Goethe and The Sciences: A Reappraisal

GOETHE AND THE SCIENCES: A REAPPRAISAL
BOSTON STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
EDITED BY ROBERT S. COHEN AND MARX W. WARTOFSKY
VOLUME 97
GOETHE
AND THE SCIENCES:
A REAPPRAISAL
Edited by
FREDERICK AMRINE,
FRANCIS J . ZUCKER
and
HARVEY WHEELER
with an Annotated Bibliography by Frederick Amrine
D. REIDEL PUBLISHING COMPANY

A
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Goethe and the sciences.
(Boston studies in the philosophy of science; v. 97)

Includes index.
1. Science-Hisfory. 2. Science- Methodology. 3. Goethe,
Johann Wolfgang von, 1749-1832. I. Amrine, Frederick, 1952-
II. Zucker, Francis 1.,1922- III. Wheeler, Harvey, 1918-
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
EDITORIAL PREFACE vii
INTRODUCTION xi
ABBREVIA TIONS xvii
PART I. GOETHE IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE
DOROTHEA KUHN / Goethe's Relationship to the Theories of

Development of His Time 3
TIMOTHY LENOIR / The Eternal Laws of Form: Morpho-
types and the Conditions of Existence in Goethe's Biological
Thought . 17
FREDERICK BURWICK / Goethe's Entoptische Farben and
the Problem of Polarity 29
JEFFREY BARNOUW / Goethe and Helmholtz: Science and
Sensation 45
JOSEPH MARGOLIS / Goethe and Psychoanalysis 83
DOUGLAS E. MILLER / Goethe's Color Studies in a New
Perspective: Die Farbenlehre in English 101
PART II. EXPANDING THE LIMITS OF TRADITIONAL

SCIENTIFIC METHODOLOGY AND ONTOLOGY
CARL FRIEDRICH VON WEIzsAcKER / Goethe and

Modern Science 115
ADOLF PORTMANN / Goethe and the Concept of Meta-
morphosis 133
VI TABLE OF CONTENTS
GERNOT BOHME / Is Goethe's Theory of Color Science? 147

DENNIS L. SEPPER / Goethe Against Newton: Towards
Saving the Phenomenon 175
HJALMAR HEGGE / Theory of Science in the Light of
Goethe's Science of N atUTe 195
ARTHUR G. ZAJONC / Facts as Theory: Aspects of Goethe's
Philosophy of Science 219
CHRISTOPH GOGELEIN / The Theory of Color as the
Symbolism of Insight 247
PART III. CONTEMPORARY RELEVANCE:

A VIABLE ALTERNATIVE?
RONALD H. BRADY / Form and Cause in Goethe's Mor-

phology 257
FREDERICK AMRINE / Goethean Method in the Work of
Jochen Bockemiihl 301
JONATHAN WESTPHAL / Whiteness 319
GUNTER AL TNER / Goethe as a Forerunner of Alternative
Science 341
KLAUS MICHAEL MEYER-ABICH / Self-Knowledge, Free-
dom and Irony: The Language of Nature in Goethe 351
FREDERICK AMRINE and FRANCIS J. ZUCKER / Post-

script. Goethe's Science: An Alternative to Modern Science
or within It - or No Alternative at All? 373
FREDERICK AMRINE / Goethe and the Sciences: An Anno-

tated Bibliography 389
INDEX OF NAMES 439

EDITORIAL PREF ACE
Goethe's writings on the natural sciences comprise thirteen volumes of

the Weimar edition; the poet was also the philosopher-scientist. And he
was deliberately the philosopher of science as well as of nature. His
epistemological instinct was that of a pure but systematic empiricist:
"Whatever the eye can encompass by direct observation became for
Goethe an object of systematic study." 1 His demand for the individual
to be known in context went beyond mere inventory to basic explanatory
issues of the development of life processes. Contexts are not themselves
given, much less understood, by direct observation, and so the
complexity of comparative studies was central to his naturalism.
Mineralogy, meteorology, botany, zoology were the areas of Goethe's
investigative enthusiasm, and of his dominant cautionary principle:
nature is flexible,- adaptive, altogether without rigidity. To understand
forms, to see and then conjecture as to their processes of modification
and adaptation, is properly to study organic nature. Goethe invented
'morphology' as descriptive of such studies.
As the great optimist, Goethe felt the rationality of the world in his
bones, the harmony of his mind with the endlessly working laws of
nature, and the potential creative harmony of all human societies, too,
with natural chemistries. " ... Goethe, subscribing to no creed and no
ideology, felt himself borne along by the current of life in its wholeness
.... (with) an essential trust in life, a faith in what is hidden from the
eye."2 If we look for his philosophic guide, of course we find Spinoza.
In a conversation with Eckermann (Feb. 23, 1831), Goethe said a propos
of God:
I do not ask whether this highest being has understanding or reason. I feel it is
understanding, it is reason. All creatures are permeated with it, and man has a sufficiently
large share of it to let him discern the All-Highest in part.
Later he wrote (recorded in the posthumous item 812 of Maxims and

Reflections):
Kepler said: The God whom I find everywhere in the universe about me to become aware
F. Amrine, F. J. Zucker, and H. Wheeler (eds.), Goethe and the Sciences:

ARe-appraisal, vii-ix.
© 1987 by D. Reidel Publishing Company.
viii EDITORIAL PREFACE
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.
As to method in the sciences, Goethe was the serious historian, as we

see in his preface to his treatise On the Theory of Color (1810):
We might venture the statement that the history of science is science itself. We cannot really
know what we possess until we have learned to know what others have possessed before us.
And later, in the historical part of the treatise:

The conflict within the individual between immediate experience and tradition is the real
stuff of the history of science.
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.
What then shall we make of theories, and of theory-making? How up-to-

date Goethe may be, for he wrote (Item 1222 of Maxims and
Reflections) :
EDITORIAL PREFACE ix
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.
Our temptation is already evident: to quote from Goethe's writings

without limit. This book is derived from several recent symposia where
Goethe and his scientific signifIcance were debated, and where his
writings were quoted and examined with care and insight. The readers
will be grateful to Frederick Amrine, Harvey Wheeler, and Francis
Zucker for their successes in arranging their symposia, and especially to
Professor Amrine for his superb editorial work in bringing this book to
publication. In addition, one must admire the useful, indeed masterful,
selected and annotated bibliography on 'Goethe and the Sciences' which
Amrine has contributed. His 500 items come from perhaps 10,000 that
have been published through 1982 (an astonishing fact); and, even now,
stimulating original essays continue to contribute to the understanding
of Goethe's philosophy of nature and its relation to human knowledge.
See, e.g., Neil M. Ribe, 'Goethe's Critique of Newton: A
Reconsideration' , Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 16 (1985), 315 - 335, wherein the
author claims for Goethe that "The classical notion of 'saving the
phenomena' is . .. invested with a new meaning" .
Our editors do not conclude with the proposition that Goethe's way
will give an alternative science, nor an alternative within established
science. Matters are open, and no doubt will continue to be. No great
scientist, no great theory, will be beyond criticism. Goethe, and again
how like Einstein, put this demand for honest criticism thus (Item 835
of Maxims and Reflections):
If it had been God's concern to have men live and act in the way of truth, he would have
had to go about his arrangements in a different way.
NOTES
1 Introduction to Goethe: Wisdom and Experience, edited by Hermann Weigand
(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1949), p. 26.
2 Ibid., p. 37.
October 1986 ROBERT S. COHEN

Boston University
INTRODUCTION
In his scientific work, Goethe simultaneously stands within modern

science, seeks to expand it, and stands opposed. This complex relation-
ship is perhaps one reason why Goethe's scientific writings have
remained a subject of perennial interest, while the work of so many of
his contemporaries has been saved from oblivion only by the curiosity
of historians.
Goethe certainly considered himself a scientist in the fullest sense of
the word: late in life, he even claimed that he hoped and expected to be
remembered more as a scientist than as a poet. He participated actively
in many of the important scientific debates of his day, performed and
promoted research, corresponded with his great contemporaries in
science, and published voluminously in numerous fields, including the
history and philosophy of science. While some parts of his work
(notably his meteorological and geological studies) have never found
favor, others, such as his work in physiological optics, animal morphol-
ogy, and botany were widely accepted - even hailed - by the scientific
'establishment' of his day, and led directly or indirectly to further
advances. A number of important scientific works were dedicated to
him. For these reasons alone, Goethe the scientist would be worthy of
continuing historical study.
Yet surely Goethe's role in the history of 'mainstream' science is not
sufficiently large or important to account for the small mountain of
secondary literature that his work has called forth. Granted that his
stature as a literary figure has played a part, even this cannot account
fully for the unbroken attraction of his scientific writings. After all,
Newton's theological speCUlations (a roughly analogous case) have not
elicited anything like the number of studies inspired by this aspect of
Goethe - perhaps 10,000 in all. The reason for the attraction lies
elsewhere: it is that Goethe sought to do science in a different way.
The 'triumph of science' in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
has been due in no small part to its attempts to extend the rigorous
methods developed originally by mathematical physics into other
domains. Goethe's major contributions were in chromatics and plant
xi
F. Amrine, I. Zucker, and H. Wheeler (eds.), Goethe and the Sciences:
A Re-Appraisal, xi-xv.
xii INTRODUCTION
morphology, fields in which he considered this transposition of

methods to be inappropriate. Exasperated with the Newtonians because
he felt he could not get a fair hearing on his theory of color, he
responded with polemics. These were often shrill and misguided.
Nevertheless, Goethe's charges that Newton's followers had enshrined
his theory as an idol, that was inadequate to many color phenomena,
and that despite his protestations, Newton had imported atomistic
hypotheses into his theory, were not entirely baseless. Goethe argued
that if science is to avoid reductionism, it must adopt a plurality of
methods or 'Vorstellungsarten,' each framed for its own particular
object. Thus he sought to develop a rigorous, empirical science of
qualities, a method of juxtaposing phenomena such that they would
reveal their lawfulness of themselves and in their own fashion. In this
sense, he can be seen as attempting to expand scientific method in ways
that seemed promising to many in his time, and that several con-
tributors to the present volume believe to be still promising in our own.
Yet there is a deep sense in which Goethe also stands opposed to
modem science - at least to the dominant framework within which
science interprets its own meaning. Far from placing the ultimate reality
of the universe in either the elementary particles of physics or in the
laws goven.ling their interaction, Goethe placed it in the Ideen (a term
usually translated as 'archetypes'). In order to apprehend the archetypes
on their affective and 'spiritual' (geistige) levels, all of our faculties need
developing: thus for Goethe, the growth of science resides as much in
the self-development of the scientist as in the accumulation of data.
Only through such restructuring and enhancement of one's cognitive
capacities can one ultimately experience the reality of archetypes as
active forces in nature, and nature itself as a living being. Thus Goethe
saw as dangerous the very different, dissecting approach to nature that
had begun to win out in his lifetime and the very different mechanistic
image of nature it constructed. And thus it is that throughout the past
century-and-a-half, those dissatisfied with the reigning paradigm have in
their search for an alternative so often turned to Goethe.
Could a 'Goethean' approach to science come to represent a
valuable complement to more conventional research programs today?
Could Goethe's non-reductive, 'qualitative' science become the basis for
a viable alternative, one that would avoid the alienating and destructive
effects upon the social and ecological environment that technological
progress has brought in train? Or must Goethe's work ultimately be
INTRODUCTION xiii
consigned to the wastebin of rejected paradigms? These are the

questions that the present volume seeks to address in offering a
selection of the best contemporary work on Goethe and the sciences.
Three main issues are addressed. The first is Goethe's place within
the history of science: in relationship to his contemporaries (Dorothea
Kuhn and Timothy Lenoir on piology and pre-Darwinian theories of
evolution, and Frederick Burwick on parallels with Romantic philoso-
phy); and in relationship to the nineteenth- and twentieth-century
reception of his work (Jeffrey Barnouw on Helmholtz and Joseph
Margolis on Freud). A further dimension is added to the problem of
reception by Douglas Miller, who explores misunderstandings of
Goethe's theory of color occasioned by pervasive mistranslations.
The second issue is the way in which Goethe attempts to expand the
limits of scientific methodology and ontology. The two initial papers, by
the physicist Carl Friedrich von Weizsiicker and the biologist Adolf
Portmann, both emphasize the fundamental antithesis between Goethe's
method and that of contemporary science, but differ in their evalua-
tions: von Weizsiicker sees in Goethe an attitude toward nature which,
like modem science, has its origin in Plato, but cannot - at least for the
time being - be assimilated to contemporary scientific methodology,
while Portmann urges us to consider Goethe an 'exemplary' comple-
ment - and antidote - to reductionism in biology. Gernot Bohme
plots the points of convergence and divergence in color theory and
arrives at the conclusion that Goethe's, though it deviates from the
conventional definition of the term, nevertheless qualifies as science,
and might, if suitably developed, offer the prospect of a more 'humane'
science that would comprehend the self in its relation to nature.
Hjalmar Hegge and Arthur Zajonc both scan the horizons of contem-
porary scientific methodology and ontology to locate the precise points
at which Goethe passes beyond them in his notion of science as the
self-development of the scientist. And finally Christoph Gogelein
demonstrates the subtle internal consistency between the ontology of
light and color in Goethe's theory and the structure of his scientific
method - proving that this essential correlation obtains within
Goethe's expanded science.
The third question addressed is the extent to which Goethe's
scientific work, or work in the spirit of his method, can stand as a viable
alternative. Ronald Brady and Frederick Amrine seek to demonstrate
the possibility of developing in a contemporary form one important
xiv INTRODUCTION
part of Goethe's method, his 'enhanced empiricism,' in taxonomy

(cladistics) and plant morphology. Jonathan Westphal demonstrates the
aptness of a 'Goethean' approach to color by using it to solve a series of
puzzles in Wittgenstein's Remarks on Colour: his argument challenges
Wittgenstein's view that, since science could not be developed in such a
way as to solve these puzzles, something beyond science was needed.
Gunter Altner and Klaus' Meyer-Abich argue that it is the very
otherness of Goethe's scientific work that makes it a suitable vehicle for
developing a less exploitative, 'softer' attitude toward nature, a true
'ecological' science.
The 'Postscript' represents a much-revised version of a Round Table
that concluded complementary symposia held on December 3-4, 1982
at Boston and Harvard Universities. It addresses the central question
raised by Goethe's scientific work: is it a scientific alternative to
modern science, or within it - or no alternative at all? Since all of the
papers in the volume speak directly or indirectly to this question, the
'Postscript' attempts to provide a reasonably coherent account not only
of the tentative conclusions and unresolved questions that resulted from
the Harvard Round Table, but also of the responses to this question
implied in the papers by those of our contributors who were not in
attendance.
In briefest outline, these tentative conclusions and open questions
might be summarized as follows:
(1) As a committed empiricist, Goethe stands within the scientific
tradition. Yet his empiricism, while clearly belonging to a major current
in the mainstream science of his day, differs from that which Galileo
and others had originally developed for physics and which had, in the
course of the nineteenth century, become dominant in other fields as
well. Whereas Goethe sought a rule-governed ordering of appearances
that exhibits the basic pattern in a field of inquiry - its 'primal
phenomenon' - reductive empiricism begins by looking for charac-
teristics of the appearances that can be quantified (in a different rule-
governed procedure), and then relates these quantities to each other. In
the course of the nineteenth century, the enormous success of this latter
approach pushed Goethe's 'morphological' science aside.
(2) Some argued that a mathematical variant of Goethe's way of
doing science is emerging in the contemporary search for topological
(i.e. non-metric) models in many fields, from engineering to develop-
mental morphology. In principle, this approach enables one to repre-
INTRODUCTION xv
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
HA J. W. von Goethe, Werke. Hamburger Ausgabe in 14 Banden

(ed. by E. Trunz), ChI. Wegner Verlag, Hamburg, 1948-1966.
(Later reprints by C. H. Beck, Munchen.)
HA Briefe = J. W. von Goethe, Goethes Briefe. Hamburger Ausgabe,
4 vols. (ed. K. R. Mandelkow et al.), Chr. Wegner Verlag,
Hamburg, 1962-1967.
LA J. W. von Goethe, Die Schriften zur Naturwissenschaft. Voll-
standige mit Erl. verso Ausg. hrsg. im Auftrage der Deutschen
Akademie der NatUlforscher (Leopoldina) zu Halle (ed. by R.
Matthaei et al.), Bohlau, Weimar, 1947-. 1st Pt. Texte; 2nd Pt.
Erganzungen und ErHiuterungen.
WA = J. W. von Goethe, Goethes Werke. Hg. im Auftrage der
GrossheKzogin Sophie von Sachsen, Pts. I-IV, 133 vols. in 143,
Hermann Bohlau/Hermann Bohlaus Nachfolger, Weimar,
1887-1919.
xvii
PART I
GOETHE IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE

DOROTHEA KUHN
GOETHE'S RELATIONSHIP TO THE THEORIES OF

DEVELOPMENT OF HIS TIME*
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
Buffon's famous representation of nature which began to appear in

1749 (the year of Goethe's birth) imparts a vivid picture of nature,
particularly of the animals, of their bodily structure, but also of their
habits. Throughout his life Goethe was intrigued by Buffon's sketch of a
self-creating nature, with his theory of germs which preserve the species
of the prototype in a mold (moule) during procreation, and his
assumption of a simple and general design or pattern of the forms
(dessin primitiJ et general). He saw in Buffon a kind of precursor of his
own typology.
Finally, also Haller's views of nature as God's creation ordered in
steps, with man at the top leading down past the animals, the plants to
the minerals and to the realm of elements, inspired Goethe, even
though, later, he perceived the gradual order starting with man as
wrong. Also, he acknowledged, with interest, Haller's views on the
forces of nature which formed the basis of the physiology of his time.
All these models and visions of order, being and action of nature,
which were at once dependent upon each other and opposed to each
other, entered into the young Goethe's perception of nature. In the true
spirit of Storm-and-Stress, he designed a picture of nature as a
powerful, yet harmonically ordered force. He spoke of nature as force
engulfing force, or as a resounding whole, in living, acting harmonic
song, in which force consumes force, and force enhances force, ever
changing, ever constant, such as in his early play, Sa tyros.
This last phrase should be remembered - ever changing, ever
constant. This is important within Goethe's concept of nature as the
whole of creation, a persistent and yet renewed contemplation of
nature. Thus nature is simultaneously constant and changing.
This stands in opposition to the common eighteenth-century view of
nature as a mechanical cause-and-effect model which one perceived
as a mechanism of a clock running rhythmically on its own power,
driven by physical and chemical forces. Such perceptions, which since
Descartes explained the world and, with it, all living things as func-
tioning interdependently, were current at the end of the eighteenth
century. When combined with a belief in Biblical creation, they
excluded further development once the process of creation had been
concluded. The early writings by Linne which were known to Goethe,
as well as those by Haller, Bonnet, and Spallanzani, to name but a few,
reflected concepts of nature which were bound to such models.
In this mechanistic model creatures have to be thought of as germs
hidden invisibly in the egg or sperm created in the beginning by God.

