modification" retains the notion that light is subjected to outer events,
but the quality of biography is lost. His translation also obscures the
clarity of Goethe's thought: What is the difference between an "active
modification" and a "passive modification?" The sentence is difficult to
translate adequately, but the following will resolve some of these
difficulties: "Colors are the deeds of light: what it does and what it
endures."
The prdblems encountered by Eastlake in coping with Goethe's
approach to physical phenomena are apparent throughout his transla-
tion; the English reader is often left with a confused picture of Goethe's
intentions in his study of color. Even where Goethe states these
intentions directly, Eastlake appears unable to follow. In section 175,
for example, Goethe describes the process which leads the researcher
to the Urphiinomen:
Das, was wir in der Erfahrung gewahr werden, sind meistens nur Hille, welche sich mit
einiger Aufmerksamkeit unter allgemeine empirische Rubriken bringen lassen. Diese
subordinieren sich abermals unter wissenschaftliche Rubriken, welche weiter hinauf-
deuten, wobei uns gewisse unerliiBliche Bedingungen des Erscheinenden naher bekannt
werden. Von nun an fiigt sich alles nach und nach unter hohere Regeln und Gesetze,
die sich aber nicht durch Worte und Hypothesen dem Verstande, sondern gleichfalls
durch Phanomene dem Anschauen offenbaren. Wir nennen sie Urphanomene, weil
nichts in der Erscheinung tiber ihnen liegt ... (Goethe, HA 13, pp. 367-368).
more comprehensive, and through which we become better acquainted with certain
indispensible conditions of appearances in detail. From henceforth everything is gradu-
ally arranged under highter rules and laws, which, however, are not to be made
intelligible by words and hypotheses to the understanding merely, but, at the same time,
by real phenomena to the senses. We call these primordial phenomena, because nothing
appreciable by the senses lies beyond thel1? ... (Goethe, 1970, pp. 72-72).
Man halte ein kleines Stuck lebhaft farbigen Papiers oder seidnen Zeuges vor eine
miiBig erleuchtete weille Tafel, schaue unverwandt auf die kleine farbige FIiiche und
hebe sie, ohne das Auge zu verrucken, nach einiger Zeit hinweg, so wird das Spektrum
einer and ern Farbe auf der weillen Tafel zu sehen sein. Man kann auch das farbige
Papier an seinem Ort lassen und mit dem Auge auf einen andern Fleck der weiBen
Tafel hinblicken, so wird jene farbige Erscheinung sich auch dort sehen lassen; denn sie
entspringt aus einem Bilde, das nunmehr dem Auge angeh6rt (Goethe, HA 13, p. 340).
Throughout the sensory world everything depends entirely on the relationship one thing
has to another, and particularly on the relationship of the most significant thing on
DIE FARBENLEHRE IN ENGLISH 109
earth, man, to all the rest. Thus the world is divided into two parts and man as subject
confronts the object. This is where the practical person exhausts himself in experi-
mentation, the thinker in speculation; they are required to endure a battle which no
peace and no decisive conclusion may resolve.
But even here the main point is always to see correctly into relationships. Since in
this regard our senses, to the degree they are healthy, will most truly express outer
relationships, we may arrive at the conviction that wherever they appear to contradict
reality they all the more surely indicate the true situation .... (Sections 181-182)
Let us hold a small piece of brightly colored paper or silk in front of a moderately
illuminated white background, gaze steadily at the small colored surface and, after a
time, put it aside without moving our eye. An image in a different color will then appear
against the white background. We may also leave the colored paper in place and shift
our gaze to another spot in the white background where we will likewise observe the
appearance of this other color, for it arises from a form which now belongs to the eye.
"Primare und sekundare Bilder" represent the effect of the form on the
110 DOUGLAS E. MILLER
eye; hence the work 'image' provides a more comfortable sense of what
is meant:
For the purpose of our chromatic descriptions, however, we may consider forms in
general as divisible into primary and secondary images. The terms themselves indicate
what is meant by them; the following will further clarify our meaning.
In the first place, we may primary images as original, as images aroused in
our eye by th object before us and capable of assuring us that the object exists in reality.
In contrast we may consider secondary images as derived images remaining in the eye
when the object is removed, those afterimages and counterimages discussed at length in
the theory of physiological colors.
his work and here we again find a uniquely suited style of presentation.
The images he constructs for this purpose are richer in language, often
suffused with a sense of wonder and inner participation which speaks to
our feelings as well as our thinking, and communicates the life and
vitality nature reveals through the phenomena. Goethe speaks of this in
his preface. "If the reader is to enjoy and make use of [a work
concerning natural phenomena], he must have nature present before
him, either in fact or in the activity of his imagination" (Goethe, HA 13,
p. 321). The sections describing the phenomena represent Goethe's
effort to bring the reader closer in imagination to nature. A section
from Goethe's discussion of colored shadows will serve to demonstrate
this:
Once, while on a winter journey in the Harz mountains, I was making my descent from
the Brocken as evening fell. The broad slope above and below me was snow-covered,
the meadow lay beneath a blanket of snow, every lonely tree and jutting crag, every
wooded grove and rocky prominence was rimed with frost, and the sun was just setting
beyond the ponds of the Oder river.
Because of the snow's yellowish cast, pale violet shadows had been apparent all day,
but now, as an intensified yellow reflected from the areas in the light, we had to
describe the shadows as deep blue.
At last the sun began to disappear, and its rays, quite subdued by the rather strong
haze, spread the most beautiful purple hue over my surroundings. At that point the
color of the shadows was transformed into a green comparable in clarity to a sea green,
and in beauty to an emerald green. The effect grew ever more vivid; it was as if we
found ourselves in a fairy world for everything had clothed itself in these two lively
colors so beautifully harmonious with one another. When the sun had set the
magnificent display finally faded into gray twilight and then into a clear moonlit night
filled with stars. (Goethe, HA 13, p. 348).
NOTE
* Originally read at a joint symposium sponsored by the Boston Colloquium for the
Philosophy of Science and the Departments of Germanic Languages and History of
Science at Harvard University, 3-4 December 1982. My own translations from the
Farbenlehre have been prepared for publication by Suhrkamp Publishers in the forth-
coming volume Goethe's Scientific Studies, edited by Alan Cottrell and Douglas Miller.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
EckermaIll, J. P.: Gespriiche mit Goethe in den letzten fahren seines Lebens, Artemis-
Verlag, Zurich, 1948.
Goethe, J. W. von: Goethe's Color Theory (arr. and ed. by R. Matthaei; trans. and ed. by
H. Aach), Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1971.
Goethe, J. W. von: Theory of Colours (intro. by D. B. Judd), The MIT Press, Cam-
bridge, Mass., 1970.
Henning, J.: 'Zu Goethes Gebrauch des Wortes "Gespenst"', Deutsche Vierteljahres-
schrift fUr LiteraturwissenschaJt und Geistesgeschichte 28 (1954) 487-496.
Schaeder, G.: Gott und Welt. Drei Kapitel Goethescher Weltanschauung, F. Seifert,
Hameln, 1947.
whole, but his conflict with Newton showed that he could not do so,
and must not lest he sacrifice what was of utmost importance to him.
The ineffectiveness of Goethe's polemics indicates that his hopes to
convert science to a better understanding of its own nature were based
on an illusion. Newton understood the nature of modem science better
than Goethe did. We physicists of today are students of Newton, not of
Goethe. But we know that modem science is not the absolute truth, but
a certain methodical process. We need to think about the dangers and
limitations of this process. Therefore, we have a good reason to inquire
what precisely it is that makes Goethe's science different from modem
science.
We will go through the sequence of some of the most important
concepts in Goethe's science. Hopefully, their connectedness will show
itself, though only from one point of view. What follows is an attempt to
suggest this point of view.
We characterize modem science as the way of thinking that has
developed its methodical awareness towards ever greater clarity in the
direction marked by such names as Copernicus, Kepler, Galilei,
Newton. This direction no longer prevails metaphysically, but it still
holds methodologically. We will not describe modem science further,
but assume its contours are known. We will describe Goethe's science
- also a complete thought system in itself - by contrasting it with
modem science. We claim:
Goethe and modem science have a common basis which makes their
dialogue possible. We can suggest this basis by the formula: Plato and
the senses. The dialogue fails when each erects different structures on
this basis. In modem science, the Platonic idea becomes a general
concept; in Goethe it becomes a form. In modem science, the participa-
tion of the world of the senses in the idea leads to the validity of laws,
in Goethe to the reality of the symbol.
Of course, such a simplistic juxtaposition violates both sides. How-
ever, we will try to follow this approach in the hope of overcoming it
later on.
THE SENSES
itself, but the name for a state of things, namely that under certain
circumstances diverse things can be considered similar. Justified though
as this warning about the ambiguity of expressions such as "forms exist"
may be, it however distracts us from the true subject matter of modern
science. All modern science essentially searches for what justifies us in
considering different things to be similar.
Modern science expresses it this way: the actual object of research is
not the individual case, but the law. Similar individual forms develop
because the same law always applies. The possibility of moving from
"similar" to "identical" shows more pointedly that in the thinking of
modern science, the knowledge of law goes deeper than that of form.
When it comes to form, different things are similar at best because
different developmental and environmental circumstances exclude an
identical development. However, a law by its very nature remains
always the same. The law can be stated once and for all in a single
sentence and, therefore, it remains in the richness of its applications,
not only always the same in kind, but identically the same. It is
essentially 'one'.
According to this view, comparative morphology cannot be a basic
science. It is only a preliminary step in the analysis of genetics which
culminates in a causal analysis exhibiting general laws. Of course, from
the 17th through the 19th century, the law was interpreted differently
than today. At that time, one tried to explain the law as an expression
of mechanical necessity, say in terms of pressure and impact. That is,
rather than to stop with the assertion of the law itself, one tried to
derive it from a conception of the nature of matter - a conception
considered more or less as self-evident. Nowadays we have abandoned
this conception and admit to not knowing anything beyond the law
which provides a general rule for the form of all that occurs.
But we must leave open whether this latest direction in physics will
bring us closer to Goethe. First, we must understand the difference
between Goethe's science and any other hitherto existing physics. For
Goethe, form is not rooted in the law, but the law in the form.
The Italian Journey reports the following from Palermo on April 17,
1787: "Here where, instead of being grown in pots or under glass as
they are with us, plants are allowed to grow freely in the open fresh air
120 CARL FRIEDRICH VON WEIZsAcKER
and fulfill their natural destiny, they become more intelligible. Seeing
such a variety of new and renewed forms, myoid fancy suddenly came
back to mind: Among this multitude might I not discover the Primal
Plant? There certainly must be one. Otherwise, how could I recognize
that this or that form was a plant if all were not built upon the same
basic model?" (HA 2, p. 266; trans. from Goeth_e, 1982, p. 251).
What for science would at best be an abstract notion such as 'form of'
a plant', 'concept of a plant', 'essence of a plant', is here presented as a
real plant. In this confusion of two conceptual levels - stated naively
here and occasionally with irony later on - is hidden the primal
intuition of Goethe's science. No wonder that it was difficult for him to
be clear about what he observed, and that he left us with a lot to
ponder.
When Goethe discussed his notion of the primal plant with Schiller,
the latter said: "This is not an experience; it is an idea." It seems that
this reply shattered Goethe's naivete. As a Kantian, Schiller forced him
to cope with an apparently inescapable alternative; yet in its very
essence, Goethe's science denied that 'experience' and 'idea' constitute
a true alternative.
Goethe had to admit: the primal plant was not an object of scientific
empiricism. A primal plant does not exist among the plants available to
the botanist. Even if it could be found one day, even if in accordance
with the theory of evolution it could be fitted into a geological past,
modem science would not consider it an experience but a hypothesis.
But Schiller understood Goethe better than a botanist might have.
He called the primal plant not a hypothesis, but an idea. Let us
interpret this term as Goethe must have interpreted it when he learned
to agree with Schiller. This means we must try to get as close as
possible to its original Greek sense. 'Idea' is derived from idein (seeing),
and means something like picture, form, perception. Goethe indeed saw
the primal plant. To claim that he saw it with the inner eye is already a
dualistic evasion. I would prefer to say he saw the primal plant with the
thinking eye; he saw it with his own eyes because he was able to see
thinkingly. He was aware of its presence in each individual plant, just as
one can see what makes a crystal a crystal in any of its fragments, or
just as - the comparison is permissible since we are dealing with a poet
- the lover sees the beloved in every gesture, in every stroke of the
beloved's pen. Thus, in the Divan Goethe addresses nature itself in the
image of the beloved:
GOETHE AND MODERN SCIENCE 121
But let us not get carried away too fast by the poetic appeal. When
Schiller spoke about the idea, he apparently meant what the poem
suggests, yet in reality he meant something different. For him, the
primal plant is an idealized truth, and therefore a truth which can never
be adequately embodied in the real world. The idea can never be
exactly represented in empirical reality, and in this precisely lies its
dignity. However, Goethe could not but argue against this distinction; it
caused a split in what for him was a whole. The idea in the sense of
Kant's theory of knowledge is a design of the human subjectivity,
though surely a necessary design, since it makes 'nature' possible in the
scientific sense of the term. Schiller's passion for human freedom was
kindled by this way of thinking. But this is not how Goethe wanted to
be free. He wanted neither to create nature nor to conquer it; he viewed
himself as the creature of nature and wanted to understand and obey it.
In making such ultimate decisions, people are bound by their
innermost being and should do no more than truly unfold it. However,
at this point, we. are not asking how Goethe's being conditioned his
science, but how it enabled him to see what almost nobody else saw. To
this end, let us revert once more to Schiller's answer.
This answer would have been even more to the point had Schiller
understood the 'idea' not in the Kantian, but in the Platonic sense.
Goethe's conclusion, "Otherwise, how could I recognize that this or that
form was a plant if all were not built upon the same basic model?" (HA
2, p. 266), is the Platonic conclusion. What connects Goethe to Plato
and separates him from Kant is based on what Goethe himself might
have called objectivity. For him, the idea is not a highest regulative of
our capacity for knowledge, but the real pattern after which the real
plants are actually modeled.
And yet, Goethe's position is not identical with Plato's either. How
often does the philosopher assure us that what is perceived through the
senses, and is subject to becoming and passing, is not truly being, but
merely participates "somehow" in the being of the idea which only the
mind can grasp! From Plato's viewpoint, isn't Goethe caught in his own
personal sensuousness, a mere poet who confuses the primal images
with their reflections? Isn't Goethe's hope to discover the primal image
122 CARL FRIEDRICH VON WEIZSACKER
This is not merely the truism that no case is like another. Rather, the
following is being suggested here: what logic means by the universal,
namely the essence or the idea, is perceived through the senses in each
individual case. When I see a plant as plant, I see the plant.
CONNECTION
mind, but all separation remains artificial. The discrete, the enumerable
exists only in thought; reality is characterized by continuity.
Comparative morphology, therefore, exhibits the unity of reality in
the continuity of the forms. All of Goethe's passion went into showing
this. A theory current in Goethe's time claimed it was the absence of
the intermaxillary bone in the upper jaw which fundamentally distin-
guishes humans from apes. How futile to protect from one's own
materialistic disbelief the faith in what is essentially human - in the
human spirit - by alleging a break of physical continuity, and in such
an insignificant spot! Goethe didn't need to be told to what extent the
human being is not an ape; that is why his belief in the continuity of
nature led him to the expectation that this difference in bones was only
secondary. So he looked without preconception at the human skull and
discovered the fine line that separates the intermaxillary bone from the
upper jaw in human beings as well.
MET AMORPHOSIS
Goethe also asks what it is that starts metamorphosis. Late in his life, he
commented on an essay entitled Nature which has been attributed to
him:
The essay lacks the consummating concepts of two of nature's activating forces: polarity
GOETHE AND MODERN SCIENCE 125
TRUTH
PHENOMENON
Now and then language places the work 'primal' [Ur-] in front of
another word. In scientific language, the concept of Ursache [cause] is
universally used. A Sache [thing] is an isolated object, and thinking in
Ursachen [primal causes] structures the domain of objects.
Goethe coined the concept of a 'primal phenomenon.' A phenome-
non is something that appears, that shows itself. Something shows itself
to somebody: when a phenomenon appears object and subject are
already connected. The Cartesian split relegates all phenomena to a
secondary rank, the rank of the merely subjective; the phenomenon is
the result or the correlative of an objective process in the consciousness
of a subject. A primal phenomenon, however, should be something
ultimate, something that cannot be deduced from anything else. Already
the word 'phenomenon' shows that Goethe's thought is unthinkable
within the Cartesian framework.
Basically, the concept of the primal phenomenon belongs to the
discipline of seeing and to the Goethean school of trust. We ought to
GOETHE AND MODERN SCIENCE 129
accept this gift and leave the primal phenomena as they are "in their
undisturbed glory" (K. W. Nose, About Science in General, 1820). To
inquire after a non-appearing, worse yet, a mechanical reality beyond
the phenomena is to follow a curiosity born of mistrust. If the
reluctance to probe further appears at times as a resignation - "at the
limits of mankind" (RA 12, p. 36.7), to be sure - it also expresses itself
in Goethe's remark, recorded with as much wit as malice by Chancellor
von Muller: "Goethe's hocuspocus with a turbid glass, topped by a
snake. This is a primal phenomenon, one mustn't try to explain it
further. God himself doesn't know more about it than I do" (June 7,
1820). This is how philosophers have invariably described the adequate
understanding of the idea. Once again, the primal phenomenon is the
appearing idea.
SYMBOL
If the idea can appear, then any individual appearance can stand for the
idea. The related can vicariously represent the related. What is imme-
diate on a primitive level, becomes a metaphor on a higher level. In
truth, the immediate sensory experience perceives the idea because it is
indeed the idea that appears; but the sensory experience neither knows
nor needs to know this explicitly. This is why Goethe says in the
'Marchen': "Which secret is the most important? The overt secret" (HA
6, p. 216).
With these thoughts, Goethe places himself within the thousand year
old neo-platonic tradition. Just as we talked of Goethe, the man, in
order to understand what the senses meant to him, so now we must
return to Goethe, the poet, to understand what a symbol meant to him.
Every human being understands human gestures. In every gesture
we encounter what we have just been talking about: a simple event
perceived by the senses simultaneously carries its meaning. Indeed,
since without meaning there would be no observable event, this mean-
ing constitutes its essence. In, within, and beyond what the senses
perceive, we recognize what is considered beyond the reach of the
senses. In the gesture, the soul reveals itself; the gesture is the appearing
soul. To be sure, the soul can conceal itself in a gesture. But it can
conceal itself only because the same gesture could also be a revealing, a
pointing - just as the judgement of a logician can be false only because
it can be true. A block of wood has nothing to conceal because it has
130 CARL FRIEDRICH VON WEIZsAcKER
The darkness peers - and who has not felt this gaze of the night?
But isn't the gesture of nature merely an artifact of the poetic
imagination? Doesn't the poet simply project the stirrings of his own
soul into a purely objective reality?
We, children of the rational age, are bound to ask this way. Yet, let
us not rush the answer. The poet strikes an ancient rock here. The
source that he once again uncovers, out of his own freedom and, as it
were, playfully, quenched the thirst of mankind in the great cohesive-
ness of mythical times. In those times, the difference between the
inward and the outward was not yet articulated. Hard though we may
find it to imagine this, gesture and soul, sign and meaning were still
one. The question if and how the idea could become visible would
have been impossible then, since one couldn't have conceived of the
opposite.
Reflective thinking has to differentiate between meaning and sign.
However, all speech and understanding is based on the immediate
grasp of the sign's meaning. Thinking has made language free and
flexible; but in reflecting, thought is always in danger of turning into
that mistrust which no longer can hear the meaning of a simple word.
Poetry, if we may use Goethe's concept here, is enhanced language.
What language simply states, becomes in poetry a formed gesture, a
symbol that is understood as a symbol. Thus the word is awakened
from the torpor of daily usage and restored to what it truly is. Poetry
lives in the tension of grasping directly the meaning in the sign by
clearly differentiating sign and meaning. That is why poetry is a game in
GOETHE AND MODERN SCIENCE 131
NOTE
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Goethe, 1. W. von: Italian Journey (trans. by W. H. Auden and E. Mayer), North Point
Press, San Francisco, 1982.
Goethe, J. W. von: West-Eastern Divan (trans. by 1. Whaley), Oswald Wolff Publishers,
Ltd., London, 1975.
Magnus, R: Goethe as a Scientist (trans. by H. Norden), Henry Schuman, New York,
1949.
Miiller, B.: Goethe's Botanical Writings, Univ. of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1952.
Bahnhofplatz 4
D-8J30 Starnberg
BRDIFederal Republic of Germany
ADOLFPORTMANN
returning home from Italy, that land rich in forms, sent back to
'formless' Germany, having exchanged the bright sky for a dark one, "a
situation in which [his] spirit sought to escape injury through intense
rebellion." Of the works that Goethe undertook at that time, the treatise
on the metamorphosis of plants was the first to be completed (Goethe
gives 1788 as the year); the saving awareness of having discovered a
universal principle underlying the particular phenomena of the magnifi-
cent "garden of the world" had been expressed in valid form.
We know that within the circle of his friends, opinion concerning this
grand conception was divided, a division that has repeated itself over
and over until today. I shall mention only two extremes within con-
temporary reception. In a commemorative address, the physiologist
Sherrington argues that Goethe's theory of metamorphosis has gone the
way of all unproven theories, and plays no role in contemporary
botany. The botanist Troll, on the other hand, has emphasized since
1926 that Goethe is the founder of scientific morphology. And the
renowned botanist Agnes Arber, one of those best acquainted with the
field of morphology, has since 1937 testified repeatedly to the high
rank of Goethe's botanical studies.
In what follows I shall attempt to contribute to our understanding of
these contradictions, and to clarify the significance of Goethe's under-
taking for our time. What are the reasons for these contradictory
evaluations? One fact in particular: it is Goethe's limitation of his study
of plant metamorphosis to a narrow part of the great realm of vegeta-
tion. For Goethe not only limits himself to flowering plants: in addition,
he prefers the dicotyledons before all others. Moreover, at the center of
his study stand not the trees, but the annual grasses, and - an
important final restriction of the theme - Goethe considers only the
growing, blossoming shoot; he pays no heed to the roots, and defends
this rejection brusquely.
The restriction was compelled by a deep-seated, unconscious need
for a clear theme, by order-creating faculties that we must consider if
we wish to understand his striving for synthesis. However, the botanist
must reject the aforementioned restrictions if he truly longs for a
comprehensive understanding of plant form.
Another fact: at the time when The Metamorphosis of Plants was
written, botanists already knew essential parts of Goethe's discoveries,
or had worked them out in those years independently of him. The
central insight that all the organs along the length of a shoot can
THE CONCEPT OF METAMORPHOSIS 135
theory, and was merely interpreted in a new way (evidence that such
research has brought to light something important). The new interpreta-
tion of the interrelationships between natural forms, which botanical
and zoological systematics seeks to model, has profound consequences.
The forms of the original system arrange themselves into distinct types,
under which in each case .individual variation is subsumed: types of
species, genera, families, orders, classes and phyla. The type stands at
the center of this kind of thinking about variations in biological form.
However, the idea of a gradual change of form throughout the
history of the earth, the fundamental idea underlying the theory of
evolution, shatters precisely the fundamental idea of clearly delineated
types and emphasizes the flux of random variation. The new mode of
thinking also assumes a transformation of serially repeating structures
with rich potentials, certain ones of which are actualized in accordance
with their position in the overall structure of a form, whether it be the
leaf appendages on the growing plant shoot, the sequence of vertebrae
in vertebrates, or the succession of limbs paired along a central axis as
shown so drastically in the arthropods. In representing the form of the
plant, it was necessary already very early on to modify Goethe's
pregnant formula "Everything is leaf." Casimir de Candolle, the nephew
of Goethe's contemporary Aug. Pyrame, introduced in 1868 the term
'partial-shoot' [Paniaischossj for the successive lateral appendages
along the shoot. The new term allows one to take into account the
tendency of many foliage leaves to form shoots which often manifests
itself, if not in three dimensions, at least in the single plane of the
spread of the leaf, in a magnificent fashion. The new formulation is
more reticent, but leaves intact the essence of Goethe's vision.
The most vehement disagreements are directed toward the last act of
the metamorphosis of this 'partial-shoot': to the same degree that the
structure of the male organs, the stamens, has seemed obvious, the
inclusion of the female organs (i.e. the pistil, gemmules, style and
stigma) in the scheme of the 'partial-shoot'-theory has remained a
matter of controversy up to the present day. Meanwhile, the greatest
authority on the problem, Agnes Arber, came in 1950 to the conclu-
sion that structural similarities in the female organs can be explained in
terms of the 'partial-shoot'-theory as well! Moreover, this problem leads
us deep into the difficulties surrounding the origin of the blossom in
higher plants. All previous attempts to derive the blossom from simpler
levels of organization remain controversial, and thereby leave open an
important question.
THE CONCEPT OF METAMORPHOSIS 137
Certain passages of The Metamorphosis of Plants have exact parallels in the history of
art. When Goethe describes there how the imperfect is transformed into the perfect by
saying that the parts initially differentiate themselves in a coordinated and analogous
way, and then enter into a hierarchical relationship, this is something that every art
historian can accept. ...
by means of a certain serious, wild concentration nature turns the horns of the
archetypal steer against himself, and thereby robs him as it were of the weapon he
would need so much in the state of nature, at the same time we have seen that in the
domesticated beast these same horns are imparted a totally different direction, moving
simultaneously outward and upward with great elegance.
Near the earth, the parts are more compressed, broader, more watery, pUlpier; it
appears that the vessels that contain water are formed horizontally, while those that
contain the oils and essences are formed vertically. Gradually, the segments between
the nodes become longer and thinner ...
that an upper node, arising out of its predecessor and receiving the saps indirectly
through it, is provided them in a finer and more filtered form, also as a result of the
intervening effect of the leaves ... The higher leaves and buds must obtain more
refined fluids as well . . . The organs of the nodes become refined; the effect of the
unadulterated saps, purer and stronger; the transformation of parts becomes possible
and proceeds unfiaggingly.
the old theory of saps in order to interpret this still obscure process.
And thus it it that the aged Goethe welcomed the ideas of Franz los.
Schelver, the lena botanist, who had criticized the theory of plant
sexuality since 1812, and built instead upon Goethe's views. In 1820
Goethe reports ironically that Schelver "was sent away with protest
from the threshhold of the scientific temple"; but Goethe goes on to
assert "that a seed, once sown, will nevertheless take root somewhat."
Aug. Wilh. Henschel, who defended Schelver's point of view again
around 1820 in Breslau, confirms Goethe's interpretation:
Schelver follows the calm progression of the metamorphosis, which carries out a
process such that everything material, more paltry and vulgar is gradually left behind,
while that which is higher, more spiritual and superior is allowed to display itself with
greater freedom. Why then should this final pollination not also represent a liberation
from the burden of matter in order that, finally, the fullness of that which is most
inward should come forth out of vital, underlying force [aus lebendiger Grundkraftl to
lead to an eternal reproduction?
for him "puberty ... is for both sexes the moment in which the
organism is capable of the highest beauty. But one may also say: it is
only a moment. Reproduction ... costs the butterfly its life, the human
form its beauty." And elsewhere he notes that "the fruit can never be
beautiful ..." Goethe writes this even at the age of seventy-five; he
remains true to his conviction about "the zenith of life."
For Goethe, the nearest and most beautiful approximation to the
living drama of the archetypal plant [UrPflanze] is played out in the
dicotyledonous flowering plant. There we see expansion, unfolding and
contraction; that which is unified, dividing into a richer reality; that
which is divided uniting itself into apregnant new unity; the repetition
of an eternal diastole and systole. There we apprehend the great truth
of the polarity and intensification [Steigerung] of forms, so that "every-
thing material, more paltry and vulgar is gradually left behind, while
that which is higher, more spiritual and superior is allowed to display
itself with greater freedom."
Goethe recreates empathetically a grand, mute drama; the observer
brings utmost objectivity into play, yet at the same time preserves the
wealth of his world of symbols, of his inwardness. In this interpretive
observer, sensation and thinking celebrate their sublimest reconciliation.
The vegetable kingdom is a "manifestation," not a "fulguration of our
God" - so Goethe wrote Herder from Italy on his birthday in 1787
under the powerful impression of southern vegetation. This depiction of
the metamorphosis of plants, which I have intentionally couched in
Goethe's language, is not intended as a retrospective consideration of a
great work of the past: rather, it leads us to problems that concern us
very immediately today. It needs to be seen that (pursuing the analogy
to the drama) biological research 'in front of the stage' remains the
necessary complement to the work 'behind the stage' that predominates
today. It is no accident that at a time when the pursuit of molecular
research, microbiology and biochemistry has been pressed to the limit,
the need for investigation of the so thoroughly different realm of the
psyche, of living form [die Gestalt] and its behavior, has intensified
itself equally within biology. The environmental research that has
become so pressing today also demands to a great extent deepened
insight into the phenomena 'before the stage' - however much it works
behind the stage, in the service of 'knowledge as power' (as Max
Scheler might once have said).
On the one hand morphology and ethology as sciences within the
144 ADOLFPORTMANN
nature are called for, a science of nature which is not a pale reflection
of today's science, but rather leads to a deepened experience with the
realm of living forms and makes nature for us a true home. Reverence
for the "open secret" of living nature: that is the great demand
placed upon such a new science. May these thoughts on Goethe's
Metamorphosis of the Plants be of help in taking this task to heart.
NOTES
1. INTRODUCTION
Goethe's theory of colors is divided into three parts, the didactic, the
polemical, and the historical. The actual theory is presented in the
didactic section, in the polemical it is confronted with the Newtonian
theory, and it is presented in its development from antiquity to the
eighteenth century in the historical section.
IS GOETHE'S THEORY OF COLOR SCIENCE? 149
We see on the one side light, brightness, and on the other darkness; we bring grey
between the two, and from this opposition, with the help of the conceived mediations,
colors develop likewise as opposites ... (HA 13, p. 368).
Goethe places value on the idea that the conditions for color
phenomena are themselves phenomena:
We become more familiar with certain essential conditions of phenomena .... From
this point on, everything is gradually arranged under higher rules and laws which,
however, are not revealed in words and hypothesis to our reason, but rather through
phenomena to our senses. We call them archetypal phenomena [Urphiinomene) ...
(HA 13, p. 367).
§739. True observers of nature, no matter how differently they think, will agree with
each other that everything which appears, which we encounter as a phenomenon, must
indicate either an original bifurcation capable of union, or an original unity capable of
bifurcation and indeed must manifest itself in this manner (HA 13, p. 488).
Goethe's theory of colors is not physics, not natural science, but a description of mental
capabilities [Seelenkriifte 1 .... A classification of his color theory then follows from
itself. It belongs to the humanities ....
Opticks with a sentence in this vein: "My Design in this Book is not to
explain the Properties of light by Hypotheses, but to propose and prove
them by Reason and Experiments." Newton is therefore no less a
phenomenologist than Goethe: to be sure, he hypothesizes about the
corpuscular diffusion of light; however, it played no role in his treat-
ment of color phenomena in the Opticks. Both forego a statement
regarding a causal mechanism through which color phenomena are
produced; nevertheless, both give a general theory of these phenomena,
Newton through a discussion of certain properties of light, and Goethe
through a discussion of the conditions for the emergence of color
phenomena.
Let us now characterize the differences between the two theories
more closely. In this endeavor we might best start with a remarkable
fact: while Newton states explicitly that his theory does not actually deal
with colors, but with the capacity of light to stimulate sensations of
color in our senses, Goethe is aware of this statement and discusses it,
but apart from taking it systematically into account!
Precisely this statement would certainly be suited to blunt the entire
controversy between Goethe and Newton. After all, Goethe might say
that Newton was simply treating the Powers and Dispositions of light,
but that he, himself was dealing with the Sensations of this or that Color.
We believe, however that Goethe saw the situation quite differently. He
attributed the separation of the Dispositions of Light from the Sensa-
tions in the Sensorium to that very Newtonian theory which he was
disputing. If in his theory he thus refused to accept a role in the
Cartesian scheme of res extensa and res cogitans, which clearly appears
in Newton, then he was certainly more clear-sighted than his inter-
preters who today are all too quick in wanting to reconcile him with
Newton concerning the distinction of objects or levels of reality. Their
subject matter was the same - the phenomenon of dioptrical colors
which was in need of explanation - but their theories were different.
Newton distinguishes, on the one hand, light with its properties, which
have as such no unequivocal relationship to colors, and on the other
hand, sensations of color which can be explained by means of the
dispositions of light. The goal of this explanation is not a statement
about a perception-oriented, physiological mechanism, but the con-
struction of an ordered correlation between disposition of light and
color perception. This could be stated as e = (d j , db ... , d n ), whereby
"e" represents a variable for color perceptions, and "d" the various
IS GOETHE'S THEORY OF COLOR SCIENCE? 159
physics and deals with the objective properties of light; Goethe's theory
is 'science of perception'21 and deals with laws of seeing. With this
approach we must naturally suppress, on Newton's side, the 'psycho-
physical' law, and on Goethe's side, his claim to have explained the
objective phenomenon of chromatic aberration.
"nature in its formal meaning," but also in its material meaning, namely, "as the
embodiment of alI things, insofar as they can be objects of our senses, and thus also of
our experience. What is in view here is the totality of all phenomena, that is, the whole
of the senses ...." (Metaphysische Anfangsgriinde der Naturwissenschajt, Vorrede A
ill)
166 GERNOT BOHME
V. INTERSUBJECTIVITY
VI. CONCLUSION
Our presentation should have made it clear that we have some justifica-
tion for designating Goethe's theory of colors as science. It is an
attempt to gain knowledge which proceeds in a methodical manner,
which aims at a systematic ordering of an objective realm, which allows
its phenomena to be derived from principles, and which states laws
governing the relationship between them. To be sure, this science
differs in many respects from the other modern natural sciences: it does
not ensure the intersubjectivity of its data through instrumental verifica-
tion; its explanations are not causal in nature; it does not anticipate an
infinite amount of potential knowledge through which it could be
continued.
Nevertheless, in all points where Goethe's science diverges from the
basically modern natural science, an analogous structure, a functional
170 GERNOT BOHME
NUTES
This essay was a part of an Institute Festschrift which the colleagues of the Max Planck
Institute for the Investigation of Conditions of Life in the Scientific-Technological
World, Starnberg, presented to their director, C. F. von Weizsiicker, on his sixtieth
birthday. The author is indebted to Christian Goegelin's dissertation, Zu Goethes Begrijf
von Wissenschaft auf dem Wege der Methodik seiner Farbstudien (Munich: Hanser,
1972), and to F. J. Zucker for many stimulating conversations. Christian Goegelein
contributed to the final draft of this essay with his critical observations.
* Translated by Joseph Gray from '1st Goethes Farbenlehre WissenschaftT, Studia
Leibnitiana 9 (1977), 27-54; rpt. in the author's Alternativen der Wissenschaft,
Suhrkamp, Frankfurt an Main, 1980, pp. 123-153. The English translation is
reprinted from Contemporary German Philosophy, ed. by D. E. Christensen, vol. 4,
Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1985, pp. 262-286, with the kind permis-
sion of Pennsylvania State University Press.
1 For a recent survey, see J. R. Ravetz (1977).
2 The rendering of "die Triibe" as grey follows the 1820 trans. of Goethe's Farbelehre
into English by Charles Eastlake. To be noted is that, in its wide range of ordinary
usages, the term seems to carry with it no clear connotation of color. Within the present
context, "dimness", "opagueness", "semi-transparency", or "cloudiness" seem possible
alternatives, no one of those, however, seems wholly adequate to Goethe's intention. -
Tr.
3 "Colors are acts of light", states Goethe, but then adds, "acts and sufferings."
totally from the perspective of this kind of research which was so characteristic of the
eighteenth century. See Kleinschnieder (1971).
172 GERNOT BOHME
8 See the Polemical Section 596 and 456. In the latter passage, Goethe makes the very
clever remark that Newton wanted to neutralize the difference between corpuscular and
wave theory with his 'Definition' so that he subsequently could use the advantages of
the wave theory for his analogy between the theories of color and harmony. Actually,
Newton uses here the difference between dispositions and colors in order to explain the
possibility of producing a color with a multiplicity of lights.
9 It was a certain triumph for Goethe that this improvement was later accomplished.
Newton was not yet aware of the dependency of the index of refraction on the refrac-
tive material, and thus the possibility of achromatic lenses and prisms lay beyond his
conception.
10 Newton's calculation of mixed colors presupposes the thesis that individual colors in
the spectrum are arranged according to the relationship of harmonic intervals. This
thesis shows how strongly Newton was indebted to certain speculative traditions - for
the corresponding meansurements he was forced to enlist the aid of a helper "whose
Eyes for distinguishing Colours were more critical than mine" (1952, p. 126).
11 Theaetetus 156-57, Timaeus 67-68.
12 Refer to §27 of the Polemical Section. Goethe states here that there are at least two
ways in which a difference can arise out of a unity: "First, that an opposition emerges,
whereby the unity is manifested towards two sides ... ; second, that the development of
that which has been differentiated occurs constantly in a series" (LA 1.5; p. 11).
13 Refer to Polemical Sections §143, §544, Didactic Section §352. For Goethe, white
light is not dispersed and synthesized again; rather, the two established conditions
neutralize each other in their result.
14 "In order to be certain, we have reproduced this apparatus of prototypes of
superfluous extremes. This is what distinguishes the experimenter from one who looks
astonished at incidental phenomena as if they were unrelated occurrences. In contrast,
Newton always seeks to keep his follower bound to set conditions because different
conditions are not favorable to his view" (Polemical Section §74, LA 1.5, p. 27).
15 See, for example, the Polemical Section §§178, 438-444.
16 See the Polemical Section §§14, 15. According to Goethe the investigation of
refracted colors should begin with plane-parallel procedures.
17 Polemical Section §70 and following paragraphs.
18 Newton, Opticks, book I, Part I, Exp. 9; Goethe, Polemical Section §190 and
following paragraphs.
19 Polemical Section §325 and following paragraphs, esp. §360.
20 Book I, Part IT, Prop. VI, Prob. IT; also see footnote 14.
21 We borrow this term from F. J. Zucker.
22 Agreement about sense perception presupposes both rules of language and agreed
upon conventions concerning 'normal sight'.
23 In connection with this comparison, see Zajonc (esp. the table on p. 331).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Biihme, G.: 'Platons Theorie der exakten Wissenschaften', Antike und Abendland 22
(1976) 40-53, now also in Biihme (1980).
IS GOETHE'S THEORY OF COLOR SCIENCE? 173
to Goethe, the great danger of any science that aims at proving - and,
we might add, disproving - hypotheses and theories is that it stirs up
all the lurking enemies of truth in the human spirit, which longs to be
able to claim the whole truth when it possesses just part, to have
certainty when it can produce only plausibility. This kind of approach
puts a premium on making the theory appear true: strong points are
placed most favorably in view, while weak points are minimized or
concealed. Science thus becomes rhetorical rather than rigorous and
logical. As alternative Goethe proposed a method, painstakingly com-
prehensive, of experimentally producing the phenomena and enumerat-
ing and describing their essential circumstances as a foundation for the
rest of the scientist's work. The best scientist, reflected Goethe, in the
first instance stays close to his initial insight into the truth by studying
intensively the phenomenon that first caught his attention. He does
this by Vermannigfaltigung ('variegating'), which works gradually and
systematically outward from the initial phenomenon (or the experiment
that replicates it) by augmenting and ramifying it. He must articulate the
experimental phenomenon, analyze it into its basic conditions, and then
vary these. His first intention is not to isolate a cause, the study of
which demands of the scientist considerable philosophical acumen, but
to establish the correlations between changes in the conditions of the
experiments and changes in the phenomenon, with the fullest possible
elaboration of the relevant conditions. Indeed, this kind of work is
essential even in trying to prove hypotheses, and it points up a major
lacuna in Newton's procedure. Consider: Why did Newton choose the
particular circumstances described in his experiments? The only
possible answers are either that the circumstances are arbitrary, and
thus not consonant with scientific discourse, or that precisely these
circumstances produce some notable effect pre-eminently. The latter
alternative shows that a choice has been made by comparing one
instance with many others and thereby deriving criteria that dictate its
use in preference to others. That is, Newton's choice can be justified
only by a more complete acquaintance with the phenomena of
refraction than his few specimens give.
The Goethean method might urge us to proceed somewhat as
follows: Begin with the simpler rather than the more complex, for
example with a single refraction as opposed to mUltiple refractions. For
each of the particular circumstances of the experiment let us then
introduce variation. In some cases we can vary a circumstance con-
184 DENNIS L. SEPPER
tinuously; e.g. we can move the prism closer to or farther from the
screen, we can change the distance of the prism from the aperture, we
can (with an adjustable diaphragm) alter the aperture's size. In other
cases we must be satisfied with discrete changes, though continuity may
be more or less approximated: we can substitute glass prisms with
larger and smaller refra<;ting angles (with a hinged water-prism, how-
ever, we could again perform a continuous variation). Of course we
shall also encounter conditions that may simply not lend themselves to
continuous variation, e.g. the material of the prism; but by resorting
to sequential or side-by-side comparisons, for instance by substituting
identical refracting angles in different substances, we may, by persistent
labor, analysis, and ingenuity, find some other principle of order. By
varying all these circumstances we can actually watch and describe the
phenomenon in evolution and thereby gain a fuller notion of how the
initial experiment fits into the totality of phenomena of the same type.
We should note that this technique really does circumscribe a range of
phenomena which constitute a natural family (and which, taken
discretely, would be infinite), and that it calls attention to what happens
as one approaches limits which in actual practice may be unreachable
(e.g. when the aperture has null diameter or the screen is at extreme
distances).
By following this method of amplification and complication Goethe
hoped, ca. 1792, to produce a completely unhypothetical presentation
of virtually all the phenomena of color, and correspondingly un-
hypothetical but absolutely sure descriptions and low-level generaliza-
tions, that would serve as a certain and unshakeable foundation for
future researchers and their attempts at yet higher levels of generaliza-
tion. The Beitriige zur Optik were to be continued until, as Goethe said,
they should have traversed the entire circle of color. From this basis
science would ascend by a process of rigorous induction. This vision of
science, in its theoretical reticence and its strict induction, is Baconian.
Goethe was less worried by the possible baneful influences of
hypotheses, theories, and imagination at the higher levels, however;
they did not need to be suppressed but only restrained until the
researcher should have had the chance to gain an overview, precise and
comprehensive, of all the phenomena that pertain to the science and
that thus needed to be embraced by future work.
If Goethe had stopped at this point he would deserve nothing more
than a footnote in histories of the natural sciences as one of the last and
GOETHE AGAINST NEWTON 185
ventures that human beings have undertaken; yet it appears that once
we grant the theory-Iadenness of facts we lose the last foothold on a
slippery slope, where nostalgia for the certainties of positivism and the
invocation of a new realism will be of little help. It seems to me that
Goethe already faced this twentieth-century perplexity more than 150
years ago without succumbing to .irrationalism, apathetic skepticism, or
a new variety of dogmatism. The key to his perseverance and whatever
success he achieved lies in the phenomenality of his science: nature and
nature's phenomena, not theories about the phenomena, are its center
and its center of gravity. For Goethe the phenomena are not the totality
of science, but they are where it commences and the place to which it
must constantly recur - often enough with previously unnoticed
phenomena, sometimes with a new way of looking at them, sometimes
even with hypotheses that help us to see with new, more alert eyes.
Even under the regime of theory-Iadenness the phenomena are not
infinitely malleable, and the more one aims at comprehensiveness, the
more one works to elaborate intrinsic relationships among them, the
greater becomes the specific resistance that they offer to arbitrary
interpretations. The great danger in the kind of science that cultivates
hypotheses and theories as the real core of science is that it encourages
one to care about the phenomena only insofar as they seem relevant to
the theory (and then to see and describe them in the theory's terms) and
to treat what is remotest from sense, what is experience able only by
hypothesis, as though it were indistinguishable from (sometimes even
more reliable than) what is nearer to sense. Whatever may be said in
defense of these induced beliefs in sciences like particle physics, it is
absurd to think that they can lead unproblematic ally to a genuine
science of color.ls
If phenomena are laden with theory, if every attentive look at the
world is the beginning of theoretical activity, there still remains the
possibility that some phenomena are less theoretical than others, and
that there exists in the human being a non-apodictic capacity to note
this difference and to start the work of sorting out the consequences. If
this possibility is authentic, it can be realized only by acts of com-
parison, which in turn require something better than a randomly-
assembled group of phenomena. A comprehensive survey, or at the
very least the intention of comprehensiveness and the ethic it imposes,16
is the only basis for the adequate comparison of the less with more. And
a survey conducted in awareness of implicit theory is less likely to be
188 DENNIS L. SEPPER
NOTES
I Earlier versions of portions of this essay appeared in papers delivered at the 1982
190 DENNIS L. SEPPER
meeting of the Claremont Institute in Denver and the 1983 History of Science Society
meeting in Norwalk, Connecticut. I wish to express special thanks to Drs. John Cornell
and Neil Ribe, who have been unstinting in their conversations, comments, and
encouragement, and to F. J. Zucker for his critique of the penultimate version of this
essay.
2 For example LA 1.8, p. 276 and LA I.ll, pp. 289-294. Goethe's unhappiness with
the application of mathematics in the natural sciences may have been directed chiefly
against the reduction of these sciences to what he called Rechenkunst and Mej3kunst (the
arts of reckoning and measuring, viz. elementary arithmetic and geometry). We must
recall, too, that Newton's presentations of his theory, apart from the posthumously-
published Lectiones opticae, hardly require anything more advanced than arithmetic
and elementary plane geometry. Goethe's comments about higher mathematics were
typically generous, and he even conceded that symbols "taken from mathematics,
because intuitions [Anschauungen] likewise lie at their foundation [i.e. just as with other
kinds of symbol], can become in the highest sense identical with the appearances" (LA
1.3, p. 418).
3 HA 13, p. 317. Cf. Goethe, Maximen, no. 575: "Das Hochste ware zu begreifen, daB
alles Factische schon Theorie ist."
4 Goethe's polemics against Newton's theory display some remarkable parallels to his
critique of Romanticism; in both he sees the danger of imagination twisting reality to its
own purposes. See Schrimpf.
5 In Seeing and Knowing: Goethe against Newton on the Theory of Colors, forthcoming,
and in the author's doctoral dissertation, "Goethe, Newton, and Color: The Background
and Rationale of an Unrealized Scientific Conroversy" (University of Chicago, 1981).
6 See, for instance, Newton, 1959-1976, Vol. 1, pp. 96-97 and 187-188. Zev
Bechler (1974) has shown that Newton's early critics disagreed more with the extrava-
gance of his truth-claims than with the substance of his theory, and points to Newton's
apparent incomprehension of their epistemological arguments as beginning the era of
the ''blind spot" for such matters. Below we shall deal with the issue of the correlation
of refrangibility and color; here it should be mentioned that the proof of the pre-
existence of diverse rays in the original light is defective. In Seeing and Knowing, part 3,
I have argued that the proof depends on a subtle question-begging implicit in Newton's
geometrical interpretation. But its invalidity can also be shown by counterexample.
Newton believed that his proof would remain valid whatever light turned out to be in its
fine structure, in particular whether light turned out to consist of tiny corpuscles or of
waves. When the wave-theory of light displaced the particle-theory in the first half of
the nineteenth-century physicists saw no reason to disagree. But in the last decades of
the century the French physicist Louis-Georges Gouy showed on mathematical and
empirical grounds that the wave theory was compatible with the notion that the prism
actually manufactures the differentiated rays out of an originally simple pulse rather
than sorts out rays already present in the original beam. But this was the leading
principle of modification theories of light, which were the chief competitors of
Newton's theory in the seventeenth century and which have affinities with Goethe's
positive doctrine of color. See Wood (1911), pp. 648-666.
7 On the modifications, see Shapiro (1980), pp. 211-235. I believe that most
historians of optics would now agree that the mathematical format of the Opticks is
more rhetoric than substance. This format, plus the greater number of experiments,
often described in minute detail, bolstered the appearance of certainty but did not
GOETHE AGAINST NEWTON 191
various conditions and theoretical and empirical considerations concerning the human
ability to discriminate the colors at wavelengths close to one another. The spectrum,
when viewed as a whole, has an almost eerie beauty, attributable in part to its seeming
to change almost imperceptibly as one observes it. Exactly what hue one sees at any
particular point depends on a wide range of circumstances, e.g. the duration, intensity,
direction, and distance of viewing. Other changes are quite determinate. For example,
as pointed out by Goethe, when the screen is placed at a great distance from the prism
some of the colors begin to disappear, until a tricolored spectrum is obtained.
Apparently this phenomenon is intended to raise a question that is difficult to resolve in
a purely physical framework: what has happened to all those unchangeable indigo-,
blue-, yellow-, and orange-producing rays that were supposed to have been separated?
These kinds of changes, and even more the different dispersive power of various
refracting materials, make any notion of 'the' spectrum fallacious.
12 On the number of spectral colors in Newton and later eighteenth-century accounts
see Hargreave (1973), esp. pp. 477-495. It is likely that when ca. 1790 Goethe
consulted a scientific text to find out about the theory of Newton he read that with a
small aperture it was possible to get a "spectrum" consisting of seven separate,
differently-colored circles aligned in a row; see Seeing and Knowing, Part 2. If initially
he had some misconceptions about the theory, he may not have been at fault.
13 HA 13, pp. 10-20. A superb analysis of this essay and of the structure of Goethe's
method is Gogelein (1972).
14 A christening highlighted already by Matthaei in LA I.3, pp. 302-314, which
192 DENNIS L. SEPPER
reproduces letters exchanged by Goethe and Schiller in early 1798 and represents in
nuce the philosophical rationale of the Farbenlehre as well as an important stage in
Goethe's understanding of the Vorstellungsarten.
15 I have glossed over the question of whether modern discussions of the theory-
ladenness of facts really penetrates the problem of the theorizing that is implicit in
observing phenomena. One issue that is in need of reflection is possible distinctions
between fact and phenomenon: energy conservation can be a fact but probably not
a phenomenon, whereas this rainbow I am looking at is a phenomenon but perhaps not
a fact (though clearly I can make statements of fact about it). Much of the recent
philosophical discussion about the theory-ladenness of facts concerns sciences already
constituted at a highly abstract level, where most of the evidence is mediated by
complex instrumentation, so that the kind of phenomenality that can be claimed for the
evidence is a question. Of course there is the more directly accessible issue whether a
pre-Copernican and a post-Copernican see the sun rise or the horizon sink below the
sun (the complications of which are too great to be disposed of in a note). However,
that it is possible (in thought, at least) to have both look to the East one morning, that
they could discuss the event and agree to disagree, indicates the central field to which
questions about the differences must be addressed. For a discussion of the changing use
of the term 'fact' over the last three centuries, see Sepper, Seeing and Knowing, Part 4.
16 The undertaking of any science already presupposes an ethics and politics of
science, i.e. an understanding of science's place in the being of human beings (in the
economy of their faculties) and in their community. All important philosophies of
science recognize this, at least implicitly (e.g. the positivistic conception of the historical
emergence of reason) - and for Goethe it is an explicit concern, both in his scientific
and his literary works. For a discussion see Sepper, Seeing and Knowing, Parts 1 and 5.
17 The parallels between Goethe's method and twentieth-century phenomenology are
interesting and significant but run into difficulties on the matter of apodicticity -
though the themes of the life-world and the historicity of science in the late Husser!
provide a point of contact again. But if one is looking for parallels with recent
philosophy there is' also the fundamentally hermeneutic character of Goethe's science,
which makes the history of science (or rather the history of knowing) part of science
itself, and which through the doctrine of the Vorstellungsarten is thematically con-
cerned with the horizons within which all knowing is appropriated. For Goethe science
is intrinsically historical, so that it can never be adequately grasped if it is understood as
essentially a result, e.g. by ignoring its ethical and political character (see note 16).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Goethe, J. W. von: Maximen und Reflexionen (ed. by M. Hecker), Schriften der Goethe-
Gesellschaft, Vol. 21, Goethe-Gesellschaft, Weimar, 1907.
Hargreave, D.: 'Thomas Young's Theory of Color Vision: Its Roots, Development, and
Acceptance by the British Scientific Community', Diss. Univ. of Wisconsin, 1973.
Helmholtz, H. von: 'Ueber Goethes naturwissenschaftliche Arbeiten', Philosophische
Vortriige und Aufsiitze (ed. by H. Harz and S. Wollgast), Akadernie-Verlag, Berlin,
1971.
Laymon, R.: 'Newton's Experimentum Crucis and the Logic of Idealization and Theory
Refutation', Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 9 (1978) 51-77.
Lohne, J.: 'Experimentum Crucis', Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London
23 (1968) 169-199.
Newton, 1.: The Correspondence of Isaac Newton (ed. by H. W. Turnbull et al.), 7 vols.,
Cambridge Univ. Press for the Royal Society, Cambridge, 1959-1976.
Raman, C. V.: The Physiology of Vision, Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore, 1968.
Ronchi, V.: Optics, the Science of Vision (trans. by E. Rosen), New York Univ. Press,
New York, 1957.
Sabra, A. I.: Theories of Light from Descartes to Newton, Oldbourne, London, 1967.
Schrimpf, H. -J.: 'Ueber die geschichtliche Bedeutung von Goethes Newton-Polemik
und Romantik-Kritik', in Gratulatio: Festschrift for Christian Wegner zum 70.
Geburtstag am 9. September 1963 (ed. by M. Honeit and M. Wegner), Wegner,
Hamburg, 1963.
Shapiro, A. I.: 'The Evolving Structure of Newton's Theory of White Light and Color',
Isis 70 (1980) 211-235.
Wood, R. W.: Physical Optics, 2nd ed., Macmillan, New York, 1911.
Department of Philosophy
University of Dallas
Irving, TX 75061 -9983
U.S.A.
HJALMAR HEGGE
The topic of this essay will perhaps invite a certain scepticism. What
light can Goethe's early nineteenth-century science of nature possibly
throw on modern conceptions of science? The question will seem an
especially apt one to methodologists and also to Goetheans themselves.
Goethe's own utterances on matters of epistemology are relatively
unsystematic as well as often very fragmentary. Not only that, what he
has said in this field seems to betray a lack of sympathy with the
subject. Of the most important epistemological work of his time, for
example, he says: "Kant's Critique of Pure Reason had been out for a
long time, but it lay altogether outside my circles. I couldn't venture
into the labyrinth itself ..." (LA, 1.9, pp. 90-91).
Although Goethe did not himself undertake any very extensive
systematic discussion in theory of science, he did carry out a con-
siderable amount of practical research within a number of areas of
natural science, particularly theory of colour and organic morphology.
The former was his major preoccupation during the last forty years of
his life. The botanical studies, which led to his theory of the metamor-
phosis of plants, occupied him from his earliest youth. His combined
scientific output comprises many volumes. Of his own relationship to
these scientific works, moreover, he says in a conversation with
Eckermann: "As for what I have done as a poet, I take no pride in it
whatever ... But that in my century I am the only person who knows
the truth in the difficult science of colours - of that, I say, I am not a
little proud ..." (Goethe, 1850, 1, p. 145).
But the main cause for theoretical interest in Goethe's researches
into nature lies in his highly systematic and distinctive procedure in
carrying out observations and forming theories, as exemplified in the
construction of his theory of colour. Goethe's scientific work seems to
be based upon a definite fundamental conception of science. Although
he undertook no extensive systematic discussion of methodological
principles, it is quite clear that he adopted definite principles of this
kind in his research.
195
F. Amrine, F. 1. Zucker, and H. Wheeler (eds.), Goethe and the Sciences:
ARe-appraisal,195-218.
196 HJALMAR HEGGE
II
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basis for the negative judgment of his work in the nineteenth century, a
judgment that has affected evaluation of it in our own century.
Goethe has not explicitly discussed the theory of primary and
secondary qualities, but scientists and epistemologists in the last century
were in no doubt that his scientific work implied a rejection of this
theory, or - as they saw it from their own assumptions about the
nature of science - that Goethe had simply failed to grasp what
'scientific explanation' means, since for them it meant precisely the
tracing back of sense-qualities such as light, colour, etc. to mechanical
properties (impact, movement, etc.) ''What was wholly lacking in
Goethe was the concept of mechanical causality," declared the eminent
physiologist and epistemologist Emil Du Bois-Reymond (1882, p. 21).
This view, that Goethe's theory of colour rested on a lack of under-
standing of the explanation of natural phenomena in terms of quan-
tifiable physical causes, was also behind Hermann von Helmholtz's
criticism. After claiming that Goethe tries to construct a theory of
colour without departing from the domain of light- and colour qualities,
Helmholtz points out that this principle is false: "For a natural
phenomenon is not considered in physical science to be fully explained
until you have traced it back to the ultimate forces which are concerned
in its production and its maintenance" (1893, p. 45). And these
"ultimate forces" are, for Helmholtz and his contemporaries, precisely
'primary qualities' of a mechanical-physical kind, "a world of invisible
atoms and movements, of attractive and repulsive forces" (Helmholtz,
1893, pp. 45-46).
From this point of view Goethe's theory of colour, by restricting
itself to a treatment of the phenomena of light and colour as qualities
(which for Helmholtz and those of a like mind means as "subjective
effects") and not looking for their "real, objective causes," seems wholly
unscientific. "It must be obvious to every one that the theoretical part of
the Theory of Colour is not natural philosophy at all; at the same time
we can, to a certain extent, see that the poet wanted to introduce a
totally different method [from the physical] into the study of Nature
"4
III
remarks in his works. Thus he says at one place in his Spriiche in Prosa:
"The great task that confronts us is to eliminate the mathematical-
philosophical theories from those parts of physics where the mathe-
matical treatment of the phenomena has been put to a perverted use,
due to the one-sidedness of recent scientific development" (1884-
1897, p. 408).
This "perverted use" of the mathematical method he found most
conspicuously in Newton's theory of colour, where a "mathematical-
philosophical theory," namely the theory of primary and secondary
sense-qualities, has led precisely to an attempt to trace the phenomena
of light and colour back to movements in a physical medium. 5
Now it has to be admitted that Newton's theory and method, in their
broad outline, continue to provide a basis for practical physical
research in the field of light- and colour phenomena. Despite their
original and, as indicated, false ontological foundation, they have
indeed proved fruitful in research. The correlating of colour phenomena
with quantifiable physical movement has opened the way to the
discovery and mapping of an extensive area of physical facts, something
which may seem all the more significant inasmuch as it has been of
invaluable use and an important factor in the development of modern
technology. Here we have that familiar situation in methodology where
a falsely based theory proves an excellent source of fruitful research
models. In this respect many recent scientific theories which Goethe
would consider false or one-sidedly "mathematical-philosophical" have
led to progress in research and have proved technologically useful.
According to the criterion of fruitfulness, then, they certainly deserve
their place in science, or as a well-known historian of science, E. A.
Burtt, puts it: "It has, no doubt, been worth the metaphysical barbarism
of a few centuries to possess modern science." 6
But the fruitfulness of these theories is inseparable from their
employment of the mathematical method. Indeed it is the quantifying of
phenomena and the correlating of them in this way with an all-
embracing system of mathematical relations that is primarily respon-
sible for the unique position enjoyed today by physics. So quite
independently of the original ontological interpretation of this quantita-
tive-physical method, the method itself is accorded a high status in
modern methodology.
Now we have seen that Goethe rejects this method in his theory of
colour. In so far as this rejection rests on a denial of the interpretation
GOETHE'S SCIENCE OF NATURE 201
IV
v
So far then, as we have said, there is no conflict between Goethe's
natural science on the one hand, and modern theory of science and
methodology on the other, nor, therefore, between Goethe's and
Newton's theories of colour. Once the quantitative theories, physical or
mechanical, have renounced their ontological or metaphysical claims,
Goethe's and the traditional Newtonian conceptions appear as two
possible, though admittedly quite different, points of view. The choice
between them will, as indicated, be a question of suitability, determined
by one or another criterion of fruitfulness.
However, this 'both-and' attitude, though well entrenched in modern
methodology, was certainly not Goethe's. For him it was a plain
'either-or' between Newton's and his own theory of colour. Goethe's
reaction to "mathematical-philosophical theories" of colour was not
confined to their ontological or metaphysical implications, it was also
directed at their methodological assumptions. Nor was this merely a
204 HJALMAR HEGGE
VI
VII
building and are taken away when the building is completed; they are
indispensable to the workman, only he must not take the scaffolding for
the building" (Spriiche in Prosa: 1884-1897, 4, p, 358, quoted in
Steiner, 1928, p. 59). They function, like the experimental method, as
necessary aids in scientific knowledge, in the developing of the neces-
sary 'organs.' But one must not in principle be content with hypotheses,
believing that with them one has acquired all possible knowledge of the
area, let alone confuse these hypotheses with properly objective knowl-
edge, as is manifestly the case in classical mechanical physics according
to its ontological claims, and as Goethe finds, for example, in Newton's
theory of colour.