According to Buffon, these germs not only receive their pattern in a
mold, but contain all the qualities of their species for all generations, as
if wrapped one inside the other, and out of whose growth and enlarge-
ment all representatives of the same species have originated. Therefore,
all development consists only in 'the growth of the already complete and
pre-formed germ. In this connection one speaks not only of pre-
formation and of encapsulation (Einschachtelung; because the germs
are located within each other and develop from generation to genera-
tion consecutively), but also of evolution.
Evolution in this sense, however, is only the development of the
individual in the sequence of generations and has nothing to do with the
origin of the species [stammesgeschichtliche Dezendenz der Arten] as it
was defined in the nineteenth century. Pre-formation encapsulation, and
evolution in the eighteenth-century sense are directly contrary to a
theory of origin or real descent [reale Abstammung] with species
change.
The theory of pre-formation in this very strict form poses problems
which could no longer be simply ignored by the end of the eighteenth
century. It is impossible to imagine how crossbreeds or bastard forms
are possible; nor can one imagine how variations occur by changes in
environmental conditions, food, or climate, for example, or how a lost
or severed part of the body could be replaced. Everywhere such experi-
ments were made with polyps which were regarded as the link between
plant and animal. One avoided these problems by using alternate
concepts for germs, for body parts, or for special male and female
germs. The pre-formation theory was, thus, in a state of flux. A further
problem arose from the notion of abiogenesis, life beginning from
inanimate matter, which was unthinkable given the condition of pre-
formation and yet was, seemingly, proven.
Were not infusoria generated from clear well water, insects from
dust and dirt and even larger animals, like mice, from dirty laundry?
The notion of abiogenesis was argued far into the second half of the
nineteenth century.
If the notion of pre-formation persisted in spite of all other argu-
ments, then the reason for the similarity of organisms which was
observed more and more with increasing knowledge of nature could
only be comprehended in the plan of the creator who had equipped
each germ with these similarities and who had provided that the entire
8 DOROTHEA KUHN
structure of the nature-machine fit together and functioned. Given this

notion of the germ as perfected in creation, a plan of similarities and
interdependent operations in nature, the natural scientist was con-
fronted with the task of discovering and tracing the blueprint of this
plan. Already since the time of Aristotle and then again since Leibniz,
opinion held that natural things and organisms could be lined up in
gradual, successive steps. Since this opinion was reinforced by experi-
ence, the comparative method was employed to construct just such a
series of steps or chain of being. Albrecht von Haller's descending
gradation beginning with man has already been mentioned. More
comprehensible was the idea of ascending gradation presented by
Charles Bonnet (who, like Haller, was Swiss) in his Contemplation of
Nature of 1764.
He started with matter in its aggregate state, i.e. as a gas, a liquid,
and a solid; lifeless and inorganic objects such as soils, metals, stones,
and crystals, followed by plants as organic inanimate and animals as
organic animate beings. Organisms are then ordered according to the
perfection of their structure, i.e. by their forms, but also by the
perfection of their functions. Bonnet judged the functioning and the
determination of their place in successive gradation by way of com-
parison with machines. The more complicated a creature's functions,
that is, the more varied the parts in his machine, the higher is its state of
perfection. According to this scale, man succeeds plants and animals as
a highly differentiated, organic, animated, and reasoning being whose
spirit Bonnet spoke of, again, as a "small etheric machine." Yet, above
man, Bonnet placed the angels as pure spirits. As the "most beautiful
link" of the chain they remain invisible, as invisible as God, with whom
the chain is concluded. This image of a series of steps thus offers the
possibility of adding even the creator in the whole of nature.
Goethe, who had visited Bonnet in Geneva in 1779, and who knew
his works well, criticized "seeming comprehensibility" [scheinbare
Faj3lichkeit]. Above all, however, he critized Bonnet's theory of pre-
formation. He examined infusoria on his own and could not perceive
and invisible pre-formation. He also believed that he could observe
newly developing life, even the metamorphosis of different infusoria,
which would have contradicted Bonnet's theories of pre-formation.
In principle, Goethe did not object to the idea of a gradated order of
nature with which he had been brought up, though he assumed greater
intervals between each of the realms of stones, plants, and animals. The
succession of similar phenomena in nature was as illuminating to him as

it was to most of his contemporaries, and, indeed corresponds to
Goethe's own fundamental idea of change and constancy in nature
found, as we observed earlier, in the series of gradations and on
individual levels, respectively. The principle that constant qualities can
be compared and that those elements with the ability to change can be
perfected enters into Goethe's idea of nature as the prerequisite for the
construction of nature.
Research concerning the diversity of nature was making rapid
progress during that time, and the increase in observations together
with extended insights into classification and anatomy demanded
further methods of ordering within natural history. In this context,
comparison in a gradated series of beings assumes special value
and significance. Using the comparative method, Goethe took his first
steps into research of nature in 1775. In a chapter of Lavater's
Physiognomische Fragmente [Physiognomic Fragments], he compared
the skulls of animals to each other and to those of man (according to
illustrations by Buffon), in an attempt to characterize their different
qualities as linked to physical appearance.
In his essay, Goethe explains:
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!
The above-mentioned criteria for the view of nature of Goethe's time

can be found in this picture, namely in the circling spheres, the model
of the nature-machine, and in the human skull, rising to the sky, its sign
of perfection or perfectibility. From this position Goethe then observed
and described what is changeable in the difference between the animal
skull and that of man and in the differences in the bone structure of
animals. He described the following characters: the gentleness of the
ruminant, the cruelty of the rodent, the fastidiousness of the cat, the
intelligence, power, and tact of the elephant, and so on. These are still
purely anthropomorphic characteristics, but already Goethe also recog-
nized the relation of the skull structure to the lifestyle of the animals
and that led to intensive studies of the intermaxillary bone.
Meanwhile, after his move to Weimar, where parks and gardens had
brought him close to nature, as did his duties with the waterways and
10 DOROTHEA KUHN
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
him away from the idea of species as being predetermined in germs. He

states (and he probably had to state it being the theologian he was) that
no new forms were generated after the doors of creation had been
closed, but that the created forms vary and transform themselves, and
that the organisational force of nature is the "guide to a higher
development of the forms." Herder observed a principal form, a
prototype of beings, which is infinitely variable. Thus, he left the theory
of pre-formation behind and turned to Buffon's molds and prototype,
as well as to the teachings of Caspar Friedrich Wolff and Johann
Friedrich Blumenbach who, in place of pre-formation, assumed a
general Bildungstrieb [formation-drive] in nature which allowed vari-
ability as well as growth without pre-cast forms through the incor-
poration of additional matter - a view which is termed epigenesis in
contrast and opposition to pre-formation or evolution. A time com-
ponent becomes apparent here which the historian Herder introduced
into the gradation of "self-perfecting beings." But Herder's ambivalent
expression, perhaps also his indecision concerning these views of
nature, which he characterized not only as emanation of God, but as
functioning machine, or gradation, as well as organism, led Kant to
remark in his sagacious review of the Ideas that a gradation of
organisms was 'meaningful only if one were to assume a relation
between beings in which "all were derived from an original species or,
perhaps, from a single creative womb," if, indeed, they actually
descended from one another. But that, said Kant, would lead to
conclusions so ominous that reason shudders to think of them, and
such conclusions should not be attributed to Herder without being
unjust. Kant, then, had realized that Herder had offered a first step
toward a theory of descent and he reproached Herder for it. They had
reached a barrier, a limit to thinking. What had led Goethe and Herder
to this limit was their observation of changeability and motion in
nature. It was their view that nature as a whole acts like a being, i.e. as
an organism, which includes the idea of development, procreation, self-
regulation and the reproductive ability of nature. It coincides with
Goethe's belief in nature as a harmonic entity which is in itself
changeable and, at the same time, constant. It was with these views that
Goethe now observed nature on his trip to Italy. Already while crossing
the Brenner pass he contemplated the creation of the world and drafted
a model of the earth and the atmosphere as a pulsating, oscillating
whole, into which he gradually integrated descriptions of clouds,
12 DOROTHEA KUHN
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
God even if he spoke of active nature. On the other hand, knowledge of

biology was too narrow, and thinking was directed, first of all, by using
comparison to find singular units within the multiplicity of nature.
Goethe noted the great difficulty in determining the type of a whole
class in general,
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.
He avoided these difficulties by dismissing them. Upon his return

from Italy he once again confronted the question of pre-formation and
even though he called the encapsulation theory absurd he noted that
one could not do without certain conceptions of predetermined forms.
However, none of these notes and thoughts can be found in his publica-
tions. There he dealt only with the development of the individual. He
described it in The Metamorphosis of Plants [Die Metamorphose der
Pflanzen] which he published in 1790. There is no mention of the
Urpflanze. The constant is the species of the plant with its specific
properties; even abnormal or induced malformations are still subject to
the laws of formation. However everything has mobility and flexibility
within this regular formation gnd re-formation. Even the principle of
the type among animals rests on consistency, on conformity of their
parts, their constant relation of position, and on the ability to retain that
which has become reality. This is now contrasted with the ability to
change the form, which, given its variability, guarantees the multiplicity
of creatures. Goethe spoke of a balance between these two formula-
tions, not, however, of the deductions, reasons or causes involved.
Goethe thought himself a realist, an empiricist, and he avoided the
formulating of hypotheses. Under Schiller's and Schelling's influence,
primal form and type gained philosophical significance and the science
of form became, like 'morphology,' the mode of observation which
teaches one to see the congruent whole of animated nature 'with the
eyes of the mind,' and which, in tum, enables the natural scientist to
recognize the hidden blueprint with its laws of form. With regard to
actual descent, Schelling stated in 1799, at a time of close collabora-
tion with Goethe: "the assertion that, indeed, the different organisms
had been formed by gradually developing one from the other is the
misunderstanding of an idea. Each product which appears fixed to us
14 DOROTHEA KUHN
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
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
THE ETERNAL LAWS OF FORM:

MORPHOTYPES AND THE CONDITIONS OF
EXISTENCE IN GOETHE'S BIOLOGICAL THOUGHT*
INTRODUCTION
In 1802 Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus announced the birth of a new

scientific discipline. He called it "biology," the science whose aim was to
determine the conditions and laws under which the different forms of
life exist and their causes. Treviranus was not alone in forging the
outlines of the new science of life. He was in fact consciously synthe-
sizing discussions that had been going on for at least a decade in
Germany involving such persons as Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, Karl
Friedrich Kielmeyer, Heinrich Friedrich Link, and the von Humboldt
brothers (Lenoir, 1981). But one of the most distinguished co-workers
in this enterprise was the man whose scientific work we are celebrating
in this volume; namely, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
In the decade'marking the centenary of Darwin's death as well as the
150th anniversary of Goethe's death, it is tempting to treat the work of
Goethe and his cohorts as the rudimentary beginnings of a scientific
discipline which would acquire its firm foundations some sixty years
later in the work of Darwin. This was in fact the strategy followed by
Ernst Haeckel a century ago at a similar occasion when the sought to
honor both men on the same program by casting Goethe as a precursor
of the Darwinian theory of evolution (Haeckel, 1868, pp. 80-81). But
such an ecumenical gesture would fail to appreciate the true signifi-
cance of the movement initiated by Goethe, Treviranus and others. For
the science of life they set out to found is not the one extrolled in
textbooks today. In truth the works of Goethe and Darwin present us
with two radically different conceptions of biological science, both
capable in their own right of organizing the phenomena of life and
serving as a basis for progressive empirical research. My aim in this
paper is to discuss some of the special features of this grand conception
of biological science that is found in Goethe's writings.
17
F. Amrine,"P, 1, Zucker, and H. Wheeler (eds.), Goethe and the Sciences:
ARe-appraisal,17-28.
18 TIMOTHY LENOIR
THE PROBLEM CONTEXT OF GOETHE'S BIOLOGICAL

THOUGHT: THE PROBLEM OF BIOCAUSALITY
Goethe summarized the essence of his approach to biology in a few

lines in a poem entitled 'Die Metamorphose der Thiere,' written in
1819:
Aile Glieder bilden sich aus nach ew'gen Gesetzen,

Und die seltenste Form bewahrt irn Geheimen das Urbild ...
Also bestirnrnt die Gestalt die Lebensweise des Thieres,
Und die Weise zu leben, sie wirkt auf aile Gestalten
Machtig zurUck. So zeiget sich fest die geordnete Bildung,
Welche zum Wechsel sich neigt durch ausserlich wirkende Wesen.!
The major difference between the conception of biological science

envisoned by Goethe in these lines and that developed by Darwin is
that Goethe's biology is fundamentally and radically teleological in
character. But Goethe's teleology is not that of a designing creator. To
appreciate Goethe's teleology one must place it in the context of
concerns that characterized biological thought in Germany in the
1790s.
Toward'the end of the eighteenth century a number of persons were
interested in placing the life sciences on a set of unified foundations.
Their model was, naturally, Newton's theory of universal gravitation,
but Newton's advocacy of applying the concept of 'force' to inves-
tigating chemical and electrical phenomena in the Queries to his
Opticks also had a profound effect in shaping a 'Newtonian research
program' for the life sciences. Albrecht von Haller was a leader of this
movement, particularly in his attempt to explain organ function in terms
of certain vital forces such as sensibility, irritability, and the force of
secretion.2
This Newtonian strategy was plagued with difficulties as Caspar
Friedrich Wolff and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach were quick to
realize. These men called attention to certain features of organic bodies
which resisted a strict Newtonian mechanistic strategy of explanation.
Of special interest were the phenomena of development, growth and
nutrition. These were clearly goal directed processes; and if they were
indeed the effects of vital forces, they were not forces acting according
to strictly mechanistic relations of cause and effect but causal relations
in which means were subordinate to the end of organization.
GOETHE'S BIOLOGICAL THOUGHT 19
These difficult and intricate problems relating to biocausality

received clarification by Immanuel Kant. Kant had been following the
work of Buffon, Haller, Blumenbach, Wolff and Georg Forster for
several years - Kant himself had published on the question of races,
varieties and species - and in 1790 in his Kritik der Urteilskraft Kant
gave a definitive analysis and attempted resolution of the problems.
Basically Kant concluded that while the goal of science must always be
to press as far as possible in providing a mechanical explanation,
mechanical explanations in biology must always stand under the higher
guidance of a teleological framework (Low, 1980; MacFarland, 1970).
The essential difficulty, he argued, is that mechanical modes of explana-
tion are inadequate to deal with many processes of the organic realm,
where the relationship of cause to effect is completely different from
that encountered in the inorganic realm. Although even in the inorganic
realm there are reciprocal effects due to the dynamic interaction of
matter, such phenomena nonetheless are capable of being analyzed in
some fashion as a linear combination of causes and effects, A -> B ->
C. This is not the case in the organic realm, however. Here cause and
effect are so mutually interdependent that it is impossible to think of
one without the other; so that, instead of a linear series, it is much more
appropriate to think of a sort of reflexive series A -> B -> C -> A.
This is a teleologic mode of explanation, for it involves the notion of a
'final caus.e.' In contrast to the mechanical mode where A can exist and
have its effect independently of C, in the teleological mode A causes C
but is not also capable of existing independently of C. The final cause
is, logically speaking, the first cause. Because its form is similar to
human intentionality or purpose, Kant called his form of causal
explanation Zweckmiissigkeit; and the objects that exhibit such patterns,
namely organic bodies, he called Naturzwecke:
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).
Clearly, Kant went on to argue, biological organisms qualify as

Naturzwecke. The laws whereby organic forms grow and develop, he
observed, are completely different from the mechanical laws of the
inorganic realm. The matter absorbed by the growing organism is
20 TIMOTHY LENOIR
transformed into a basic organic matter by a process incapable of

duplication by an artificial process not involving organic substances.
This organic matter is then shaped into organs in such a way that each
generated part is dependent on every other part for its continued
preservation: the whole organism is both cause and effect of its parts.
"To be exact, therefore, organic matter is in no way analogous to any
sort of causality that we know ... and is therefore not capable of being
explicated in terms analogous to any sort of physical capacities at our
disposal" (Kant, 1908, p. 375; Kant, 1951, pp. 221-222).
To be sure, there is, according to Kant, a certain analogy between
the products of technology and the products of nature. But there is an
essential difference. Organisms can in a certain sense be viewed as
similar to clockworks. Thus Kant was willing to argue that the func-
tional organization of birds, for example the air pockets in their bones,
the shape and position of the wings and tail, etc., can all be understood
in terms of mechanical principles, just as an a priori functional
explanation of a clock can be given from the physical characteristics of
its parts. But while in a clock each part is arranged with a view to its
relationship to the whole, and thus satisfies the first condition to be
fulfilled in a biological explanation as stated above, it is not the case -
as it is in the organic realm - that each part is the generative cause of
the other, as required by the second condition to be fulfilled by a
biological explanation. The principles of mechanics are indeed appli-
cable to the analysis of functional relations, but the teleological
explanations demanded by biology require an active, productive
principle such as the Bildungstrieb postulated by Blumenbach and
others which transcends any form of natural-physical explanation
available to human reason.
Kant's analysis demonstrated that the life sciences must rest upon a
different set of assumptions and that a methodological strategy different
from the physical sciences must be worked out if biology is to enter
upon the royal road to science. One of the main conclusions of his
analysis of causality was that biological organization could not be
reduced to the laws of chemistry and physics, that at certain funda-
mental levels biological organization had to be assumed as given and
beyond any further explanatory account. But whereas Kant's analysis
had concluded the impossibility of constructing the forces of the
biological realm from inorganic physico-chemical forces, he did none-
theless think it possible to go quite far in uncovering the framework of
laws in terms of which the forces constitutive of the organic realm

operate. If biological science were to be possible, it was because the
biological realm no less than the inorganic realm was guided by a
fundamental, unified framework of law. These bionomic laws were
to be discovered through empirical research guided by reasonable
hypotheses.
The practical implications of this analysis were illustrated by its
application to animal systematics. Kant advocated the construction of
morphotypes or organizational plans to be arrived at through compara-
tive anatomy and physiology:
The agreement of so many species of animals in a particular common schema, which
appears to be grounded not only in their skeletal structure but also in the organization
of other parts, whereby a multiplicity of species may be generated by an amazing
simplicity of a fundamental plan, through the suppressed development of one part and
the greater articulation of another, the lengthening of now this part accompanied by the
shortening of another, gives at least a glimmer of hope that the principle of mechanism,
without which no science of nature is possible, may be in a position to accomplish
something here (Kant, 1908, p. 418; Kant, 1951, pp. 267-268).
The fundamental plans referred to by Kant in this passage were the

particular ways in which the forces constituting the organic world can
be assembled into functional organs and systems of organs making up
viable animals capable of surviving in the external world. The correct-
ness of these hypothetical unities, Kant went on to point out, would
have to be established through careful archaeological investigation.3
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
metamorphosis of plants in which the continuous transformation of an

idealized primitive organ, the embryonic leaf, is used to establish
homologies between the various structures of plants in different stages
of development.
Goethe's early morphological work suggested a path toward realizing
the program outlined by Kant of constructing a general science of form,
and sometime in late 1794 and early 1795 Goethe set out to construct
this general science. In his plant morphology Goethe had shown that all
the advanced structure of the plant can be considered as a transforma-
tion of a single fundamental organ, and that the plant can be described
as a continuous multiplication of similar parts. For more complex types
of biological organization Goethe now advocated the hypothetical
construction of a generalized morphotype consisting of a set of
structures standing in definite relation to one another. Where he had
earlier explored the unity of plant structure in terms of a single
Grundorgan, Goethe now proposed a more general notion of the type
based on a systematically interconnected set of fundamental organs. As
one illustration of the richness of his approach Goethe concentrated on
the construction of the osteological type, which he regarded as the most
important expression of the forces determining life (Goethe, 'Erster
Entwurf einer allgemeinen Einleitung in die vergleichende Anatomie':
HA 13, p. 180).
The importance of comparative anatomy in arriving at the elements
of the morphotype had been impressed upon Goethe by his earlier
work on the intermaxillary bone. The apparent absence of the inter-
maxillary in adult humans had been a favorite argument of those,
such as Camper and Blumenbach, who wished to argue that man is not
related to the apes, which do exhibit a well defined intermaxillary.
Goethe established that the intermaxillary is present in very young
human skulls, and when its sutures are not fused, it can even be seen in
adult skulls. Such considerations led Goethe to reject the practice of his
eighteenth century predecessors of using a particular species, such as
the human species, as the model for the rest (Goethe, HA 13, p. 172).
The osteological type was to consist of clI, the structural skeletal
elements common to the vertebrates, and it was to be arrived at
through generalization based on careful comparative anatomies, not
only of adult organisms but of organisms in different life-stages as well
(Goethe, HA 13, p. 181).
Moreover, these researches revealed that a particular structure can
appear quite differently in different animals, either part or all of it being

elongated in one form while compressed in another, even to the point
of being apparently absent. Hence Goethe introduced several important
defining characteristics of the generalized elements constituting his
morphotypes. Foremost among these is degree of complication [Voll-
kommenheit] (Uschmann, 1939): Structures that appear single in one
form are shown to consist of sevetal elements in another. Thus the
seven cervical vertebrae, distinct in man and other mammals, are fused
in the whale into a structure having the appearance of a single giant
atlas with an appendage (Goethe, 'Erster Entwurf .. .': WA II.8, p. 43).
In its most perfect or complex form an organ expresses its full potential
for development, the entire complement of its component elements
being present and fully articulated. The gill arches of the bony fishes,
for instance, are the best representative of the archetype of the
pharyngeal system. In different forms nature dissects, as it were, the
structural components of the type, emphasizing now one, now another
element. In addition to the number of elements, two further important
defining characteristics of the type, according to Goethe, are position
and arrangement. 4 The position of a structural element is its most
constant feature, for position is defined in terms of the element's
functional relationship to the organism as a whole. Thus, number of
elements, their arrangement, position and degree of complication are all
methodological tools for defining the morpho type, and it is in terms of
these methodological requirements that organisms are to be established
as related through homologlous variations on a ground plan [Bauplan].
In somewhat disparaging terms Goethe is frequently described as an
essentialist and typologist (Mayr, 1963, p. 4; Mayr, 1957, 1-22; Mayr,
1968), and his conception of biology has been characterized as idealistic
morphology (Russell, 1916, pp. 45-51; Uschmann, 1939; Riedl, 1978,
p. 63). The implication is that he did not believe in the physical reality
of his morphotypes. Now it certainly is true that Goethe himself
referred to the types as 'pure ideas' of nature somewhat in Platonic
fashion. But this is in part a result of the manner in which they were to
be discovered. Morphotypes are necessarily hypqthetical relations
arrived at through what Goethe described as "der spekulative Geist."
But they are not for that reason less really present in nature. In
Goethe's view it is imperative to note that nature operates in terms of
forces and laws. Both are present in nature, but in different senses.
For Goethe, morphotypes are laws that guide and delimit what he,
24 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.
The Conditions of Existence
I have spoken up to now of Goethe's concern with internal laws of

organization. But internal structure was inseparably correlated with the
external conditions of existence in Goethe's view. Morphology was
just one side of a more comprehensive science which Goethe called

Zoonomie and which Treviranus called Biologie (Goethe, 'Erster
Entwurf .. .': HA 13, p. 126).
Goethe had already demonstrated a concern for the external condi-
tions of existence in his earliest morphological work on the inter-
maxillary bone. There is, in Goethe's view, a natural order among the
stuctures one chooses to focus upon in morphology. The morphologist
is not guided by an arbitrary choice of structures but rather focuses
upon whose which have some special significance for the life of the
animal, and in particular, with its contact with the external environment.
Viewed in this context, the intermaxillary bone is of considerable
importance, for as Goethe notes, it is by means of this structure that the
animal is first in contact with its food; and, as Goethe also pointed out,
the structure of the intermaxillary bone varies in accordance with the
type of food for which the animal is adapted. s Generalizing upon this
type of consideration, Goethe wrote:
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).
Such variables as the role of the climate, temperature, moisture, and

altitude were all to be taken into consideration. Examples of the sorts
of 'laws' Goethe envisioned here were provided by Humboldt in his
Ansichten der Natur and later in his Kosmos when he investigated the
variation of forms within a class of animals by relating them to a
biogeographical grid determined by isothermal lines. This approach was
explored in somewhat different terms in the 1840s by the Gottingen
physiologist Carl Bergmann leading to 'Bergmann's Law,' which relates
26 TIMOTHY LENOIR
variation in size to the temperature of the animal's environment

(Coleman, 1979).
The extent to which Goethe was prepared to incorporate his ideas
on morphology into a more general theory of systematics is demon-
strated in a discussion of rodents which appears in the second part of
his Morphologie of 1824 . In reviewing D'Alton's widely influential
tables on the skeletal structure of the rodents Goethe concluded that
the entire class seemed to be based on a fundamental set of Anlagen
capable of being diversified in numerous directions; but while the class
seemed to be generically determined by these internal laws of organiza-
tion, external conditions of life have brought about determinate
specification of the forms in the class through structural transformation.
In Goethe's view the class of rodents are all related through a common
set of biological laws governing structure:
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).
This apparent adaptation of the basic rodent Bauplan to a variety of

habitats led Goethe to the hypothesis that:
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
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
* 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.
1 WA 11.8, p. 59. This poem dates back to a sketch written in 1806. See WA 11.8,
"Lesearten," 279-280.
2 Haller was no vitalist, at least not in the ordinary sense of someone who advocates
the imposition of a soul or designing agency upon organic forces. Rather, Haller's vital
forces were assumed to be rooted in the material constitution of muscle, nervous and
mucous tissue but incapable of further mechanistic reduction (cf. Roe, 1981).
3 "The archaeologist can let the great womb of nature, which erl1erges from the original
chaos as a great animal, give birth first to creatures of less purposive form, those in turn
to others which are better adapted to their birthplace and to their inter-relations with
one another; until this womb has petrified, fossilized and limited its progeny to
determinate species incapable of further modification, and this manifold of forms
remain just as it emerged at the end of the operation of that fruitful formative force. But
28 TIMOTHY LENOIR
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).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brauning-Oktavio, H.: Vom Zwischenkieferknochen zur Idee des Typus. Goethe als
NatUlforscher in den Jahren 1780-1786, Nova Acta Leopoldina, 126, J. A. Barth,
Leipzig, 1956, (= Nova Acta Leopoldina NS 18 (1956».
Gauss, J. 'Goethe und die Prinzipien der Naturforschung bei Kant', Studia Philosophica
29 (1970) 53-58.
Haeckel, E.: Die natiirliche Schopfungsgeschichte, Georg Reimer, Berlin 1868.
Kant, 1: Critique ofJudgement (trans. by J. H. Bernard), Hafner, New York, 1951.
Kant, 1: Kritik der Urteilskraft, in Kants gesammelte Schriften, Konigliche Preussische
Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin, 1902-1923, Vol. 5,1908.
Lenoir, T.: 'The Gottingen School and the Development of Transcendental Natur-
philosophie in the Romantic Era', Studies in History of Biology 5 (1981) 111-205.
Lenoir, T.: 'Kant, Blumenbach and Vital Materialism in German Biology', Isis 71
(1980) 77-108.
Low, R.: Philosophie des Lebendigen. Der Begrijf des Organischen bei Kant. Sein Grund
und seine Aktualitiit, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a.M., 1980.
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.
History and Sociology of Science

Univ. of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104
U.S.A.
FREDERICK BURWICK
GOETHE'S ENTOPTISCHE FARBEN AND

THE PROBLEM OF POLARITY*
When Ludwig Tieck visited Samuel Taylor Coleridge at Highgate in

June, 1817, their conversation certainly concerned matters literary, for
Tieck had been busy at the British Museum collecting transcriptions for
"his great Work on Shakespear" (Coleridge, 1959,4, pp. 744-747). As
his letters reveal, however, Coleridge was much more excited by their
discussion of the mysticism of Boehme and Tauler, the animal mag-
netism practiced by Wohlfahrt, and the color theory of Goethe, topics
that Coleridge found intimately conjoined through the principle of
polarity. Digressing at length on Tieck's account of Schelling and
Spinoza, the tetractys of TO ()t:fov and '0 Coleridge confesses that
"these Tieckiana have seduced me from Mr. Tieck himself (1959, 4, p.
745). Goethe's Farbenlehre and his supplemental work on entoptics
were discussed, as Coleridge makes evident in his letter to Tieck at
Oxford (4 July 1817), under the same constellation of mystical and
magnetic polarity:
I am anxious to learn the specific Objections of the Mathematicians to Goethe's
Farbenlehre, as far as it is an attack on the assumptions of Newton. To me, I confess,
Newton's positions, first of a Ray of light, as a physical synodical Individuum, secondly,
that specific individua are co-existent (by what copula?) in this complex yet divisible
Ray; thirdly, that the Prism is a mere mechanic Dissector of this Ray; and lastly, that
Light, as the common result, is = confusion; have always, and years before I ever heard
of G6the, appeared monstrous FICTIONS! - and in this conviction I became perfectly
indifferent, as to the forms of their geometrical Picturability. The assumption of the
Thing, Light, where I can find nothing but visibility under given conditions, was always
a stumbling-block to me. Before my visit to Germany in September, 1798, I had
adopted (probably from Behmen's Aurora, which I had conjured over at School) the
idea that Sound was = Light under the praepotence of Gravitation, and Color =
Gravitation under the praepotence of Light: and I have never seen the reason to change
my faith in this respect (1959, 4, pp. 750-751).
Clearly, Coleridge understood the grounds of Goethe's objections to

Newton's Opticks (1704). If Tieck intended that Coleridge should
consult Tauler's Hellleuchtender Herzens und Andachts Spiegel (1713),
he must have failed to appreciate Coleridge'S search for a reconciliation
of the natural and the divine in a theory of light which would be at once
29
A Re-appraisal,29-44.
30 FREDERICK BURWICK
philosophically and scientifically tenable.! This is what he sought in

Boehme's Aurora and Goethe's Farbenlehre. Coleridge's annotation to
Aurora reveal his attempt to bring Boehme into accord with the recent
discoveries of Sir Humphry Davy in the field of electro- and photo-
chemistry. In a marginal note to Lorenz Oken's Erste Ideen zur Theone
des Lichts (1808), Coleridge suggests that a confutation of Newton's
theory of light and color could be presented only through "the full
exhibition of another Theory adequate to the Sum of the Phaenomena"
(1973, n. 3606). While awaiting that "full exhibition," Coleridge, as he
claims to Tieck, held to the formula of polarity with a tenacious "faith."
Nevertheless, when he repeats the formula in a letter to C. A. Tulk just
two months later, he has replaced the equations of light/gravity and
color/sound, as derived from Boehme and Goethe, with a tetractys of
light/gravity and electricity/magnetism (1959, 4, pp. 767-775 and
804-808). Although it is possible to point to the parallel in Goethe's
comparison of 'Tonlehre' and 'Farbenlehre' in paragraphs D7 4 7 - 748
and 889-893 in the 1810 edition of the Farbenlehre, it was not until
Goethe witnessed the bipolarity of the entoptic figure and saw the
physical analog in Ernst Chladni's acoustic figures (WA 11.5, pp. 295-
296), that Goethe put aside the simple model of polarity that he had
argued in the Farbenlehre and adopted the tetractys which he then
presents in Elemente der entoptischen Farben (1817) and Entoptische
Farben (1820).
1. THE ENTOPTIC FIGURE
To be sure, the biaxial phenomena he beheld in .the rhomboid crystal

and the Bolognese bottle merely provided visual confirmation of that
scheme of thought, largely Spino zan, that progressively informed
Goethe's concern with the Urphiinomen. To Goethe's credit, he did not
force the shape of his observations. Yet the zeal and enthusiasm with
which he pursued the problem of polarized light is not difficult to
understand. As he wrote to Hegel, whom he addressed as godfather of
the entoptics, this new research had brought him to a reappraisal of his
earlier work: "da ich, durch die neuste Bearbe:itung der entoptischen
Farben aufgeregt, meine altern chromatischen Akten wieder mustere
und mich nicht erwehren kann, gar manches durch sorgfaltige Redak-
tion einer offentlichen Erscheinung naher zur fiihren" (Goethe and
Hegel, 1970, p. 24: 13 Apr. 1821). Goethe acknowledged Hegel as
GOETHE'S ENTOPTISCHE FARREN 31
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-
sumptions which he opposed in Newton's corpuscular theory. Goethe

describes the opposition of the matter-based premises of Newton and
the energy-based premises of Christian Huygens and Robert Hooke in
the 'Historischer Theil' of the Farbenlehre, but he also claimed that
dynamism no less than atomism remained bound by a mechanical
thesis: "Der Atomist wird alles aus Theilchen zusammengesetzt sehen
und aus dem Dunkeln das Helle enstpringen lassen, ohne im mindesten
einen Wiederspruch zu ahnen; der Dynamiker, wenn er von Bewegung
spricht, bleibt immer noch materiell, denn es muss doch etwas da sein,
was bewegt wird" (WA II.5, pp. 429 and 433; WA 11.3, p. 116). When
Goethe joined Thomas Seebeck and Hegel in the investigation of the
entoptic figures, it was not to take up the argument of the dynamists
that polarized light demonstrated the interference of waves. Rather, it
was because the "wundersame Spiegelungen," as described in his poem
'Entoptische Farben' (1817), reveal a sign of the macrocosm: the
tetractys (Matthaei, 1971, p. 126).
Although Goethe did not accept the fundamental issues in the
debate between the atomists and the dynamists, the undular versus the
corpuscular theory, he found in the entoptic phenomena evidence
substantiating his observations that color is produced by the opposition
of light and darkness. As he recorded it in his "Konfession des
Verfassers," the dioptric "Farbensaume" provided the first evidence for
the emergence of color from the polarity of Licht and Finsternis. The
violet-blue and the red-yellow prismatic emissions from the ends of a
black band on a white surface seemed physically kindred to the
"Lichtenbergische Figuren," the radiations of iron-filings from the ends
of a magnet. His early observations on colored shadows (1792), the
blues and greens that appeared in "rotliche Diimmerung," Goethe took
as proof that the eye needed only light and darkness to stimulate
sensations of color. The negative-positive inversion of after-images
contributed further support to his polarity thesis. To Newton's claim
that once white light was separated into primary colors, no further
change could be imposed, Goethe answered that it was Newton's
mistake, "dass er namlich das prismatische Bild als ein fertiges,
unveriinderliches ansieht, da es doch eigentlich immer nur ein
werdendes und immer abiinderliches bleibt" (WA II.2, p. 58). Goethe
demonstrated, contrary to Newton's conclusion, that any color from
Newton's spectrum, accompanied by normal daylight, would cast a
shadow in complementary color and a full array of colors could be seen
GOETHE'S ENTOPTISCHE FARBEN 33
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:
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).
As Goethe describes them here, the entoptic figures are dominated