Goethe is altogether closer, therefore, to the Aristotelian tradition in
science than to the Galilean-Newtonian. His view of induction recalls
Aristotle's 'intuitive induction,' though Goethe has also applied his view
extensively in practical research, and at the same time formulated it
more precisely than did Aristotle on just this point.
But Goethe's methodological step beyond, or rather in addition to,
experiment and theory-construction is foreign to modem methodology.
However, the matter need not be controversial on that account. True,
today's theory of science will look altogether sceptically upon any
conception of science which assumes a form of 'direct apprehension' of
scientific facts (Goethe uses the term 'Schauen'). This notion is now,
with some justice, discredited. But if we look more closely at Goethe's
use of the term 'Schauen' we see that there is little justification for
scepticism here.
What Goethe clearly means by 'Schauen' is in principle nothing
other than what we would call in, say, mathematics the 'capacity to
grasp' mathematical connections (something which is, moreover, in-
dependent of the question whether the mathematical statements may be
'analytic' or 'synthetic' - a question which we will not take up here).
"Mathematics," as Goethe himself says, "is . . . an organ of the higher
inner sense ..." 16 And as this mathematical ability, which strictly
speaking is not 'innate,' is developed by systematical use, so, according
to Goethe, is it also possible to develop a similar capacity in other,
qualitative areas, e.g. that of the phenomena of colour. One can develop
an organ for the cognition of the objective connections in these areas, a
quality sense corresponding to the sense for quantitative relations upon
which mathematical science is built. 17
Naturally, there are important differences between these kinds of
214 HJALMAR HEGGE
VIII
NOTES
Timaeus. Plato adopts the view that the phenomena of colour, although dependent on
physical conditions of another kind, are nonetheless not a 'product' of them. It is not
the task of science, therefore, to derive the phenomena of colour from, or trace them
back to, these conditions.
2 Newton considered light and colours, in accordance with the revived Democritean
atomism, as a stream of material particles with different velocities, the colour qualities
(which he assumed to arise first in the sensorium) being functions of the velocities of
the particles.
3 This theory is also originally due to Democritus, although nowadays it is argued for
independently of his philosophy. Cf. Hegge (1957). Regarding the phenomena of
colour, Democritus took 'white', for example, to be an effect of the proportionate
distribution of the 'atoms', or 'red' to be due to a certain arrangement of 'atoms' of a
certain shape.
4 Helmholtz (1893), p. 50. The words in parentheses are added to Atkinson's
modern theorists of science to regard it as the scientific method. They then patently
ignore what is specific to the various qualitative domains and the interconnections
within these domains. Rudolf Carnap, for example, clearly thinks that no such specifi-
cally qualitative domain exists for the researcher: 'when you hear the physicist's
quantitative statement, you can infer ... exactly what color he is describing. The
quality, in this case the color, is not at all lost by his method of communication. The
situation here is analogous to that of musical notation .. .' (1966, p. 114, from the
chapter entitled 'Merits of the Quantitative Method'). Carnap overlooks the fact that the
quantitative (colour) wave spectrum as such does not reveal actual qualitative proper-
ties and connections, any more than do, for example, the words 'green,' 'yellow' and
'blue' in our ordinary language. However, once qualitative properties and connections
have been empirically established, they can naturally be expressed in symbols in one or
another language, even in a quantitative or geometrical notation, or one can interpret
their kinetic (wave) manifestations qualitatively. This structural similarity or isomorphy
between qualitatively different domains cannot, however, be used to eliminate either of
them as specific domains of cognition.
7 Goethe, 'Der Versuch .. .': 1884-1897, 2, pp. 19f. An example of a 'primal
phenomenon' in the theory of colour, for Goethe: 'the yellow colour is white light seen
through a semi-opaque medium [Trube]', and an undefined basic concept within the
same domain (corresponding, for example, to that of 'a point' in traditional geometry)
would be 'white light'.
8 Naess (1963), pp. 170f. Goethe touches upon a similar point when he says, e.g.: 'The
causes which lie closest to hand are those which can be grasped by the hands, and they
also seem therefore to be the easiest to grasp with the mind. For this reason we tend to
picture the phenomena in a mechanical way, even if they are of a higher kind' (Spruche
in Prosa: 1884-1897,4, p. 372).
9 Concerning the fruitfulness of the mathematical method (applied mathematics),
Goethe says, among other things, 'that it [mathematics] is particularly useful, especially
when it is employed in the solution of technical problems' (Materialen zur Geschichte
der Farbenlehre, Ch. 'lnnere Miingel der Societiit': 1884-1897,4, Pt. 1). Goethe was,
moreover, very much aware - showing in his time considerable foresight - of the
dangers implied by technological development, as can be seen, for example, in Pt. II of
Faust.
10 The traditional Newtonian theory is constructed as if there were in principle no
specific interconnections between qualities of colour. The interconnections in this
theory consist of relations between rays or beams of colour conceived as geometrical
lines and their (quantitatively) different angles of refraction, rates of oscillation, etc.
II 'Necessary' (relating to connections) is used here and in the following in the sense of
'apodeictic', or 'that which cannot be otherwise', as when we say that particular colour
phenomena occur if and only if specific other colour phenomena occur.
12 Cf., e.g., Hegel's letter to Goethe of 20 February 1821, reprinted, e.g., in Steiner
to the influence of the empiricist tradition that many theoreticians of science ignore,
without argument, a possible connection between qualities as such. For Carnap, for
example, the concept of quality is no more than 'a classificatory concept', which does
GOETHE'S SCIENCE OF NATURE 217
not betoken any link between elements, as do the comparative and quantitative
concepts. See Carnap (1966), pp. 51ff, in his chapter, 'Three Kinds of Concepts in
Science'. Goethe, on the contrary, e.g. in his theory of colour, assumes precisely that
there are such qualitative links, and he describes many different kinds of them. Thus,
for example, the colour quality red under certain conditions appears as an intensifica-
tion of yellow (cf. Entwurf einer Farbenlehre: 1884-1897, 3, §§517 and 699ff). These
links have of course the character of apodeictic necessity. They are 'natural laws' of
,which Goethe says, in the spirit of Spinoza, 'there is Necessity, there is God' (1926, p.
383).
15 For Goethe the experiment serves precisely the purpose of his methodological
principle of placing the phenomena within a system of interconnections in which the
complex phenomena can be derived from the more simple and, in the final analysis,
irreducible 'primal' phenomena. The experiment comes close to proof, and Goethe's
criticism of Newton's use of experiment is in part that, in his view, it does not satisfy
this requirement. There was no conception that we should reduce a phenomenon, an
experiment, to its basic elements, that one should analyse it ... in order to interpret it
in this way ... Newton would not have been able to put forward his theory if he had
the slightest sense of the principal rule which the experimenter should here be guided
by. One took as a point of departure a complex phenomenon [namely refraction] and
immediately suggested a theory which was supposed to illuminate it' (Matenalien zur
Geschichte der Farbenlehre, Ch., 'Mangel die in der Umgebung und in der Zeit liegen',
1884-1897,4, Pt. 1, p. 287).
16 Goethe, Spriiche in Prosa (1884-1897), 4, p. 405. Walter Heitler, for example,
characterizes Goethe's 'Schauen' (which Goethe also appropriately terms 'Anschauende
Urteilskraft' [perceptive Power of Thinking]) as lying 'somewhere between observation
and intuition' (1967; 1962).
17 Goethe's stress upon such a direct (though not immediate!) qualitative method, and
his view that science must look for connections between phenomena within their own
(qualitatively specific) domain, have led many people to describe his conception of
science as 'phenomenological'. Although there are doubtless certain similarities between
Goethe's conception of science and Husserl's phenomenological method, there are
philosophical aspects of Husserl's phenomenology which are alien to Goethe's point of
view.
18 Goethe, Spriiche in Prosa: 1884-1897, 4, p. 351. In this connection it is worth
noting that while Goethe arrives at his qualitative method in theory of colour from the
artistic experience of its cognitive need (his background is a concern with 'laws' of the
art of painting), Newton's theory of colour arose from the need to improve a technical
apparatus, namely the telescope, i.e. an instrument for enlarging, not giving a better
qualitative understanding of, the phenomena. Cf. Bjerke (1961), pp. 54ff.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bjerke, A.: Nye bidrag til Goethes farvelaere, Kosmos F6rlag, Stockholm, 1961.
Boring, E. G.: Sensation and Perception in the History of Experimental Psychology,
Appleton-Century, New York-London, 1942.
Bruno, G.: Uber die Ursache (ed. by A. Lasson), Heidelberg, 1882.
218 HIALMAR HEGGE
.For many, the business of science is to search for causes. So when the
would-be scientist Goethe declares to Schiller that ". . . we are not
seeking causes but the circumstances under which the phenomenon
occurs" ('Erfahrung und Wissenschaft': HA 13, p. 25; Goethe, 1952,
p. 228), he seems to be missing the point of the scientific enterprise.
He only makes matters worse by maintaining that, "Man in thinking
errs particularly when inquiring after cause and effect; the two together
constitute the indissoluble phenomenon ... ['Maximen und Reflexionen',
591: HA 12, p. 446]. "It is rightly said that the phenomenon is a
consequence without a ground, an effect without a cause [Goethe,
Maximen . .. ,590: HA 12, p. 446].
It is clear immediately that Goethe takes issue with certain naively
held convictions about the nature of the scientific enterprise. The
scrutiny of the foundations of science, while common today, was not
something practioners cared to engage in during Goethe's lifetime.
Rapid progress was being made on many fronts, the scent of success
was in the air. Yet it seems clear in retrospect that a careful recon-
sideration of the nature and means of scientific inquiry was in order. By
1890 several philosophers and physicists had launched a critique of the
commonly held notions of explanation, law, observation, fact, and so
on. The undertaking is certainly even now not complete. In what
follows, I hope firstly to show that Goethe's declarations and
admonishments concerning the scope and methods of science often
foreshadowed later developments, and that his understanding of the
'business of science' was often more thoughtfully conceived and con-
sistent than that of his more orthodox contemporaries. After such
considerations we may wish to reconsider Goethe's own scientific
efforts. In the second part of the paper, just such a reconsideration is
presented. In particular we must discern clearly that for which Goethe
is searching in his scientific studies, and also how he proposes to attain
his goal. In addressing these aspects of his thought, Goethe's unique
and, I think, fruitful way of expioring nature will become evident. But
first we must gain some clarity concerning the climate of scientific
219
F. Amrine, F. 1. Zucker, and H. Wheeler (eds.), Goethe and the Sciences:
ARe-appraisal,219-245.
220 ARTHUR G. ZAJONC
thought in Goethe's day and why the reception of his scientific work
was then so negative.
Nature is a grand spectacle which is like that of the opera. From the place where one
sits, one does not see the theater at all as it really is. The scenery and machinery have
been arranged so as to make an agreeable impression. The wheels and counterweights
which drive all the movements are hidden from view. Nor do you concern yourself with
how these machines are put into motion (FonteneIle, 1973, p. 29).
The highest thing would be to comprehend that everything factual is already theory.
The blue of the heavens reveals to us the fundamental law of chromatics. One should
only not seek anything behind the phenomena: they themselves are the theory
(,Maximen . .. ,488: HA 12, p. 432)
A false hypothesis is better than none at all. The fact that it is false does not matter so
much. However, if it takes root, if it is generally assumed, if it becomes a kind of credo
admitting no doubt or scrutiny - this is the real, evil, one which has endured through
the centuries ('Analyse und Synthese': HA 13, p. 51; Goethe, 1952, p. 239).
Against this Goethe would place his own mode of inquiry with its
special attention to phenomena. But let us delay that discussion slightly
in order to explore briefly the role of hypothesis in scientific discussion.
not been able to discover the cause of those properties of gravity from phenomena, and
I frame no hypotheses; for whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called
an hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult
qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy (Newton, 1947).
There is, of course, still the subtle question of what counts as deduction
'from the phenomena.' When Descartes deduces a material plenum
from his observations concerning primary qualities and matter, Newton
discounts the attempt. Likewise, when Newton deduces from the
phenomena of refraction and dispersion of light through a prism the
"rays differently refrangible" of his Opticks (1952, p. 26), Goethe will
declare these to be hypotheses merely, not the 'true' nature of light.
What then is the proper place of hypothesis in scientific inquiry, and
when if ever does a hypothesis become a true statement about reality?
A brief consideration of the works of Duhem and Mach will allow us to
appreciate better the positions of Helmholtz and Goethe.
Plato's mandate to astronomers that they "save the appearances
presented by the planets" begins the tradition which we seek to
investigate. (Duhem, 1969, p. 5). From a neo-Platonic standpoint, the
ontological status of the Greek astronomical hypotheses generated to
save the phenomena was clear from the start. If sensory experience was
viewed as at best only a semblance of eternal Forms, then hypotheses
invented to reproduce these appearances could have little claim to
reality. The constraint placed on astronomers that they use circular,
geocentric orbits was one derived by Aristotle from essentially theo-
logical considerations. As such it was expected to possess greater
kinship with the true reality, whatever that might be. Greek and
Hellenistic astronomers certainly did not conceive the planets as
actually moving in the epicycles or along eccentric orbits as their
theories described. It is abundantly clear from their careful discussions
of the nature and role of hypotheses in astronomy that hypotheses were
conceived of as human contrivances which, when theoretically elabo-
rated, could match all the observations of the apparent motions of
planets and stars. Moreover, this could be done with great accuracy.
Indeed, by merely extending their methods using contemporary tech-
niques of Fourier analysis, planetary and stellar positions can now be
predicted to arbitrary accuracy. Ancient astronomers knew that two
FACTS AS THEORY 225
no one, no matter who, can undertake to give out an explanation, theory or hypothesis
as a fact. That the stone falls is fact, that it occurs through attraction, is theory. One
may be deeply convinced of the theory, but one can never experience, never see, never
know it. (Uber Newtons Hypothese ... ': WA II. 5, p. 170).
NEW VIEWS
The program has not changed materially since Newton's time. One may
replace impressed force (as a hypothetical entity) with various potential
functions like Lagrangians or Hamiltonians; but whether one uses
Newton's original or more 'advanced' formulations, the procedure is
essentially the same. One is not concerned with the 'cause' of gravity or
of the impressed force in general. The laws of motion in no way depend
on whether we are harboring atomistic or field-theoretic visions of
reality. We are, in this view, merely representing what we see abstractly,
elaborating a theory in terms of definitions which we deem helpful, and
positing laws axiomatically according to their usefulness and success in
unifying certain groups of phenomena.
By the end of the nineteenth century, many scientists such as
Ampere, Fourier and Fresnel had indicated their support for such
representational or abstractive theories in place of explanatory or
hypothetical theories such as those offered by mechanical philosophy.
Robert Mayer would write to Griesinger:
Concerning the intimate nature of heat, or of electricity, etc., I know nothing, any more
than I know the intimate nature of any matter whatsoever, or of anything else. 3
But Goethe goes much further than Duhem, Mayer or Rankine when
he writes:
Yet how difficult it is not to put the sign in the place of the thing; how difficult to keep
the being [Wesen] always livingly before one and not to slay it with the word (HA13, p.
452).
Newton has in no way shown that colorless light is compounded out of other lights
which at the same time differ as to color and refrangibility. I consider, rather, diverse
refrangibility only as an artful hypothesis which must faIl before exact observation and
criticaIjudgement (WAIl 5, p. 166).
duces an idol of the study, and it is taken for scientific fact throughout
the following centuries.
From a contemporary perspective, Newton's theory is helpful for a
limited range of simple color phenomena, but Goethe rightly stated that
when one considers a truly full range of color effects, then the theory is
found wanting. Certainly this is no disgrace, but rather an attribute of
all theories. Light is mutable. Colors do arise through the modification
of that input energy we call light by the medium. The spectral decom-
position of light, whether performed by a prism or mathematically
through Fourier analysis, tells one about the prism or about the
character of the formalism used, but not about light itself (Hecht and
Zajac, 1976, p. 43; Sommerfeld, n.d., Ch. 3). One can only muse what
might have been Newton's reaction to second harmonic generation in
which red light enters a crystal only to be refracted so as to come out
violet. The immutability of rays is truly a hypothesis.
In light of the above, what is Goethe's contribution to color science?
As was already indicated, we must not attempt to conceive it as just an
alternative representational theory. Rather, his is a non-representational
theory in which hypothetical entities have no place. Weare not to be
surprised when Goethe declares white and black to be primary and
unitary in nature: One works throughout with what one sees. It becomes
then rather a question of transforming the organs of sense for a
more comprehensive and deeper vision. With genuine phenomena as a
starting point, how does one proceed, according to Goethe, to a higher
view which unifies a diverse realm of phenomena?
GOETHE'S METHODOLOGY
Although his own thought evolves in this matter, especially under the
influence of Schiller, the main features remain clear. In his essay
'Experience and Science,' sent to Schiller in 1798 (HA 13, p. 23;
Goethe, 1952, p. 228) Goethe maintains that one begins with ordinary
'empirical phenomena,' the simple ordinary observations any attentive
observer might make. From these we can rise to data of a higher type
by varying the conditions under which the phenomenon appears and
noting the essential preconditions necessary for the effect to arise.
These he termed 'scientific phenomena.' Some would suggest that one
rest content with these, writes Goethe, presenting the instances of
appearance and non-appearance (HA 13, p. 317; Goethe, 1970, p. xl).
232 ARTHUR G. ZAJONC
The mind too must play its part, not in the reduction or representation
of phenomena by hypothetical entities, but rather in the search for
pattern and constancy in the phenomena. "The constancy of the
phenomena is the one important thing; what we think about them is
quite irrelevant" (WA II.13, p. 444).
From these scientific phenomena one mounts to a still higher class of
phenomena - Goethe's well-known pure, or archetypal phenomena.
Such archetypal phenomena stand as the ulitirnate goal and endpoint of
any field of Goethean research. With this the pattern stands fully before
one as experience:
In order to describe it [the archetypal phenomenon] the intellect fixes the empirically
variable, excludes the accidental, separates the impure, unravels the tangled, and even
discovers the unknown (HA 13,p. 25; Goethe, 1952, p. 228).
Let no one be deceived on this point, the [mathematical) unit is an image created by our
Intellect [Verstand) which separates it from a totality just as it separates effect from
cause, and substances from their attributes (1968, p. 62).
The Intellect [Verstand) cannot reach up to her [Nature); a man must be able to rise up
to the highest plane of Reason [Vemunft) in order to touch the Divine, which reveals
itself in archetypal phenomena - moral as well as physical - behind which it dwells,
and which proceed from it. 6
Before the archetypal phenomenon, when it appears unveiled before our senses, we feel
a kind of shyness bordering on fear. Sensible people save themselves through wonder;
quickly, however, comes the busy pimp Verstand and would procure in his way the
most precious with the commonest (Maximen ... , 17: HA 12, p. 36).
should forbear to seek for anything further behind it: here is the limit. But the sight of
an archetypal phenomenon is generally not enough for people; they think they must go
still further; and are thus like children who after peeping into a mirror turn it round
directly to see what is on the other side (Eckermann, 1964, p. 147).
We live in an age when we feel ourselves more compelled everyday to regard the two
worlds of which we are a part, the upper and the lower, as linked; to recognize the Ideal
in the Real, to assuage our occasional discontent with the Finite by an ascent into the
Infinite (Vietor, 1950, p. 156).
In his essay 'Indecision and Surrender,' Goethe wavers before the task
and 'takes flight into poetry' (HA 13, p. 31; Goethe, 1952, p. 219).
Yet the next day we find him composing his little essay 'Intuitive
Judgement,' confident that he in his science had embarked upon
the "adventure of Reason" which Kant reserved for the intellectus
archetypus, that faculty of the mind "which proceeds from the
FACTS AS THEORY 237
... we cannot escape the impression that underlying the whole is the idea that God is
operative in Nature and Nature in God from eternity to eternity. (RA 13, p. 31;
Goethe, 1952, p. 219)
Goethe in his studies of that whole is seeking his God not so much
'behind the scenes' as through or even within the scenery of Nature.
One final important question remains: how are the boundaries of
natural science, or more generally, of human cognition to be expanded?
If Goethe is indeed hoping to rise to the ideal while remaining within
the perceptual, through what means can such a development take
238 ARTHUR G. ZAJONC
place? The answer will be, through the transformation of man. The very
method of investigation which Goethe has chosen may give rise to new
faculties or organs of cognition.
BILDUNG
the world" (Gadamer, 1976, p. xv), one appreciates the power of 'bad'
prejudices to create misunderstanding. Still, a 'tabula rasa' registers
nothing. In this view, it is through our prejudices that we know the
world at all. But let us drop Gadamer's dramatic use of the word
prejudice and focus rather on man's 'historical mode of being.'
That we see is due to our historical mode of being. In other words,
that we have lived as sentient beings in this world for 20 or 30 years is
not without its consequences. In this facet of our nature, memory
certainly plays an important role. But by memory different capacities
can be meant. I may remember, for example, that the sum of any
sequence of odd integers is a perfect square (1 + 3 + 5 + 7 = 16).
Certainly at one time at least, I thought about this fact even if was only
to puzzle over what my mathematics teacher said.
I may also remember that my wife has red hair, but to do so
presupposes that I noticed the color of her hair. Very few of us possess
the faculty of eidetic imagery, photographic memory, which would
allow us to recall details we have not thought about. Things thought
about, whether percepts or concepts, are then one class of memories.
They form one aspect of our historical mode of being. They do not,
however, by any means exhaust it. Here we come back to the concept
of 'tacit knowing'· developed by Polanyi. When I sit down at the piano
struggling to remember a Two-part Invention, I am certainly not calling
forth a score into memory. I am not sure what happens, but musical
memory translates immediately into actions - into will, without ever
rising up into full consciousness. Examples can be multiplied easily:
language learning, bicycle riding, writing and even more subtle abilities
such as oratorical skill. Each of these faculties arises with practice, that
is from work in or amongst the elements of that field. This is then a
second aspect of our historical mode of being. It is like memory in that
it connects past actions with the present, but is unlike memory in that it
need not rise up into consciousness. To do so may in fact be fatal, as
any good sports car driver will tell us.
It may be somewhat bolder to maintain that our normal faculty of
sight arises in a manner analogous to this second aspect, but this has
been cogently argued. What is of most importance for this discussion is
the light it throws on the practice of Goethean science. From the
preceding discussion we may recognize a concept familiar to us from
the Romantic period, namely that of Bildung or the cultivation of
faculities. The travels and apprenticeship of Wilhelm Meister provide
240 ARTHUR G. ZAJONC
him with much more than a head full of memories. The protagonist of
a Bildungsroman deepens and matures through his travels. He sees
the world differently for having passed through countless struggles.
Odysseus returns home profoundly changed and it is that change, more
than his specific conquests, which is of first importance.
Likewise for Goethe in his scientific writings, neither the eye nor the
mind is viewed ahistorically. Rather each can be understood only in the
context of historical development. Organs and faculties are shaped by
their corresponding natural elements. The eye is shaped by the light:
The eye owes its existence to the light. Out of indifferent animal organs the light
produces an organ to correspond to itself; and so the eye is formed by the light for the
light so that the inner light may meet the outer (HA 13, p. 323; Goethe, 1970, p. 1iii).
"What" he [Goethe] once said to me, staring at me with his Jupiter eyes, "Light should
only exist in as much as it is seen? No! You would not exist if the light did not see you"
(Goethe, 1901-1911, II, p. 245).
The faculties [die Organe] of man freely and unconsciously combine the acquired with
the innate through practice, teaching, reflection, successes, failures, challenge and
opposition and always again reflection, so that they bring forth a unity which astounds
the world (Hiebel, 1961, p. 246).
To grasp the phenomena, to fix them to experiments, to arrange the experiences and
FACTS AS THEORY 241
know the possible mode of representations of them - the first as attentively as possible,
the second as exhaustively as possible and the last with sufficient many-sided ness -
demands a moulding of man's poor ego, a transformation so great that I never should
have believed it possible. 7
I maintained that the capacity of scientists to perceive in nature the presence of lasting
shapes differs from ordinary perception only by the fact that it can integrate shapes that
ordinary perception cannot readily handle (1969, p. 138).
NOTES
* Originally read at a joint symposium sponsored by the Boston Colloquium for the
Philosophy of Science and the Departments of Germanic Languages and History of
Science at Harvard University, 3-4 December 1982. It is a pleasure to acknowledge
the very considerable assistance which Professor Frederick Amrine so willingly
provided in matters of both content and style. His criticisms served always to clarify
FACTS AS THEORY 243
and strengthen this essay. lowe much also to conversations with Professors Ron Brady,
Alan Cottrell and Mr. Christopher Bamford.
I On Aristotelian and corpuscular physics, see J. L. Heilbron (1982), pp. 11-38.
S Goethe, from a letter to Soret, 30 December 1823, quoted by Rike Wankmiiller (HA
13,p.616).
6 Eckermann (1964),13 Feb. 1829, p. 144.
7 Goethe (1846), p. 198.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Broudy, H. S.: 'Tacit Knowing as a Rationale for Liberal Education', Teachers College
Record 80 (1979) 446-462.
Cassirer, E.: Platonic Renaissance in England (trans. by J. P. Pettegrove), Gordian
Press, New York, 1970.
Descartes, R: Discourse on Method, Optics, Geometry and Meteorology (trans. by P. J.
Olscamp), Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis, 1965.
Duhem, P.: The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory (trans. by P. Wiener),
Athenaeum, New York, 1974.
Duhem, P.: To Save the Phenomena (trans. by E. Doland and C. MaschJer), Univ. of
Chicago Press, Cl).icago, 1969.
Eckermann, J. P.: Conversations with Goethe (trans. c. O'Brien), Ungar, New York,
1964.
Fontenelle, B. de: Entretiens sur la pluralite des mondes, Marabout Univ. (Gerard and
Co.), Marabout, 1973.
Furley, D. J.: 'Aristotle and the Atomists on Motion in a Void', in Motion and Time,
Space and Matter. Interrelations in the History and Philosophy of Science (ed. by P.
K. Machamer and R G. Turnbull), Ohio State Univ. Press, Columbus, 1976, pp.
83-100.
Gadamer, H.-G.: Philosophical Hermeneutics, Univ. of California Press, Berkeley,
1976.
Gadamer, H.-G.: Truth and Method (trans. by G. Barden and J. Cumming), Seabury
Press, New York, 1975.
Galilei, Galileo: Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences (trans. by A. de Salvio),
Dover Publications, New York, 1954.
Goethe, J. W. von: Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe und F. H. Jacobi (ed. by M. Jacobi),
Weidmann, Leipzig, 1846.
Goethe, J. W. von: Goethe's Botanical Writings (trans. by B. Mueller), Univ. of Hawaii
Press, Honolulu, 1952.
Goethe, J. W. von: Goethes Gespriiche, Biedermann, Leipzig, 1901-1911.
Goethe, J. W. von: Theory of Colours (trans. by c. L. Eastlake), M. 1. T. Press,
Cambridge, Mass., 1970.
Hanson, N. R 'The Logic of Discovery',lournal of Philosophy 55 (1958) 1073-1089.
244 ARTHUR G. ZAJONC
Wallace, W. A.: 'Causes and Forces in Sixteenth Century Physics', Isis 69 (1978) 400-
412.
Westfall, R. S.: The Construction of Modern Science, Cambridge Univ. Press,
Cambridge, 1977.
Whitehead, A. N.: Science and the Modern World, Free Press, New York, 1967.
Department of Physics
Amherst College
Amherst, MA 01002
u.s.A.
CHRISTOPH GOGELEIN
Idea Condition
Archetypal phenomenon
Conceptual Mode Phenomenon
Light Darkness
Color
Eye Turbidity
(a) The idea appears as archetypal (a) Light appears as color when it
phenomenon when it is limited by is limited by darkness.
the condition.
The archetypal phenomenon is Color is not light, but rather the
not an idea, yet it stands at the interaction of light and shadow,
boundary of the idea, and the idea "the image of light" (Goethe, LA
lies beyond what is accessible to 1.4, p. 361). To the extent that it is
human beings. visible, light is always conditioned
and thus colored.
However, often the word 'idea' is However, often 'light' is also used
also used for something not transcendently, but rather for
comprehensible to or produced by that which radiates visibly, which
a human being. comes from the sun.
(b) The conceptual mode strives (b) The eye grasps the colors that
to order the multiplicity of arise in encountering turbidity
phenomena, to make visible a through opposition and strives to
context. create a whole.
Through anticipation of order - It sees the color. Seeing is as it
producing ideas - insight into the were the creation of a whole
archetypal. phenomenon is (Goethe, LA 1.4, pp. 33, 38 and
prepared. 60), the comprehension of infinite
multiplicity (Goethe, WA 1.49 2 , p.
234, 1Sf.).
(c) The archetypal phenomenon (c) Turbidity is the 'corporeality,'
manifests itself within the the 'stuff of color. However, often
phenomena; it is borne by each turbidity only becomes visible by
phenomenon. Yet on the other virtue of color (Goethe, LA 1.4, p.
hand, the phenomena only 182f.).
become possible by virtue of the
archetypal phenomenon.
A phenomenon manifests and Turbidity can be compared with
hides simultaneously (through its the veil, which conceals and
singularity). reveals.
(e) Initially, turbidity can stand generally for this world of ours, for
this turbid world of appearances, which works upon the eye, stands
opposite to it. This is comparable to the world of phenomena, of
experience, in the way that Goethe opposes idea and experience.
Moreover, 'turbidity' also performs (as we have already indicated)
the function of a vehicle: it is the corporeality of color, its medium
(Goethe, LA 1.8, pp. 226f). In the same way, the archetypal phenome-
non appears within the series of phenomena.
Now since the upper group as a whole stands as it were transcendent
with regard to the lower group, i.e. since their relationship corresponds
to that described above respectively between light/darkness and eye/
turbidity or between idea/condition and conceptual mode/phenome-
non, there exists not only an analogy, but also a relationship like
idea/appearance, i.e. like a ground to its realization. And since this
ground is present to us in appearance and only in appearance - in the
same way that we have actually developed the epistemology out of the
theory of color and have not been able to separate the two completely
- we must now term the relationship of the lower part (of the theory of
color) to the upper (epistemology) a symbolic one, and say in this
sense: the theory of color is the symbolism of insight.
If the upper part of the scheme represents insight and the lower part
appearance, then because of these relationships we can now say as well
that insight is an appearance (here the appearance of the archetypal
phenomenon or the idea within it), and that the locus of the appearance
is the human being.
The assertion 'Light does not consist of individual finished colors' is
analogous to the assertion 'The idea (the One, the whole) does not
consist of individual finished appearances (ideas, parts).' Insight is
precisely the 'generation,' the 'creation' of the appearances and their
reembodiment in the idea. If one wants to complete the scheme as an
image, then one could write in the middle between the two groups
'appearance,' in accord with the way in which 'archetypal phenomenon'
stands above and 'color' stands below between the transcendent and the
immanent part.
In order to complement and free up the relationships suggested by
the spatial ordering used until now, let us consider yet a second,
somewhat different ordering:
THE SYMBOLISM OF INSIGHT 253
Idea Light
Conceptual Mode Arch. Phenom. Phenomenon Eye Color Opacity
Condition Darkness
Here the 'transcendent' opposing terms are at the top and bottom,
and in between lies a level of conjunction or mediation, the world of
appearance, in which the human being as viewer and thinker is active
and allows the archetypal phenomenon and color to appear within him-
or herself.
Just as in the scheme in LA 1.3, p. 440, the colors from the section
"Subject" (Physiological Colors) in the Entwurf einer Farbenlehre are
placed under 'light'; the colors from the section "Mediation" (Physical
Colors) are placed under 'medium' (opacity); and the colors from the
section "Object" (Chemical Colors) are placed under 'darkness,' one
could also organize the three levels as subject/mediation/object and
view them symbolically as God and the Devil with the human being in
the middle, as Goethe does in Maximen und Reflexionen, No. 429,
where an analogy between the human being and color, their standing
between polarities, is expressed thus: "We ascribe our states now to
God, now to the Devil, and are mistaken in both: within ourselves lies
the enigma, that we are the progeny of two worlds. It is just so with
color: one seeks it now in the light, now outside in the universe, and
cannot find it just where it is at home."
Now we are able to term insight also 'the appearance of truth.' In the
process, the human being plays the decisive role, for the truth expresses
itself through human thinking and acting.
If this is central to the conception of human nature, then a defense of
the nexus described above, i.e. of Goethe's concept of truth, is simul-
taneously a defense of the vocation of human beings.
The sense in which the human condition and this nexus are related is
expressed pictorially in the 'myth of cosmogony' at the end of the eighth
book of Goethe's autobiography Poetry and Truth [Dichtung und
Wahrheit].
NOTES
* Originally published as Chapter 3.1 of G6gelein (1972). Translated by Frederick
Amrine and Francis J. Zucker. This original translation appears with the kind permis-
sion of Hanser Verlag.
254 CHRISTOPH G0GELEIN
1 By 'theory of color' I mean here not the text of Goethe's Theory of Color [Zur
Farbenlehre], but rather the theory in its perhaps somewhat incomplete form; its basic
features are shown also in the section of Zur Farbenlehre entitled "General Introspec-
tive Views" ["Allgemeine Ansichten nach innen"j. See also Gogelein, 1972, section
2.1225.
2 We might also substitute throughout 'contemplative viewing' [Anschauen] for 'insight'
[Einsehen]; Goethe himself employs the term, placing it opposite "regarding" [Ansehen]
in the schema at LA 1.3, p. 440.
3 Later we shall adopt the less cautious formulation (Gogelein, 1972, section 1.3, end):
'the theory of color is the symbolism of insight.'
4 This schema is not completely univeral - indeed, it cannot be, since our inquiry is
founded upon a consideration of Goethe's work on color.
5 Naturally we presuppose here a knowledge of the previous chapters, and thus we no
longer adduce everywhere 'demonstrations' that Goethe thought in this way.
6 One might term this relationship symbolic; i.e. it corresponds to the relation that a
symbol bears to an object.
7 Cf. Gogelein, 1972, footnote 504. [''The meaning of 'sense' [Sinn] is clarified in part
by saying that a pronounced giving and taking, action and reaction is possible." -
supplied by Tr.].
BIBLIOGRAPHY
C. Gogelein, Zu Goethes Begriff von Wissenschaft auf dem Wege der Methodik seiner
FarbstudiefJ, Carl Hanser Verlag, Miinchen, 1972.
CONTEMPORARY RELEVANCE:
A VIABLE ALTERNATIVE?
RONALD H. BRADY
INTRODUCTION
When Aristotle noted that animals within the same group possessed the
same parts modified only "by excess or defect," he implied that the
difference between these organisms was merely one of transformation
- i.e. that some underlying identity was preserved through all the
changes. The implication still holds, for it is obvious that the concept of
homology postulates an identity of positional plan as well as an identity
of organs (since the identify between the organs is often argued on the
identity of their connections). Yet morphologists are not in the habit of
giving that plan any definite form.
In actual taxonomic practice, although one assumes that all verte-
brates are built upon a single schema, membership in the phylum is
decided by possession, not of an entire plan, but of one very general
character - the axial skeleton. Of course, the identification of this
character implies the rest of the plan (as its context), but no attempt
need be made to trace it out. The full plan, oddly enough, remains an
object of speculation. (Darwin spoke of the "unknown progenitor" of
the vertebrates, or of any other phylum.)
When we compare fishes and tetrapods, for instance, the presumed
homologies between fins and limbs are not clear. The conceptual
problem is once again a standard of comparison - something that
would act as a guide in our attempt to trace the transformation between
fins and limbs. A good deal of morphological guesswork has been
concentrated on this problem, but without better evidence - i.e.
enough transitional forms between fins and limbs to make the posi-
tional relations clear - the answers must remain questionable. Of
course, the more distant the forms, the more difficulty we have in
262 RONALD H. BRADY
zygapophysi&. " .
"''C'
.. __ ----•.neurapophysill.
diapophysis.
---pleurapophysis.
parapophysia . .••..
bremapophYllis.
:'
zygapophysis. , .. , . . ,
Fig. 1.
When the positional data is fairly clear, as is the case when the
distance between forms is not great, homology is traced by direct
l]latching of connections and composition. When these are somewhat
ambiguous, however, the morphologist may still determine homology
through the implications of grouping information (see preceding
section). When the empirical data is too impoverished to clarify groups,
the investigator may still form a hypothesis of relation by proposing a
GOETHE'S MORPHOLOGY 265
Fig. 3.
GOETHE
forms from one original plant becomes clear to me and more exciting. Only when we
have accepted this idea will it be possible to determine genera and species exactly. So
far this has, I believe, been done in a very arbitrary way. At this state of my botanical
philosophy, I have reached an impasse, and I do not see how to get out of it. The whole
subject seems to me to be profound and of far-reaching consequence.
Naples
May 17, 17.87
I must also tell you confidently that I am very close to the reproduction and organiza-
tion of plant.s, and that it is the simplest thing imaginable. This climate offers the best
possible conditions for making observations. To the main question - where the germ is
hidden - I am quite certain I have found the answer; to the others I already see a
general solution, and only a few points have still to be formulated more precisely. The
Primal Plant is going to be the strangest creature in the world, which Nature herself
shall envy me. With this model and the key to it, it will be possible to go on forever
inventing plants and know that their existence is logical; that is to say, if they do not
actually exist, they could, for they are not the shadow phantoms of vain imagination,
but possess an inner necessity and truth. The same law will be applicable to all other
living organisms.
119
Just as we have now sought to explain the protean organs of the vegetating and
GOETHE'S MORPHOLOGY 271
flowering plant all from a single organ, the leaf, which commonly unfolds itself at each
node; so we have also attempted to refer to leaf-form those fruits which closely cover
their seeds.
120
It goes without saying that we must have a general term to indicate this variously
metamorphosed organ, and to use in comparing the manifestations of its form; we have
hence adopted the word leaf But when we use this, it must be with the reservation that
we accustom ourselves to relate the phenomena to one another in both directions. For
we can just as well say that the stamen is a contracted petal, as we can say of the petal
that is a stamen in a state of expansion. And we can just as well say that a sepal is a
contracted stem-leaf, approaching a certain degree of refinement, as that a stem-leaf is a
sepal, expanded through an intrusion of cruder saps.
121
In the same way it may be said of the stem that it is an expanded flowering and fruiting
phase, just as we have predicated of the latter that it is a contracted stem.
the same place in the topography of the stem - the sepals will come
between the foliar members and the petals, for instance - but this is
hardly a criterion of recognition. Tulips move directly from leaves to
petals, omitting the sepal stage entirely, but no one wants to call its
petals sepals for that reason. But just because it is not a criterion of
recognition, positional information can be used in another manner.
If we take the 'node' as a point at which some appendicular organ
appears, then we find that these nodal points are multivalent. In the
'normal' progression of any particular flowering species, we are able to
predict what sort of organ will arise at which node. But in an 'abnormal'
progression the same node may give rise to something other than the
expected form. In the case of 'doubled' flowers, for example, we find
that the group of nodes that would usually produce stamens give petals
instead. In a more extreme reversal of the ordinary progression, the
whorl of nodes that usually produce the corolla may go vegetative and
produce foliage leaves instead. Due to such violations of the usual
progression we learn that a single nodal position may be capable of
giving rise to several different forms, which fact suggests, upon reflec-
tion, that these forms may share an underlying identity.
This suggestion is strengthened when we find, in the same flower, not
only petals and stamens but forms intermediate between the two, often
moving so gradually from the petal-like to the stamen-like that they
form a smoothly graded series. Here we actually seem to 'see' the
metamorphosis of petal to stamen, or back again, for the intermediate
series gives the appearance of 'snaphots' of a continuous transforma-
tion. Such intermediates are also found between petal and pistil,
stem-leaf and sepal, sepal and petal, etc. Through his consideration of
these apparent transformations, plus the multivalence of the node,
Goethe' concluded that whether the plant produces foliar, floral, or
other members - "it is still the same organs which, with different
destinies and under protean shapes, fulfill the part prescribed by
Nature."
But if this is homology, it is neither 'special' nor 'general' homology,
for it makes no use of their criteria. Goethe's common organ, or leaf, is
not a simplification of foliar members. All empirical forms are, for him,
equally particularized, and his general organ can be general only by
lacking such particularity. His leaf accomplishes this requirement by
having no form at all. To say that these organs are 'the same' means
here only that they can occupy the same nodal position and that
GOETHE'S MORPHOLOGY 273
If Goethe did not construct an ideal schema, the 'one model' [Muster]
upon which all plants were built might seem rather problematic. What
could he have had in mind? Given the tendency of biologists, then and
now, to conceive of any plan as a construction of fixed parts or
positions, it would be difficult to read his 'one model' in any other way.
Goethe evidently worried about the tendency himself. In 1817 he
decided to add an
introduction to his botanical writings which would
point the reader in the right direction. The piece was titled Formation
and Transformation (Bildung und Umbildung: Goethe, 1963), and the
opening paragraphs of the second section - 'The Intention Intro-
duced" - follow:
If we become attentive to natural objects, particularly living ones, in such a manner as
to desire to achieve an insight into the correlation of their nature and activity, we
believe ourselves best able to come to such a comprehension through a division of the
parts, and this method is suitable to take us very far. With but a word one may remind
the friends of science of what chemistry and anatomy have contributed to an intensive
and extensive view of Nature.
But these analytic efforts, continued indefinitely, produce many disadvantages. The
living may indeed be separated into its elements, but one cannot put these back
together and revive them. This is true even of inorganic bodies, not to mention organic
ones.
For this reason, the urge to cognize living forms as such, to grasp their outwardly
visible and tangible parts contextually, to take them as intimations of that which is
inward, and so master, to some degree, the whole in an intuition, has always arisen in
men of science. How closely this scientific demand is tied to the artistic and imitative
impulses need not be worked out in detail.
One finds, therefore, numerous attempts in the course of art, learning, and science,
274 RONALD H. BRADY
to found and develop a study which we call morphology. The varied forms in which
these attempts appear will be discussed in the historical section.
The German has the word Gestalt for the complex of existence of an actual being.
He abstracts, with this expression, from the moving, and assumes a congruous whole to
be determined, completed, and fixed in its character.
But if we consider Gestalts generally, especially organic ones, we find that independ-
ence, rest, or termination nowhere appear, but everything fluctuates rather in continu-
ous motion. Our speech is therefore accustomed to use the word Bildung pertaining to
both what has been brought forth and the process of bringing-forth.
If we would introduce a morphology, we ought not to speak of the Gestalt, or if we
do use the word, should think thereby only of an abstraction - a notion of something
held fast in experience but for an instant.
What has been formed is immediately transformed again, and if we would succeed,
to some degree, to a living view of Nature, we must attempt to remain as active and as
plastic as the example she sets for us.
Or again, how can the intelligent student of the human frame consider the back-
bone, with all its numerous joints or vertebrae, and consider the gradual modification
which these undergo downwards to the sacrum and coccyx, and upwards into the atlas
and axis, without the notion of the vertebra in abstract, as it were, gradually dawning in
his mind: the conception of an ideal something which shall be a sort of mean between
these actual forms, each of which may then be conceived as a modification of the
,abstract or typical vertebra?
Such an idea, once clearly apprehended, will hardly permit the mind which it
informs to rest at this point. ... What can be more natural than to take another step -
to conceive the skull as a portion of the vertebral column still more altered than the
sacrum or the coccyx ... ?
Fig. 4.
gaps or at either end of the series and observing the result. When the
movement is strengthened or made smoother the new form may be left
in place. But if the impression of movement is weakened or inter-
rupted, the new form must be rejected. Thus the context of movement
is itself a criterion by which we accept or reject new forms.
The movement of such an extensive series does not preserve any
particular schema but the trivial form on the lower right, for connec-
tions are themselves transformed during the course of the series. The
only general element besides the trifoliate schema is the movement
itself, which is also the element by which membership may be deter-
mined. Huxley's remarks indicate that he was quite cognizant of the
dynamic aspect of a graded series, since his statement that the vertebrae
- which are fixed particulars - are seen to undergo 'gradual modifica-
tion' can only refer to the sort of 'seeing' that intends the movement of
the series. Yet Huxley's habits of mind, in which he is hardly alone, led
him to miss the obvious analysis. The impression of 'gradual modifica-
tion' cannot depend any more on what each form has in common with
its neighbors than upon what it does not share with them. Change
demands difference, and continuous change, continuous difference. We
can take the continuity of the series as an indication of a common
underlying schema only by a sort of mental laziness - we do not care
to undertake the problem of how things may be united by difference,
prefering the empty alternative that they were not really different at all
- that is, they are united by sameness.
Having recognized the function of the intended movement, we are in
a position to admit what Huxley could not. We are able to 'see' such
movement between the forms only by a distribution of sameness and
difference between them. We intend the dynamic context because by it
the lawful relation between the forms is made manifest. All this usually
happens tacitly, as an unnoticed aspect of ordinary perception, but the
fact that it is normally unnoticed does not hinder our analysis of it now.
And it is at this point in the analysis that we shall begin to recover
Goethe's meaning.
Notice that in order to take the forms as parts of a continuity, we
must cancel their independence. If we intend a continuous movement,
we cannot recognize the stasis of the empirical particulars in such a
manner as to contradict the movement. We compromise with the
sensible conditions by taking each individual form as an arrested stage
of the transformation, akin to a series of photographs which break a
278 RONALD H. BRADY
." \
Fig. 5.
rest of the series, they are quite unlike. But let the observer work
through the series, as Goethe claimed that he did, both forward and
backward, until it becomes a continuous movement, and then glance
again at the extracted forms. If these can be placed within the context of
the movement of the whole series they will not longer seem unlike.
They will, in fact, bear a distinct resemblance to each other, and bear it
so strongly when the trick is learned that the impression arises that they
are somehow the same form. Here is the intuited 'single form' of the
series, but it cannot be equated with anything static.
GOETHE'S MORPHOLOGY 279
FORM AS MOVEMENT
upon the former. But can the sort of movement that I have been
following itself be thematized? If we resurrect the problem of under-
lying unity at this level, can we find a basic element or elements from
which the complexities of plant metamorphosis are built up? The
answer seems to be yes.
The movement of the stem-leaf series depicted in Figure 4 is
detected a posteriori - i.e. by comparing the range of forms on the
stem - and of course, this exact movement belongs only to the plant
from which the leaves were taken. But when we compare this group of
forms with those produced by other plants of the same species, it
becomes obvious that all share a common transformation. All members
of this species begin from a relatively small and 'filled-in' version of the
leaf and progress first by an expansion in size and an articulation
through division (i.e., through the division of the plane of the leaf into
separate branches), and then by a shrinking and a simplification of the
branch pattern. Given a reasonable sample of individual plants within
the species, the mind quickly seizes upon the transformation charac-
teristic to all. It is this characteristic transformation that is co-extensive
with the species. (It is also this transformation that we tend to pick out
of Figure 4, for it is far easier to recognize a characteristic transforma-
tion than. the unique one.) Of course, by my tactic of describing the
movement of the entire sequence in terms of two transitions, I have
already suggested the possibility of further generalization.
If the metamorphic series of this species is compared to those
produced by other species, some will answer to the same description
and some will differ, but the differences will be describable in terms of
general transitional relations - i.e. the movement from the filled-in to
the articulated, or that from the articulated to the simplified, or the
reverse of these, or in fact, the transition from any characteristic
condition of development to any other. Since I have already argued that
it is not the static condition that is important here but the movement
that leads to or away from this condition (thus unifying it with other
conditions), the movement of metamorphic foliar series might be
describable in terms of several transitional 'gestures' that generalize
upon all such series.
When we begin to follow out this last line of thought we are
travelling Goethe's own path of investigation. The tum from Gestalt to
Bildung is shift of focus from the static product to the transformation
which leads to and from the product, and thus eventually to a
GOETHE'S MORPHOLOGY 281
move toward continuity. Potential forms come to mind because they are
contained in the whole we are trying to see.
Let us tum again to the leaves of Figure 4. Once we have reestab-
lished the context of movement each form will begin to show its
distance from the Gestalt. The individual leaf now appears to be
'coming from' something as well as 'passing to' something, and by so
doing represents, to our mind, more than itself - it can no longer be
separated from its before and after. Indeed, its only distinction from
these moments lies in the conditions of arrest - i.e. we see it 'caught in
the act' of becoming something else. Caught, that is, by sensible
conditions - by the manner of its appearing. Each visible form now
emerges as partial, and becomes a disclosure of another sort of form.
We must remember that in making the individual images into
representatives of gesture, we have not allowed the before and after to
be accidental. The leaves become representative by belonging to a
specific gesture, which becomes in tum the standard of inclusion
and exclusion, designating potentials. Each leaf is now, paradoxically,
representative of all the others (which is how the two forms of Figure 5
manage to look alike), and the new form that shows through the old is
somehow all the forms at once.
Now that the single image is incomplete, its full import can appear
within sensible conditions only through continuous transformation -
through change. I noted earlier that the movement of the series unifies
the forms through their differences. We can now see that the type of
form making its appearance here requires that difference - i.e. no two
forms can possess the same Gestalt without losing their representative
function.
Form in space allows us to represent distinct loci in space as a unity,
but these distinctions are those of 'here' and 'there,' and the loci are
'outside' one another and presented simultaneously. In succession we
have to do with 'before' and 'after' rather than 'here' and 'there.' The
positions of a succession exclude one another by a distinction in time
rather than space. A principle by which we represent the distinct
moments of time as a unity, even as we represent the loci of space as
unity, is a principle of form. But this sort of form must be causal
principle as well.
Since a time-form can only manifest in sensible conditions through
continuous change, it cannot appear as an object but only as a quality
of objects - or a type of form. The partiality of the sensible form by
286 RONALD H. BRADY
attempt to observe his own intentional acts, and thus never investigated
this possibility. Goethe, coming to Kant when he was already engaged
in this project, was simply made more conscious of it. He read Kant as
if Kant were proposing a similar 'adventure of reason' (Goethe, 1963:
Anchauende UrteilskraJt).
With regard to Hume we must return to the problem of causality in
general. It should be clear to us that however we normally think of
causal necessity, we must intend it as a necessity that stretches over
different moments in time, and it is the ultimate exclusion of one
moment from the next that defeats Hume's attempt to think it out in
terms of logical necessity. An identity that bridges that exclusion would
also solve the logical problem, and just such an identity is intuited in
the observations described. It should be of some interest to rethink
Hume's problem on these grounds, for it rests upon the assumption that
the distinctions of time are primary. If, on the other hand, the time-
form is primary, we should discover that we must intend this unity in
order to perceive the 'movement of time' itself. The project is too
fundamental to consider any further in this discussion.)
The forms of life are not 'finished work' but always forms becoming,
and their 'potency to be otherwise' is an immediate aspect of their
internal constitution - i.e. of their representative function - and not
something to be added to them. Their 'potency' is 'self-derived,' in that
it is inherent in their identity with the whole. The becoming that belongs
to this constitution is not a process that finishes when it reaches a
certain goal but a condition of existence - a necessity to change in
order to remain the same. Of course, at some time the leaf or bone
loses this capacity - it no longer participates in the continual becoming
of its generation and therefore does not remain the same - i.e. does
not remain alive.
It can still be morphologically studied, for corpses still display the
imprint of the generative process, but such study must be aimed at
transformation rather than stasis if it is to recover that imprint. It is
unlikely that anyone would do otherwise - corpses make no sense in
themselves, having fallen out of their proper context, and were they
not referred back to the power from which they came they would be
unintelligible. This point is too often forgotten, or never noticed in the
288 RONALD H. BRADY
organic development, but rather to explain how life arises at all - i.e.
the suggested force raises chemical material to organic organization,
which organization guides perceptible development. The strategy is now
one of reductionism, and easily identified as such through the addition
of a crucial assumption - namely, that which is potent in itself must de-
rive from that which is not. Obviously the 'vital force' could only be
needed to 'vitalize' material which is not yet alive. But since we cannot
detect, in the phenomena, the distinction between 'that which is to be
vitalized' and 'that which vitalizes,' our observations provide no reason
to insist on this derivation, and this problem. If the phenomena of life
are not separable from their potency-for-change (except by death,
which is a derivation of the impotent from the potent rather than the
opposite) then they are not separable, and if we bother ourselves about
how to add the potency of life to the stuff of life we do so after a
preconceived notion.
As one might expect from the results above, Goethe also rejected
any analogy to human purpose in nature and any notion of 'final cause'
which contained such an analogy. Teleological judgement, as Kant had
explained in the Critique of Judgement, gives an account of a structure
(or event) by referring it to a purposer and a goal beyond the structure
itself. The pocket-watch may be understood as a means to the end of
telling time, which means was constructed by an intelligent agent guided
by his concept of that end. On the other hand, life, according to Kant, is
'purposive without a purpose' - i.e., seems conceptually designed
without any indication of an external designer or an external goal.
Goethe took great satisfaction in this attack on teleological judgement
in biology (Goethe, 1963: Einwirkung der neuern Philosophie), and
remarked that Kant had 'explained and vindicated' his own aversion to
it. Life had no goal or purpose except itself, and to suggest otherwise
was to force the phenomena into a pre-conceived mold.
As Goethe admitted, the type was an idea (by which the successive
was grasped as simultaneous), and its manifestations in time were quite
'designed,' each preparing for the next and leading over into it. But as I
have been arguing, the designing idea is not separable, and living form
cannot therefore be modelled on the machine or any other result of an
external planner. Nor can any particular goal of development be
determined. Aristotle supposed that the adult state could be conceived
as goal, since it was the most revealing stage of development, but
Goethe did not make any stage of development primary in this manner.
290 RONALD H. BRADY
(He accounted for Aristotle's distinction in another way with the notion
of Steigenmg, by which he indicated a progression toward greater
intelligibility. The sophistication of this concept is beyond the scope of
the present discussion however, and it does not constitute a stage for
which prior stages are simply means.) Indeed, he could not do so. Each
stage of development was equally required by the whole, not as a means
to an end, but as a mode of being-in-the-world. Development in time
does not proceed towards this whole, but rather expresses it. As I
have already noted, the representative of a time-form must continually
become other in order to remain representative. Any additional reasons
are redundant.
The same thing must be said with regard to the modern notion of
design by 'program' or 'teleonomy' (Mayr, 1974). A program must pre-
exist the process which it is to direct, and is in this sense external to it.
Since the process of development, when understood as the expression
of a time-form, is complete in itself, the addition of a directive program
is unparsimonious. 'Teleonomy' is the hypothetical reconstruction of
organic form by mechanical means - it models the organism on the
machine in general and the computer in particular. It is logically
consistent and reasonably convincing, but in order to invoke mechani-
cal means it must assume a separation between elements that appear to
be inseparable in the phenomena of life - i.e. between object and
power.
As we can see from these applications, Goethe's notion of 'type,'
'archetype,' 'entelechy,' or as he would sometimes identify it, 'spirit,' is
not a speculative but a descriptive concept. He does not advance it as
a theory that explains the phenomena, but a description that clarifies
the same. There is a difference.
was entirely descriptive, its concepts derived from the phenomena. But
'description' for him was not a simple abstraction of regularities. Let me
review the argument.
The development of the concept of common positional schema
represented a descriptive advance for the biology of the eighteenth
century, for it provided a method by which complex appearances could
be simplified. Using Geoffroy's principles the investigator could start
from two very different organisms and map their parts upon a common
set of formal relations, or 'connections,' thus demonstrating that their
differences could be described as variants of the same thing. This is
obviously a crucial step in coming to understand their relation, without
which evolutionary theory would have remained still-born. But it rests,
of course, on nothing more than the fact that organisms can be so
described. We may assume that they should be, as Geoffroy did,
because it alters mere difference to intelligible difference - because it
reveals that 'the other' is still 'the same.'
Goethe's choice of movements rather than schemas rests upon
his dissatisfaction with the attempt to generalize on transformation by
stasis. A particular form, as he pointed out, can only be one among
many, and every form in the transformation falls equally short of the
whole. The schema can generalize on these particulars as long as the
transformation is limited enough to preserve all connections intact, but
if these are not preserved in the transformation the schema is itself a
static particular that abstracts from continuous change. In botanical
sequences one could clearly observe transformations which generate, or
dissolve, connections, and there is some evidence that the transforma-
tions of vertebrates, or even tetrapods, may be this extensive. Thus
while Geoffroy is correct that connections do not admit transposition
(which is little more than a tautology, since connections are simply the
linkage between positions), it seems they will admit generation and
degeneration, a point which excludes the schema. Thus, at least in
botany, Goethe was able to show that the schema was inadequate to the
proposed task - i.e. grasping difference as a variation of the same. The
formal relations of generative movements would perform this task
where those of the schema would not, and thus the decision to adopt
them as the descriptive concept.
Again, the rationale for this approach is exactly the same as that
which I gave for the schematic approach - mere difference is reduced,
by the descriptive concepts, to intelligible difference - to another
292 RONALD H. BRADY
The theory of metamorphosis has nothing to do with this question of the historic
sequence of the appearance of life. It is quite separate from every sort of 'theory of
descent' not only in its content but in the posing of the question and in method.
Goethe's concept of 'genesis' is dynamic, not historical; it connects widely unrelated
forms, demonstrating how they are constantly intermediated, but it aims to set up no
genealogical trees of the species. The transformation by virtue of which various parts of
the plant, its sepals, petals, stamens, and so on, originated from one common archetype,
the leaf, is an ideal, not a real genesis. "It is not a broadening but a deformation of the
sciences," said Kant, "when their boundaries are allowed to run together." It would be
such a deformation if we were to confound Goethe's biological idea of knowledge with
that of Darwin or Haeckel.
since it [the physical organismj is subject not only to its own formative laws but also to
the conditions of the outer world - since it is not what it should be were it derived in
conformity to the nature of the self-determining entelechy, but as it becomes from its
dependence upon other things - it appears as if it were never quite in accord with
itself, never obeying only its own nature. Here human reason enters and forms an
organism in the idea which does not reflect the influences of the outer world but
answers only to the inner principle. Thereby every accidental influence, which has
nothing to do with the organic per se, falls away. This idea, which corresponds purely to
the organic in the organism, is the primal organism [Urorganismusj, Goethe's Type.
Of course, one cannot accept this project (of forming an idea of the
unchanging in the organism) unless the two causal factors of the
original description - i.e. the internal and the external - are taken as
irreducible.
Cassirer was correct about the necessary presupposition of a prin-
ciple of self-determined development - i.e. of the organic per se - but
it does not follow that this principle must be given a central position. In
practice the 'presupposition' is denatured by a reductionism that makes
it derivative. We do not observe the production of the organic from the
inorganic in nature, but current theory treats this production as neces-
sary. In keeping with this framework, the descriptive results above are
referred to the' past for explanation. Thus, although the organism's
reaction to its local environment is understood as the response of a
self-regulating and therefore constant entity, we take that very entity to
be a historical product. If modern biology incorporates, to a degree,
the distinction between external influence and organic response, the
organic principle is not accorded primary status.
The present lack of emphasis on the organic as a principle is
probably a reflection of the lack of emphasis upon description as a
method. The reductionism we see here is contingent upon a practice
that introduces the stage of explanation before description is fully
developed, undermining even those descriptive results that have been
gained to that point. We do not, for instance, push our descriptive
investigation of self-regulation to the concept of a self-given principle
of organization. Failing this, we still need a further clarification of
self-regulation. We supply this by semi-mechanical speCUlations on
'teleonomy,' adding something that was not needed, and making the
self-regulation of the organism derivative by explaining it rather than
making it a principle of explanation - i.e. a law. Even so, our evolu-
296 RONALD H. BRADY
cannot be equated with static form, for such form lacks the requisite
powers of generalization.)
With these ideas in mind, let us look again at phylogenetic practice.
Modem morphology has labored to trace the relationship between
organisms, living and extinct. To do so it constructs branching diagrams
in which smaller groups are subordinated under larger groups in a
hierarchical order. In purely morphological terms, this practice iden-
tifies groups by 'rooting' them according to shared characters and
'branching' them according to difference. The hierarchical patterns so
produced have two levels of interpretation. As description, they are
simply branching diagrams that serve to summarize the distribution of
similarity and dissimilarity between taxa, resulting in a hierarchical
subordination of groups within groups. Perhaps the clearest version of
this approach is found in the 'cladogram,' in which every taxon is an
end-point and the characters form the defining elements. (The argu-
ment that a cladogram is a purely descriptive device has been clearly
set forth by Nelson and Platnick, 1981.) If we add certain explanatory
assumptions, we can recast the same set of taxa as a 'tree,' in which taxa
take up positions not only at the ends of the branches but also between
branching points - i.e. some taxa become hypothesized ancestors. The
tree, of c0urse, is not longer a descriptive result, but a hypothetical
reconstruction of the events by which the pattern of the cladogram
came about.
The relations found in the cladogram are purely logical - i.e., the
cladogram displays the manner in which the same thing reappears in
difference. Groups bear a resemblance to logical classes, each possess-
ing its own unique set of defining characters, which set is itself a distri-
bution between more general and less general elements. Obviously, on
this level we can find no opposition to Goethe's approach. The next
interpretive level, that of the tree, does produce such an opposition, not
because a historical element is introduced, but because the other half -
i.e. the a-historical, is not. The reasons for this omission have already
been covered.