by the appearance of a black or white cross with a halo of concentric
colors, or "Pfauenaugen," in each of the four reticular spaces. With that
"geringste Anlass" that converts the black cross to white, the colors
within the four halos reverse like the negative of a color photograph.
Just as Goethe had compared the dioptric effect to the "Lichtenber-
gische Figuren," the entoptic decussation he likened to the "Chlad-
nische Figuren," the patterns wrought in fine sand on glass plates set
into vibration by sound (WA U.S, pp. 294-296). Although he grants
that the tetractys in both figures results from Schwingungen, Goethe
does not accede to the wave theorists. The "Schwingungen" which
produce the entoptic figure are in the matter, not in the energy.
Chladni's research on Feuermeteore (1819) also prompted Goethe's
discussion of entoptic effects within "atmosphiirische Meteore" (WA
U.S, pp. 296-298; Hoppe, 1978). The entoptic figure, Goethe wrote,
cou.ld also be discovered in various atmospheric conditions involving
light through fog and could often be observed within the halo around
the sun or moon. Goethe also reports seeing the entoptic figure in
melting ice on a window as reflected in a mirror. He found it in such
natural crystals as selenite, spar, mica-schist, and turmaline. Chiefly, he
studied the entoptic effects in tempered glass, following the discoveries
of Seebeck. Blown glass, rapidly cooled, such as Prinz Rupprecht vials
and Bolognese bottles, produce entoptic figures, and Seebeck experi-
mented extensively with such phenomena in tempered glass. The waves
produced in heating glass to the melting point, as Goethe explained the
"Schwingungen," are allowed to subside in slow cooling, but they
become trapped in rapid cooling. The resulting tension - a modern
GOETHE'S ENTOPTISCHE FARREN 3S
scientist would call it molecular strain - causes tempered glass to

shatter almost explosively: "die ... zerspringen ... und lassen ein
pulverartiges Wesen zuriick." Even the splinters perpetuate, "Solutio
continui," a configuration. The trapped "Schwingungen" render the
entoptic glass or crystal peculiarly "augenmassig": "Zugleich mit diesen
Eigenschaften gewinnt nun das Glas die Figuren und Farben
in seinem Innern sehen zu lassen (WA, U.S, p. 290).
The potential Christian symbolism in the black/white cross of the
entoptic figure Goethe made use of in the dramatization of Homunculus
as the bottle-born, bottle-bound light-bearer of the 'Klassische Walpur-
gisnacht.' He employs it, too, in the poem he addressed to Julie,
Countess von Egloffstein, explaining the operation of Seebeck's
entoptic apparatus. In the midst of the "allerschonste Farbenspiel," the
name becomes a sign (X):
Schwarz wie Kreuze wirst du sehen,

i'fauenaugen kann man finden;
Tag und Abendlicht vergehen
Bis zusammen beide schwinden.
Und der Name wird ein Zeichen,
Tief ist der Kristall durchdrungen:
Aug in Auge sieht dergleichen
Wundersame Spiegelungen.
Lass den Makrokosmos gelten,
Seine spenstischen Gestalten!
Da die lieben kleinen Welten
Wirklich Herrlichstes enthalten (Matthaei, 1971, p. 126).
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:
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).
Like the physiological opposition of the image and after-image in the

eye, the tempered glass, because of the undulation trapped in rapid
cooling, catches light from opposing directions and thus produces a
negative-positive image. "Halbschatten" is made to exist in the same
space with "Halblicht": this is the polarized light that becomes visible as
the entoptic coincidence, enabling the eye to see color in the contrast. It
was precisely such optical/physiological coincidence that commanded
the attention of Jan Purkynje, Johannes Milller, and Ewald Hering, that
has continued to direct research in color-relative reception and
oculomotor physiology. It was such coincidence, too, that enabled
Edwin Land to see color "spring" into a black-and-white photograph,
prompting his investigation of "brightness ratios" as a correction to
what he discovered "'wrong' with classical theory."6
II. PHYSIOLOGICAL OPTICS
The great name in physiological optics is Hermann von Helmholtz: in

his Handbuch der physiologischen Optik (1856-1866) he revives from
Thomas Young's Bakerian lecture, 'On the Theory of Light and
Colours' (12 November 1801), the proposition that "The sensation of
different colours depends on the different frequency of vibration
excited by light on the retina," with the scholium that three color
receptors are sufficient of account for color vision. Helmholtz delivered
two lectures on Goethe's scientific pretensions. In the first, 'Goethes
naturwissenschaftliche Arbeiten' (1853), Helmholtz describes Goethe
as a misguided humanist who thought he must protect "die umittelbare
Wahrheit des sinnlichen Eindrucks gegen die Angriffe der Wissens-
chaft"; his Farbenlehre celebrates "schoner Schein" and confounds
poetic sensibility with scientific observation. In the second, perhaps
more tolerant because delivered to a meeting of the Goethe-Gesell-
schaft, Helmholtz modestly praises "Goethes Vorahnung kommender
GOETHE'S ENTOPTISCHE FARREN 37
naturwissenschaftlicher Ideen," with apologies for the mistakes which

resulted from his ''unvollkommene Apparaten": because Goethe had
"niemals vollstandig gereinigtes, einfaches, farbiges Licht vor Augen
gehabt," so Helmholtz explains, Goethe "wollte deshalb nicht an seine
Existenz glauben." Apparently Helmholtz forgot the celebration of
"schoner Schein" and became -muddled in the polarity of klar und
trUbe.
The three-receptor theory of Young-Helmholtz, interestingly enough,
has not fared as well as some of Goethe's tenets which Helmholtz
scorned. Goethe distinguished between the subjective and objective
colors, and those mediated as subjective-objective. The mixture of all
colors, as objective, makes gray, counter to Newton's contention that all
colors are contained in white. Colors share with gray a shading from
Licht into Finsternis. In Goethe's bipolar scheme of 1820, tension
produces color, submission grayness. Hence Goethe's comic pedagogue
fails in his Newtonian demonstration:
Newtonisch Weiss den Kindem vorzuzeigen,
Die padogogischem Ernst so gem sich neigen,
Trat einst ein Lehrer auf mit Schwungrads Possen,
Auf selbem war ein Farbenkreis geschlossen.
Das dorlte nun. "Betracht es mir genau!
Was siehst du, Knabe?" Nun, was seh ich? Grau!
Du siehst nicht recht! Glaubst du, dass ich das leide?
Weiss, dummer Junger, Weiss! so sagts Mollweide 11 (WA 1.5, p. 179).
Karl Brandan Mollweide, honored in Goethe's bibliography of "Wider-

sacher" (WA U.s, pp. 359-361) as well as here in the pedagogue's
blind appeal to authority, had refuted Goethe's doctrine of polarity in a
review for Zachs monatliche Correspondenz (July 1810).
Goethe received both endorsement and substantiation in Jan
Purkynje's Zur Kenntnis des Sehens in subjektiver Hinsicht (1819),
which was the first attempt to extend Goethe's physiological approach.
Here, Goethe's idea of gray as das Leidende, the passive or submissive
surrender of Licht to Finsternis, is reformulated in terms still cited by
physiologists as the "Purkynje effect" (Jung, 1973,yn/3a and 3b). At
twilight, slower nightime (scotopic) vision, utilizing the cones around
the fovea centralis, begins to take over for the faster daytime (photopic)
vision, keenest in the rods in the middle of the fovea centralis. Because
nighttime sight is less color sensitive, the passive grays replace the
active colors: red turns black, orange darkens, green and blue appear as
lighter gray. Where color is still perceived, it seems to flicker, and

because nighttime vision is slower, the eye may see the same image
twice at twilight. Although the disjuncture in the retinal reponse is
minute, the 'flash' is startlingly perceptible. Coleridge recorded the
perception at the close of his poem 'Shurton Bars' (1795): "in Summer's
evening hour/Flashes the golden-colour'd flower/ A fair electric
flame." 7 Goethe describes the "machtig rothe Farbe" of the oriental
poppy seen flashing its "Blitz" in a June twilight, "der Blitz eigentlich
das Scheinbild der Blume, in der geforderten blaugriinen Farbe" (WA
Ill, p. 24). Purkynje's account is more attentive to responsiveness of
the eye. This concern is evident, too, in the commentary on entoptic
phenomena. Goethe received from Purkynje, apparently with his letter
of 7 February 1823, a careful account "iiber farbige Dunsthofe an
Glasscheiben" in which Purkynje ascribes the shifting of color in the
entoptic figure seen in the frosted pane to the varying color sensitivity
of the retina in the twilight (Paralipomena, CXVI).
Goethe's physiological approach led Purkynje to explore the capaci-
ties and the limitations of the eye. Johannes Miiller acknowledged that
it was Goethe's Farbenlehre that provoked him to examine the relation-
ship between physiology and anatomy, between function and organ.
It may seem ironic, but this debt is no less evident in his study of
the development of the gonads, than it is in his work on Gesichts-
Empfindung. From Goethe, Miiller' developed his doctrine on the
specific energy of the sense organs and of psychomotor reflex actions.
His Handbuch der Physiologie des Menschen (1833) remained the
standard reference for severals decades. At Miiller's death, the
pathologist Rudolf Virchow emphasized the importance of Goethe's
methodology: "1st es nicht beschiimend zu gestehen, dass Goethe das
Prinzip der Beobachtung fiir die Naturwissenschaft retten musste"
(Matthaei, 1971, p. 5).
Ewald Hering's Zur Lehre vom Lichtsinne (1878) drew from the
"Gegensatz fordernde Farben" of Goethe's color scheme. In opposing
the Young-Helmholtz three-receptor theory, Hering posited a theory
based on the antagonism of color polarity (Rlack and white, blue
and yellow, red and green). Hering claimed his theory fulfilled the
"nativistic" physiological conditions of perception, while Helmholtz's
theory relied on external "empiristic" factors. Nevertheless, in arguing
a phenomenological physiology, Hering supposed the cones to have
alternating phases (catabolic and anabolic, breaking down and building
GOETHE'S ENTOPTlSCHE FARBEN 39
up) that would distinguish antagonistic sensations (blue impulses, for

example, from yellow impulses). Such a capacity would seem to violate
MUller's doctrine of specific energy. It was primarily this difficulty
that led Christine Ladd-Franklin to propose a compromise between
the Young-Helmholtz theory and the Hering theory, keeping the
phenomenological advantages and avoiding the conflict with specific
energy. Her scheme also extended, from Purkynje, the perimeter
studies: the varying color responses of different parts of the retina
(Ladd-Frankin, 1929, pp. 66-71; Hurvich and Jameson 1957).
Perhaps it was received with undue fanfare but certairily the "bright-
ness ratio" theory of color was an important contribution to physio-
logical optics. Edwin Land, of Polaroid camera, gave this theory
popularity in his report, 'Experiments in Color Vision' for Scientific
American (1959). Land found that he could turn a black-and-white
photograph into a color picture with colorless light and any color from
Newton's spectrum. Goethe was credited for a part in this discovery
with brief reference to "Farbige Schatten" in Francis Bello's report in
Fortune (May, 1959). The reporter for Der Spiegel (August, 1959) gave
Goethe a larger share of the credit. And Gerhard Ott (1980) put the
discovery in historical context in his essay "Die Versuche von Land.
Ansatze ze ihrer goetheanistischen Deutung."
III. THE TETRACTYS
In his satirical excursion on the "Maschinenmann" in Palingenesien

(1798), Jean Paul lets loose a barrage at the mechanistic theories of
both the atomists and the dynamists:
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).
Who fails to comprehend the relevance of the "Longitudinal- und

Transversalschwingungen bezogene Ichs" will scarcely understand why
Jean Paul, addressing the problem of mimesis within the extremes of
poetic nihilism and materialism, opens his Vorschule der Asthetik with
the declaration: "mit Farben kann man nicht das Licht abmalen"
(1959-1963, 5, p. 30). Although Palingenesien was published three
years before Thomas Young presented his paper on the interference of

light waves and twenty years Augustin Fresnel demonstrated that light
waves were transverse and not longitudinal (Fresnel, 1866), Jean Paul
knew, through his reading of Robert Hooke,8 what the debate was
about. Certainly Jean Paul was not alone in recognizing as the awful
consequence of this debate that the negation of the natura naturans
attended the mechanistic affirmation of the natura naturata. Coleridge,
in putting forth his version of the tetractys, cited his debt to Spinoza's
famous scholium to Proposition XXIX of the Ethics. The proposition
states:
Nothing in the universe is contingent, but all things are conditioned to exist and operate
in a particular manner by the necessity of the divine nature.
In the scholium, Spinoza adds:

I wish here to explain, what we should understand by nature viewed as active (natura
naturans), and nature viewed as passive (natura naturata).
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:
a - Experience in application to figure, number, position, and motion successive and

coexistent = physiography, that is, description of nature as the aggregate of objects
(natura naturata) b - Experience in application to acts, that is, manifestations of a will;
acts simultaneous or successive of men, or of nature considered as an agent (natura
naturans) = history.9
For Coleridge, the tetractys provided a noetic pentad: the prothesis =

the logos or the sum; the meso thesis = the agere; the thesis = the res ;
the antithesis = the ago or patior; and the synthesis = the agens.1O
When Goethe first posited the polarity of "Farbensaume," he was not
merely indulging an analogy to magnetism. Johann Ritter conducted
experiments together with Goethe on the galvanic polarity of color and
shared with him the evidence of photochemical nrocesses: violet occurs
at the cold, hydrogen or positive pole, red at the hot, oxygen or
negative pole. I I Schelling had incorporated Ritter's observations into
his own tetractys of the "vier Weltgegenden" (Schelling, 1958, Ergan-
zungsband 2, p. 242). Schelling's bipolar model served as the imme-
diate source of the tetractys as Coleridge presented it in his letters to
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
reciprocity: "Was in der Atmosphare vorgeht, begibt sich gleichfalls in

des Menschen Auge, und der entoptische Gegensatz ist auch der
physiologe" (WA II.S, p. 293). It was in terms of this reciprocity and
coincidence that Goethe confirmed the entoptic tetractys as the name
become a sign, the macrocosm within the microcosm.
NOTES
* 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.
1 Johannes Tauler (1300-1361) was a follower of Meister Eckhart. His prose makes
abundant use of visual and visionary display in his attention to practical moral activity
fulfilled through devotional receptivity to the divine. Although rich in light and color
imagery, Tauler has none of the chemical interest evident in Boehme's Aurora.
2 For a historical summary of the wave-theory in opposition to Newtonian optics, see
Ronchi (1970), Chs. 5-7, pp. 159-259.
3 'Sur une propriete de la lumiere reflechie par les corps diaphanes' (1809); 'Theorie
de la double refraction de la lumiere dans les substances cristallines' (1810) (Ronchi,
1970, pp. 232-234).
4 The fifth chapter of his Traite de la lumiere (1690) Huygens devotes to the "refrac-
tion merveilleuse" of rhomboid spar.
5 Newton (1913). For Newton's account of ''fits of easy reflection" and ''fits of easy
transmission" see Book II, Pt. 3, Proposition XIII; for the speculation on "sides," see
Book ill, Pt. J, Query 25 and Query 26.
6 Jan Purkynje, Das Sehen in subjektiver Hinsicht (1819); Das Sehen, Pt. II (1825);
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
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:
Coleridge, 1853, 1, pp. 218-219.

11 WA III.3, pp. 7-11. Goethe's Tagebuch lists frequent visits of Ritter between 23
February and 3 April 1801 and gives some account of their experiments. See also
Wetzels (1973), pp. 34 and 121-124; von Klinkstroem (1921), pp; 131-151.
12 Vergleichende Physiologie des Gesichtssinnes (1826); Muller repeate the formulation
in Bildungsgeschichte der Genitalien (1830), quoted in Schipperges (1978), p. 103.
13 WA II, 1, p. 16. Goethe acknowledges these lines as the words "eines alten
Mystikers"; the verse from Plotinus he first uses in a dedication "Lauchstedt, d. 1. Sept.
1805," and it appears again in the 'Zahme Xenien.'
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Coleridge, S. T.: Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (ed. by E. L. Griggs),

Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1959.
Coleridge, S. T.: The Complete Works of S. T. Coleridge, 7 vols. (ed. by W. G. T.
Shedd), Harper, New York, 1853.
Coleridge, S. T.: Logic (ed. by J. R. de J. Jackson), in The Collected Works of Samuel
Taylor Coleridge, Vol. 13, Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton, 1981.
Coleridge, S. T.: Notebooks (ed. by K. Coburn), Routledge and Kegan Paul, London,
1973.
Coleridge, S. T.: The Poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (ed. by E. H. Coleridge),
Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, 1967.
Eckermann, J. P.: Gespriiche mit Goethe in den letzten lahren seines Lebens, Artemis-
Verlag, Zurich, 1948.
Fresnel, A.: 'La Diffraction de la lumiere', in Oeuvres completes, Pairsk, 1866, Vol. 1,
pp.89-129.
Goethe, J. W. von and Hegel, G. W. F.: Goethe-Hegel Briefwechsel (ed. by H. Bauer),
Verlag Freies Geistesleben, Stuttgart, 1970.
Hegel, G. W. F.: Enzyklopiidie der philosophischen WissenschaJt, Heidelberg, 1817.
Hering, E.: Zur Lehre vom Lichtsinne, Vienna, 1878.
Hoppe, G.: 'Goethes Ansichten uber Meteorite und sein VerhaItnis zu dem Physiker
Chladni', Goethe 95 (1978) 227-240.
Hurvich, L. and Jameson, D.: 'An Opponent-Process Theory of Color Vision', Psycho-
logical Review 64 (1957) 384-390; 397-404.
Paul, Jean: 'Das Sehen', Das Museum, Pt. II 2 (1814) 886-887.
Paul, Jean: Siimtfiche Werke (ed. by N. Miller), Hanser Verlag, Miinchen, 1959-1963.
Jung, R., ed.: Handbook of Sensory Physiology, Springer, Beriin-fI'eidelberg-New York,
1973.
Kanajew, 1. I.: 'Goethes Arbeiten zum Problem der Physiologie des Farbsehens' (trans.
O. Tome), Goethe 94 (1977) 113-126.
Klinkowstroem, C. von: 'Goethe und Ritter', lahrbuch der Goethe-GesellschaJt 8 (1921)
135-151.
Ladd-Franklin, C.: Colour and Colour Theories, Harcourt, Brace, New Yorks, 1929.
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
GOETHE AND HELMHOLTZ:

SCIENCE AND SENSATION*
The relation of Hermann von Helmholtz, the nineteenth-century physi-

cist and physiologist, to Goethe is worth studying for the insights it can
provide into the scientific ideas and the conceptions of science of both
men. In 1853, toward the beginning of his academic career, and again
in 1892, Helmholtz gave public lectures on Goethe's scientific ideas.
Goethe also figures in a number of Helmholtz's popular philosophical
writings of the intervening years as well as in technical professional
works such as his Manual of Physiological Optics. I will try to show that
these writings offer an understanding and assessment of Goethe's
involvement with science which are still valuable. Far from being
surpassed by more recent appreciations of Goethe by scientists, histo-
rians of science and Goethe scholars, Helmholtz's full interpretation has
scarcely been assimilated. It could still prove to be important for the
current interest in Goethe's scientific concerns.
I will also try to show that Goethe has a certain significance for the
development of Helmholtz's own ideas. His growing appreciation of
Goethe's possible relevance to modern physics, which he began by
denying altogether, seems to have reinforced - if it did not in fact
catalyze - a fundamental shift in his analysis of sense perception and
of the conception of scientific knowledge which follows from that
analysis. This shift is reflected in the reformulation of Helmholtz's sign
theory of perception, a crucial contribution to the tradition of empiri-
cism, in which the nature and bearing of the sign relation constitutive of
sense perception are transformed. The role which his interest in Goethe
played in this transformation must be inferred, but the challenge which
Goethe posed to Helmholtz as a physiologist is directly met by his
revision of the function of natural signs in sense perception.
In his first writings on optics in the early 1850s, with which the first
address or essay on Goethe is closely connected, and continuing into
his major research in physiological optics in the following decades,
Helmholtz brings to a culmination a Newtonian approach to phe-
nomena, that is, to what appears to our senses, including prominently
the phenomena or appearances of color. It was largely against this
45
F. Amrine;F. J. Zucker, and H. Wheeler (eds.), Goethe and the Sciences:
ARe-Appraisal, 45-82.
46 JEFFREY BARNOUW
Newtonian approach that Goethe had directed his own Theory of

Colors [Farbenlehre]. First published in 1810, that work included,
besides the positive doctrine of its 'didactic part,' a 'polemic part'
devoted to refuting the Newtonian conception of light and the spectrum,
with additional criticism of Newton and his followers in the final part,
'Materials for the History of the Theory of Colors.'
The Theory of Colors was a massive undertaking on which Goethe
had worked, off and on, since his 'Contributions to Optics' ['Beitdige
zur Optik'] of 1791. He had added 'Supplements to the Theory of
Colors' ['Nachtrage zur Farbenlehre'] in 1822 and 1823, and continued
to revise the work into the last year of his life, 1832. At times he
appears to have anticipated greater posthumous acclaim for his Theory
of Colors than for his poetic works, and he ironically credited the
fundamental errors of Newton's approach with having made his own
approach possible, just as Napoleon's great achievement depended on
his having 'inherited' the French Revolution, or Luther's on the priestly
obscurities of Catholicism.!
The initial opposition between the orientation of Helmholtz as a
physicist and physiologist and Goethe's anti-Newtonian approach could
hardly have been more direct. In the 1853 essay Helmholtz acknowl-
edges the. value of Goethe's contributions to comparative anatomy,
botany and, in general, to sciences based in perceptions and
conceptions of form and type. But he argues that Goethe's incursions
into physics, and particularly optics, are misguided, because here, with
respect to sciences emphasizing explanation in terms of concepts of
cause and law, Goethe's intuitive and morphological approach was
inappropriate. The virtues of the approach in one general area became
basic defects in another.
Helmholtz never changed his view that Goethe's criticisms of Newton
and Goethe's alternative theory of colored and white light were both
fundamentally mistaken. But he did show an understanding of the
motives of Goethe's opposition to Newton from the beginning, and his
sympathy with the main underlying concern of that opposition grew
significantly as his methodological reflection on his own work pro-
gressed. That concern focused on the divorce of physiological under-
standing of sensation from the phenomenal apprehension of, that is, in
or by, sensation, for this divorce meant a qualitative discontinuity
between the perspectives of the scientist and the sentient.
The transformation of Helmholtz's epistemology reflects his response
GOETHE AND HELMHOLTZ 47
to that concern. The reformulation of the sign theory of perception is

meant to overcome both the misapprehension that the world of sensa-
tion or appearance is merely subjective and the related notion that
physics and physiology have to do with a world that is inaccessible to
sense perception. Ironically, because Helmholtz effected the reorienta-
tion of his theory of perception. and knowledge by changing the role
which natural signs played in it, or rather by changing the meaning and
reference of the term 'sign' while reaffirming its crucial function, the
transformation itself and thus Goethe's possible influence in it have
gone virtually unnoticed.
While he rejected Goethe's theory of color and light to the end,
Helmholtz came to value the methodological ideas which Goethe put
forward largely to support that theory of color. In these ideas
Helmholtz perceived a relevance to a new conception of physics that
was emerging in the later decades of the nineteenth century, in which
physics became more descriptive, oriented to a concept of law that was
less akin to the old conception of cause than to notions of form and
type which Goethe had stressed. This new physics shunned causal
explanation in terms of unobservable entities, that is, and rather sought
to discern regular relations (or laws) within the phenomena.
We are here concerned with this shift from explanation to descrip-
tion not as it applies to physics, however, so much as for the general
epistemological application which Helmholtz gave it. His analysis of the
processes by which we build up a stable and predictable physical world
in and through perception relies, in its final formulation, on a concep-
tion of natural sign relations that corresponds to - and seems to owe
something to - Goethe's methodology.
In assessing the importance of Goethe's ideas for the development of
Helmholtz's theory of knowledge, we will eventually have to rely on
what might best be called literary interpretation, on close reading of
what Helmholtz wrote with attention to the imagery and to implications
of the structure and modulation of his essays. In a specific dimension
we will follow the recommendation of Goethe who, introducing his
'Materials for a History of the Theory of Colors,' writes that such
materials should serve "to remind us how important it is to regard an
author as a human being." Helmholtz's preoccupation with Goethe was
never simply a matter of general culture or the popularization of
science, but involved his recognition of a challenge to his own sense of
what he was doing as a scientist. As Goethe said in the same passage, "a
48 JEFFREY BARNOUW
history of the sciences as they have been carried on by men presents

a totally different and highly instructive view compared to mere
discoveries and opinions laid out in a row." 2
In his own way Helmholtz was notable for his many-sided interests
and abilities just as Goethe was, and as with Goethe these different
aspects were not compartmentalized but actively complementary.
Before we try to understand the impact of Goethe's conception of
scientific method on Helmholtz, we must first attempt a sketch of that
conception that brings out the relevant features. It was crucial to
Goethe's approach to scientific questions that he brought his artistic
and aesthetic sensibility fully to bear on them.
1. GOETHE'S SCIENTIFIC METHODOLOGY
Toward the beginning of the 'Confession of the Author' appended to

the 'Materials for a History of the Theory of Colors' Goethe offers a
bold yet persuasive justification for his massive undertaking in a field
which public opinion might consider alien to him, a wasteful scattering
of his energies. Conceding that a new beginning of this sort requires the
whole man, he adds,
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.
This corresponds to the inference Goethe makes toward the beginning

of the same work from the circumstance that "we must necessarily think
of science as an art if we expect any kind of wholeness from it,"
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
It would undermine Goethe's point, however, if this were understood

as implying that science should be taken or undertaken as an art. One
of the most persistent themes of his reflections on science is that the
individual cannot be considered the knowing subject in isolation, in the
sense that by its nature science requires cooperation not only between
contemporary colleagues but over the generations. It cannot present

itself as a completed whole in the way a work of art must. In the
immediate context of the passage just quoted Goethe goes on to
elaborate this Baconian idea as a basic motive for writing such a history
of the theory of color.
A conscious and critical relation to the heritage, and a corresponding
openness to what future thinkers might make of one's work, are for
Goethe essential dimensions precisely of individuality. This sense that
the force of cumulative experience of many earlier minds is focused in
individuality, which by the same token depends on future development
for its fulfilment, leads to the pregnant insight that the knowing subject
of science can only be mankind as a whole, which no individual can
represent adequately.4
Just as the isolation of the individual from contemporaries and from
the continuity of tradition needs to be resisted, so too the isolation
within the individual of some narrowly defined 'professional' com-
petence. Each sort of isolation is the result of misconceived specializa-
tion, an intellectual division of labor that promotes only fragmentation,
not the advancement of science. Goethe was no dilettante virtuoso but
an amateur in the best sense, and he opposed the compartmentalization
of human activities and affirmed the continuity between aesthetic and
cognitive concerns through his own endeavors in science as in literature.
Goethe's insistence on the scientist's need to draw on all his faculties
paradoxically brought with it a sort of limitation, in that the desired
mental integration posed a barrier to the capacity of intellectual (and
particularly mathematical) abstraction to go beyond the limits of
intuition derived from sense. A fear that science, by pursuing too far
the tendency which brought it success in physics, might sever its own
roots in sensible intuition and thus cut off all continuity with everyday
experience was implicit in Goethe's opposition to Newton's conception
of colored light, and explicit misgivings of a similar nature account for
much of the subsequent interest in Goethe's polemics and alternative
color theory.
Goethe is not bothered by the idea that common sense might be
contradicted by science and our everyday perceptions of the world
corrected. As he pointed cut, "The Copernican System rests on an idea
which is hard to grasp and which daily contradicts our senses. We only
repeat by rote what we neither know nor comprehend. The meta-
morphosis of the plants equally contradicts our senses (Maximen und
50 JEFFREY BARNOUW
Reflexionen, 536: HA 12, 438). In the 'Confession of the Author' he

even writes that he himself had at first unthinkingly accepted Newton's
analysis of white light (as containing all the different colors of light)
until a particular experience brought him, so to speak, to his senses -
and to a judgment securely grounded in instinct (HA 14, pp. 256 and
259).
Where physical science attempts to penetrate behind appearance
itself, however, and to explain the power of sensation in terms of
insensible causes, Goethe feels that the notion of explanation is being
turned inside-out. His conception of explanation is in most respects
traditional. He maintained that "no phenomenon is self-explanatory;
only many phenomena, examined in conjunction and methodically
ordered, eventually lead to what could count as theory (Maxim en ... ;
500: HA 12,434). At the same time he rightly held that explanation in
its regress had to stop at certain intuitively evident phenomena, which
were to provide the basis of explanation for other more complicated
ones. Thus, in the Introduction to the Farbenlehre Goethe writes that he
expects the appreciation of philosophers because he has "tried to follow
the phenomena to their original sources, to that point where they
simply appear and are and where nothing more can be explained about
them" (HA 13, p. 327).
Light, what he saw as simple white light, he took as a given that
could not be further analyzed or explained and did not need to be. As a
result, the Newtonian analysis that found the whole spectrum contained
in white light and separated the colors out by their differing degrees of
refrangibility seemed to Goethe an attempt to explain what was simple
and evident by something complicated, obscure, and hypothetical (HA
13, p. 323; HA 14, p. 263). This is a type of basic mistake that Goethe
holds responsible for the greatest confusion in natural science (HA
13, pp. 368 and 482). When we finally find a primitive or primal
phenomenon, he says, we do not want to recognize it as such but
continue to seek for something behind or above it, "whereas it is here
that we should acknowledge the limits of sense intuition [die Grenze des
Schauens)" (HA 13, p. 368).
Goethe's way of writing about this 'primal phenomenon' sometimes
seems to flirt with mysticism. Continuing the paragraph which has just
been quoted from, he says that the natural scientist should simply leave
the Urphiinomene "in their eternal peace and majesty." The philosopher
may take them up and find ''worthy matter for further study and
elaboration in the basic and primal phenomenon rather than individual

cases, general rubrics, opinions and hypotheses." If the eternal peace
and majesty of the Urphiinomen suggests a transcendent vision, the
character of the philosopher's interest in it should make clear that it is
basically a methodological notion for Goethe.
Furthermore, basic or primal phenomena are not 'found' simply by
luck or inspiration but arrived at by method. Already in his first essay
on the method of science, 'Der Versuch als Vermittler von Objekt und
Subjekt,' ['The Experiment as Mediator of Object and Subject'], written
in 1792 in connection with his first essays on the theory of color,
Goethe shows the necessity and difficulty of reaching valid general
conceptions through experiment, that is, through deliberately repeated
and refined experience. The essay is evidence that Goethe not only read
Bacon with profit but read him better than most Baconians.5 He calls
attention, as Bacon did, to the natural tendency of the mind to form
theories and systems, and argues that we cannot condemn such a
tendency because it "springs necessarily from the organization of our
being," but that we can be wary of it and control it (HA 13, p. 16).
The history of the sciences, Goethe says, reflects the succession of
"hypotheses, theories, systems and whatever other sorts of 'modes of
conception' [types or 'modes of representation,' Vorstellungsarten] by
which we strive to grasp the infinite" (HA 13, 10-11). This notion of
Vorstellungsarten is to become central to Goethe's theory of knowledge.
If we are able to apply our knowledge in action, we have a certain
control on our notions, "for life corrects us [weist uns zurecht] at every
step" (HA 13, p. 13). But when the observer is concerned with natural
phenomena in themselves, and not as they affect us and are used in our
actions, he enters a world in which he is in a sense alone. Then it
becomes important to communicate his findings to others from the
beginning and to take account of their responses. (Here the difference
from artistic endeavor is emphasized by Goethe.)
Even more basic than establishing co-ordination with the experience
of others is the problem of integrating one's own experience, of
determining how one experiment is connected with others, for it is only
through such connection that the single experiment has value. It is in
the correlation of disparate experiments that the real acuity and rigor of
the observer come into play, just as it is in the transition from
experience to judgement, from knowledge to application that the real
liabilities of imagination beset the scientist, "drawing him aloft when he
52 JEFFREY BARNOUW
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
Accordingly Goethe condemns the use of single experiments to

support pre-conceived hypotheses and cautions against the derivation
of hypotheses from isolated experiments. He suggests that diverse
experiences should be brought together as in a free-working republic
rather than a despotic court, and this means that the application of
experimentation to support general ideas must be indirect, mediated.
With specific reference to his first "optical contribution," (he later
regretted having used the term 'optical' for the Beitrage because it
implied a context of physics that was foreign to his purposes,) Goethe
outlines a way of integrating various, consciously varied experiments
into an experiment or experience "of a higher sort."
He compares the process of distilling such "Eifahrungen einer
hoheren Art" to the attainment of certainty by mathematical method,
which he sees as a simple spelling out of all necessary intermediate
steps in reasoning, such that its demonstrations are more expositions or
recapitulations than arguments. He contrasts these then with the
rhetorical "arguments" of an orator which rely on intuitive leaps of
imagination and are more akin to the ad hoc use of isolated experi-
ments to support a chosen theory.
When we have arrived at a number of "Eifahrungen der hoheren
Art ," we must order them without putting them in any hypothetical
systematic form.
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).
The principles (Satze, implying something laid down) in which the

experiences of the higher sort are expressed can then be ranged under
an even higher principle [ein hoheres Prinzip j by a consensual process

in which science as an institution provides a social control of individual
imagination and judgment.
In later writings Goethe no longer maintained the notion of an
approach to a human Vorstellungsart iiberhaupt, but rather argued that
the plurality and diversity of Vorstellungsarten was not to be overcome
and was in fact a crucial resource for the continual progress of science,
through a recurring competition between fundamental 'paradigms' or
'worldviews.' This shift only heightened the role of the interplay
between Vorstellungsart and experience, however, giving greater
emphasis to the need to recur to the source of meaning of all general
conceptions in individual sense perception and intuition.
Goethe published his 1792 essay only in 1823, but he sent it to
Schiller in 1798, inaugurating a phase of their correspondence that was
focused in questions of scientific theory. Schiller read the essay as
outlining the demands inherent in a "rational empiricism" [rationellen
Empiriej, in which despotic rule of a single "mode of conception," as is
projected by rationalism, is to be overcome by "the freedom of the
theoretical faculty" manifested in "the plurality [or varietyj of modes of
conception [Mannigfaltigkeit der Vorstellungsartenj, through which they
control one another [sich wechselsweise einschriinkenj." "Even by the
path of theory one is forced back to the object."
Schiller emphasizes a strict separation of thought and experience
here, as a quasi-Kantian way of insuring their genuine synthesis in
rational Empirie (which can mean 'experience' as well as 'empiricism'),
and this reflects his sense of the incommensurability of phenomena and
rationality. "In general an appearance or fact, which is something
determined [Bestimmtesj through and through, can never be adequate
to a rule which is purely determining" (Goethe and Schiller, 1966, pp.
541-542: 12 Jan. 1798). Upon writing this, Schiller urges Goethe to
develop the ideas of the 1792 essay in their own right, apart from the
research they were meant to introduce. Goethe answers that he sub-
scribes to Schiller's interpretation as his own credo,? and then with the
following letter sends him a precis of his position, published posthu-
mously as 'Erfahrung und Wissenschaft' ['Experience and Science'j,
which clarifies the three stages of inductive generalization from the
earlier essay precisely by undermining the distinction between phenome-
non and thought.
Although Goethe acknowledges that "the observer never sees the
54 JEFFREY BARNOUW
pure phenomenon with his eyes," he outlines an approach which makes

this seem virtually possible. "When I have experienced the constancy
and consistent order [Konstanz und Konsequenz] of phenomena to a
certain degree, I extract an empirical law from that and project it for
future appearances." In this way continually varying experiments by
seeking new conditions fBedingungen] and attending to the circum-
stance [Umstiinde], the scientist gradually attains "a higher standpoint,"
"that point where the human mind most closely approaches objects in
their generality." We have moved steadily toward the universality or
rationality of law without leaving the sensuous contact with phenomena.
This progress separates into three stages: the empirical phenomenon,
the scientific phenomenon, and the pure phenomenon. The first is
accessible to everyday experience, the second elicited by experiment
[Versuch], and the third is the "result of all experiences and experi-
ments" and reveals itself not in isolation but only in "a steady succes-
sion of the appearances [einer stetigen Folge der Erscheinungen]" (HA
13, pp. 23-25). It is this "pure phenomenon" which Goethe will call the
Urphiinomen in the Farbenlehre, at once the result of scientific induc-
tion and the starting point and basis of scientific explanation.
This conception of science is similar to that of Bacon in both its
main aspects, 8 but even more strikingly reminiscent of the epistemology
and logic of science presented in Aristotle's Posterior Analytics.
Aristotle argued that demonstrative reasoning must start from primary
premises which cannot be secured by demonstration, but only by
induction, that is, through experience from sense impressions. His text
culminates in a classic derivation of the universal from the "discrimina-
tive capacity which is called sense-perception." This capacity is
common to all animals, but only in some does the impression come to
persist and in still fewer does repeated persistence give rise to a power
to systematize impressions, that is, the emergent capacities of memory
and experience (99 b 31-100 a 5).
From experience again - i.e. from the universal now stabilized in its entirety within the
soul, the one beside the many which is a single identity within them all - originate the
skill of the craftsman and the knowledge of the man of science.
When a particular has coalesced or "made a stand," become capable of