Since only the prevailing habits of thought separate phylogenetic
morphology from the wider possibilities that Goethe offers, it would
seem that Cassirer was correct in suggesting that these approaches were
not opposed in any fundamental way. On the other hand, Goethe's
approach will be of little or on interest to a scientific community that
has allowed evolutionary explanations to obscure the descriptive study
GOETHE'S MORPHOLOGY 299
SOURCES OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Fig. 1. R. Owen, Report on the Archetype and Homologies of the Vertebrate Skeleton.
Voorst, London, 1848.
Fig. 2, Ibid.
Fig. 3, R. Owen, On the Anatomy of Vertebrates. Vol, 1. Longman, Green, and Co.,
London, 1866.
NOTE
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Arber, A.: The Natural Philosophy of Plant Form, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge,
1950.
Bockemiihl, J.: in Goetheanistische Naturwissenschaft: 2: Botanik (ed. W. Schad),
Verlag Freies Geistes1eben, Stuttgart, 1982 (Originally published in Elemente der
Naturwissenschaft 4 (1966). See also articles below.)
300 RONALD H. BRADY
Fig. I.
THE WORK OF JOCHEN BOCKEMUHL 303
Fig. 2.
the top line, the blades of each leaf form have been magnified to the
same size; the actual proportions are indicated in black below. It should
be added here that the rounding of the leaf apices in the first form is a
distortion created by the strong magnification. Again, 'shooting' pre-
dominates initially, although 'articulating' and 'spreading' are evidenced
very early on as well. 'Shooting' and 'articulating' continue at the base of
the leaf through the fourth stage, then come to rest. The rounded lobes
of this fourth stage already announce the intensification of 'spreading.'
The spreading continues, but is 'held back' at the top and at the base on
both sides of each lobe, with the result that notches form where there
had originally been points. In the fully developed form of the leaf,
'shooting' and 'articulating' seem to have receded entirely, while the
results of 'spreading' and 'stemming' are totally dominant.
Bockemiihl then proceeds to test this elementary 'grammar,' to
justify viewing the typus of. leaf development as the nexus of these four
interpenetrating activities, by applying it to a more intricate set of
'texts': the series of fully-developed foliage leaves taken as a whole.
Even earlier 'Goetheans' such as Karl Goebel and Wilhelm Troll had
run into problems by identifying the typus of the plant with a single,
static form, the fully developed intermediate stage of the foliage leaf,
which forced them in turn to see the higher and lower leaves merely as
'suppressed' or 'inhibited' manifestations of the typus. Bockemiihl's
more complex understanding of the typus allows one, on the other
hand, to follow its active workings throughout all the stages of leaf
development. This larger development reflects the sequence we have
followed in the individual leaf, but reflects it as a mirror image. One
can see this characteristic "Gegenlaufigkeit der Bildebewegungen," this
"inversion of transformations," as he calls it, even in the development of
THE WORK OF JOCHEN BOCKEMUHL 305
the individual Ivy leaf: moving backwards, the foliage leaves gradually
approximate those of the blossoms. Yet this characteristic transforma-
tion is even clearer within the foliage leaves themselves (see Figure 3).
Bockemiihl is fond of arranging the foliage leaves in such 'horseshoe'
o 10 c ""
Fig. 3.
forms, beginning at the lower left with the cotyledon and ending at the
lower right with the last hypsophyll subtending the blossom. He is very
insistent, however, that this arrangement be understood not as a semi-
circle, but rather as the top half of a lemniscate continuing down the
left side through the blossom and up the right side through the fruit and
seed. This development is easy to survey in Valerianella locusta, a
species of Comsalad - again, Bockemiihl employs the characteristi-
306 FREDERICK AMRINE
...
Fig. 4.
:-----------;.....
Fig. 5.
one could steal Ronald Brady's penetrating metaphor, and call them the
melody that moves between and through the notes (Brady, 1977, pp.
157f). And then at a third level under which the four activities are
themselves subsumed: Bockemiihl calls these "regulatives." The first of
these 'regulatives' we have encountered was the principle of "inversion,"
whereby the succession of activities in the individual leaves and the
foliage leaves as a whole constitute mirror images of one another. The
second, clearest in Valerianella (see Figure 3), is the progression
"separating" - "interpenetrating" - "fusing" that governs the interplay
between 'spreading' and 'stemming.'
Having mastered these 'primers,' and carefully distinguished the
three explanatory levels of individual phenomena, transformations and
regulatives, we are ready to move on to 'texts' of greater intricacy. We
are ready to learn to 'read' the development of the foliage leaves within
the context of the leaf development in its entirety (see Figure 6). Here
THE WORK OF JOCHEN BOCKEM"UHL 309
310 FREDERICK AMRINE
the going gets steep: mastering such series in any real sense requires
extensive practice. But let us make the attempt at least.
This is Sisymbrium officinale. Actually, we have here four plants,
germinated at the same time and place, but harvested about a month
apart, and then arranged in concentric 'semi-Iemniscates.' The outer-
most series, plant four, is missing most of its leaf forms, and plant three
somewhat less than half; while plant two seems to lack one or two. This
is because in each case these earlier leaf forms had withered away by
the time of harvesting. Each of the outer series can be completed by
adding with the mind's eye the forms from the next series in: the black
arrows indicate the transition points. The white or transparent arrows
allow one to trace the development that a single plant would undergo if
it were left unharvested.
This new level of complexity reveals something that was not observa-
ble earlier: the regulative rhythm 'separating' - 'interpenetrating' -
'fusing' recapitulates itself not just in the foliage leaves, but at every
stage of leaf development. The white arrows indicate the points at
which the transition from 'fusing' to 'separating,' from the end of the
previous regulative rhythm to the beginning of the next, takes place.
The now-familiar pattern is repeated throughout the whole of leaf
development: as a result of 'separating,' the forms on the left half of
each series are generally longer-stemmed and rounder; as a result of
'fusing,' those on the right are shorter-stemmed and more pointed;
while those in the middle show most evidence of 'articulating.' The
inversion of the four generative activities governed by the regulative
rhythm is thus confirmed here as well: the embryonic sequence 'shoot-
ing,' 'articulating,' 'spreading,' 'stemming' that we observed in the first
two Figures is mirrored in these complete series of fully developed
forms as the progression 'stemming,' 'spreading,' 'articulating' and
'shooting.' Yet careful observation of the development of a single plant
(following the path indicated by the white arrows) also reveals that the
polarity between 'separating' and 'fusing,' and with it the inverted
sequence of activities as a whole, is much more pronounced in the
lower leaves than in the higher. Again, the white arrows each indicate
the beginning of a new rhythm: the weakening in intensity becomes
already quite evident in comparing the first rhythm (in plant one) with
the second (in plant two).
In order to investigate this phenomenon more closely, Bockemiihl
then creates series of ever greater complexity (see Figure 7), this time
THE WORK OF JOCHEN BOCKEMUHL 311
"".h.,
'ft ..
.! :.. , .. .
. ..
,
Q "
,.
t t
;.
"
I
6
"
Q
4
J "'
Fig. 7.
Fig.S.
,C,,;
6
. .t N'
. t
Fig. 9.
314 FREDERICK AMRINE
the blades of the leaves have all been enlarged to approximately the
same size, while the actual proportions have been retained in black
below. Each row represents the evolutionary development of one of the
leaves of Nipplewort that we have just seen, first as undulating
horizontal series, then as 'semi-Iemniscates.' The numbers at the left of
each row are those of the individual leafs place within the entire foliar
development: number 1 is the first leaf after the cotyledons; number 32
in the next Figure (Figure 10) the last of the blossom leaves. This
Figure and the previous together form a continuous series. The
weakening of the inverse rhythm we have observed within the larger
development is strongly confirmed here. Again, all four activities are at
work in the formation of each of the leaves, with the possible exception
of the first and the last (Figure 10), neither of which shows any signs of
'articulating.' Yet the relative intensity of the four activities varies
greatly form leaf to leaf. In the lower leaves (see Figure 9), all four
activities are strongly engaged: look for example at leaf 2, in which the
sequence 'shooting,' 'articulating,' 'spreading' and 'stemming' manifests
itself fully. By leaf 6, 'spreading' is no longer able either to 'round out'
completely the apices created by 'articulating' or to halt the multiplica-
tion of leaf forms. This tendency is accentuated even more strongly in,
for example, leaf 12 (see Figure 10). By the time we reach leaves 25
through 32, not only 'spreading' but 'articulating' and 'stemming' have
nearly disappeared. Thus leaf 32 represents the 'confluence' of these
two inverse streams, the place where the micro- and macro-develop-
ments intersect. The first activity of the embryonic sequence, 'shooting,'
manifests itself as the last predominant activity in the sequence of foliar
development as a whole.
The next illustration (Figure 11) depicts Bockemiihl's attempt to
make visible the interrelationship and interaction between these two
inverse developments. Here we are presented with a 'text' of the utmost
intricacy - so much so, that we can no longer even pretend to 'read' it
together. I can only describe abstractly the process one would go
through in reading it. We have returned to the form of the semi-
lemniscate, in which, again, the forms around the periphery represent
the foliar development of a single plant beginning at the lower left and
ending on the lower right. Curving radii stream out from the crossing-
point of the lemniscate to the periphery. Upon these, Bockemiihl has
placed the embryonic forms of the leaves at intervals proportional to
their proximity to the shape of the fully developed leaf. These are the
same series that were arranged horizontally in the two previous
THE WORK OF JOCHEN BOCKEMUHL 315
n n-IJ1
t.
32
28
n,
n
25
17
• • I 'J
r. :1 .. .. :
, t
9
Fig. 10.
316 FREDERICK AMRINE
THE WORK OF JOCHEN BOCKEMUHL 317
NOTE
* Originally read at a joint symposium sponsored by the Boston Colloquium for the
Philosophy of Science and the Departments of Germanic Languages and History of
Science at Harvard University, 3-4 December 1982. Since the approach was very
much determined by the context of presentation, I have retained the original oral style
throughout. I am grateful to Elizabeth L. Taylor of the Harvard University Herbaria
and to Dr. Bockemiihl himself for help with botanical terminology. The illustrations are
reproduced with the kind permission of Dr. Jochen Bockemiihl of the Forschungs-
laboratorium am Goetheanum, Dornach, Switzerland.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Germanic Languages
3110 Modern Languages Bldg.
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor Ml 48109-1275
U.S.A.
JONATHAN WESTPHAL
WHITENESS*
INTRODUCTION
This elusive quality it is, which causes the thought of whiteness, when divorced from
more kindly associations, and coupled with any object terrible in itself, to heighten that
terror to the furthest bounds. Witness the white bear of the poles, the white shark of the
tropics; what but their smooth, flaky whiteness makes them the transcendent horrors
they are? That ghastly whiteness it is which imparts such an abhorrent mildness, even
more loathes orne than terrific, to the dumb gloating of their aspect ... Bethink thee of
the albatross: whence come those clouds of spiritual wonderment and pale dread, in
which the white phantom sails in all imaginations ... Nor, in some things, does the
common, hereditary experience of all mankind fail to bear witness to the super-
naturalism of this hue. It cannot well be doubted, that the one visible quality in the
aspect of the dead which most appalls the gazer, is the marble pallor lingering there ...
Or why, irrespective of all latitudes and longitudes, does the name of the White Sea
exert such a spectralness over the fancy ... But not yet have we solved the incantation
of this whiteness, and learned why it appeals with such power to the soul; and more
strange and far more portentous - why, as we have seen, it is at once the most meaning
symbol of spiritual things, nay, the very veil of the Christian deity; and yet should be as
it is, the intensifying agent in things the most appalling to mankind? ... Is it that by its
indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and
thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white
depths of the milky way? Or is it, that in essence whiteness is not so much a colour as
the visible absence of colour, and at the same time the concrete of all colours? ... And
of all these things the Albino whale was the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt?
question as Witfgenstein means it. But if my answer is the right one, and
this goes for the other puzzle question as well, then science does bear
upon the "logic of colour concepts," and the contrast between logic and
science which Wittgenstein sets up is a false one. At best it will be the
contrast between the demands of logic and the claims of a particular
scientific theory and a particular mode of scientific theorizing. Before
starting on the question itself it is necessary to clear up a small but
important confusion. In his review of Remarks on Colour Nelson
Goodman (1978, p. 504) claims that Wittgenstein's question is "mis-
taken." He points out that "the glass in a white light bulb sometimes is
as transparent as that in a red one." This is, in a sense, true. But it is
also not to the point. 'As transparent as' does not mean 'transparent,'
any more than 'as full as' means 'full.' Two jugs which are not full can
be as full as one another, e.g. half-full.
Goodman has confused his true proposition, "A white glass can be
as transparent as a red one," with a different and false proposition, "A
white glass can be transparent." According to the Q.ED., 'transparent'
means "having the property of transmitting light so as to render bodies
lying beyond it completely visible, so that it can be seen through."
Goodman's white light bulb is not transparent, it is merely translucent.
Translucency is only partial or semi-transparency. 'Translucent' means
"allowing the passage of light yet diffusing it so as not to render bodies
lying beyond clearly visible." The white (pearl?) bulb can be seen not to
be transparent by comparison with a completely transparent colourless
bulb, in which the filament is clearly visible. A white bulb can have the
same degree of translucency as a red one, but for it to be as transparent
as the red what lies behind it must be as clearly visible as it is through
the red. (The bodies lying behind or beyond a transparent piece of
glass must be visible as normal, so that the fact that bodies flush against
the glass are somewhat visible is not enough to make the glass trans-
parent - and is what is seen in this case a shadow? The Q.ED.
definition says that objects lying beyond, not merely behind, the
transparent medium must be completely visible.) Perhaps then we
should say that no coloured medium is transparent in the strictest sense
that it transmits all of the light incident on it and therefore renders any
body beyond it as visible as that body is without the medium. But even
if no body is in the strictest· sense transparent, why is white glass less
transparent than red? The fact that a white glass can be as transparent
as a red glass, that is, as transparent as some red glass is, does not
322 JONATHAN WESTPHAL
the question, the form of his solution to the puzzle. The point is that
there is nothing the words could demand of us - "we don't know what
description these words demand of us" is a Wittgensteinian way of
saying they make no coherent demand. Their failure is a logical failure
in the sense of Remarks on Colour, I 27: ''When dealing with logic,
'One cannot imagine that' means: one doesn't know what one should
imagine here."
It is as though Wittgenstein's method, insofar as he has one, is to try
in various ways to imagine the thing of which it is true that "one doesn't
know what one should imagine here."The knowledge of the inconceiva-
bility of the thing is to emerge from these doomed efforts. Thus "A
smooth white surface can reflect things: But what, then, if we made a
mistake and that which appeared to be reflected in such a surface were
really behind it and seen through it? Would the surface then be white
and transparent?" (I 43). Wittgenstein's use of such oblique reductios -
or perhaps they are merely expressions of uncertainty - makes it
difficult to see the general outline into which the details of his 'solution'
to the puzzle fit, and the difficulty is increased by the fact that the
remarks about white are scattered about Remarks on Colour in no
obvious order.
If what I have said so far is right, Wittgenstein has no 'solution' of
any straightforward kind. Reconstructions of his arguments typically fail
to catch his exact logical nuance, and we get a more organized but less
alive version of what he has said. I have chosen not to attempt to
reconstruct his views on whiteness. What follows is H.O. Mounce's
summary of an approach to the question, attributed by him to Wittgen-
stein, why we don't know what the words 'transparent white' demand of
us. I have said that this is not actually a question Wittgenstein asks, but
the summary does cover some of the main points he makes in connec-
tion with the question he does ask.
To answer this question we have to see what pattern of experiences is picked out by the
word 'transparent' and what, through not fitting within the pattern, is excluded.
Transparency goes with depth; depth with a relation between the colours that lie behind
the transparent medium and the medium itself. Of the colours that lie behind the
medium white itself is of special importance. The white that lies behind green trans-
parent glass must itself appear green. Why must? Because otherwise, at these spots at
least, it would not be correct to describe the glass as both transparent and green.
"White seen through a coloured glass appears with the colour of the glass. That is a rule
of the appearance of transparency". And now we may conclude "So white appears
",hite through white glass, i.e. as through uncoloured glass" (p. 44e; 200).
WHITENESS 325
back almost all the incident light - it is white - and transmits almost
none. A transparent white object would transmit almost all the incident
light and reflect almost all the incident light, and reflect almost all the
incident light and transmit almost all the incident light, which is a
straight double contradiction. Weare told that every kind of statement
has its own logic - so then every kind of statement must have its own
kind of contradiction. But in the proposed conception, 'X is white and
X is transparent' turns out to be an ordinary contradiction of the form
'p. - p'. This result brings with it the thought that there is no peculiar
or distinctive logic of colour concepts, but only logic applied to state-
ments about the distinctive facts and phenomena of colour.
A white surface will always reflect most of the incident light, and
therefore it will not darken the light to any significant degree, by
absorbing it, as surfaces of other colours will. A red object, for
example, refuses to reflect any green light, and turns black in green
illumination. A white object darkens no light in the sense that for any
illumination the incident light is approximately the same in quantity and
quality as the reflected light. So white is always the lightest colour in the
Tricolour 6 not because the colour concept 'white' inexplicably happens
to be the concept of something with the mysteriously necessary
property of: being the lightest colour, but because the concept of a
white object is the concept of an object which does not significantly
darken the light in the above sense. Actually the better question is not
why white is the lightest colour, but rather why all other colours are
darker than white. In Goethe's conception of a colour the answer to this
is that black and white are limiting cases of the darkening process,
which for him is what colour is? White is minimum darkening, black is
maximum darkening.8 White is the "representative of light,' in his classic
phrase. We can be assisted in this conception by watching a white
surface turn under increasing intensity of the light source first to glare
and then to dazzle, which lie higher on the brightness scale. 9 There is
such a thing as a glaring white and a dazzling white, but no such thing
as glaring or dazzling blue - or black. Why? Other similar facts may
bring home the phenomenal point of the conception. Why, for example,
does a painter use white for highlights? We might even say that
whiteness is a low dazzle of reflected light. 10
What is dazzling, however, depends on the adaptive state of the eye
and therefore on relative rather than absolute brightness. We must
distinguish reflectance, the proportion of incident to reflected light,
328 JONATHAN WESTPHAL
from luminance, or the absolute amount of light entering the eye. Thus
in a famous example a white sheet of paper in shade looks the colour it
is (white, not grey), and a grey sheet of paper in direct sunlight which is
reflecting far more light looks grey. Whiteness is connected not with the
quantity of light entering the eye but with the ratio of reflected and
incident light, that is with what the surface typically does to the light.
The colours of objects that we see are always perceived in relation to
the illumination. The illumination, no matter what colour it is, is treated
by the eye as standard or neutral, and the other colours are 'judged'
in relation to this. The reflectance of white objects, as contrasted with
the luminance, is the same through changes in illumination, and there-
fore we get as a natural result of the conception what psychologists call
colour constancy. This would be a properly psychological phenomenon
only if for colour vision the important property of objects were the
spectral composition of the light they are disposed to reflect. But the
eye is not concerned with the colour and quantity of the light. It is
concerned with how the object changes the light; it compares the
reflected light with the illumination. I I
A white surface scatters back almost all of any incident light, light of
any colour. This is not true of a blue object, for example, which under
blue light will do exactly what the white surface does; it will reflect a
high proportion of the incident light. Provided we are aware of the
illumination, we can tell the difference between the two objects. If we
are not, we cannot tell the difference between a blue room filled with
blue objects and illuminated by white light and a white room filled with
white objects illuminated by blue light. Under these restricted viewing
conditions we cannot determine in what characteristic way the objects
change the light. It should be pointed out, against most philosophers
who have discussed this kind of example, that a white surface illumi-
nated with blue light does not look blue. It looks white, and completely
different from a blue surface illuminated with white light - provided
we are able to adapt to the illumination.
This mistake is made by Ayer (1973, p. 74) and many other writers.
One of the empirical premises on which the argument from illusion to
sense-data is based says that a white wall "looks blue when it is seen
through blue spectacles." This premise is simply false, as Ayer would
discover if he were to look through a pair of blue spectacles at a white
wall. The wall continues to look utterly white, not blue, although as if in
a dimmer or misty illumination. If on the other hand we place the
WHITENESS 329
spectacles up against the wall, we do get a blue datum, but one which is
visibly the colour of the spectacles. When we are wearing the spec-
tacles, we adapt to the colour of the illumination. When the blue is not
the colour of the light but of an object held against the wall, we are
aware how the object changes the (white) illumination, and we do not
adapt to the colour. So Wittgenstein's crucial 'rule of appearance' that
''white seen through a coloured glass appears with the colour of the
glass" (1977, ill 200) is simply false. Accordingly it cannot explain the
opacity of white things or anything else, and Wittgenstein's (or
Mounce's) 'transcendental' deduction fails.
Several Wittgensteinian explananda fall into place under the pro-
posed conception.
(1) We learn why white is always an object colour, and reverts to
brightness in other modes. In order for anything to be white it must
scatter back a high percentage of the incident light. If it can do this, it is
probably going to be sufficiently solid to count as an object or surface.
(2)' It becomes evident why a white lying behind a coloured medium
to whose colour we do not adapt, or one which is so strongly coloured
that we cannot adapt to it, should appear with the colour of the
medium. The white surface acts as a light shining through the coloured
medium. The medium acts as a filter.
(3) Remarks on Colour II 6, "Isn't white that which does away with
darkness?"is easily explained.
(4) "We don't speak of a 'whitish light cast on things' at all!" (1977,
II 14). This is a very interesting remark. We may be prepared to speak
of white lights, a white light, etc., but "a whitish light" in this remark
means something different. We might notice that the light at a particular
time of day was bluish, but not that it was whitish. The distinction to be
drawn here is between a light in the sense of a lamp or light source, and
light as the illumination or lighting. The former can be whitish, the
latter not. We have seen that whiteness is the alteration of light by a
surface. So "if everything looked whitish in a particular light, we
wouldn't then conclude that the light source must look white" (1977, II
15) (still less that the light from the source must look white) because it
could only be a change in the surfaces of things which caused them to
look white. It is a good thing that white light is not white coloured - a
good thing or white light would be opaque and we would be unable to
see through it. 'White' light is only white in a specialized sense. Newton
says in the Opticks, Prop. VI, Problem I that, "I placed a lens by which
330 JONATHAN WESTPHAL
the image of the hole might be distinctly cast upon a white sheet of
paper . .." (my italics). A light which gives red on a white sheet must be
a red light, a light which gives blue on a white sheet must be a blue
light, so a light which gives white on a white sheet must be a white
lightP But the white given on a white screen here is the screen's colour.
It 'appears' because the so-called white light is strictly colourless (it
'makes' red things red), and the screen is already white. When we say
things like "The light is poor today," we mean light in a sense akin to
lighting or perhaps the way of being lit. Light in this sense cannot
appear white, like a white mist over everything, nor can it be white, for
it does not make things white, but rather brings out the colours they
already have. Nor can light in this sense be put through a prism, though
a beam of light can. A beam of light is made of light, perhaps, but it is a
light rather than lighting.
(5) '''Transparent' could be compared with 'reflecting'," Wittgenstein
says cryptically at III 148, and goes on to point out that transparency
and reflection exist only in the dimension of depth of a visual image.
The fact that white surfaces present a barrier to the light, due to their
high reflectance, means that these surfaces block the depth required for
transparency.
(6) "Blending in white removes the colouredness from the colour;
but blending in yellow does not. - Is that the basis of the proposition
that there can be no clear transparent white?" (1977, II 2). It is hard to
see why it should be. But why does blending white in a colour C
remove the colouredness of C, and what does this mean? (There is an
interesting exception if C is white.) Blending progressively more red
into yellow finally destroys the yellow, just as blending in white does.
The difference is that the final result in the second case is the absence
of any colour. This shows that blending white into C removes colour
because white is not counted as a colour. We reserve a special concept
for the effect of white in colour mixing. White makes all the other
colours weaker or paler, but there is no corresponding concept for the
effect of any other colour. Everything turns, then, on the question
why ''white sometimes appears on an equal footing with the other
pure colours (as in flags) and then again sometimes it doesn't" (1977,
ill 211). The basis of the fact that white destroys colour (hue or
colourfulness) and the fact that in certain connections it is not counted
as a colour are, I believe, illustrated in Figure 1 (from Clulow, 1972,
Plates 18 and 19). Figure 1 shows how much of a given illumination
WHITENESS 331
100 r------------------------------------,
90
___ TYPING BOND
BO
PERCENTAGE
,OF
ILLUMINANT 70
REFLECTED
(REFLECTANCE
PERCENT)
60
SO
40
30
GREY CARD
20
10
LAMPBLACK
100
90
80
PERCENTAGE
OF
I LLUMIN ANT 70
REFLECTED
(REFLEC TANeE
PERCENT)
60
SO
40
30
20
10
NOTES
* This paper owes much to David Wiggins, Ralph Brocklebank, Michael Wilson,
Richard Mort and Mike Land. 1 am grateful to Michael Slote and Natalie Reed for
helpful comments on an earlier version, and 1 wish to acknowledge the loan of a
number of specific points in the text from Wilson and Brocklebank. The paper is
dedicated to Steve Graham.
1 The recognized modes of the appearance of colours are: surface, volume, film or
aperture, illumination and illuminant.
2 It is a grammatical mistake to speak, as Katz occasionally does, of surface, film and
volume colours. The colour blue, for example, can be all three. It would be better to
speak of these as Katz also does (I believe following Husserl) not as modes of colours
but as modes of the appearance of colours. Ch. 2 of The World of Colour is called:
'How Colours Appear in Space: the Modes of Appearance.' Cf. Remarks on Colour, III
202: "It is odd to say that white is solid, because of course red and yellow can be the
colours of surfaces too, and as such, we do not categorically differentiate them from
white."
3 White is also said to appear in the iIIuminant mode, e.g. as the colour of a lamp or a
naval signal. The important point may be that at a distance and in darkness an
illuminated surface with a high reflectance is indistinguishable from the light source,
since it is effectively a light source.
WHITENESS 337
4 But cf. Remarks on Colour, 1977, ill 242, "Milk is not opaque because it is white, -
as if white were something opaque."
5 Keith Campbell (1969) makes the alleged fact that not all objects of a particular
colour under a given illumination have "a distinctive light-modifying feature in
common" (p. 137) an objection to "the idea that colours are intrinsic physical qualities
of surfaces." I do not know how to interpret 'a quality of a surface' (property?) nor
exactly what an extrinsic quality would be. Still, high reflectance, whether a quality or
'not, is common to all white surfaces. It is not relevant to this that there may be many
different causes of high reflectance. And there may be no property which all square
objects have in common (apart from the dubious property of being square) which
makes them all squares, but this has no tendency to show that being square is not an
intrinsic quality, feature, property or what -not of the squares.
6 A fact which Wittgenstein uses to introduce the "sort of mathematics of colour" at
Remarks, ill 2 and 3.
7 Cf. Remarks I 52: "White as a colour of substances (in the sense in which we say now
snow is white) is lighter than any other substance-colour; black darker. Here colour is
darkening, and if all such is removed from the substance, white remains, and for this
reason we call it 'colourless'." Cf. W. D. Wright, Towards a Philosophy of Colour'
(1967, p.26) on the point that "when a painter talks about colour he means pigment."
For a modern exposition of Goethe's theory, M. H. Wilson and R. W. Brocklebank
(1958).
8 A limiting case: white might be regarded as a colour in a way comparable to the way
in which zero can be regarded as a number - but also as the absence of a number: We
can answer the question, 'How many?' with 'None'.
9 Here there is no dash between the so-called 'worlds' of commonsense and perception
on the one hand and science on the other. There is no qualitative gap or difference in
kind between the physical property and the 'phenomenal quality, and accordingly no
need for a philosophy of mind which relocates the phenomenal quality within the
physical world. A white surface looks exactly as we would expect a surface reflecting a
high proportion of the incident light diffusely to look, insofar as there are any prior
expectations here. This should be contrasted with the position of the physicalist claim
that a colour is a light emission of a certain disjunctive class of wavelengths. The
conception I am putting forward involves no theoretical terms.
10 I find some confirmation of this in the leukos of Attic Greek, a Stage IITh language
in Berlin and Kay's classification (1969), i.e. one which covers colour space with only
four terms whose foci or areas of primary application are the same as English white
(leukon), black (glaukos), red (erythros) and green (khloros). Leukon translates as
'white' because the focus of the terms is the same, but it can also translate as 'light.' The
spread of the term over colour space and also the connections with other concepts
differ. Leukon describes water, sun, metallic surfaces, anything bright, brilliant, reflect-
ing, clear. 'Leukon' is a much richer concept than 'white,' much less obviously the name
of a 'simple idea' - it would have been harder for Hume to write as he did of a white
sphere as a simple idea had he written in Greek. For some "obvious inaccuracies" in
Berlin and Kay's account of Homeric Greek, see Irwin (1974, pp. 221-222).
11 "Due to the powers of adaption of the eye to varying conditions of illumination,
there is little connection between the apparent brightness of a surface and the absolute
338 JONATHAN WESTPHAL
intensity or quantity of reflected light. It is the reflected fraction of the incident light
which is all important" (Clulow, 1972, p. 24).
12 "In the course of a scientific investigation we say all kinds of things; we make many
many utterances whose role in the investigation we do not understand. For it isn't as
though everything we say has a conscious purpose; our tongues just keep going. Our
thoughts run in eastablished routines, we pass automatically from one thought to
another according to the techniques we have learned. And now comes the time for us
to survey what we have said. We have made a whole lot of movements that do not
further our purpose, or that even impede it, and now we have to clarify our thought
processes philosophically" (Wittgenstein, 1980, p. 64e).
13 Figure 2 suggests an easy explanation of the fact that "white gradually eliminates all
contrasts, while red doesn't" (Wittgenstein, 1977, ill 212).
14 A peg (Odyssey V 248), according to Guthrie.
15 D. M. Armstrong (1969, p. 125) thinks that this is what colours must be because
"surely colour is an intrinsic and not a relational property."
16 For a suggestion about how to solve Wittgenstein's problems about brown, with a
Goethe-inspired definition, J. Westphal (1982).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
GOETHE AS A FORERUNNER OF
ALTERNATIVE SCIENCE*
The physicist also makes himself master of the phenomena, gathers experiences, rigs
them up and joins them together by means of artificial experiments ... only let us
341
F. Amrine: F. J. Zucker, and H. Wheeler (eds.), Goethe and the Sciences:
A Re·Appraisal, 341-350.
© 1987 by D. Reidel Publishing Company.
342 GUNTER ALTNER
respond to the bold assertion that this is still nature at least with a quiet smile, a gentle
shaking of the head. For it never occurs to the architect to give out his palaces for
mountain camps and woods.