recurrence and persistence, "the earliest universal is present in the soul:
for though the act of sense-perception is of the particular, its content is
universal" (71 b 10-12).
A crucial point which Aristotle makes at the outset will serve to

show where Goethe diverges significantly from an Aristotelian concep-
tion of science. The premises of demonstrated knowledge, he says, must
be prior to and better known than the conclusion, and he adds a caveat:
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).
It was in response to this methodological commitment that Schiller had

offered a fuller elaboration of "rational empiricism" (now "rationelle
Empirism"), which was to overcome both the passivity of "common
empiricism," which did not even "feel the itch to make laws for the
object out of its perceptions," and the precipitancy of rationalism,
which exercised its synthesizing power "at the expense of a certain
republican freedom of the facts." Rationalism "inquires into the
causality of appearances and links everything qua cause and effect,"
which is indispensable for science, but can also ruin it if pursued in
one-sided exclusivity. By focusing on the "pure phenomenon," which
Schiller equates with "the objective law of nature," rational empiricism
has regard to the "breadth of nature" as well as its "length," that is, "to
56 JEFFREY BARNOUW
the causality and the independence of appearances, seeing the whole of

nature in a reciprocal interaction [reciproquen Wirksamkeit]."9
The conception of science in its unbroken relation to sense, as
presented in 'Experience and Science,' is developed further in the
'Didactic Part' of the Farbenlehre, in the characterization of the
"main appearance" which Goethe also calls the "basic and primal
phenomenon":
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).
Goethe's reliance on intuition is the obverse of a mistrust of abstraction,

of "words and hypotheses." Where he considers the "neighborly
relation" of his Farbenlehre to philosophy, Goethe writes that the
physicist should have enough philosophical awareness to "develop a
method appropriate to intuition [dem Anschauen gemiift]; he should be
careful not to transform perception into concepts, concepts into words,
and then treat these words as if they were objects" (HA 13, p. 482).
Hypostatization is such a danger because of the disparity between
what can be intuited and what can be conceptually grasped and
expressed. Goethe did not draw sceptical conclusions from his aware-
ness of this gap, either for science or for poetry, but saw a certain
resignation as essential to each. What he said about art in his 'Annota-
tions to Diderot' could apply to his view of science as well: "Art does
not undertake to compete with nature in its breadth and depth, but
keeps itself on the surface of natural appearances . . . by recognizing
what is determined by law [das Gesetzliche] in it." 10
The much-quoted and almost as often misconstrued words of the
Foreword to the Farbenlehre, "Colors are the acts of light, its actions
and passions," are actually an expression of Goethe's modified nominal-
ism or conceptualism. He has just established that "it is in vain that we
undertake to express the essence of a thing. it is effects that we
perceive, and a complete history of these effects would encompass the

essence of that thing." The doctrine of colors will proceed descriptively,
on the analogy of a characterization of a person: his essence in itself is
inexpressible, "but if, on the contrary, you can bring all his acts, his
actions, together, the image of his character will emerge." On such
terms we can hope that the study of colors will give us insight into light,
"but we must think of both as part of nature as a whole" (RA 13,
p.315).
At times this conceptualism is presented as a form of conventional-
ism, which sees the value of concepts and theories grounded precisely
in awareness of their discrepancy, their radical difference, from the
reality we seek to make sense of by means of thought and language.
In order that a science may progress, its expansions become more complete, hypotheses
are necessary as well as experiments and observations. What the observer has faithfully
and carefully collected the philosopher will unify under a point of view, combine it into
a whole and thus make it capable of being surveyed and appreciated [literally "enjoyed,"
geniej3barj. Even if such a theory, such an hypothesis, is only a fiction [Dichtungj, it will
prove useful enough . . . . I regard such hypotheses in physics as nothing more than
convenient images to facilitate the conception [Vorstellungj of the whole. The mode of
conception [Vorstellungsartj which affords the greatest facilitation is the best, no matter
how far removed from the truth that we want to approach by means of it. II
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
of proceeding in the positive and negative parts of the Farbenlehre.

What we have concentrated on, then, is the relation of science and
sensation which Goethe felt he was defending against a basic danger
inherent in the Newtonian conceptions of science and of light.
In his first essay on Goethe Helmholtz writes, "we must regard his
theory of colors as an attempt to save the immediate truth of sense
impressions from the attacks of science." 13 It should be clear by now
that Goethe was far more concerned with the mediate truth of sense
impressions, which he saw as central to science in a conception he, was
striving to preserve and propagate. In the Foreword to the Farbenlehre
he rejects the idea that mere looking at an object [das bloJ3e Anblicken
einer Sache] can do any good, or even that it is possible to have
perceptions or make experiments without theoretical presuppositions:
Every regarding [Ansehen] goes over into a contemplating [Betrachten], every contem-
plating into a reflecting [Sinnen], every reflecting into a linking, and thus one can say
that with every attentive gaze into the world we are already theorizing. To do this with
awareness, with knowledge of ourselves, with freedom, and - to use a risky word -
with irony, we need to be adept in this way, if the abstraction which we are afraid of is
to be rendered harmless and the hoped-for results of experience are to be truly vital
and useful (HA 13, p. 317).
In this conception of and commitment to science Goethe anticipates

Helmholtz. To see how Goethe's writings may have influenced
Helmholtz in this sense, we must begin with Helmholtz's early work on
optics and color and his first essay on Goethe which seem rather to
emphasize his differences from and with Goethe.
2. GOETHE AS A PROBLEM FOR HELMHOLTZ
When Helmholtz was made Ordinarius for Physiology in Konigsberg,

he wrote an inaugural dissertation which was published as two articles
in 1852, 'On the Theory of Compound Colors' and 'On Brewster's New
Analysis of Solar Light.' He had already established a considerable
reputation while army surgeon at Potsdam with his work on 'animal
heat' or 'physiological heat,' that is, the metabolism of muscular activity,
and he had generalized from this and other, quite disparate phenomena
in what proved to be the crucial contribution to the crystallization of
a new paradigm, the 1847 essay 'On the Conservation of Energy.' He
had also proved that the transmission of nerve impulse was not instan-
taneous and had measured it, and had invented the opthalmoscope "for
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,
The indivisibility and apparent simplicity of a compound color impression seems so

evident that for that very reason some minds which are foreign to the physicist's way of
looking at things have taken offense at Newton's theory. This is particularly proper to
poetic genius; it feels its highest power and innermost nature in the capacity to grasp
the full energy of sensuous appearance, and in clothing intellectual things in it, it carries
over the whole vigor and insistent liveliness of immediate intuition into it.
This is unmistakably a reference to Goethe, whom he goes on to name,

but in a context that makes such fulsome language ("full energy of
sensuous appearance," "insistent liveliness of immediate intuition,")
seem little more than a sop for minds foreign to the physicist's way
of thinking. "The mistakes which Goethe thought he had found in
Newton's experiments have long since been recognized as conse-
quences of the imperfect way in which he tried to replicate them." 15
The inaugural lecture has nothing more to say about Goethe. But the
further progress of its argument is of interest for our topic in two ways,
as Helmholtz moves on through a brief discussion of the subjectivity of
sensation to his own conception of sense perception. He remarks that
not everything is light that is sensed as light, that pressure or a blow on
the eye or even an electric stimulus to the optic nerve can also produce
such a sensation. Such phenomena were used in the same way already
by Hobbes and are noted by Goethe at the outset of the 'Didactic Part'
of the Farbenlehre, but Helmholtz extends the point of this example by
citing the doctrine of the 'specific energies' of the sense nerves that was
developed by his teacher, Johannes von Muller.
The use of this doctrine is pertinent to our purposes because of
the paradox that it marks the subjectivist extreme of Helmholtz's

Newtonian view of the sensation of light while drawing on an idea
explicitly developed by Muller as a continuation of Goethe's insight in
the matter of physiological colors. In Helmholtz's characterization, the
doctrine of 'specific energies' means that "what is proper to the sensa-
tion of light comes not from the. particular character of light, but from
the particular activity of the visual nerve." Applied to the composite
make-up of compound colors, this means that "the sameness of color of
variously composed light has only subjective value, no objective value,
and the groups of color combinations that produce the same color
correspond to no objective relations independent of the nature of the
seeing eye." The upshot for Helmholtz is that "color is not a property of
objects in themselves, but rather a property which the eye first attaches
to bodies [den Korpern anheftet] , determined in its choice of the
particular color seen only by contingent combinations of properties of
that body" (1883, pp. 607-608).
This passage epitomizes the approach to phenomena which Goethe
reacted to so passionately in Newton. The world that appears to the
senses seems cut off from what science recognizes as objective reality,
and science in turn cut off from its reliance on intuition. In the final
paragraph of the inaugural lecture, however, the argument takes a
different turn, as Helmholtz gives the first sketchy presentation of
his own epistemology. Immediately after the sentences just quoted,
Helmholtz says,
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.
This is a version of the 'sign theory of perception,' which has a long

history extending back to the Greek Stoics and Epicureans and was
developed in various directions in the eighteenth century by thinkers
such as Locke, Berkeley, Reid and Tetens (cf. Barnouw, 'The Phi-
losophical Achievement .. .', 1979). Here Helmholtz speaks of
"Symhole" and the "Symholik unserer Sinnesnerven," [symbolics or
symbolism of our sense nerves] whereas later he will use the term
"Zeichen" or "sign." Helmholtz will also change some more funda-
mental things about his sign theory of perception over the course of its
development, reflecting a sensitivity to the point of Goethe's opposition
62 JEFFREY BARNOUW
to Newton on color and white light which is already obliquely

expressed here.
The conception of sensations as mere signs, not images or copies, of
external objects and properties is the corollary of the physiological
argument for the subjectivity of sense. Of the real nature of the external
relations that are designate<;l [bezeichnet 1by them, the signs tell us next
to nothing. But what is most striking about this conception, even as
presented here, is that it bears no sceptical implications for Helmholtz,
no tendency to undermine the reliability of our grasp of the external
world, in science or sensation.
Far from holding the scientific analysis which penetrates behind
appearance responsible for undermining the richness and presence of
intuition, as Husserl, Whitehead and many others were later to do
(often claiming Goethe as a model), Helmholtz turns the tables on such
a critique precisely by emphasizing the difference between science and
sensation:
Just think what our representation of the world would be like without the symbolism of
our senses, if we were able to perceive directly what the physicist can approach only
gradually through a long chain of inferences, everywhere nothing but the uniform
workings of attracting and repelling molecular forces, no variety but the dry alteration
of numerical relations, no light, no color, no tone or warmth. Thanks be to our senses,
they conjur up light and color for us out of the relations of oscillations .... In short we
have these symbols to thank for the whole delightful splendor and enlivening vigor of
the sensuous world.
What is more, this sensuous immediacy is itself a kind of knowledge

which science cannot compete with on its grounds. It would take a
physicist years, he says in conclusion, to define all the shades of color
of a landscape seen for a moment, which our eye had taken in at a
single glance. These final passages resume the language which had been
used earlier in the lecture to characterize Goethe's standpoint. It is as
much a gesture as an argument, but Helmholtz has begun to affirm that
appreciation of the wealth of phenomenal experience is only enhanced
- not undermined - when its non-apparent conditions or causes are
understood. This is not directed even tacitly at Goethe, but is rather an
attempt to obviate his misgivings about the Newtonian approach.
Helmholtz's early version of the sign theory of perception, which he
cast as correlative to the subjectivity of sensation and its specific
energies, nonetheless still seems to support a dualism in which science
is the knowledge of a reality distinct from, if not divorced from, that
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
the neglect of the 'causal nexus' is seen to be a deficiency in Goethe's

approach, even if it was deliberate.
In sharp contrast to what is on the whole a very positive appraisal of
the morphological side of Goethe's scientific endeavors, Helmholtz's
treatment of the Farbenlehre is uncompromisingly critical. After
reviewing weaknesses of _Goethe's arguments and experimentation,
Helmholtz concludes that so little can be said in defense of his
opposition to Newton and Newton's later advocates at the level of
scientific theory, that one must construe it rather as a conflict of basic
tendencies [Geistesrichtungen] which prevents each side of the dispute
from understanding the other.
Helmholtz then charcterizes Goethe's tendency as 'artistic,' meaning
that he seeks immediate expression of the idea in the material,
preserving "the entire liveliness of the immediate sensous impression"
even at the expense of generality and comprehensibility. Goethe
supposedly transferred the principles of artistic creativity to scientific
work, which is said to account for his successes in descriptive fields
where the still sensuous concepts of form and type are central, as well
as for his failure in an. area calling for analysis that penetrates behind
appearances to causes that are qualitatively different from their effects.
Goethe's expectation that physical investigations should have one fact
explain others such that the scientist could attain insight into the whole
"without leaving the sphere of sensuous perception" was erroneous
because a natural phenomenon [appearance, Naturerscheinung] is fully explained in

physical terms only when one has traced it back to the ultimate natural forces
underlying it and at work in it. Since we never perceive the forces in themselves, but
rather only their effects, we have to leave the realm of sense in every explanation of
natural phenomena and have recourse to non-perceptible entities determined solely by
concepts.
Helmholtz regards the connection of one fact to another more

general or better known fact as mere association, not a true explanation
of the fact. Insight into causality is crucial for the latter; "but this step
into the realm of concepts, which must be taken if we are to arrive at
the causes of natural phenomena, frightens the poet away." Helmholtz
brings in the principle of the 'specific energies' of the sense nerves as
further evidence leading in the same direction as Newton's decomposi-
tion of white light, and alludes to his own fledgling sign theory of
perception, still stated in terms of symbols standing for "objects of the
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).
Helmholtz makes it clear that he still regards the Farbenlehre, or

rather, as he significantly puts it, "Goethe's attempt to carry out his
views [on the method of science] practically with the example of the
Farbenlehre, " as a failure (and this will still be true in the 1892 essay).
But he adds, "the emphasis that he put on this tendency of his work
becomes understandable. He was a great goal before him, to which he
wanted to guide us." Goethe's idea of physical science has been
disengaged from his theory of color and light and receives a highly
positive appraisal that corresponds to a significant change in Helm-
holtz's own conception of science and its continuity with sensation.
During the period when he was writing his Treatise in Physiological
Optics, the three parts of which appeared in 1856, 1860 and 1867,
Helmholtz brought his theory of perception to its mature form, which is
presented most clearly in the subsequent papers, 'Recent Progress in
the Theory of Vision' (1868) and 'The Facts in Perception' (1878).
Prominent themes of the latter are then reworked in Helmholtz's
address to the Goethe Society in Weimar in 1892, 'Goethe's Anticipa-
66 JEFFREY BARNOUW
tion of Subsequent Scientific Ideas.' The character and extent of the

changes involved can best be appreciated by setting the later version off
against the presentation in 'On Human Vision' (1855).
The 1855 lecture, given to honor the memory of Kant, tries to show
that the subjectivist physiological legacy of Muller is complemented by
a parallel subjectivist epistemological legacy of Kant and Fichte. Their
common emphasis of subjective constitutive factors in our knowledge
of the world allowed for a basic disparity between appearance and
reality, the latter as construed by science or reason, whereas the later
objective idealists Schelling and Hegel claimed to find rationality within
the phenomena themselves and made the laws of the mind into the laws
of reality. Helmholtz connects this tendency with their "unphilosophi-
cally passionate polemic" against Newton and with their seconding of
Goethe's similar crusade (Philosophische Vortriige, pp. 47 and 58-59).
Accordingly Helmholtz's own epistemology is put forward here in a
form that exaggerates its subjectivism. At this stage of his development
it is possible and necessary to distinguish his theory of knowledge from
his theory of vision and perception. There is a striking discrepancy
between the two in their tenor. On the one hand, he presents an
empiricist account of the way we learn (as we must) by experience and
practice what various sensations of light mean with regard to the
location and character of visual objects in the world about us. Sense
perception is a complex and subtle skill relying on a vast number of
correlations and coordinations which we do not attend to in themselves
but are continually refining through the adjustments inherent in
successful use. The spirit of his empiricism is expressed by an analogy
which stresses the sense of skill: "We are all, so to speak, jugglers with
our eyes."
The epistemology that is meant to support this empiricism, on the
other hand, seems to underline a great gap which knowledge must span
rather than a network or unending series of minute correlations.
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
This last universal statement cannot itself be an induction or inference

but must logically precede all experience. By calling on the principle of

sufficient reason as an a priori "law of our thinking," Helmholtz, in a
way that is suggestive of Schopenhauer, claims to draw on Kant for
what is a most unkantian way of relating the phenomenon to the thing
in itself, since for Kant the category of causality had no cognitive
application beyond the realm of phenomena.
The notion that sensations are immediately feelings of neural events
and only secondarily referred to external objects (as the causes of those
neural events) could have been taken over from Muller as well as from
Fichte, not to mention Schopenhauer,!9 and indeed in this form it is a
legacy of Descartes rather than of the empiricist tradition in England.
The inference constituting this mediate reference would have to be
unconscious not only because we are not aware of making it, but
because we are not aware of external sensation as pertaining to our
nerves to begin with.
The idea of an "unconscious inference" as the means by which we
originally and perpetually make the instinctive transition from an
alleged immanent world of mere sensations to one of reality was
recognized by many critics, including his friend Dilthey, as a weak point
of Helmholtz's conception of sense perception. 20 Even though it is not
explicitly presented in terms of natural sign relations,2! this version of
the unconscious inference argument would seem to make the assump-
tion or assertion of such relations vulnerable to sceptical attack. The
Greek Sceptics, as represented by Sextus Empiricus, singled out for
rejection a kind of natural sign which they called "indicative," which
was said (by "dogmatists") to signify something that is by nature
non-evident, as sweat signifies the existence of invisible pores. As
applied to sensations per se this approach seems all the more prob-
lematic because the inference from a given effect to an otherwise
incognizable cause does not even have the firm possession of the effect
as an immediate sensation to begin with.
The stark separation of immediate sensing (whether of nervous
excitation or sense datum) and causal inference is in fact not at all to
Helmholtz's purpose, as it was to the very different ulterior purpose
of Schopenhauer. Helmholtz's ultimate point is rather the ubiquitous
interpenetration of sense and interpretation, such that the very notion
of immediacy in sensation comes to seem questionable. The inter-
penetration of sense and interpretation is intrinsic to his empiricism,
but his epistemology did not reflect this at first. The role and character
68 JEFFREY BARNOUW
of the "unconscious inference" will be seen to change, as the con-

comitant of a shift in Helmholtz's mature sign theory of perception in
which sensations-as-signs are no longer taken to refer to 'external'
objects that are never directly perceived, but rather to other sensations,
while what is constant in the series of sensations is taken to constitute
the object. .
Before proceeding to Helmholtz's mature theory of knowledge,
however, we must pursue what may appear a side issue but will prove
convergent with our main interest and show how Goethe functioned as
a touchstone for Helmholtz in the modification of his conceptions of
sensation and science. In an 1862 address, 'On the Relation of the
Natural Sciences to the Sciences as a Whole,' Helmholtz returns to his
critique of Schelling and Hegel for identifying the categories of thought
with those of reality, but suggests that while this is wholly mistaken in
its application to the knowledge of nature, it "might have more success
with respect to religion, law, the state, language, art, history, in short all
those sciences the objects of which are developed essentially on a
psychological foundation and which are thus fittingly grouped together
under the name 'human sciences' [Geisteswissenschaften]" (Philoso-
phische Vortriige (1971), p. 83).
He goes, on to point out that this is not really ever a matter of a
priori construction which is realized or reflected in history, for even
in the case of Hegel the derivation of consequences from concepts
supposedly representing essences relied fundamentally on foregoing
empirical analyses and syntheses accomplished by others, in effect the
German poets and philosophers of the era from 1770 on whom Dilthey
was soon to comprehend as a single movement. 22
Correspondingly the Geisteswissenschaften are seen as relying on a
mode of thought distinct from that of the natural sciences and which
often escapes notice. It is a type of induction which he calls "artistic," in
which neither the major nor the minor premise of the inference needs
to be or can be spelled out conceptually. Rather it relies on a sort of
instinctive intuition [Anschauung] or psychological tact not directed by
any graspable rule. This procedure is later explicitly linked to that
developed by "an artist, namely Goethe," in his botanical and
anatomical studies (Philosophische Vortriige (1971), pp. 92-93, 97; d.
pp. 177,277,340).
At the same time, however, artistic induction is seen in sharp
contrast to what Helmholtz calls "the iron-hard work of self-aware
inference [eiserne Arbeit des selbstbewuf3ten Schlief3ens]," characteristic

of natural sciences, the opposite, in other words of ''unconscious
inference." This "self-conscious logical activity" is connected with "a
certain mistrust of sense appearances and a striving after a causal nexus
[Kausalnexus]" (Philosophische Vortriige (1971), p. 101). Helmholtz's
idea of natural science has not yet changed substantially, then, nor its
opposition to Goethe's model, but the notion of unconscious inference
has been tacitly modulated by its association with Goethean artistic
induction and intuition. 23
3. GOETHE'S IMPORTANCE FOR THE LATER HELMHOLTZ
'Recent Progress in the Theory of Vision' begins by stating that "the

physiology of the senses is a borderland in which the two great
divisions of human knowledge, the natural and the human sciences,
encroach on one another's domain." Here the stringency of self-critical
logical thought and the suppleness of artistic induction and intuition
must come together. Recent work in science, Helmholtz says, meaning
above all ·his own just complete Treatise, has revealed complex and
subtle "mental activities, which are involved even in those perceptions
which at first sight appear to be most simple and immediate" (Selected
Writings (1971), p. 144). Such mental activities, moreover, are not the
expression of innate faculties but rather reflect the cumulative effect of
associations acquired, fixed and continually refined through experience.
In the third section, 'The Perception of Sight,' Helmholtz undertakes
to answer the charge he has just imagined the reader (with a quotation
from Faust) leveling at science, that its penetration only destroys "the
beautiful world presented to us by our senses." His response is a more
positive and subtle version of the sign theory of perception, "the
empirical theory" which opposes the "innate theory" favored by his
teacher Miiller, i.e. empiricism as opposed to nativism. The empirical
theory of vision
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).
Helmholtz thereby gives an empiricist turn to Lotze's "local signs" such

70 JEFFREY BARNOUW
that he eliminates the need for any pre-established physiological, i.e.

neuro-anatomical correlation of places on the retina with places in the
visual field.
Just as "we can learn what changes in the· impressions on the eye
correspond to the voluntary movements of a hand which we can see"
(Selected Writings (1971); p. 198), we can also learn to use the
movements of our eyes and our knowledge of the changes which they
bring about in the appearance of objects. The empirical theory holds
that "only those sensations are perceived as separated in space which
can be separated one from another by voluntary movements," including
movements of the eye.
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).
Helmholtz underlines the operationalist basis of rational insight

into causality and thus of demonstrable knowledge, a key to active
empiricism from Bacon and Hobbes to John Dewey, But he achieves an
additional point by insisting on the complementarity (and thus non-
identity) of certainty based on our own initiation of processes and the
universality grounded in the controlled use of language. This differen-
tiation is crucial to his new way of approaching the topic of uncon-
scious inferences. Helmholtz seeks to justify use of the term 'inference'
while preserving the qualification 'unconscious' and thus the "difference
between the inferences of logicians and those inductive inferences
whose results we recognize in the conceptions we gain of the outer
world though our sensations" (Selected Writings (1971), p. 215).
The core of this difference is that the former "are capable of
expression in words, while the latter are not." A vast amount of our
knowledge is in the form of sensations, or memory traces of them,
including muscular sensations of the effort required to produce a
particular movement, which must attain great subtlety and complexity
even for a simple action like walking. Knowledge of this sort, Kennen,
related to Konnen as knowing-how, could never be translated into

linguistically articulated knowledge, Wissen, knowing-that, yet it shares
the same basic logical forms, Helmholtz argues.
"It is clearly possible, by using these sensible images of memory
instead of words, to produce the same kind of combination which,
when expressed in words, would be called a proposition or judgment."
To show that such propositions are. universal as well as particular,
Helmholtz says he could refer to the effect of works of art, but he
makes a more exacting argument with regard to sensation:
if I know that a particular way of seeing, for which I have learned how to employ
exactly the right kind of innervation, is necessary in order to bring into direct vision a
point two feet away and so many feet to the right, this also is a universal proposition,
which applies to every case in which I have fixed a given point at that distance before
or may do so hereafter. It is a piece of knowledge which cannot be expressed in words
but which sums up my previous successful experience. It may at any moment become
the major premise of an inference ... (Selected Wirtings (1971), pp. 218-219).
Unconscious inference and artistic induction are nicely merged here,

under the aegis of the sign theory of perception which renews the
continuity of sign and inference that was central to Stoic semiotics.
Helmholtz here that the meanings of sensations as they enter into
such unconscious inference are as intimately tied up with them as the
meanings of words in one's mother tongue. Thus these inferences or
their conclusions "appear as inevitable as one of the forces of nature."
Natural sign relations make up an associative network that is the basis
of meaning in the artificial signs of natural languages, but they also
present a medium of knowledge that cannot be wholly or even
adequately taken up into language. Sensation retains its value as
knowledge over against science.
What is particularly striking about this section on unconscious
inference, when compared to Helmholtz's earlier lecture using the term
(and he does not call attention to that here), is that he has shifted the
reference and altered the meaning of the term fundamentally. A decade
later, in his most important epistemological paper, 'The Facts in
Perception,' he sketches the development of "an intuitive image of the
typical behavior" of an object, and comments,
In previous studies I characterised as unconscious inferences the connexions between

representations which thereby occur - unconscious, inasmuch as their major premiss is
formed from a series of experiences, each of which has long disappeared from our
72 JEFFREY BARNOUW
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).
For Helmholtz unconscious inferences are connections between repre-

sentations [Vorstellungsverbindungenj, linking present sensation to the
distillation of past experience. There is no longer any hint of inferring
from (a world of) appearances to (a world of) reality on the basis of the
principle of sufficient reason, which is now the "unjustified conception"
ofSchopenhauer.
Unconscious inference is now seen to be simply the extension of our
taking sensations as natural signs. Helmholtz has just described the
development of "an intuitive image of the typical behavior" of an object,
a process which is in fact the foundation of any truly informative
perception, in parallel with the "highest kind of intuiting [Anschauenj,
or vision [Schauenj of the artist, which is the grasping of a new type."
Repeated perceptions leave behind memory traces of like kind which
reinforce one another, such that what is law-bound or law-like [das
GesetzmiifJigej recurs most regularly [am regelmiifJigstenj, while the
accidentally changing is erased. The observer or artist knows no more
about how such intuitive images of type have arisen than a child knows
about the examples from which he learned the meanings of words in his
native language.
The model of Goethe, who sought the law-like in phenomena or
appearances, has been absorbed into the sign theory of perception.
Helmholtz has shifted - without making the shift explicit - from an
emphasis on "indicative signs" to one closer to what the Greek Sceptics
approved under the name "commemorative signs" where what is present
to sense is taken to signify what is temporarily (but not by nature or
necessarily) non-evident. Sensations taken as signs can provide an
image or copy of objects and events in the world only with respect to
the regularities or lawfulness of processes. Helmholtz leaves it un-
decided whether sensation is thereby subsumed under the laws of
nature or presupposes and projects them, or perhaps both, but the
principle of sufficient reason is now basic to the perception of law in
appearances, while law as such is simply an extension of our taking

sensations as signs.24
Helmholtz extends and elaborates the sign theory of perception
through inclusion of sensations of muscle innervation or impluse of will
as essential to our knowledge of the spatial location and character of
objects seen, as was touched ort in the above discussion of his 1868
paper. We cannot go further into the 'motor' and 'motive' aspects of
sense perception and the knowledge it leads to, but we should see how
the link between signs drawn from inner sense of voluntary motions
and the perception of the law-like in appearances comes to fruition
under what might be regarded as the sponsorship of Goethe.
An indication of the change in Helmholtz's grasp of the relation
between sensation and science is afforded by what he concludes from
the fact that objects present in space "appear to us clothed in the
qualities of our sensations,"
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
Just as spatiality is given in sensations to begin with, so through our

own motor activity we attain by continual instinctive experimentation a
knowledge of "the enduring existence of a lawlike relationship between
our innervations" and the changes we can bring about in the appear-
ance of objects, and perception of the lawlike in the phenomena means
that "even the first elementary representations contain intrinsically
some thinking, and proceed according to the laws of thought" (1977,
pp. 136 and 138; Philosophische Vortriige (1971), pp. 271 and 274).
Not only does Helmholtz say that "the first product of the thinking
grasp [Begreifen] of appearance is that which follows a law [das
Gesetzliche]," so what we directly perceive is simply the law [das
Gesetz] itself, but further that this is also what we call "the cause, i.e.
that which primarily [urspriing/ich, primordially] remains and endures
behind what changes." 26 This is now the only sense he will accept for
the term 'cause,' although he acknowledges that it is loosely used in
common speech for an antecedent or occasioning factor. What had
been a dichotomy of causal explanation on one side and description on
the other in his earlier conception of science now seems to be a unified
approach.
74 JEFFREY BARNOUW
The new way of construing causality in physics, as Helmholtz had

already suggested in the 1875 addendum to his first Goethe essay,
where he referred to Kirchhoffs characterization of mechanics as a
descriptive science, vindicates the opposition to methodical isolation
and exaggeration of individual factors of a complex process as its
'causes' on the part of Goethe - and Schiller, whose poem, 'Der
Spaziergang, ' Helmholtz quotes at this point, on the need to seek the
law within the frightful prodigies of chance. The law, or the lawlike, is
cause seen from a different angle, and from another it is force, and
from yet another perspective, Helmholtz writes, it is reality [das
Wirkliche I. This is then the occasion for a further quote from the
German classics:
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.
The comparison of Goethe and Kirchhoff is repeated here, in terms

which will later lead Helmholtz to claim that Kirchhoff is approaching
the UrphiinomenY
In fact the closing pages of 'The Facts in Perception' are reworked
and elaborated on in Helmholtz's address to the Goethe Society in
Weimar in 1892. In both we have passages from Faust, many identical,
used to epitomize (and not simply to decorate) some of Helmholtz's
far-reaching conclusions in the theory of knowledge. In the next
paragraph of 'The Facts in Perception' Helmholtz offers a version,
avant la lettre, of the pragmatist maxim of meaningfulness in which the
affinity, if not the actual influence, of Goethe's mistrust of abstractions
is evident. "Every correctly formed hypothesis sets forth, as regards its
factual sense, a more general law of the appearances than we have until
now directly observed .... Hypotheses not having such a factual sense,
or which in no way specify anything sure and unambiguous about the

facts falling under them, are to be regarded only as worthless talk."
The other side of this will to tie conceptions back into sense
experience is a recognition that the universality of general concepts and
propositions involves an open-ended projection into the future. As
Helmholtz says, we are forbidden definitive unconditional generaliza-
tion by the very "nature of the inductive inferences upon which all
of our perception" of reality is based. Expressed in positive terms,
this means that every inductive inference is based on a trust in the
lawlikeness of everything that happens, a belief in the comprehensibility
of the world which allows us to presuppose the causal law.
Helmholtz's discussion of the law of causality as an a priori premise
of all investigation of nature is presented primarily as an attempt to
adapt Kantian transcendentalism, to which the allusions to Goethe
provide a kind of counterpoint. That Goethe's understanding of the
motivation of science as referring beyond the individual life in a way
which conditioned thought to such open-ended universality did not
escape Helmholtz, although, far from belaboring the correlation, he
trusts it to our ability to interpret a crux from the conclusion of Faust
II. Having shown that no demonstrable proof of the law of causality is
possible, only the inductive argument from success, which in its
inductions presupposes that law, Helmholtz writes, "Here the only
valid advice is: have trust and act!" and quotes the complement of the
two lines that he quoted earlier: "Das Unzuliing/iche/Dann wird's
Ereignis." Knowledge that is inadequate from the perspective of
rational justification ("idealistic doubts") proves itself - epistemo-
logically - in the event, the deed.28
Helmholtz reinforces these cryptic lines from Faust II with an
unambiguous passage from Goethe's poem, 'Grenzen der Menschheit,'
suggesting not only that acts fulfil such "resignation," but that he
regards Goethe as a model for the human capacity to acknowledge the
limits of humanity without acquiescing in them. This is clearly an
essential motive behind his address celebrating 'Goethe's Anticipation
of Subsequent Scientific Ideas' in 1892. We have already encountered
the main features of Helmholtz's changed attitude toward Goethe's
methodology in essays of the 1860s and 1870s, so that we may refer to
this late piece devoted to Goethe simply in order to bring the various
threads together.
76 JEFFREY BARNOUW
He quotes from Goethe's Poems in Prose a passage which nicely

conveys his combination of awareness of the limitation of human
knowledge and determination to push it to its limits, which shows the
Urphiinomen to be an empirical notion:
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).
Helmholtz still maintains, however, that Goethe's endeavors in the

theory of color were unsuccessful and is ambiguous about his "convic-
tion that one must search for an archetypal phenomenon in each of the
branches of physics."
Goethe was reacting against "the abstraction of intuitively empty
concepts, which the theoretical physics of his time used to calculate
with," 29 such as matter and force conceived as existing independent of
one another. "Although they had been used meaningfully and without
contradiction by the great theoretical physicists of the seventeenth and
eighteenth· century," these abstractions did contain the seeds of serious
misunderstanding and thus Goethe's reaction was justified. "In this
respect, physics in the present day has taken the direction which
Goethe wanted to lead it in," but not, it seems, through his influence.
His incorrect interpretation in the field in which he chose to
exemplify his ideas, i.e. the Farbenlehre, and the bitter polemic with
physicists which followed upon it, conspired to deny his methodological
ideas adequate reception. Helmholtz suggests it was rather the English
physicist Michael Faraday, "who was self-taught and, like Goethe,
an enemy of abstract concepts, with which he was unable to work," who
brought about the reorientation of physics to sensible phenomena.
Nonetheless, the affinity with Goethe's ideas, which Helmholtz was the
first to bring out in this way, is significant in retrospect, and it is
surprising that Helmholtz's appreciation of this relation has gone
unnoted (Kindermann (1966), p. 255).
There are several new aspects to his interpretation of Goethe in this
last paper. Showing how his own now well-known ideas on the tacit
dimension of thought in sensuous intuition can be extended to artistic
intuition, which in a more overt way is also an isolation of the type or
lawlike behavior of the phenomenon, a formulation which has become

closely associated with Goethe in Helmholtz's writings, he now reveals
a new relevance of this tacit dimension to natural science as the basis
of a 'logic' of discovery. The first, creative thoughts in science as in art
precede verbal expression and are formed in much the way that
unconscious inferences work in -sense perception, starting from the
intuition or divination [Ahnung] of new lawlike correlations within
appearances.
Here Helmholtz explicitly alludes to the traditional doctrine of 'wit'
as a faculty of discovering previously unsuspected similarities. The
perception of relations not perceived before cannot be reached
methodically through reflection. It must emerge as a sudden insight, but
the mind must also be prepared to recognize it, and here the cumulative
yet not verbally formulated result of past experience is again the crucial
factor. The theme of the mind's workings beyond the range of language
is resumed where Helmholtz again turns to the conclusion of Faust II
for pithy passages that seem to distill his own thinking. After repeating
the two quoted in 'The Facts in Perception,' he glosses a third: "Das
Unbeschreibliche/Hier ist's getan," reading "The indescribable" as that
which cannot be formulated in words, so that the weight of "Here it is
done" falls not only on the difference between earthly limitations and
fulfilment in another world, but on the difference between the cognitive
roles of language and of action.
This leads to a more extended attempt to interpret a passage from
Faust as representing ideas akin to Helmholtz's own, namely Faust's
translation of the beginning of The Gospel According to St. John in the
light of his own ideas. Helmholtz sees the transitions that lead from "In
the beginning was the word" to "In the beginning was the act" as a
parallel to his transformations showing concept, law, cause, and force to
be different facets of a single reality (Selected Writings (1971), p. 498,
cf. p. 493; Philosophische Vortrage, pp. 361 and 355-356), while the
passage as a whole does not reflect Faust's contemplative interest in the
original means of creation but foreshadows his salvation through action.
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
Helmholtz has thus brought the interpretation around to one of hls

most fundamental ideas: our sensations inform us of the world in a sign
language [Zeichensprache]. "We must learn to understand tills sign
system, and that comes about by our noting the results of our actions
and learning to distinguish whlch changes in our sense impressions
follow upon our acts of will and whlch occur independently of our will."
In tills way "the theory of knowledge that is based on the physiology of
the senses also [like Goethe's Faust] must direct man to proceed to
action in order to be sure of reality."
Helmholtz closes the essay, as he did "The Facts in Perception," with
the words of the Earth-Spirit from Faust, read as anticipating the view
of reality of modern energy-oriented physics, (but omitting the glance at
the Darwinian struggle for existence of the earlier address). This is a
suggestive link, but superficial compared with the affinity he has just
touched on. Goethe's sceptical yet fruitful reservations about the range
of language and reason go together with an optimistic affirmation of life
whlch is expressed in the commitment to infinite collective tasks meant
to approach what no individual could accomplish.
The attitude toward life is expressed at a different level in that trust
in the coherence of experience that makes experience possible. What
calls trust in the principle of causality or sufficient reason as
the a priori of our ever ongoing chain of unconscious inferences, is a
character of human drive or endeavor whlch was grasped by Goethe in
ways that recall Leibniz, Hobbes and Bacon, while anticipating Peirce
and Dewey. The emphasis on action where explicit knowledge cannot
reach or will not suffice is not irrationalist, because it is founded - in
both Goethe and Helmholtz - on an awareness of the reasons and
reasoning of intuition that few others have been so aware of (HA 12,
p. 420: maxims 407-408; HA 12, p. 433: maxim 433).
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.
3 HA 14, pp. 251-252 and 41. Translation of the latter taken from Nisbet (1972), pp.
68-69. Cf. HA 13, p. 485.