Man himself, to the extent that he makes use of his healthy senses, is the greatest and
most precise physical apparatus that can exist. And this is precisely the trouble with
modern physics: that the experiment has as it were been sundered from the human
being, and knowledge of nature is sought merely in that which artificial instruments
display.
Into the inextricable conglomerate of the gigantic increase in the species, of Wall
Street's entry into the capital market, of the intoxification with colonization, of whole
continents drawn deeper into instinct and luxury, of the economic progress of pro-
fessions eager for usury, of the crises of the early years of the empire's proclamations
and debacles fell the theory of 1859: Fitness, struggle and victory!
To be sure, experiments can be performed that allow us for example to determine with
great accuracy the location of a particle; but in the act of measurement we must submit
the particle to a powerful external effect, so that there results a great uncertainty
regarding its velocity. Thus nature retreats from precise determination in terms of our
mental C011StruCtS because of the inevitable disruption that is bound up with every
observation.
346 GUNTER AL TNER
It was just this that worried Goethe. For this reason he pleaded the
importance of sensory observation. For this reason he warned against
experimental constructs that interpose themselves between nature and
the observer of nature. Goethe knew already what we have had to learn
with great difficulty via the long path through atomic physics, modern
biology and ecology: the separation of the researcher as subject from
the object of research is artificial.
In doing research, the scientist participates at the same time in that
which he or she investigates. Natural laws are not descriptions of nature
as such: they are the points of view of such participants, exemplary
reactions by nature to the matrix of questions posed by experimental
reason. There is no neutral observation; every observation gives rise to
a change in the system. We know that today, especially with regard to
living systems. The higher the level of order at which scientific experi-
ments pose questions, the greater the probability of artificially induced
alterations and destruction.
Goethe was of the opinion: the greater the gentleness and care with
which one engages the senses in observation, the more true-to-nature
the results will be. Goethe formulates this in a way that is still un-
surpassed:
Yet if we consider all the forms in nature [Gestalten], especially the organic forms, then
we find that nothing exists in nature that is constant, nothing at rest, nothing closed off;
rather, everything oscillates in continual movement ... That which has been given form
is immediately transformed again, and if we wish to attain in some measure a living
comprehension of nature, we must ourselves remain as mobile and plastic as the
example nature presents to us.
Progress in the exact sciences requires that for the time being we forego in many areas
the living contact with nature that Goethe felt to be the precondition for a profounder
knowledge of nature. We resolve to forego this because in return we are able to
comprehend extremely far-reaching connections and see into them with mathematical
clarity.
That was written in 1941, at the beginning of the Second WorId War
A FORERUNNER OF ALTERNATIVE SCIENCE 347
that was to end with the atomic inferno of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The threat of atomic weapons is today more than ever a nightmare for
every responsible person in East and West. Added to this are the
destruction and encroachments that come in the train of industrial and
technological progress and gnaw at the prerequisites for the survival
of the earth's biosphere. In the face of this overall development, the
renunciation of contact with living ,nature within the sciences recom-
mended by Heisenberg must be rejected. With the emergence of
alternative science today - which, as we have seen, is not merely a
matter of ethics nor of after-the-fact precautions applied to existing
technology - there has followed a profound change in the methodol-
ogy of scientific cognition. Here one can see the beginnings of con-
troversies and breaks with the past comparable to the Copernican
revolution or the change from classical to atomic physics.
Heisenberg claims for the line of exact, calculating science he
supports the advantage "of being able to see into extremely far-reaching
connections with mathematical clarity." Does it follow that thinking in
open systems and holistic relationships necessarily entails wilfulness
and subjectivity? Was it not Goethe who claimed for his living con-
templation of nature the ability to touch that which is most universal,
the Ideas? And -is his Theory of Color entirely devoid of mathematical
abstraction? In his theoretical deliberations, Goethe confronted over
and over again the question how the universal could take on a partic-
ular form and still be perceived as such. In his debate with the Kantian
Schiller, Goethe insists that the ideas viewed by him in natural forms
really exist and as such are a product of his experience or of the pure
form of intuition [Anschauung].
We reached Schiller's house; the conversation lured me in. There I gave an animated
exposition of the metamorphosis of plants and, with a number of characteristic strokes
of the pen, caused a symbolic plant to arise before his eyes. He took everything in and
viewed it with great interest, with resolute comprehension. But when I ended he shook
his head and said: 'That is not an experience, that is an idea.' ... statements like the
following made me extremely unhappy: how can an experience ever be given that would
be adequate to an idea ? For the essential characteristic of the latter is that it can never
be congruent with an experience.
Thus in many ways Goethe fits easily into the mold of a forerunner
of alternative science. Only his political stance appears not to be in
harmony with alternative science. But this is only an initial, fleeting
impression. Alternative science today is, by virtue of its very pre-
suppositions, nonconformist. It takes upon itself a comprehensive
responsibility for society and the environment. In the process it comes
into conflict not only with the interests of the state, industry and
society. It also undermines the reigning paradigms of exact science as
well as the systems of exploitation founded upon it. It unmasks the logic
of scientific reason as a form of power and argues for a gentle alterna-
tive to the technocratic state.
There is lots of inflammatory material here. Behind it, however,
pulses the hope for an evolutionary turn for the better. If one ponders
the main features of this new impulse, then one feels oneself led back to
Goethe once again. For him the theory of form is a theory of trans-
formation, and thus he thinks in an evolutionary way politically as well.
Goethe remained reserved in the face of the French Revolution and
the changes in European politics that it brought about. And yet he
explained:
Because I hated revolutions, I was called a friend of the old order. That is however a
very ambiguous title, which I would beg to decline. If the old order were in every way
excellent, good and just, then I would have nothing against it. Yet since in addition to
the many good things there is much that is bad, much that is unjust, much that is
imperfect, 'a friend of the old order' often means little more than a friend of that which
is out of date and bad. But time marches ever forward, and human affairs take a
different form every 50 years, so that an institution that was perfect in 1800 has
perhaps become decrepit already by 1850.
NOTE
* Translated from the German by Frederick Amrine. Translation revised and approved
by the author. The German original of this paper was first published in a collection of
his essays, Fortschritt wohin? Der Streit urn die Alternative, Neukirchener Verlag,
Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1984, pp. 97-108, whom we thank for permission to print the
translation.
Weinbrennerstrasse 61
6900 Heidelberg
BRDIFederal Republic of Germany
KLAUS MICHAEL MEYER-ABICH
1. INTRODUCTION
Humanity today through its science of nature is in danger of destroying the very realm
of nature in \vhich it lives and which is subject to its intervention. A knowledge which
manifests itself in destroying what it seeks to know cannot be true knowledge. We are
therefore forced today to question the truth of our science of nature (1973, p. 1).
Let us ask ourselves, then, whether the conditions for the existence
of life today would not be endangered, or would be less endangered, if
in our economic interaction with the objects of nature our actions had
been or would in the future be guided by the Goethean conception of
nature rather than the Newtonian. My contribution to an answer to this
question is a philosophical confrontation of the two cognitive para-
digms capable of guiding science, which are now themselves to be
devaluated in a broader perspective as to their truth. I begin by
identifying what is common to both the Goethean and Newtonian
methods in order, against this background, to illuminate their dif-
ferences all the more clearly.
nature, however, did not work with this aim in mind; instead they
sought to explain phenomena on the basis of theories of a very general
nature, as when Descartes used the little spheres of his matter ... to
explain color" (HA 14, p. 156). Thus to Goethe the notion that "those
who are involved with the natural sciences are concerned with the
phenomena" (HA 14, p. 165) appeared nigh onto a delusion.
In fact, the empiricism of natural science is often enough but a
rhetorical formula or a banner under which the guild fell into line
against the outside in a common opposition to what in scholasticism
was considered worth knowing. As in every historical movement, so in
science, one can by no means be certain that it calls the gods which it
follows by their right names. For example, Galileo in his Dialogue
Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, presents himself as a good
empiricist in the sense of Aristotle, against the claims of the Aristotelians
who invoke his authority. In his argument, however, he accuses Aristotle
of not having distanced himself sufficiently from raw experience.
Participants in the Dialogue are, on the one hand, Salviati and
Sagredo, two physicists of Galilean persuasion, who so-to-speak con-
duct a conversation of Galileo with himself and, on the other, the
Aristotelian Simplicio, whom they ridicule in the course of the discus-
sion. Galileo's (Platonic) criticism of the empiricist Aristotle begins at
the very opening of the discussion: "Following the example of Aristotle,
you have first carried me off, far from the world of the senses, in order
to show me the plan according to which it shall be executed" (Galileo,
1967, p. 15). He refers here to the first general reflections on the
relation between matter and motion, and to the division of motion into
straight and curved (De caelo I, 2). That Aristotle had taken on such a
general problem as the blueprint of the universe apparently meets with
his approval. "On the other hand," he continues, "I don't like it at all
when I hear him (Aristotle) suddenly restrict the generality ... by
calling one motion a motion around a center and the other sursum et
deorsum, i.e. upwards-directed and downward-directed; all these are
expressions that cannot be employed outside of the fully constructed
world but rather imply that the world is already created and, further, is
already inhabited by us" (1967, p. 16).
Aristotle, in fact, had merely divided all motion into straight and
circular, but it had certainly not been proven that all straight line
motions are directed towards or away from a single point, nor that all
circular motions must be effected about precisely this point as center;
THE LANGUAGE OF NATURE IN GOETHE 357
Here we find Goethe very close to Galileo who, for example, opens
his great work on the foundations of mechanics, the Discorsi (1638), in
a Venetian armory and with praise for the acumen and knowledge that
had already been attained in the handicraft technique of weapons
manufacture. To be sure, the model of 'pure' science, far removed from
any application, arose first in the late 19th century, so that Goethe
would hardly have encountered opposition, even among the physicists
THE LANGUAGE OF NATURE IN GOETHE 359
We found a primordial immense contrast between light and darkness that can be
expressed more generally as light and not-light; we sought to mediate this opposition
and in so doing to construct the visible world out of light, shadow, and color (HA 13,
p. 489). And thus from this triad (light, darkness, and color) we construct the visible
world (HA 13, p. 323).
At this point 'we are still not at all far from the Galilean reconstruc-
tion of the world according to the provisions of the blueprint. It is true
that Goethe was particularly concerned to "recognize living forms as
such, to grasp their external, visible, palpable parts in context", but by
then the science of mechanics had long been completed and it was life
phenomena that were of interest. It is therefore even more remarkable
that the "comprehending in context" should ultimately come down to
"the mastery in some sense of the whole in intuition" (HA 13, p. 55;
italics of the present author).
So it was not only traditional science, on which modem industrial
society is based, that was concerned with human domination in nature,
but Goethe as well. In downright Baconian terms he explains, for
example, that our entire attention must be ''focused on listening to
nature to overhear her processes" (HA 13, p. 37), and his criterion of
success is - as in the dominant natural science - reproducibility: "to
repeat the phenomenon just as often as we please" (HA 13, p. 342).
Nor does he shrink from hauling the objects of his interest before the
Kantian tribunal by, for example, using the opportunity "to illuminate
or darken a greenhouse at will ... , in order to study the effect of light
360 KLAUS MICHAEL MEYER-ABICH
"In the entire world accessible to the senses", one reads in the Theory of
Color (the Farbenlehre), "everything depends on the relations of the
objects among themselves in general; primarily, however, on the rela-
tion of mankind, the most important object on earth, to the others. In
this way the world is divided in two parts, the human being, as subject,
confronting all else as object. It is with this division that the practitioner
wrestles in experience and the thinker in speculation, both being
summoned to a struggle which no truce and no decision can conclude.
Here also, the essential point as always is that the relations be correctly
perceived" (HA 13, p. 369).
Thus the struggle of humankind with the rest of the world belongs
for Goethe, as in the myth of the Fall, to the fundamental conditions
of human existence, and it would be a misunderstanding to want to
conclude the struggle, say, by a victory. Has the triumphal advance of
modern science and technology caused us to succumb to this mis-
understanding? If the object is not to end the struggle through a victory
or defeat and then to conclude a peace, but rather to conduct the battle
THE LANGUAGE OF NATURE IN GOETHE 361
use ... that fully harmonized with nature could be called symbolic"
(HA 13, p. 520). It sounds very promising also that in constructing the
visible world out of light, darkness and color we "at the same time
make painting possible" (HA 13, p. 323) so that art and technology
must follow the same path. But all these are only identical comments in
the framework of the alternative science that Goethe had in mind, so
that science and technology are as inseparable as in classical science.
A technology which is based on reverence for the world around us,
one that aims at a symbolic use of things that harmonizes with nature,
and which is coeval with art, is impossible for me even to imagine as
based on classical physics. For the normative understanding of nature
as material or resource, which underlies our industrial activity, is
already assumed in the conception of matter of classical physics
(Meyer-Abich, 1984), and neither art nor reverence has any place
there. Conversely, we could expect much more of a Goethean technol-
ogy if it, too, is grounded in science, but now in a Goethean science.
What then are the characteristic features of that science?
The goal of science for Goethe is "to reduce the manifold, particular
phenomena of the magnificent world-garden to a general simple prin-
ciple" (HA 13, p. 103). A typical example is the metamorphosis of
plants. "I traced all forms as I encountered them through their trans-
formations until, at the last destination of my trip, in Sicily, the original
identity of all plant parts became completely clear to me; and from then
on I pursued them everywhere and sought to rediscover them" (HA 13,
p. 164). In Goethe's opinion it is principally by 'variegating' the
phenomena (HA 13, p. 18; HA 14, p. 141) that we are led to a
perception of the original identity, although this by no means excludes
the role of hypotheses that guide cognition - as in the case of Goethe
himself after looking through Privy Councillor Buttner's prisms.
It is now the task of science, once it begins correctly with a recogni-
tion of the original identity of the many in the one, or of the individual
phenomena in the archetypal phenomenon, to "set forth the phenomena
in their natural development and true empirical order" (HA 13, p. 411),
i.e. to bring them into an order conformable to nature (HA 13, pp. 325,
527). In so doing one must recognize and perceive "the simple as
simple, the complex as complex, the primary and higher as such and the
secondary and derivative as such" (HA 13, p. 411). "The worst thing
that can befall physics or some other sciences is that the derivative is
taken as primitive and, since what is primitive cannot be derived from
THE LANGUAGE OF NATURE IN GOETHE 363
True observers of nature, however differently they may think in other regards, still will
agree with one another that everything that occurs, everything that we may experience
as a phenomenon must either point to an original division that is capable of unification,
or to an original unification that could be divided, and that it must present itself as
such. Dividing what is unified and unifying what is divided is the life of nature, it is the
eternal systole and diastole, the eternal synkrisis and diakrisis, the inhaling and
exhaling of the world in which we live, work and are (HA 13, p. 488). With gentle
weight and counterweight, Nature sways back and forth, and thus arises a here and
there, an above and below, a before and an after, which condition all phenomena that
we encounter in space and time (HA 13, p. 316).
era "had the courage to ascribe reason to her, and in the end she was
left lying there bereft of spirit" (HA 14, p. 122).
Once the philosophy of subjectivity is renounced, there is a further
problem associated with the attribution of reason to nature, namely that
the question of creation can no longer be evaded by recourse to anthro-
pocentric arguments. It is known that Goethe's thought here too
reaches back through Spinoza to Greek antiquity: "Observing the
universe in its greatest extension, in its ultimate divisibility, we cannot
resist the sense that at the basis of the whole universe lies an idea
according to which God creates and works in nature and nature in
God, from eternity to eternity" (HA 13, p. 31). "It pleases ... God to
move the world from within, to cherish Nature in Himself, Himself in
Nature, so that what lives and works and is in Him is never without His
strength, His spirit" (HA 1, p. 357). From this it follows however that,
philosophically speaking, Nature must also be conceived in terms of
freedom. Along with Schelling, Goethe here takes a quite different path
from that chosen by Kant and classical physics.
Given the successes of Newtonian classical mechanics, Kant believed
that he could not avoid the conclusion that all natural phenomena right
up to human behavior were as determined as the eclipses of the sun. In
order to estllblish a foundation for morality he sought nonetheless to
'rescue' freedom. The rescue succeeds insofar as the Kantian solution,
which rests on the distinction between things as 'phenomena' - that is,
as we experience them in space and time, the (exclusively) human forms
of apperception - and things as they may be in themselves but as we
cannot experience them, is convincing: If one "still wants to rescue
freedom, there is no way other than to attribute to the existence of a
thing as far as it can be situated in time and, consequently according to
the law of natural necessity, to causality as well, the status of mere
phenomenality, while conferring on freedom the same essence as
things-in-themselves" (Kant, 1956, A 169).
Now creation without freedom is unthinkable. Thus Kant rightly
understood by creation the creation of things in themselves, not of
things in time (1956, A 183). In hindsight however, his rescue of
freedom is as superfluous as it is unsuccessful. In my opinion, his
principal error was to save freedom from nature rather than to con-
ceive nature in terms of freedom. Goethe, owing to his very different
('pantheistic') theological starting point, is prevented from making the
same error. A man for whom the greatest good in life is "that God-
THE LANGUAGE OF NATURE IN GOETHE 367
Nature reveals herself to him" (HA 1, p. 367) certainly cannot allow the
realm of freedom to begin only beyond nature. Thus Goethe in the
Theory of Color refers optical phenomena ''back to nature and gives
them back their true freedom" (HA 14, p. 244). It is in this context
then that the polemic against Newton's "thread-like sunbeam" (HA 13,
p. 111) and the liberation of nature "from the small darkroom and the
tiny prisms" (HA 14, p. 265) must be understood.
The decisive reason why, in Goethe's judgement, "nature for the
Newtonian has become non-nature" lies therefore, in my opinion, in the
fact that for Newton and for classical physics, nature is not conceived
in terms of freedom. Here Goethe was acquainted with Kantian thought
mainly through Schiller. "More out of friendly consideration toward me
perhaps than out of personal conviction, he treats the good mother in
the aesthetic letters without those harsh expressions that made me so
hate the essay on grace and dignity" (HA 13, pp. 28f).
Nature, the good mother: I don't know if the psychoanalytic interpre-
tation of Goethe can contribute anything to the further illumination of
his understanding of nature, or whether there is a connection between
the environmental problem and the role of woman in industrial society.
I do, however, have the impression that the young Goethe speaks of
nature as a girl, while the Weimar Goethe speaks of her as a woman, so
that for him Nature in any case is feminine, a feminine god. This even
results in a special quality of vitality in which he lets her freedom
appear: "Nature has no system; she has, she is life and progression from
an unknown center, to an unknowable limit. The contemplation of
nature is thus endless" (HA 13, p. 35).
The personhood of nature has become foreign to us today because
nature has been devalued from the nature of things to the things of
nature. Goethe, on the contrary, understood by nature not an accumu-
lation of objects, but rather the creative force (natura naturans) which
works in these objects, by virtue of which the natural is natural, in other
words Sein and not Seiendes 1, the Sein being taken as the being of a
person, like a personal god. Only in this way can we understand how
nature "can urge something to our consideration" (HA 13, p. 147) or
that Nature covers a distance (HA 13, p. 79) or skips over something
on the way (HA 13, p. 71), arrives at a destination (HA 13, p. 79), as
well as, finally, that nature "has effects" (HA 13, pp. 69, 73, 100) and
forms organs in a particular way (HA 13, p. 75) by separating and
unifying (HA 13, p. 68; all references are only illustrative).
368 KLAUS MICHAEL MEYER-ABICH
the whole of Nature reveals herself (my italics) to another of the senses. Let us close our
eyes, open and sharpen our ear, and from the softest breath to the wildest roar, from
the simplest tone to the highest harmony, from the fiercest most passionate cry to the
mildest word of reason, it is nature alone that speaks and reveals her being, her force,
her life, and her interrelations .... Thus Nature speaks down to the other senses, to
known, unrecognized, unknown senses. Thus she speaks to herself and to us through a
thousand phenomena. To the attentive she is nowhere dead nor dumb" (HA 13, p.
315).
though they were soluble problems, and approaches the subject matter
usually from the side of the most complicated phenomena" (RA 14, p.
111).
For Goethe nature was, so to say, no problem in the literal sense of
the word, i.e. no bulwark that must be victoriously stormed. For this
reason, the scientist can still be for him a "lover of Nature" (RA 13, p.
377) and a "friend of Nature" (RA 13, p. 316 et passim). This is of
great significance for us today as we become increasingly aware that in
our behavior toward nature we always enter into a relationship with
ourselves as well.
Goethe was profoundly aware of the correspondence between the
experience of nature and the experience of self in the human relation-
ship to nature. It is precisely there that the possibility of humanization
through the growing reverence for the world of nature around us lies
(RA 13, p. 53). What is important here, and what we fail to see in
classical science and technology, is "that nature is concerned to elevate
us through totality to freedom" (RA 13, p. 503). The question then is
not only whether we may withhold from nature the very freedom we
want to redeem for ourselves, but also whether there is anything at all
to be redeemed for us, as long as we allow the realm of freedom to
begin only beyond the world of sense experience.
What is asked of us here - notwithstanding Goethe's usual reserva-
tions concerning efforts at self-knowledge - is a science of nature in
which we know what we are doing: no childish, exploitative relationship
in which we, locked into ourselves, take from the 'good mother' what
she has to offer, but rather a grown-up relationship in which one's self-
perception parallels the self-perception of the other, and in which our
distance from what confronts us does not exact the price of our being
locked into ourselves. What is needed in the construction of a scientific
theory, says Goethe, "is the skill to undertake it in full awareness, with
self-knowledge, with freedom and, to use a daring word, with irony, so
that the abstraction that we fear shall be rendered harmless, and the
practical results that we hope for shall become truly vital and useful"
(RA 13, p. 317).
Self-knowledge, freedom and irony! Nothing is further from classical
physics and industrial society than these three characteristics. All the
more reason that we dare perhaps to hope that in them we have found
a path that respects the nature-embeddedness of human life.
THE LANGUAGE OF NATURE IN GOETHE 371
NOTES
* An earlier version was read at the symposium 'Goethe e l'idea di natura,' Trieste,
Oct. 1982. Translated by Amelia Rechel-Cohen (with revisions by F. J. Zucker). The
German version of this paper first appeared under the title 'Selbstkenntnis. Freiheit und
Ironie - Die Sprache der Natur bei Goethe', in Scheidewege, Vol. 13, Frankfurt,
1983/4, pp. 278-299, and again in Goethe und die Natur, Referate des Triestiner
Kongresses, H. A. Glaser, ed., Verlag Peter Lang, Frankfurt a.M., Bern, New York,
1986, pp. 37-67.
1 The Heideggerian distinction between Being as ontological (Sein) and as ontic
(Seiendes) (Translator's note).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
37 Hamburgerstrasse
2000 Hamburg 76
BRDIFederal Republic of Germany
FREDERICK AMRINE AND FRANCIS J. ZUCKER
POSTSCRIPT
GOETHE'S SCIENCE:
AN ALTERNATIVE TO MODERN SCIENCE OR
WITHIN IT - OR NO ALTERNATIVE AT ALL?
I think there was something cockeyed about Goethe, and you cannot get away from it
... one thing is very intuitive and clear and I'm sure Goethe would have agreed. And
this is that there is a mainstream of science, and there were contributions to science
which were made three hundred, four hundred, a hundred years ago, and these undergo
metamorphosis, and alter, and are recognizable contributions to science. The fact that
Galvani lost his debate with Volta does not matter since we aU agree that he has made
a contribution to knowledge even though we view it today differently. His contribution
has entered the mainstream and dissipated there. This is not true of Goethe. Helmholtz
could not show anything that Goethe had contributed to either perception theory or
theory of colors. Goethe's biological views resemble somewhat those of Geoffroy St.
Hilaire on 'the unity of organic composition; for which Goethe had a good word but
whose contribution was likewise bypassed by the history of science. There is no need
373
F. Amrine, !. Zucker, and H. Wheeler (eds.), Goethe and the Sciences:
ARe-Appraisal, 373-388.
© 1987 by D. Reidel Publishing Company.
374 FREDERICK AMRINE AND FRANCIS 1. ZUCKER
for any historian of science to mention Goethe; he cannot report the situation as
Goethe encountered it and add: here comes Goethe and makes a decisive move that,
although we do not accept it, makes a change in the situation. In this respect there is
little doubt that Goethe falls out and this is the verdict of both Helmholtz and
Heisenberg, who very much regret it because they loved him as a German poet.
Goethe was not a poet who blundered into the alien territory of physics, but rather
someone who actually looked at the phenomena and compared them with what the
prevailing theory said; someone who knew Newton's writings on optics and colors far
better than anyone except perhaps Newton himself; someone who knew the history of
chromatics and not just the history of optics; someone who gave prolonged thought
to the methodological and philosophical problems implicit in experimental science,
especially those of claiming factuality, of proving theory by experiment, and of
mathematizing phenomenal description. .
The whole notion of 'Goethe's science' strikes me as a strange idea. We don't talk about
'Helmholtz's science,' and it may in fact be putting Goethe in an awkward position to
have something identified as 'his' science ... What I chose to talk about in Goethe and
Helmholtz was ... the extent to which even in that part of the spectrum of the sciences
where Helmholtz felt that originally Goethe had nothing to offer - in physics and so
forth, Goethe's view of scientific method came to seem much more in consonance with
the view that physicists gained of their own activity in the latter part of the nineteenth
century. In other words, there was a real shift from an explanative procedure on the
basis of causes that were not accessible to the senses to a view of physics which was
much more descriptive and where essential regularities gave the basis for laws. So that
there is another way in which you could say that it was not really a Goethean science,
but that Goethe could be seen as contributing something. I think it's very important that
Goethe had a, what shall I say?, a human perspective on science. He really didn't want
to have an alternative to science; he felt that he was doing science, and that science was
something that could not be adequately done by the individual. There is a very nice
quote where he says: 'OnIy all men can know the truth; onIy all men can experience the
human; and in engaging in science you're doing a very different kind of thing from what
you're doing in art, because in art you want in a sense to give it individual closure. You
are trying to express yourself, or what you have to say, in a form which is going to be
sufficient for that meaning from then on. Whereas in science you're saying something
that's meaningful only because people have said things before and people are going to
take up what you've said and continue it, so that science is by definition something
going over generations, where the epistemological subject of science isn't the individual.
And this was a very important thought to him: this is one of the reasons that he says he
wrote the history of the Farbenlehre. And so I think it's a problem; I can recognize the
appeal of the notion of alternative science ... but it's also important, I think, not to
have the view that Goethe had his own science .... Goethe also had, I think, a very
profound view of the necessity for competing paradigms. He talked about them as
'Vorstellungsarten' ... He came to see that in fact it was fruitful for science to work in
terms of large conceptions, but that it was necessary for it to remain a plurality, not to
get locked into it, and I think the underlying motive of his polemic against Newton was
not any chauvinism or any hatred for the great man, but the fact that he felt he was up
against a monolith, because everybody said, Newton, Newton, Newton, and he just
POSTSCRIPT 377
didn't want to have it that way. He wanted to have a real ball-game ... he was keyed on
Newtonianism as an - an 'influenza' is what he called it, right?; 'influence' becomes
epidemic.
I'd like to emphasize the uniqueness of Goethe. I can see the parallel that you're
drawing between the more phenomenological, more mathematical-phenomenological
approaches that physics adopted in the latter part of the nineteenth century as
evidenced, for example, by Kirchhoff in his elimination of the notion of force, in saying
that mechanics from now on is going to be a purely descriptive, and not an explanatory
discipline. Well, that does seem to me to be missing something very important in
Goethe, and that is ... the dynamical element, the experience of the ideal in the actual,
in the perceptual ... this is very distinct from the sort of thing Kirchhoff was doing,
precisely because he wanted to eliminate this notion of dynamism, of force in nature.
And I'm reminded also in this regard of, for example, Ernst Mach and his philosophy
of science. If one reads Mach, one might come very easily to the conclusion: 'Oh, well,
this is very Goethean because this is phenomenology; he's restricting us to the
sensations.' The only problem with Mach is that, like Hume's, his is a very atomistic
view of nature, and there isn't the implicit trust one finds in Goethe that nature is a
unity, an organic unity, apart from our putting these sensations together in economical
ways according to mathematical formulae. I think that's a fundamental difference ...
that is slowly dawning upon us now: the need to think and act in open
systems." These new developments must remain utterly incomprehen-
sible, Altner claims, until this incipient scientific revolution has been
effected; Goethe "gives us courage today to make the change."
"Goethe's challenge to Newton" (with all that implies) is for Meyer-
Abich one of the highpoints in an ongoing "struggle over the direction
of scientific progress" in which the health not only of the natural
environment, but also of the political environment is at stake. Although
in Goethe's "alternative science," "science and technology are as in-
separable as in classical science," his would be a very different technol-
ogy, "a technology which is based on reverence for the world around
us, one that aims at a symbolic use of things that harmonizes with
nature, and which is coeval with art ..." Bohme sees in Goethe's
polemic against Newton "a genuine competition of theories," and
suggests that Goethe's approach would become a candidate for further
development if the need were ever felt "of constructing a 'humane'
environment," or "if the concern were not only nature as a realm of
possible manipulation, but at the same time, the effective role of man in
nature, and if the concern were not only the experiences of man with
nature, but also the experience of one's self in one's relation to nature."
In his paper, Brady likewise champions Goethe as an important
scientific alternative. In order to see this, one must first divorce Goethe
from a 'mainstream' context into which he has often been wrongly
placed: the pre-Darwinian Naturphilosophie of Oken and Owen.
Rather, "Goethe's own investigation produces a different sense of form
and a unique notion of cause." As a result of such confusion, Goethe's
penetrating critique of static notions of biological form did not find its
way into the mainstream of biological thinking, which has - to its detri-
ment - turned away from Goethean 'descriptive study of form.'
The participants in the Round Table discussion who saw Goethe's
approach as a viable scientific alternative advocated two quite distinct
avenues of further development. The first group sought in Goethe the
possibility of overcoming certain limitations inherent in modern science
through an intensification or enhancement of perception which, if
systematically pursued, would lead to the development of the 'new
organs of cognition' foreseen by Hegge and Zajonc at the ends of their
papers. The second - which aroused suspicion as well as interest -
asked whether Goethe's approach can be reconciled with certain recent
developments in mathematics and system theory; but most of those who
POSTSCRIPT 379
If one looks at the beginning of the Theory of Color, there is a famous passage which
says it is impossible to define a man's character, but let a series of his acts be presented
to us, and a lively picture of the character immediately emerges. Goethe intends this
reference to novelistic technique as a warning what he is about to do in the Theory of
Color, and it's exactly what he does in The Metamorphosis of Plants as well. So we get
description instead of explanation: Goethe says he has a science that would be content
to darstellen (,set forth'); he is not interested in causal analysis (if 'causal' stands for the
Aristotelian 'efficient' cause). What could such a descriptive science do? I think it will
be instructive to review a couple of cases: we'll come to Goethe himself presently.
POSTSCRIPT 381
First, think in terms of that little bit of necessary reasoning one evidently does
almost unconsciously when one walks past any object, say a piano. One gets it square
on and it's sort of square, and one gets it on an angle, and it's changed again and it
slowly gets sort of lozenge-shaped ... One will have many views, some of which differ
drastically from each other. Perhaps we say: well, that's no problem; that's a continuous
transformation; the various views can be treated as I was treating the views of the
leaves. But it is a problem, logically, because in fact unless one has a unity to which to
refer each partial view, those views are not partial; they are complete in themselves and
therefore they are totally different things. So in order for the mind to perform this little
miracle that keeps the table constant, one has to be able to think the table in a form
that is identical with no view of the table available to the senses .... To make sense of
that table, one must think the table in a form that illuminates, as a law illuminates, all
the exemplary views of the table, but always reveals each of them as partial. Therefore,
whatever this form is, it is not any of the views themselves - I hope we needn't fool
around with the possibility that it's an infinite number of views somehow collected in
one's head: rather, it is a generative function. It's very difficult to discover - this is a
problem of intentionality - the content of the intentional stance that one takes to unify
the table for oneself. I invite you to the exercise; it's a very interesting one, and there is
something there, and you can come by it. . ..
But then go from these examples to the parallel case that Goethe suggested: let the
list of the actions of a character be presented to us in a novel, and we have a lively
picture of something, a comprehension of the character even as - and by a similar
process - we had a comprehension of the piano, except the piano was simply a
distribution in space, and generative in that way of different views from different angles
in space. The character is something else again. The character is at least in some sense
causal and generative in a causal sense; I suspect that it's a close relative of Aristotle's
formal cause. Well, you can decide for yourself whether you really believe this. I had a
conversation with someone once who explained to me what a human being was: 'a
complex collection of chemical salts' plus 'interconnections' and so forth. So I asked
him if he loved his wife. And he replied, 'That's dirty pool!' He had seen what was
coming: I then wondered whether he loved a complex collection of chemical salts? And
he said, 'No, it's her character.' And he actually used the example of feeling the
kindness in her actions, the particular, unique stamp there her actions had toward him
as something that always renewed his love. . ..
Think carefully about that aspect of human life: personality, the unitary sense of
character, whatever we're calling it, for example in a good play: the character may not
be predictable, but what he does appears inevitable since it follows a pattern; we say,
'Ah, of course! That's what that character would do.' One can see that life is an
irreducible for Goethe, and the fact that one removes rational character doe.s not mean
that one removes all character: one can talk about the species character of other beings
- horses, cows, and so forth - and do the same exercise; one obtains less of a result,
but one still comes up with a law. I suppose one would need an individual law for each
human being, but certainly in zoology in general we have a species-law, species-types.
This is behavioral law now: the behaver is essentially what is being expressed through
the entirety of the organism, including the morphology. At this point we come to the
plant, and the plant's only behavior, since it does not exhibit irritability, is growth and
382 FREDERICK AMRINE AND FRANCIS J. ZUCKER
reproduction. But it is still behavior, and it is still the plant-character in action we're
seeing. In other words, it's the doing of the plant that one is watching, and in fact that's
why we must take awfully seriously Goethe's suggestion that colors are 'deeds of light,
what it does and what it endures.' Not because he wants an anthropomorphic model, it's
a point of epistemology: he has noticed a mode of immediate intelligibility of the world,
which is, that patterns - put most abstractly now - patterns in space or time are lawful
in the sense that they express law or they would not be recognized as pattern. This
expressive or symbolic function is what he finds immediately necessary to postulate in
order to make any kind of sense of phenomena at all. In other words, sense-stimulus is
not intelligible without this symbolic function. . ..
The argument I wanted to make was that the archetype of Goethean science is itself
the account of the intelligibility of ordinary perception, because everything that I said is
going to be necessary on that account. Goethe simply says: 'That's the archetype of
science; that's the primal form - perception is. That we perceive and it's meaningful'. If
we make it more meaningful by a rational effort, that he defines then as science. But for
him it has to be based on the improvement of the thinking faculty of perception itself.
It is not adequate to say that you have discovered the archetype; it must be 'tested.' The
test is as follows: imagine in what form the archetype will manifest itself when in
environments other than that in which it was already observed. If those imagined forms
are then actually found in nature, the archetype that was the source of the imagined
form can be considered verified.
activity is nothing but recognizing, let us say, the archetype in Rembrandt, which allows
one to attribute a hitherto unknown work and insert it into a series of known works at a
given point in an artist's evolution. Goethe did just this: through a lifetime of experience
in viewing phenomena, he schooled a faculty that ultimately allows one to recognize, let
us say, a species, and that allows us to recognize a human being in a great variety of
POSTSCRIPT 383
manifestations. We are not wont to call this science today: we call it something else. The
connoisseur is also usually considered a witch who can predict certain things. But I
think that the method is something that can become scientific; it can become so clearly
defined and expressed that ultimately one will have to recognize it as a science - that
the humanities can become scientific in this way, just as an artistic element has to be
brought into the natural sciences.
... Brian Goodwin at the University of Sussex in England has ... described bone
development, from the single heavy bone of the upper limb to the increasingly fine and
numerous metacarpal bones, in terms of an eigenfunction problem. This is mathe-
matically similar to the quantum mechanical description of a particle confined within a
space, or the description of the vibration of a violin string according to continuum
mechanics. For example, if you imagine a violin string somehow floating in space it can
take on every possible form. But once you fix it at its ends to a violin it can only vibrate
according to a certain set of forms determined by that fixed length. Using this approach,
the mathematics is suggestive of a field of form and is a dynamical description on the
organic level. ... In Lawrence Edwards's work, the appearance of form arises within a
projective geometry that is initiated in a completely non-analytic fashion. He starts with
a pencil and a straight edge to generate a space and forms. The metric arises only after
the space is generated in this purely qualitative way. In a sense one could say that a
particular form is individualized out of pure form through the mathematician's intuition.
Although this is in a way the reverse of Goethe's method of discovering the archetype
through observation of already manifest expressions of it, I don't think that Goethe
would have had any objections to such a mathematics.
the 'flow matric calculus' invented by Alan Turing, famous for his fundamental
computer theorem. Turing started his work in a very 'Goethean' manner: he walked
POSTSCRIPT 385
around for a very long time observing the sequence and orientation of leaves growing
out of stalks, and then he had his intuition: a mathematical one, not a Goethean primal
phenomenon manifesting the activity of an archetype; evidently both are possible.
does seem to separate him from orthodox science and the kinds of things orthodox
scientists admit to doing when they are in the laboratory. This has to do with this last
stage of the archetypal phenomenon, which I think is in some ways his most unique and
personal contribution. It also reflects itself in the way Mr. Zucker describes con-
temporary discussions of, I might say, a mathematization of Goethe.
If I read that as a scientist, I say: 'What is this man engaged in?' It sounds to me like
Goethe's intermediate realm. He's engaged in the taking of individual plant buds,
bringing them together under another rubric, and seeing a common shape, a common
element, as it were, which connects all of them together. It's the pattern which we
recognize in it, and he's cast it into a beautiful mathematical form. Now, Galileo did the
same thing. When he dropped a stone, he said to himself: 'I'm going to describe the
motion; regardless of how I drop it, or where I drop it, it will have a characteristic
movement.' And then he says in a little passage: 'Some people speculate, then, as to the
cause of that motion: why, in fact, it moves the way it does' - they wish to see the
'forces' exhibited, the dynamic content, the way Newton did it later. But GaJiIeo says, 'I
will not engage in that speCUlation; that is outside my purview.' And so he founded what
is usually called kinematics, as opposed to dynamics. In other words, he's interested in
the geometry of motion, so-called, as opposed to invoking a dynamical element which
generates the kinematic or geometric aspect. Now it seems to me we may be in a
similar historical situation. We start out with a lot of plant forms which confuse us. We
begin to bring them together intuitively; we sense similarities. A mathematician
recognizes patterns from his geometry, which also appear in nature, which is the case
with Edwards, and then he begins to try them out. He fails in some cases, and succeeds
in his mathematical descriptions in others. But the thing which seems to me to be
missing, and which Goethe, I think, grasps with the archetypal phenomenon, is the
dynamical element. This is something I put forward as a question more than anything
else. But it is the thing which has always stood out as his unique contribution, which I
talked about in the last part of my paper, which in some ways is the controversial part.
As long as we denude Goethe, leave out this operative principle, this immanent,
activating, almost animistic element, we're safe; then we all feel comfortable; then it's
386 FREDERICK AMRINE AND FRANCIS J. ZUCKER
they could act in surfaces or volumes, they come into play in great diversity in phase
transitions and chemical reactions. The first one to develop a model for biological
growth processes was again Turing, and today we can admire many computer-
generated pictures looking, for example, like the growth of hydra-like organisms, like
embryological development, etc. They 'look like' these organic processes, they haven't
yet been developed to the point where we can say 'yes, this is the mathematics and the
dynamics of biological form.' But perhaps, who knows, someday someone will succeed
in representing the forces Bockemiihl introduces so beautifully (they are implicit in the
novel verbs with which he describes leaf growth) - a development that many Goethe-
lovers (among whom I count myself) may experience as a threat as much as an offer of
POSTSCRIPT 387
NOTES
1 As G6gelein himself does in the remaining chapters of the book from which his essay
was taken.
2 Forthcoming in greatly revised and expanded form.
3 R. Rosen, Fundamentals of Measurement and Representation of Natural System,
North-Holland, New YorJC!Oxford, 1978.
4 L. Edwards, The Field of Form: Research Concerning the Outer World of Living
Forms and the Inner World of Geometrical Imagination, Floris, Edinburgh, 1882.
Germanic Languages
3110 Modern Languages Bldg.
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor Ml 48109-1275
52 Hastings Rd.
Belmont MA 02178
FREDERICK AMRINE
page
Abbreviations 393
Introduction 395
I. Bibliographies and Reference Works 396
II. Editions of Goethe's Works 399
III. Editions of Goethe's Scientific Works 400
IV. Translations 405
V. Method and General Assessments 407
VI. Morphology 416
VII. Color Theory and Optics 419
VIII. Geology 423
IX. Other Sciences 424
X. Goethe's Scientific Works in Relation to his Oeuvre as a
Whole 425
XI. Goethe's Place in the History of Science 427
XII. Praxis . 432
391
ABBREVIATIONS
tunately, the former extends only through 1932 (with partial coverage
of 1933-1938), while the latter is restricted to the literature on
Goethe's color theory through 1938. Both volumes are well annotated.
For the years after 1932, it is necessary to consult the standard
Goethe-bibliographies. Driesch and Schlager's volume in Goedecke's
Grundriss (No. 10) covers 1912-1950; the annual bibliographies in
Goethe (No.6) take up where No. 10 leaves off, and have continued to
provide limited coverage through the present. Additional material is
contained in No.7, which overlaps all the aforementioned sources to
some degree. Nos. 16 and 18 provide at least a partial guide to doctoral
dissertations on Goethe. Moreover, 'national' bibliographies such as
Nos. 1 and 3 (France), 9 (Japan), 14 (Italy), 15 (Soviet Union) and 19
(Scandanavia) also yield important items not to be found in the general
compilations. Yet even all these sources taken together do not present a
comprehensive picture of the literature on Goethe and the sciences, for
they do not cover at all adequately the many important studies that
have appeared in scientific and philosophical publications, not to
mention the vast literature that has arisen outside academic circles.
Nos. 2 and 8 are valuable aids in assessing the influence of other
scientists upon Goethe, and in determining the extent of his reading.
Nos. 11 and 12' catalogue the most important collections of manu-
scripts; No. 13, the published editions of Goethe's works. I find the
Goethe-Handbuch, the Goethe- Wortschatz and the Konkordanz zu
Goethes Werken to be less helpful: thus I have chosen not to include
them. The inclusion of No. 17 may seem even more capricious, yet in
light of the tremendous influence Steiner has exerted upon the recep-
tion of Goethe's scientific studies, the central importance of Goethe
within Steiner's own work, and the complexity of his (Euvre, I thought it
important to include this one reference work not devoted to Goethe
himself.
[1] Baldensperger, F.: Bibliographie critique de Goethe en France, 1907. ix, 251 pp.
Rpt. Burt Franklin, New York, 1972.
[2] Keudell, E. von: Goethe afs Benutzer der Weimarer Bibliothek. Ein Verzeichnis
der von ihm entliehenen Werke (ed. and intra. by W. Deetjen), H. Bohlaus
Nachfolger, Weimar, 1931. xiv, 391 pp.
[3] *Bibliotheque Nationale: Goethe 1749-1832: Exposition organisee pour com-
memorer Ie centenaire de fa mort de Goethe (notes by H. Monee!; intra. by
C. Andler), Paris, 1932. vii, 237 pp.
[4] Richter, M.: Das Schrifttum iiber Goethes Farbenfehre mit besollderer
398 FREDERICK AMRINE
[19] *Findeisen, E.: 'Goethes Werke in Schweden, Diinemark and Norwegen (1900-
1980). Bibliographie', Der GingkobLatt 1 (1982) 1-27. Der GingkobLatt is
published as a supplement to the journal Der Gingkobaum.
[20] Eckermann, J. P.: Gespriiche mit Goethe in den Letzten lahren seines Lebens.
1823-1832,2 vols., F. A. Brockaus, Leipzig, 1836. xiv. 386 and 360 pp.
Rpt. as Vol. 24 ofthe Gedenkausgabe [see No. 22],1948.925 pp.
[21] Goethe, J. W. von: Goethes Werke: Hg. im Auftrage der Grossherzogin Sophie
von Sachsen, 4 pts., 133 vols. (in 143), Hermann BohlaulHermann Bohlaus
Nachfolger, Weimar, 1887-1919.
[22] Goethe, J. W. von: Gedenkausgabe der Werke, Briefe und Gespriiche. 28 August
1949,24 vols. (ed. by E. Beutler), Artemis Verlag, Zurich, 1948-1954.
400 FREDERICK AMRINE
[26] Goethe, J. W. von: Versuch die Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu erkliiren, 1st,
edn., Carl Wilhelm Ettinger, Gotha, 1790. vi. 86 pp.
[27] Goethe, J. W. von: Zur Farbenlehre, 2 vols., 1st. edn., J. G. Cotta'sche
Buchhandlung, Tiibingen, 1810, xlviii, 654 and xxviii, 757 pp.
[28] Bratranek, F. T. ed.: Goethe's naturwissenschaftliche Correspondenz, 1812-
1832, 2 vols. (Neue Mittheilungen aus Johann Wolfgang von Goethes
handschriftlichem Nachlasse, Pts. 1 and 2), Brockhaus, Leipzig, 1874. lxxxix,
400 and 424 pp.
[29] Goethe, J. W. von: Zur Farbenlehre. Didaktischer Theil (WA ILl), Hermann
BohIau, Weimar, 1890. XXXX, 399 pp.
[30] Goethe, J. W. von: Zur Farbenlehre. Polemischer Theil (WA 11.2), Hermann
BohIau, Weimar, 1890. ix, 318 pp.
[31] Goethe, J. W. von: Zur Morphologie. l. Theil (WA 11.6), Hermann BohIau,
Weimar, 1891. viii, 452 pp.
[32] Goethe, J. W. von: Zur Morphologie. II. Theil (WA 11.7), Hermann BohIau,
Weimar, 1892. vi, 372 pp.
t J. W. von Goethe, Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen, 4th edn. (intro. and comm. by
R. Steiner), Verlag Freies Geistesleben, Stuttgart, 1980.80 pp.
AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY 403
IV. TRANSLATIONS
t Goethe heute. Ober Stellung und Wirkung von Werk und Gedankenwelt Johann Wolf-
gang Goethes im geschichtlichen Selbstverstiindnis unserer Zeit (Beigabe to Goethe 99
(1982), Goethe-Gesellschaft, Weimar, 1982),p. 35.
406 FREDERICK AMRINE
[84] Gete, I. V.: Izbrannye filosofskie proizvedeniia AN SSSR, Instityt filosofii; ed.
by G. A. Kursanov and A. V. Gulygi); 'Nauka', Moskva/Leningrad, 1964.
520 pp.
[85] Goethe, J. W. von: Goethe's Color Theory (ed. and se!. by R. Matthaei; trans. by
H. Aach), Van Nostrand Reinhold Co., New York, 1971. 275 pp.
Pub!. simultaneously by Studio Vista, London.
This ed. also includes a complete facsimile reproduction of Eastlake's transla-
tion ofl840.
[86] *Goethe, J. W. von: De metamorfose van de planten, Rotterdam, 1971.
*Rpt. (prometheus paperback, deel 8), Uitgeverij Vrij Geestesleven, Zeist, 1972.
128 pp.
[87] Goethe, J. W. von: Le Traite des couleurs (trans. by H. Bideau; se!. and pref. by
P. Bideau; intro. and notes by R. Steiner), Editions du Centre Triades, Paris,
1973. xxxi, 263 pp.
Rpt. 2nd expo edn., inc!. 3 add. theoretical essays by Goethe, 1980. xxiii, 300 pp.
[88] Goethe, J. W. von: La Metamorphose des plantes suivie d'extraits sur la
botanique (trans. by H. Bideau; pref. by P. Bideau; intro., comm. and notes by
R. Steiner), Editions du Centre Triades, Paris, 1975.272 pp.
Forthcoming:
[89] *Goethe, J. W. von: Goethe's Scientific Studies (ed. by A. Cottrell and Douglas
Miller; trans. by D. Miller), Suhrkamp Publishers.
History, 5), Sijthoff & Noordhoff, Alphen aan den Rijn, 1978. xii, 161 pp.
[200] Blasius, oJ.: 'Zur Wissenschaftstheorie Goethes', Zeitschrift [iir philosophische
Forschung 33 (1979) 371-388.
[201] Hahn, K.-H.: '''Die Wissenschaft erhiilt ihren Werth, indem sie niitzt". Ober
Goethe und die Anfiinge der technisch-naturwissenschaftlichen Welt', Goethe
96 (1979) 243-257.
[202] Tewsadse, G.: 'Zur Frage der Naturerkenntnis bei Kant und Goethe', Goethe 96
(1979) 128-129.
[203] Weiland, W.: 'Goethes gliickliches Gleichnis von der Ergiinzung der Wissenschaft
durch Religion und Kunst', Goethe 96 (1979) 146-158.
[204] Hene!, H.: 'Goethe, Die Schriften zur Naturwissenschaft', Euphorion 74 (1980)
397-402.
[205] Hene!, H.: 'Typus und Urphiinomen in Goethes Naturlehre', in his Goethezeit.
Ausgewiihlte Aufsiitze, Inse! Verlag, Frankfurt a.M., 1980, pp. 158-181.
A German version of No. 155.
[206] Kaufmann, W.: Discovering the Mind: Goethe, Kant and Hegel, McGraw-Hill,
New York, 1980. xvi, 288 pp.
[207] Westphal, J.: 'Editorial', Theoria to Theory 14 (1981) 181-185.
[208] Forster, W.: 'Zur philosophischen Leistung J. W. Goethes', Deutsche Zeitschrift
[iir Philosophie 30 (1982) 191-205.
[209] Kifer, D.: Methodenprobleme und ihre Behandlung in Goethes Schriften zur
NatUlwissenschaft (BoWau Forum litterarum, 13), KolnlWien, BoWau Verlag,
1982. x, 345 pp.
[210] Le Shan, L. and Margenau, H.: Einstein's Space and Van Gogh's Sky. Physical
Reality and Beyond, Macmillan, New York, 1982.
See ch. 14, pp. 196-204, on Goethe and Newton.
[211] Requardt, M.: 'Goethe und die "anschauende Urteilskraft" oder "Feinsinn"
contra "Geometrie''', in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Sonderband aus der
Reihe TEXT + KRITIK (ed. by H. L. Arnold), edition text + kritik,
Miinchen, 1982, pp. 240-257.
[212] Amrine, F.: 'Goethe's Science in the Twentieth Century', To Wards 2, No.4
(1983) 20-23; 41.
Forthcoming in Proceedings of the Conference Goethe in the Twentieth Century,
Hofstra Univ., 1-3 April 1982.
[213] Forbes, E. G.: 'Goethe's Vision of Science', in Common Denominators in Art and
Science (ed. by M. Pollock), Aberdeen Univ. Press, Aberdeen, 1983, pp. 9-15.
[214] Steiner, R.: The Boundaries of Natural Science (trans. by F. Amrine and K.
Oberhuber; intro. by S. Bellow), Anthroposophic Press, Spring Valley/N.Y.,
1983. xiii, 125 pp.
An English translation of No. 114.
VI. MORPHOLOGY
1 have included under this single rubric both plant morphology and
AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY 417
[215) Hansen, A.: Goethes Metamorphose der Pflanzen. Geschichte einer botanischen
Hypothese, Verlag von Alfred Tolpelmann, Giessen, 1907. xi, 380 pp.
[216) Hansen, A.: Goethes Morphologie (Metamorphose der Pflanzen und Osteologie):
Ein Beitrag zum sachlichen und philosophischen Verstiindnis und zur Kritik der
morphologischen Begriffsbildung, Verlag von Alfred Topelmann, Giessen,
1919.200pp.
[217) Andre, H.: 'Goethes Metamorphosenlehre, ihr Sinn und ihre Bedeutung fur die
heutige Biologie', Medizinische Klinik 29 (1933) 1411-1413.
[218) Weinhandl, F.: 'Die gestaltanalytische Philosophie in ihrem Verhiiltnis zur
Morphologie Goethes und zur Transzendentalphilosophie Kants', Kant-
Studien 42 (1942/1943) 106-145.
[219) Wachsmuth, A. B.: 'Goethes naturwissenschaftliche Lehre von der Gestalt',
Goethe 9 (-1944) 54-87.
Rpt. in Wachsmuth, pp. 57-85.
[220) Arber, A.: intro., 'Goethe's Botany. "The Metamorphosis of Plants" (1790) and
Tobler's "Ode to Nature" (1782)', Chronica botanica 10 (1946) 63-124.
Cf.No.74.
[221) Hocquette, M.: Les Fantaisies botaniques de Goethe, Yves Demailly, Lille, 1946.
123 pp.
[222) Kiesselbach, A.: 'Goethe als Osteologe', Naturwissenschaftliche Rundschan
(Stuttgart), 2 (1949) 342-345.
[223) Weinhandl, F.: 'Goethes Morphologie', in Festschrift zum 200. Geburtstag Goethes
(ed. by E. Castle), Osterreichische Bundesverlag fiir Unterricht, Wissenschaft
und Kunst, Wien, 1949, pp. 85-113.
[224) Whyte, L. L.: 'Goethe and the Formative Process', Horizon 19 (1949) 240.
[225] Abercrombie, M.: 'Goethe as a Biologist', New Biology 8 (1950) 112-128.
[226) Cassirer, E.: 'The Idea of Metamorphosis and Idealistic Morphology: Goethe', in
his The Problem of Knowledge: Philosophy, Science, and History since Hegel
(trans. by W. H. Woglom and C. W. Hendel), Yale Univ. Press, New Haven,
1950,pp.137-150.
Pub!. simultaneously by Oxford Univ. Press, London.
[227) Hassenstein, B.: 'Goethes Morphologie als selbstkritische Wissenschaft und die
heutige Giiltigkeit ihrer Ergebnisse', Goethe 12 (1950) 333-357.
[228) Bloch, R.: 'Goethe, Idealistic Morphology, and Science', American Scientist 40
(1952) 313-322.
418 FREDERICK AMRINE
[247J Kuhn, D.: 'Grundziige der Goetheschen Morphologie', Goethe 95 (1978) 199-
211.
[248J Kuhn, D.: '''Welt- und Naturgeschichte rast jetzt recht bei uns" - Goethes
Engagement fur die Morphologie', in Kolloquium zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte:
Georg Uschmann zum 65. Geburtstag gewidmet (Acta historica Leopoldina,
13), Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina, Halle (Saale), 1980,
pp.9-26.
[249J Fliigge, J.: 'Goethes morphologische Naturanschauung und die Macht der exakten
Naturwissenschaften', Scheidewege 12 (1982) 429-447.
[250J Lotschert, W.: 'Goethe und die Pflanze', JFDH (1982) 216-230.
[251J Kiesselbach, A.: 'Naturforscher und Dichter - die morphologischen Studien
Goethes', Universitas 38 (1983) 761-766.
Except for Goethe's method in general, more has been written about
his optics and theory of color than any other part of his scientific work.
Young (No. 252), Brewster (No. 253), Tyndall (No. 254), Ronchi (No.
263) and Heitler (No. 277) have all voiced opinions, while Heisenberg's
essay is definitely a 'classic'. Wilson's study of 1958 (No. 273), which
seeks to recast Goethe's theory in contemporary terms, is a superb
introduction that 'is already well on its way to becoming a 'classic' (d.
Born, No. 462). Matthaei, the editor of the Farbenlehre in the LA, has
published widely on Goethe's color theory, and is very reliable: No.
269 or No. 67 (in Section III) would serve as fine introductions.
[252J Young, T.: 'Zur Farbenlehre. On the Doctrine of Colours. By Goethe. 2 vols.
Tiibingen, 1810 ... (etc.), (Review), The Quarterly Review 10 (1814) 427-
441.
[253J Brewster, D.: Review of Goethe's Theory of Colours (trans. by C. L. Eastlake),
London, 1840, The Edinburgh Review, or CriticalJournal 52 (1841) 99-131.
[254] Tyndall, J.: 'Goethe's Farbenlehre', The Fortnightly Review NS 27 (1880)
471-490.
[255] Glockner, H.: 'Das philosophische Problem in Goethes Farbenlehre' (Beitriige zur
Philosophie, 11), Carl Winter's Universitiitsbuchhandlung, Heidelberg, 1924.
32pp.
[256] Speiser, A.: 'Goethes Farbenlehre', in his Die mathematische Denkweise, Rascher
& Co., Ziirich/Leipzig/Stuttgart, 1932, pp. 88-97.
Rpt. in Vortriige, pp. 82-91.
[257] Matthaei, R: 'Goethes Farbenkreis. Die quellenmiissige Begriindung einer
Rekonstruktion', Euphorion 34 (1933) 195-211.
[258] Matthaei, R: 'Goethes biologische Farbenlehre', Goethe 1 (1936) 42-54.
[259] Matthaei, R: 'Neues von Goethes Entoptischen Studien (Mit zwei Tafeln nach
420 FREDERICK AMRINE
[275J *Bjerke, A.: Nye bidrag til Goethes farvelaere. 1: Goethe kontra Newton, Kosmos
fOrlag, Stockholm, 1961. 78 pp.
Originally written in Norwegian; first published in this Swedish translation.
Translations: German, No. 279.
[276J Heimendahl, E.: Licht und Farbe. Ordnung und Funktion der Farbwelt (intro. by
C. F. von Weizsacker), W. de Gruyter, Berlin, 1961. 284 pp.
[277J Heider, W.: 'Goethe contra Newton', in his Der Mensch und die naturwissen-
schaftliche Erkenntnis, Friedr. Vieweg & Sohn, Braunschweig, 1961, pp.
13-22.
Rpt. 3rd edn. 1964.
Translations: English, No. 280.
[278J Matthaei R: 'Complementare Farben. Zur Geschichte und Kritik eines Begriffes',
Neue Hefte zur Morphologie 4 (1962) 69-99.
[279J Bjerke, A.: Neue Beitriige zu Goethes Farbenlehre. Erster Teil: Goethe contra
Newton (trans. by L. Funk), Verlag Freies Geistesleben, Stuttgart, 1963.88 pp.
A German translation of No. 275.
[280J Heider, W.: 'Goethe versus Newton', in his Man and Science (trans. by R
Schlapp), Basic Books, New York, 1963, pp. 17-20.
Pub!. simultaneously by Oliver and Boyd, Edinburgh.
An English translation of No. 277.
[281J *Beckerath, K. von: 'Uber die Helligkeit der sechs Farben des Goetheschen
Farbenkreises', Die Farbe. Zeitschrift fUr alle Zweige der Farbenlehre und ihre
Anwendung (G6ttingen) 13 (1964) 74-78.
[282J Schmidt, P.: Goethes Farbensymbolik. Untersuchungen zu Verwendung und
Bedeutung der Farben in den Dichtungen und Schriften Goethes (Philologische
Studien und Quellen, 26), Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin, 1965.258 pp.
[283J Gerlach, W.: 'Farbenlehre und kein Ende. 1. Teil: Ein Geburtstagsbrief. 2. Teil:
Licht und Farben in der Physik der Goethezeit', in Natur und Idee. Andreas
Bruno Wachsmuth zugeeignet. 1m Auftrage des Vorstands der Goethe-Gesells-
chaft im Weimar zum 30. November 1965 (ed. by H. Holtzhauer), Hermann
B6hlaus Nachfolger, Weimar, 1966, pp. 67-78.
[284J Glockner, H.: 'Das philosophisch-asthetische Problem in Goethes Farbenlehre', in
his Die iisthetische Sphiire. Studien zur systematischen Grundlegung und
Ausgestaltung der philosophischen Asthetik (his Gesanunelte Schriften, 3), H.
Bouvier & Co., Bonn, 1966, pp. 324-338.
[285J Matthaei, R: 'Goethes Gesetz der Farbe', in Gestalt und Wirklichkeit. Festgabe fUr
Ferdinand Weinhandl (ed. by R Miihlher and J. Fischl), Dunker & Humblot,
Berlin, 1967, pp. 453-475.
[286J Holtsmark, T.: 'Goethe and the Phenomena of Color', in The Anatomy of
Knowledge. Papers Presented to the Study Group on Foundations of Cultural
Unity, Bowdoin College, 1965 and 1966 (ed. by M. Grene), AmherstiMa., Univ.
of Massachusetts Press, 1969, pp. 47-71.
Pub!. simultaneously by Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.
[287J S. L. Jaki, 'Goethe and the Physicists', American Journal of Physics 37 (1969)
195-203.
Cf. the following entry.
422 FREDERICK AMRINE
[288] Bliih, 0.: 'Jaki on Goethe', American journal of Physics 38 (1970) 544-545.
A reply to the previous entry.
[289] Judd, D. B.: intro., J. W. von Goethe, Theory of Colours [cf. No. 72, 1970], pp.
v-xvi.
[290] Holtsmark, T.: 'Zur Didaktik der Goetheschen Farbenlehre', EdN 14 (1971)
37-43.
[291] Wells, G. A: 'Goethe's Qualitative Optics', Journal of the History of Ideas 32
(1971) 617-626.
[292] Sambursky, S.: 'Licht und Farbe in den physikalischen Wissenschaften und in
GoethesLehre', EranosJahrbuch 41 (1972) 177-216.
[293] Gruner, S. M.: 'Goethe's Criticism of Newton's "Opticks"', Physis. Rivista
Internationale di Storia della Scienza 16 (1974) 66-82.
[294] Wilson, M.: 'Evolution of Light, Darkness and Colour', The Golden Blade (1975),
pp.53-66.]
[295] Gebert, H.: 'Goethe's Work on Color', The Michigan Academician 8 (1976)
249-265.
[296] Wilson, M.: 'Goethe's Concept of Darkness', Journal for Anthroposophy 24
(1976) 43-57.
Translations: German, No. 300.
[297] Zajonc, A G.: 'Goethe's Theory of Color and Scientific Intuition', American
Journal of Physics 44 (1976) 327-333.
[298] Bohme, G.: '1st Goethes Farbenlehre WissenschaftT, Studia Leibnitiana 9 (1977)
27-54.
Rpt. in his Alternativen der Wissenschaft, Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt a.M., 1980,
pp.123-153.
[299] Kanajew, I. I.: 'Goethes Arbeiten zum Problem der Physiologie des Farbsehens',
Goethe 94 (1977) 113-126.
'Translation [by O. Tome] of chapter 8 of Kanaev's Studies on the History of the
Problem of the Physiology of Color Vision from Antiquity to the Present (in
Russian) Leningrad, 1971' (ISIS).
[300] Wilson, M.: 'Das Dunkel als wirkende Macht', Die Drei (1977) 716-725.
An English translation (by R. Jacobs) of No. 296.
[301] Fink, K. J.: 'The Metalanguage of Goethe's History of Color Theory', in The Quest
for the New Science. Language and Thought in Eighteenth-Century Science (ed.
by K. J. Fink and J. W. Marchand), Southern Illinois Univ. Press, Carbondalel
Edwardsville, 1979, pp. 41-55.
[302] *Martin, M.: Die Kontroverse um die Farbenlehre: Anschauliche Darstellung der
Forschungwege von Newton und Goethe, Novalis-Verlag, Schaffhausen, 1979.
91 pp.
[303] Zimmermann, R. C.: 'Goethes Verhiiltnis zur Naturmystik am Beispiel seiner
Farbenlehre', in Epochen der Naturmystik: Hermetische Tradition im wissens-
chaftlichen Fortschritt. Grands Moments de la mystique de la nature: Mystical
Approaches to Nature (ed. A Faivre and R. C. Zimmermann), E. Schmidt,
Berlin, 1979, pp. 333-363.
[304] Heisenberg, W.: 'La scienza e la tecnica nella polemica Goethe-Newton', II Verri
22123 (1980/1981) 39-50.
An Italian translation (by. R. Troncon) of No. 260. Cf. No. 306.
AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY 423
[305) Carrier, M.: 'Goethes Farbenlehre - ihre Physik und Philosophie', ZeitschriJt fUr
allgemeine WissenschaJtstheorie 12 (1981) 209-225.
(306) Il Verri. Rivista di Letteratura 22123 (1980/1981).
A special double issue, ed. by R. Troncon, devoted entirely to Goethe's color
theory.
[307) Sepper, D. L.: 'Goethe, Newton and Color. The Background and Rationale of an
Unrealized Scientific Controversy', Diss. U niv. of Chicago, 1981.
To appear shortly in revised form as a book.
[308) Heissenbiittel, H.: 'Farbige Schatten. Goethe gelesen mit Hilfe von Lichtenberg',
inlohann Wolfgang von Goethe [cf. No. 211), pp. 258-266.
[309) Abraham, W.: 'Bemerkungen zu Goethes Farbenlehre im Lichte der Wahrneh-
mungspsychologie und der kognitiven Psychologie. Goethe als Gast in einer
fremden Wohnung', Euphorion 77 (1983) 144-175.
[310) Holscher-Lohmeyer, D.: "'Entoptische Farben". Gedicht zwischen Biographie
und Experiment', Etudes Germaniques 38 (1983) 56-72.
VIII. GEOLOGY
M. Semper's study of 1914 (No. 312) is a 'classic', while Nos. 313 and
315 (since incorporated into No. 199) would serve well as introduc-
tions. The remaining studies are more specialized. It should be added
that W. von Engelhardt has co-edited LA 1.11, which contains many of
Goethe's shorter .geological studies, and is at work preparing another
volume of commentary on Goethe's geology for the LA.
(311) Semper, M.: Die geologischen Studien Goethes: Beitriige zur Biographie Goethes
und zur Geschichte und Methodenlehre der Geologie, Verlag von Veit, Leipzig,
1914. xii, 389 pp.
[312) Seifert, H.: 'Mineralogie und Geologie in Goethes Lebenswerk', Philosophia
naturalis 2 (1952) 72-99.
[313) Cameron, D.: 'Early Discoverers, XXII: Goethe - Discoverer of the Ice Age',
lournal of Glaciology 5 (1965) 751-754.
[314) Wells, G. A.: 'Goethe's Geological Studies', Publications of the English Goethe
Society NS 35 (1965) 92-137.
[315) Pretscher, H.: 'Die Samrnlungen zur Mineralogie, Geologie und Paliiontologie
Johann Wolfgang von Goethes in Weimar', Geologie 19 (1970) 682-685.
[316) Hoppe, G.: 'Goethes Ansichten iiber Meteorite und sein Verhiiltnis zu dem
Physiker Chladni', Goethe 95 (1978) 227-240.
[317) Engelhardt, W. von: 'Goethes Beschiiftigung mit Gesteinen und Erdgeschichte im
ersten Weimarer Jahrzehnt', in Genio huius loci: Dank an Leiva Petersen (ed.
by D. Kuhn and B. Zeller), Bohlau, Wien/K6ln, 1982, pp. 169-204.
424 FREDERICK AMRINE
[326] Reuter, H.-H.: "'Roman des europilischen Gedankens". Goethes "MateriaIien zur
Geschichte der Farbenlehre''', Goethe 28 (1966) 1-49.
[327] Schone, A: 'Uber Goethes Wolkenlehre', fahrbuch der Akademie der Wissens-
chaften in Gottingen (1968) 26-48.
Rpt. in Der Berliner Germanistentag 1968 [ef. No. 177], pp. 24-41.
[328] Groth, A: Goethe als Wissenschaftshistoriker (Miinchener germanistische
Beitrage, 7; Miinchener Universitats-Schriften. Philosophische FakuItat), Fink,
Miinchen, 1972.447 pp.
[329] Fink, K. J.: "'DuaIisten", "Trinitarier", "Solitarier": Formen der Autoritat in
Goethes "Geschichte der Farbenlehre"', Goethe 99 (1982) 230-249.
[330] Zajonc, A G.: 'The Wearer of Shapes. Goethe's Study of Clouds and Weather',
Orion Nature Quarterly 3, No.1 (1984) 34-45.
Many of the entries in this section might easily have been placed
elsewhere: what distinguishes them from those in the previous sections,
however, is that they reflect more upon their authors and the prevailing
climate of scientific opinion, or more upon Goethe's relationship to
certain scientific developments, than upon Goethe himself. For example,
Du Bois-Reymond's polemic of 1882 (No. 358) is important not for the
light it sheds upon Goethe's work (which is practically none), but rather
for what it reveals about the late nineteenth-century reception of
Goethe's science (and perhaps about Du Bois-Reymond himself). On
the other hand, Helmholtz's critique of 1853 (No. 90) remains illumi-
nating even when considered outside its historical context; thus I have
placed it in Section V.
The studies by Feuchtersleben (No. 353), Cams (No. 355), Huxley
(No. 356), Du Bois-Reymond (No. 358), Naef (No. 361), Ostwald (No.
360), Haeckel (No. 423), and the work of Troll generally (Nos. 363
and 366; cf. also Section Xll) all deserve to be termed major or minor
'classics'. Nisbet (No. 411) provides a good introductory overview of
Goethe's relationship to earlier scientific traditions, while Mandelkow
outlines the overall reception of Goethe's scientific works within the
German-speaking world in No. 425, and reprints many of the most
important documents in Nos. 416, 418 and 422. Brauning-Oktavio's
lengthy study of 1982 (No. 429) traces the differing responses to
Goethe's morphological writings and his color theory within the scien-
tific community; it also represents an excellent introduction to the
reception of Goethe's work in science.
[371] Arber, A.: The Natural Philosophy of Plant Form, Cambridge Univ. Press,
Cambridge, 1950.247 pp.
See esp. pp. 33-58.
[372] Wells, G. A.: 'Coleridge and Goethe on Scientific Method in the Light of Some
Unpublished Coleridge Marginalia', German Life and Letters NS 4 (1950)
101-114.
[373] Hennig, J.: 'A Note on Goethe and Francis Bacon', Modern Language Quarterly
12 (1951) 201-203.
[374] Gray, R D.: Goethe the Alchemist. A Study of Alchemical Symbolism in Goethe's
Literary and Scientific Work, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1952. x, 312
pp.
[375] Hennig, J.: 'Goethe and De Candolle', Modern Language Quarterly 13 (1952)
277-284.
[376] Hennig, J.: 'Goethe's Interest in the History of British Physics', Osiris 10 (1952)
43-66.
[377] Kindermann, H.: Das Goethebild des xx. lahrhunderts, Humboldt Verlag, Wien,
1952.729 pp.
Rpt. '2., verb. und erg. Ausg. mit Auswahl-Bibliographie der Goetheliteratur seit
1952', Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt, 1966. 738 pp.
[378] Wolff, E. B.: 'On Goethe's Reputation as a Scientist in Nineteenth-Century
England', German Life and Letters 6 (1952) 92-102.
[379] Jantz, H.: 'Die Grundstruktur des Goetheschen Denkens. Ihre Vorformen in
Antike und Renaissance', Euphorion 48 (1954) 153-170.
[380] Goethe et l'esprit franc;ais. Actes du colloque international de Strasbourg. 23-27
avril 1957·(publications de la faculte des lettres de l'Universite de Strasbourg,
137) en depot it la Societe d'Editions Les Belles Lettres, Paris, 1958. xvii, 346
pp.
[381] Hassenstein, B.: 'Prinzipien der vergleichenden Anatomie bei Geoffroy Saint-
Hilaire, Cuvier und Goethe', in l'esprit, pp. 153-168.
[382] Klein, M.: 'Goethe et les naturalistes fran"ais. Documents et commentaires', in
l'esprit, pp. 169-184.
[383] Matthaei; R: 'Goethes Begegnung mit franz6sischen Gelehrten bei seinen Studien
zur Farbenlehre', in l'esprit, pp. 105-122.
[384] Michea, R: 'Goethe et les evolutionnistes fran"ais du XVlIIe siecle', in l'esprit, pp.
129-149.
[385] Bduning-Oktavio, H.: 'Cuvier und Goethe', Goethe 21 (1959) 183-211.
[386] Brauning-Oktavio, H.: Oken und Goethe im Lichte neuer Quellen (Beitrage zur
deutschen Klassik), Arion-Verlag, Weimar, 1959. 109 pp.
[387] Ronchi, V.: 'Schopenhauer con Goethe e contro Goethe in tema di colore', Physis
1 (1959) 279-293.
Translations: English, No. 393.
[388] Schneider-Carius, K.: 'Goethe und Alexander v. Humboldt. Zum Gedenken an
Humboldts Todestag vor 100 Jahren', Goethe 21 (1959) 163-182.
[389] Cahn, T.: 'Goethes und Geoffroy Saint-Hilaires anatomische Studien und deren
Bedeutung fur die Entwicklung eines naturwissenschaftlichen Denkens',
Goethe 22 (1960) 215-236.
[390] Kanaev, I. 1.: 'Gete i Linnei', Trudy instituta isotorii estestvoznaniia i tekhniki AN
SSSR 31 No.6 (1960) 3-16.
430 FREDERICK AMRINE
(391) Gray, RD.: 'J. M. W. Turner and Goethe's Colour - Theory', in Studies
Presented to W. H. Bruford on his Retirement by his Pupils, Colleagues and
Friends, G. Harrap & Co., London, 1962, pp. 112-116.
(392) Hofsten, N. von: 'Linne och Goethe', Svenska Linne-Siillskapets Arsskrift 46
(1963) 1-4.
Includes English summary on p. 74 (ISIS).
(393) *Ronchi, Y.: 'Schopenhauer with Goethe and against Goethe on the Subject of
Colour', Atti della Fondazione'Giorgio Ronchi', 19 (1964) 491-503.
An English translation of No. 387.
(394) *Runge, P.O.: Hinterlassene Schriften, 2 vols., ([ed. by J. D. Runge)); Deutsche
Neudrucke, Reihe Texte des 19. Jahrhunderts), Yandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
Gottingen, 1965.435 and 554 pp.
Facsimile of 1840-1841 edn. Cf. esp. ch. 'Farbenlehre. 1806-1810'.
(395) Witzleben, H. von: 'Goethe und Freud', Studium Generale 19 (1966) 606-627.
(396) Kuhn, D.: Empirische und ideele Wirklichkeit: Studien ilber Goethes Kritik des
Jranzosischen Akademiestreites (Neue Hefte zur Morphologie, 5), Hermann
Bohlaus Nachfolger, Graz/Koln/Wien, 1967. 319 pp.
(397) Larson, J. L.: 'Goethe and Linnaeus', Journal of the History of Ideas 28 (1967)
590-596.
(398) Kruta, Y.: Basnfk + vedec. Johann Wolfgang Goethe - Jan Evangelista Purkyne,
Academia, Prague, 1968.44 pp.
Translations: English, No. 399.
(399) *Kruta, Y., ed.: The Poet and the Scientist. Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Jan
Evangelista Purkinje (trans. by L. Pantuckova), Academia, Prague, 1968.46 pp.
An English translation of the previous entry.
(400) Wachsmuth, A. B.: 'Goethe und die Gebriider von Humboldt. Die Jenaer Jahre
1794-1797', in Studien zur Goethezeit. Festschrift fur Lieselotte Blumenthal
(ed. by H. Holtzhauer et al.), Hermann Bohlaus Nachfolger, Weimar, 1968, pp.
446-464.
(401) Wachsmuth, A. B.: 'Goethe und die Gebriider von Humboldt - Goethe und
Schelling', in Goethe und seine grossen Zeitgenossen. Sieben Essays von Emil
Staiger, Andreas B. Wachsmuth, Hans Lilje, Joachim Milller, Kurt von Raumer
(Beck'sche Schwarze Reihe, 55; ed. by A. Schaefer), C. H. Beck, Miinchen,
1968,pp.53-85.
(402) Zimmermann, W.: Evolution und Naturphilosophie (Erfahrung und Denken.
Schriften zur Forderung der Beziehungen zwischen Philo sophie und Einzel-
wissenschaften, 29), Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, 1968.313 pp.
Cf. esp. pp. 41-61 on 'idealistische Morphologie'.
(403) Gage, J.: Color in Turner. Poetry and Truth, Praeger, New YorklWashington,
1969.285 pp.
Cf. esp. ch. 11, 'Turner and Goethe', pp. 173-188.
(404) Gauss, J.: 'Goethe und die Prinzipien der Naturforschung bei Kant', Studia
Philosophica. Jahrbuch der Schweizerischen Philosophischen Gesellschaft 29
(1969) 54-71.
(405) Michea, R: 'La metamorphose des plantes devant la critique', Etudes Ger-
maniques 24 (1969) 194-209.
(406) *Kanaev, 1.1.: 'Gete i Biuffon', Iz Istorii bio!ogii 2 (1970) 71-89.
Translations: German, No. 408.
AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY 431
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Humboldt. Ein Beitrag zur Naturwissenschaft der Goethezeit (Veroffent-
lichungen der Joachiro-Jungius-Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften Hamburg),
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1970. 193 pp.
[408] Kanajew,LI.: 'Goethe und Buffon', Goethe 33 (1971) 157-177.
A German translation of No. 406.
[409] *Kanaev, I. 1.: 'Covremenniki 0 nauchnykh rabotakh Gete', in his Nauchnoe
otkrytie i ego vospriiatie, Moskva, 1971, pp. 187-193.
[410] Bideau, P. H.: 'Carl Gustav Carus Lecteur et interprete de Goethe. Goethe "au
point de vue purement physiologique''', Etudes Germaniques 27 (1972) 341-
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[411] Nisbet, H. B.: Goethe and the Scientific Tradition (publications of the Institute of
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Wesen (Studienmaterial herausgegeben aus der Arbeit der Humanus-Stiftung
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[414] Zimmermann, R c.: 'Goethes Polaritatsdenken im geistigen Kontext des 18.
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Beck, Miinchen, 1975. lxxvi, 606 pp.
[417] Einem, H. von: 'Philipp Otto Runge und Goethe. Zu Runges 200. Geburtstag am
23. Juli 1977', JFDH (1977) 92-110.
[418] Goethe im Urteil seiner Kritiker: Dokumente zur Wirkungsgeschichte Goethes in
Deutschland. Vol. 2. 1832-1870. (Wirkung der Literatur. Deutsche Autoren im
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[419] Heinig, K: 'Goethes Verhiiltnis zur Chemie, der Organisation der Wissenschaft
und zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte', Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Humboldt-
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[420] Wittgenstein, L.: Remarks on ColouriBemerkungen iiber die Farben (ed. by G. E.
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[421] Fischer, J.: 'Goethes spate Wiirdigung. Ein StUck Rezeptionsgeschichte', in
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432 FREDERICK AMRINE
XII. PRAXIS
[431] Schopenhauer, A: Ueber das Sehn und die Farben, Johann Friedrich Hartknoch,
Leipzig, 1816.88 pp.
[432] Purkinje, J.: Beitriige zur Kenntnis des Sehens in subjectiver Hinsicht, Johann
Gottfred Calve, Prag, 1819. 176 pp.
*Rpt. in J. E. Purkyne Pragae, Opera selecta (Opera Facultatis Medicae Univer-
sitatis Carolinae Pragensis, 1), Spolek ceskych l6kai'u, Prag, 1948. xxxi, 181 pp.
[433] Miiller, J.: Zur vergleichenden Physiologie des Gesichtssinnes des Menschen und
der Thiere nebst einem Versuch iiber die Bewegungen der Augen und iiber den
mensch lichen Blick, C. Cnobloch, Leipzig, 1826. xxxii, 462 pp.
Cf. esp. 'Fragmente zur Farbenlehre, insbesondere zur Goetheschen Farbenlehre',
pp. 391-434.
[434] MUller, J.: Handbuch der Physiologie des Menschen [iir Vorlesungen, 2 vols.,
Verlag von J. Holscher, Coblenz, 1834 and 1840.
[435] Owen, R: On the Archetype and Homologies of the Vertebrate Skeleton, John van
Voorst, London, 1848. viii, 203 pp.
[436] Schopenhauer, A: 'Zur Farbenlehre', in his Parerga und Paralipomena: kleine
philosophische Schriften, A W. Hayn, Berlin, 1851, pp. 143-167.
[437] Ostwald, W.: Die Farbenlehre: l. Mathematische Farbenlehre, Verlag Unesma,
Leipzig, 1918. xi, 129 pp.
[438] Hering, E.: Grundziige der Lehre vom Lichtsinn, Verlag von Julius Springer,
Berlin, 1920. 294 pp.
Translations: English, No. 465. 'Sonderabdruck aus dem Handbuch der
Augenheilkunde I. Teil XII. Kapitel'.
[439] Poppelbaum, H.: Mensch und Tier. Fiinf Einblicke in ihren Wesensunterschied.
Gestalt, Abkunft, Seele, Erlebnis, Schicksal, Rudolf Geering, Basel, 1928. 158
pp.
Rpt. 8th edn. S. Fischer, Frankfurt a.M.lHamburg, 1981.
[440] Steiner, R.: Goethe-Studien und Goetheanistische Denkmethoden. Der Goethea-
434 FREDERICK AMRINE
[452] Muller, G.: 'Goethes Morphologie in ihrer Bedeutung fur die Dichtungskunde', in
Vortriige, pp. 23-34.
Rpt. in his Morphologische Poetik [ef. No. 477], pp. 287-298.
[453] Arber, A.: The Mind and the Eye. A Study of the Biologist's Standpoint,
Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1954.
Translations: German, No. 456.
[454] Neue Hefte zur Morphologie, Beihefte zur Gesamtausgabe von Goethes Schriften
zur Naturwissenschaft (Leopoldina-Ausgabe) [ef. No. 46] (ed. K. L. Wolf and D.
Kuhn), Hermann B6hlaus Nachfolger, Weimar, 1954-1962.
Five issues have been published to date.
[455] Wilson, M. H. and Brocklebank, R. W.: 'The Complementary Hues of After-
Images', Journal of the Optical Society ofAmerica 45 (1955) 293-299.
[456] Arber, A.: Sehen und Denken in der biologischen Forschung (rowohlts deutsche
enzyklopadie, 110), Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Hamburg, 1960. 151 pp.
A German translation of No. 453.
[457] Wilson, M. H. and Brocklebank, R. W.: 'Two-Colour Projection Phenomena',
Journal of Photographic Science (Royal Photographic Society), 8, No.4 (1960)
141-150.
[458] Poppelbaum, H.: A New Zoology, Philosophic-Anthroposophic Press, Dornachl
Switzerland, 1961. 192 pp.
[459] Wilson, M. H. and Brocklebank, R. W.: 'Colour and Perception: The Work of
Edwin Land in the Light of Current Concepts', Contemporary Physics 3 (1961)
91-111.
[460] *Wilson, M. W. and Brocklebank, R. W.: 'The Phenomenon of the Coloured
Shadows'; Die Farbe. International Congress Report, Dusseldorf, 1961, pp.
367ff.
[461] Schwenk, T.: Das sensible Chaos. Stromendes Formschaffen in Wasser und Luft,
Verlag Freies Geistesleben, Stuttgart, 1962.
5th. edn. 1980.
Translations: English, No. 468; French, No. 466.
[462] Born, M.: 'Betrachtungen zur Farbenlehre', Die Naturwissenschaften 50 (1963)
29-39.
[463] Bockemuhl, J.: 'Der Pflanzentypus als Bewegungsgestalt. Gesichtspunkte zum
Studium der Blattmetamorphose', EdN 1 (1964)3-11.
Rpt. GNw2, 7-16.
[464] Elemente der Naturwissenschaft. Zeitschrift, herausgegeben von der Naturwis-
senschaftlichen Sektion am Goetheanum, Dornach, (ed. by J. Bockemuhl
and M. Howald-Haller, Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag am Goe-
theanum, DornachiSchweiz, Iff (1964ff).
[465] Hering, E.: Outlines of a Theory of the Light Sense (trans. by L. M. Hurvich and D.
Jameson), Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1964. 317 pp.
An English translation of No. 438.
[466] *Schwenk, T.: Le Chaos sensible: Creation de formes par les mouvements de l'eau
et de l'air (trans. by G. Claretie; intro. by J. Cousteau), Triades-Editions, Paris,
1964.144 pp.
2nd edn. 1982.
A French translation of No. 461.
436 FREDERICK AMRINE
Rpt. 1976.
Translations: English, No. 442.
[486] Schad, W.: 'Niedermoor und Hochmoor. Ein goetheanistischer Ansatz zur
Landschaftskunde', EdN 21 (1974) 22-39.
Rpt. GNw2,pp.199-222.
[487] Torbruegge, M. K.: 'Goethe's Theory of Colour and Practicing Artists', Gemzanic
Review 49 (1974) 189-199.
[488] Bockemiihl, J.: 'Ein Weg zur Charakterisierung von Pflanzenprozessen und zur
Qualitatsbeurteilung von Nahrungspflanzen am Beispiel des Radieschens',
EdN 22 (1975) 1-12.
[489] Dreyer, E.-J.: Versuch, eine Morphologie der Musik zu begrfinden. Mit einer
Einleitung fiber Goethes Tonlehre (Abhandlungen zur Kunst-, Musik- und
Literaturwissenschaft, 229), Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann, Bonn, 1976.
275 pp.
[490] Schad, W.: Man and Mammals. Toward a Biology of Form (trans. by C. Scherer),
Waldorf Press, Adelphi Univ., Garden City/New York, 1977.309 pp.
An English translation of No. 480.
[491] Wilson, M. H. and Brocklebank, R. W.: 'Zwei-Farben-Projektion und ihre
Phanomene', EdN 31 (1979) 24-37.
[492] Bockemiihl, J.: In Partnership with Nature, Bio-Dynamic Literature, Wyoming!
R.I., 1981. 84 pp.
[493] Westphal, J.: 'Colour: Some Philosophical Problems', Diss. Univ. of London,
1981. 365 pp.
Soon to be published in revised form as a book.
[494] Goetheanistische Naturwissenschaft. 1: Allgemeine Biologie (ed. by W. Schad),
Verlag Freies Geistesleben, Stuttgart, 1982. 140 pp.
[495] Goetheanistische Naturwissenschaft. 2: Botanik (ed. by W. Schad), Verlag Freies
Geistesleben, Stuttgart, 1982. 220 pp.
[496] Bockemiihl, J.: 'Goethes naturwissenschaftliche Methode unter dem Aspekt der
Verantwortungsbildung', EdN 38 (1983) 50-52.
[497] Bockemiihl, J.: 'Urbildliche Phasen der Entwicklung h6herer Pflanzen', EdN 39
(1983) 48-54.
[498] Bockemiihl, J.: 'Vergleiche zwischen Wild- und Kulturformen zum Verstandnis
der Nahrungspflanze und zum Finden einer Zie1richtung fiir die Ziichtung',
EdN 39 (1983) 1-14.
[499] Goetheanistische Naturwissenschaft. 3: Zoologie (ed. by W. Schad), Verlag Freies
Geistesleben, Stuttgart, 1983. 184 pp.
Forthcoming:
[500] *Goetheanistische Naturwissenschaft. 4: Anthropologie (ed. by W. Schad), Verlag
Freies Geistesleben, Stuttgart.
Germanic Languages
3110 Modern Languages Bldg.
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor MI 48109-1275
INDEX OF NAMES
439
440 INDEX OF NAMES
Lavater, J. K. 9 Ott,G. 39
Leibniz, G. W. 8,78,201 Owen, R. 257-63, 265, 267, 269-75,
Leonardo da Vinci 83 283,297,299,378,432-3
Lettvin,J. 373
Liceti 357 Peirce, C. S. 78, 164
Lichtenberg, G. C. 115 Perkin, W. H. 323
Link, H. F. 17 Plato xi, xiii, 23, 85, 116, 121-2, 125,
Linnaeus [Linne), c. von 5-6, 141-2 147, 151, 159, 171, 215, 224, 365,
Locke,J.61,209 368,387
Loder, J. C. 10 Pies sing, F. 84
Lotze,H. 69 Plotinus 43
Luther, M. 46 Polanyi, M. 233,239,241
Lutz,R. 348 Portmann, A. 133-45, 374, 377, 412,
Lyonet, P. 133 417-8
Purkynje, J. 36-9,42,375,432-3
Mach,E. 199,224-6,228,375,377 Putnam, H. 320,333
Maillet, de 14-15
Malpighi, M. 135,269 Rankine, J. M. 226-8,375
Malus, E. 31,33 Reaumur, R. A. F. de 133
Margenau, H. 416 Reid, T. 61
Mayer, R. 227-8,243 Remane,A. 259,418
Mayr,E. 290 Rembrandt van Rijn 382
Melville, H. 320 Ricoeur, P. 98
Mendel, G. 154 Ritter, J. 40,43
Meyer,E. 14 Robinet, J.-B. R. 12,14
Mohr 342 Ronchi, V. 42,191,419-20,429-30
Mollweide, K. B. 37 Rorty, R. 90,238
Muller, Chancellor von 129 Runge,P.O. 164,430,432
Muller, J. 36,38-9,41-3,60-61,66-
7,69,80,86,91,374,432-3 Saint-Hilaire, Geoffroy de 15, 258-9,
267,291,299,347-8,373,427
Napoleon 46 Scheler, M. 143
Necker, L. A. 238 Schelling, F. W. J. 13,29,40-41,66,68,
Newton, I. ix-x, 18,29-33,37,39,42, 79,81,126,207,366
45-6, 49-50, 57-62, 64-6, 79, Sche1ver, F. J. 142
85-91,94-7,108,111,115-6,124, Schiller, F. 3,13,53,55,59-60,74,78-
148, 153-64, 170, 172, 175-191, 9,80,89,90,120-21,131,185,192,
197, 200, 202-227, 229-31, 319- 219,231,236-7,301,317-8,343,
20,329,341,354-5,358-9,363-4, 347,367,379
366,367,374-8,385 Schleiermacher, F. 343
Niebuhr, B. G. 343 Schlick, M. 80
Nietzsche, F. 79,86,99 Schopenhauer, A. 67,80,240,432-3
Novalis [Friedrich von Hardenberg) Seebeck, T. 31-6
241-2 Sextus Empiricus 67
Shakespeare, W. 5,29
Oken, L. 30,257,262,269,378 Shelley, P. B. 241
Ostwald, W. 427-8,432-3 Sherrington, C. 134,373,410
442 INDEX OF NAMES
Socrates 95 Virchow, R. 38
Soret, F. 234, 243 Voigt, F. S. 14
Spallanzani, L. 6 Volta, Count A. 373
Spinoza, B. 5,29-30,40-42,87-9,90,
201,206,208,217,366 Weber,M. 351-3
Sprengel, K. C. 141-2 Weizsacker, C. F. von 115-32, 153-4,
Stein 343 171,374,407,413,420,425-6
Stein, C. von 12,342 Whewell, W. 427
Steiner, R. 208, 213, 216, 234, 268-9, Whitehead, A. N. 62,227,228,375
273-4,398,400,402,403,405-11, Willemer, Mariane von 125,131
416,433-4,436 Wilson, M. 335,337,419-20,422,433,
Stiedenroth, E. 206 435-7
Swammerdam,J. 133 Wittgenstein, L. xii, 319-26, 329-30,
333-4,336-8,375-6,431
Tauler, J. 29,42 W6lfflin, H. 138
Tetens,J.N. 61 Wohlfahrt 29
Tieck, L. 29,41 Wolff, C. F. 11, 18-19, 24, 135,
Tobler, G. C. 369 269
Treviranus, G. R. 17,25 Wollaston, W. H. 31
Troll, W. 3, 134,304,400,402-3,427-
8,432,434 Young, T. 31,37-40,99,419
Tulk,C.A. 30,141-2
Turing, A. 384, 386 Zeiter, K. F. 342
Tyndall, J. 419
BOSTON STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
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