4 Goethe wrote Schiller, February 21, 1798, in connection with their attempt to
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
account of the intellectual transition "from a nervous sensation to the conception of an

external object, willch has aroused the sensation" [the existing translation has "willch
the sensation has aroused"] is found in 'On the Physiological Causes of Harmony in
Music,' Helmholtz (1962), p. 47; Selected Writings (1971), p. 98.
19 In ills notes to the later essay, 'The Facts in Perception,' Moritz Schlick quotes
Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, paragraph 4, to the effect that
"the intuition of the actual world ... is altogether a knowledge of the cause from the
effect," but Schlick deliberately skirts the problem that might have led hlrn to recognize
that Helmholtz had distanced himself from tills understanding of "unconscious
inference." See Helmholtz (1977), p. 176. It was for the 1855 lecture that Schopen-
hauer accused Helmholtz of plagiarism, cf. Schopenhauer (1978), p. 381: to Frauen-
stadt, January 31,1856.
GOETHE AND HELMHOLTZ Sl
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
grasped in words." Cognitive truth is based in a trust in the principle of sufficient

reason, or the comprehensibility of the world, that is intrinsic to the unconscious
inferences of sense perception.
29 Selected Writings (1971), p. 490, mistranslated; Philosophische Vortrage (1971), p.
352.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barnouw, J.: 'Active Experience vs. Wish-Fulfillment in Bacon's Moral Psychol,ogy of

Science', The Philosophical Fornm 9 (1977) 78-99.
Barnouw, J.: 'Bacon and Hobbes: The Conception of Experience in the Scientific
Revolution', Science, Technology &the Humanities 2 (1979) 92-110.
Barnouw, J.: 'The Philosophical Achievement and Historical Significance of Johann
Nicholas Tetens', Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 9 (1979) 301-335.
Barnouw, J.: review of G. M. Vasco, Diderot and Goethe. A Study in Science and
Humanism, Slatkine, Geneva, 1978, in Gradiva 2 (1980-1981) 94-97.
Dilthey, W.: Gesammelte Schriften, Teubner, Stuttgart, 1957.
Eckermann, J. P.: Gesprache mit Goethe in den letzten lahren seines Lebens (ed. by E.
Ruprecht), Schauenburg, Lahr, 1948.
Gagelein, c.: Zu Goethes Begrijf von Wissenschaft auf dem Wege der Methodik seiner
Farbstudien, Hanser, Miinchen, 1972.
Goethe, J. W. von and Schiller, F.; Der Briefwechsel zwischen Schiller und Goethe (ed.
by E. Staiger), Insel, Frankfurt, 1966.
Helmholtz, H. von; Epistemological Writings (ed. by P. Hertz and Schlick; newly trans.
by M. F. Lowe and ed. by R. S. Cohen and Y. Elkana), Reidel, Dordrecht, 1977.
Helmholtz, H. von: Philosophische Vortrage und Aujsatze (ed. by H. Harz and S.
Wollgast), Akademie Verlag, Berlin, 1971.
Helmholtz, H. von: Popular Scientific Lectures, Dover, New York, 1962.
Helmholtz, H. von: Selected Writings of Hermann von Helmholtz, Wesleyan Univ.
Press, Middletown, Conn., 1971.
Helmholtz, H. von: Wissenschaftliche Abhandlungen, Leipzig, 1883.
Kindermann, H.: Das Goethebild des 20. lahrhunderts, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesells-
chaft, Darmstadt, 1966.
Kleinschneider, M.: Goethes Naturstudien. Wissenschaftstheoretische und wissenschafts-
geschichtliche Untersuchungen, Bouvier, Bonn, 1971.
Nisbet, H. S.; Goethe and the Scientific Tradition, Univ. of London Institute of
Germanic Studies, London, 1972.
Schopenhauer, A.: Gesammelte Briefe (ed. by A. Hubscher), Bouvier, Bonn, 1978.
Department of English
University of Texas
Austin, TX 78712
U.S.A.
JOSEPH MARGOLIS
GOETHE AND PSYCHOANAL YSIS*
Relative to psychoanalysis, Goethe is straightforwardly divisible into

partes tres: for he proto-psychoanalyzed several of his contemporaries,
including himself; he has been anaiyzed and misanalyzed repeatedly;
and he has metapsychologically influenced the Freudian tribe and
certainly ought to have. Freud, in fact, has been our Caesar in this, for
he wrote two quite short pieces on Goethe rather neatly confirming
these divisions. In the first, he begins a pleasant ramble by citing the
following line from the first pages of Goethe's Dichtung und Wahrheit:
"If we try to recollect what happened to us in the earliest years of
childhood, we often find that we confuse what we have heard from
others with what is really a possession of our own derived from what
we ourselves have witnessed" (Freud, 195 3f, 17, p. 147).
Freud notes that Goethe began to write this autobiographical study
at the age of sixty; so it is clear that he views Goethe as having
attempted an exainination of himself at least under the constraint of a
precept he himself refines as a fundamental caution of psychoanalysis
- notably, in his own study of that other, not altogether dissimilar,
artistic and scientific spirit, Leonardo da Vinci. (Freud himself com-
ments on the similarity and difference between the two.) The ramble
continues with one of Freud's characteristically ingenious analyses of
the actual recollection Goethe reports immediately following the
observation; hence, in the span of the one brief paper, Freud actually
starts the hares for all three industries.
In the second, also quite brief paper, read by Anna Freud (because
of his own illness) on the occasion of receiving the Goethe Prize from
the City of Frankfurt, Freud explicitly mentions a number of linkages
between Goethe and the development of psychoanalysis. He set himself
the task of imagining how Goethe "would have reacted if his glance,
attentive to every innovation in science, had fallen on psycho-analysis"
(1953f, 21, p. 208). He notes the following connections, which he
suggestively, confirms from Goethe's literary work and letters and the
like. First of all, Goethe, he says, "w;!ls familiar [here he mentions the
Dedication to Faust] with the incomparable strength of the first
83
F. Amrine, F.l. Zucker, and H. Wheeler (eds.), Goethe and the Sciences:
84 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
acknowledgements to Goethe, which, though punctiliously fair to the

rather incipient discoveries of this enormously gifted man, utterly fail to
come to terms with his conception of science, with the bearing of this
conception on the fortunes of psychoanalysis itself, and with the
awakening theoretical import, for Goethe, of those otherwise very small
and obvious discoveries. There is 'every reason to believe, for instance,
that Goethe's proto-psychoanalytic forays simply manifest the same
orientation that motivated his rather ill-fated speculations about the
UrpjZanze and his equally ill-fated theory of colors. But Freud says not
a word about this; and one can see, for instance in the preposterously
inflated two-volume psychoanalysis of Goethe that Kurt Eissler (1963)
has constructed - in the marvellous vacuity of its blind insights - the
sort of hopelessness that Goethe himself would have exposed as the
natural disorder of the Newtonian view of science, applied now (most
ironically) by canonical psychoanalysis to human beings and, in
particular, to his own case. Also, it is most remarkable that Freud never
considered the obvious analogy between Goethe's psychologically acute
analysis of his life, sustained throughout his entire career, and Freud's
own deliberate self-analysis (beginning probably in 1897) and extend-
ing intermittently through a good part of his own life. For, as we may
guess, it may well be that Freud's study of his own childhood fantasies
was decisive for the formation of his mature psychoanalytic theory: very
probably, therein lies the key to the fundamental shift in his own
methodological convictions - which bear in a most illuminating way on
Goethe's theory of science and opposition to Newton and Kant.
It is certainly possible that Goethe was a remarkably disciplined
neurotic who, because of his obsessive habit of self-examination,
managed to hit with his usual intuitive acumen on certain of the
main principles and techniques of psychoanalysis - approximating in
remarkable detail, as Freud puts it, "our psychoanalysis." But this is to
suggest both a questionably indisputable status to Freudian analysis as a
science (to which Goethe happily approximated, though [fortunately]
without also guessing the principle of dream-distortion) and an even
more questionable approximation, on Freud's part, as to what Goethe
was up to. It is as if one were to say that, in the Republic, Plato both
guessed at one of the master themes of Freud's theory of dreams and
was essentially intent on penetrating the science that was to become
psychoanalysis.
There is, in fact, a fair and entirely straightforward sense in which
86 JOSEPH MARGOLIS
Freud is simply mistaken about Goethe's link to psychoanalysis -

genuine enough in itself - which is precisely the same nagging source
of error that one senses in embarrassed readings of Goethe's Farben-
lehre and Metamorphosis of Plants. Surely, there is a plain sense in
which Goethe was dreadfully and unpleasantly wrong about the falsity
of Newton's theory of color and natural light; but what Goethe did not
make clear (and what his standard critics hardly see at all) was that he
was not really investigating what Newton was, though the experimental
data both were addressing clearly overlapped. This is not merely to say
that Johannes Muller was nearer the mark in respecting Goethe's
pioneer work on what he called "physiological colors" as opposed to
Newton's concern with what we now regard more narrowly as the
physics of color; or that the experimental study of the human percep-
tion of color, for instance E. H. Land's, tantalizingly supports some-
thing of the general thrust of Goethe's results (Land, 1964; Grene,
1974, pp. 263-264). The fact is that Muller's studies (as well as such
recent studies as Land's) were ultimately inimical to Goethe's vision of
science, at the same time they pursued possibilities not conceived of
within Newton's experimental horizon. Similarly, there is no reason to
deny Helmholtz's candid assessment of the scientifically useless tautol-
ogy of Goethe's notion of the leaf (Helmholtz, 1971: 'The Scientific
Researches of Goethe'; Heller, 1975); and it is not quite enough,
though it is relevant, to acknowledge the pioneer nature of Goethe's
reflections on comparative plant and animal morphology.
The issue lies elsewhere, and may well be of considerable impor-
tance to the reformulation of an adequate conception of science -
particularly now that the old unity of science program lies in a
shambles and no fully suitable revision is yet in place. 1
The Preface to the first edition of Goethe's Theory of Colors contains
certain well-known, powerful theses of his that mark the distinction of
his general view of science - which, hopefully, here, can be brought to
bear on psychoanalysis. Certainly the best known of these is his direct
attack on Newton's naive satisfaction in having eschewed hypotheses.
Goethe's statement is remarkably modern and has, not at all unfairly,
been taken as fixing very firmly indeed what has only been rediscovered
(if the term be allowed) by such authors as Kuhn and Hanson and
Feyerabend: "It is the strangest claim in the world [says Goethe] -
raised sometimes, but never lived up to even by those who raise it -
that one should present experiences without any theoretical link
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
may prove pragmatically useful, true science cannot rightly be served

by a reductive reading of such uniformities, that obscures the primary
relationship through which human understanding penetrates the
mysteries of nature to the extent it can.
From this, another important Goethean theme may be drawn -
perhaps opposed more to what Goethe found in Kant than in Newton,
certainly more closely linked to his ambivalence regarding Schiller's
efforts to reconcile his own views with those of Kant - namely, that
nature cannot, in a narrowly sensory sense, be perceived whole, and yet
'experience' and 'idea' (more than 'percept' and 'concept' in the Kantian
idiom) must be unified in the pursuit of science, in virtue of which the
unity of nature is rightly grasped (in a sense, perceived) through the
symbolic function of the particulars of the normally perceived order of
things. Goethe himself reports in his diary an occasion on which he
discussed this view of science with Schiller, particularly with respect to
the theory of plants, and insisted then that "perhaps there was still the
possibility of another method [of science], one that would not tackle
Nature by merely dissecting and particularizing [say, in Newton's
manner], but show her at work and alive, manifesting herself in her
wholeness in every single part of her being" (Heller, 1975, p. 6). Against
Schiller's doubts, Goethe insists that such an achievement could emerge
"from experience itself." What he apparently meant, as passages from
the Italian Journey indicate, was that one could perceive all particular
plant forms as morphologically variable effects of some universal plant
principle, even plant form, that functions in a telic manner responding
to the forces and constraints of different environments. Here, we begin
to see what may well be worth modifying in the Spinozistic and even
Aristotelian side of his science, while we hold on in a more literal spirit
to the perspicuous challenge that he addresses to Newton and Kant.
The bearing of all this on his implied relationship to psychoanalysis
begins to loom.
Two interesting themes emerge here: first, against Goethe, it may be
claimed that Newtonian physics is correctly (even if naively and
fractionally) pursued in accord with Goethe's own conception of
science - generously construed; second, in favor of Goethe, it may be
claimed that any reasoned theory of how science proceeds must come
to terms with second-order questions about the relationship between
man and nature, in virtue of which his beliefs, experiences, would-be
cognitions, experiments, hypotheses, and confirmations can be reason-
90 JOSEPH MARGOLIS
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-
ments are primitive or prejudiced - which of course is not entirely true

either.
How, then, may we apply these findings to Freud's intriguing invita-
tion to imagine how Goethe would have reacted to psychoanalysis if he
had thought about it? Here, a rather curious dialectical relationship
between Goethe and Freud may_ be enlisted - that, as we shall see -
helps to locate both Freud and Goethe with regard to the issue of the
scientific status of psychoanalysis.
It is a strange fact that Freud and Josef Breuer, with whom Freud
colloborated (with increasing misgivings) on the very early Studies on
Hysteria (1895), were both students of Ernst Briicke, the Viennese
physiologist. It was Briicke who facilitated Freud's studies at Charcot's
Salpetriere; and it was Briicke whom Freud described in later years as
the teacher that had most impressed him.4 This same Briicke was a
distinguished student of Johannes Muller, who had originally found
Goethe's studies on physiological colors so promising. (Ironically, of
course, it was this same Muller who formulated, for the physiology of
sensation, the so-called law of specific sensory energies - which
Helmholtz favorably summarizes thus: that the degrees of difference
among various kinds of sensation do "not depend, in any manner what-
soever, upon the kind of external impression whereby the sensation is
excited, but is determined alone and exclusively by the sensory nerve
upon which the impression impinges. Excitation of the optic nerve
produces only light sensations, no matter whether objective light - i.e.
aether vibrations - impinges upon it, or an electric current which we
pass through the eye, or pressure on the eyeball, or straining of the
nerve stem during rapid changes of the direction of vision" ('The Facts
of Perception': 1977, p. 119). In effect, therefore, in a way not in the
least out of sorts with Newton's approach, Muller's first sympathetic
view of Goethe's studies was itself transformed in accord with the
abstractive and mathematical spirit of science that Goethe so much
opposed. The bearing of this on the theory of science is not a negligible
one. Needless to say, Muller's vitalism, which Helmholtz opposed, does
not bear on the present issue.)
To return, Briicke was one of the founders of the Berlin Physical
Society (1845), at which Helmholtz lectured, in 1847, on the principle
of the conservation of energy; and Helmholtz and Du Bois-Reymond
viewed Briicke, once installed in Vienna, as their "ambassador in the
Far East." 5 It was Fliess, Freud's early and closest friend, who counted
92 JOSEPH MARGOLIS
himself as belonging to the same company of scientists intent on

organizing Berliner and Viennese biology, physiology, and medicine on
a strongly physical and mathematical foundation, with whom Freud first
discussed and for whom was first written the Scientific Project, drafted
rather quickly in 1895 (the same year as the publication of the Studies
on Hysteria), and who actl!ally had earlier presented Freud with a copy
of Helmholtz's collected works. It is precisely the Scientific Project that
constitutes Freud's most sustained attempt to provide a scientific, in
fact, a mathematized, theory of psychological energy and process
committed to a version of the conservation of energy principle. It may
be mentioned here, that, in his historical overview of Freud's work
during the period in question, Ernst Kris (following Bernfeld's account)
explicitly observes that "the dominant idea in Freud's mind was to
make physiological changes and the physically measurable the basis of
all psychological discussion; in other words his aim was the strict
application of ideas derived from Helmholtz and Briicke" (Freud,
1977, p. 25; Helmholtz, 1971: 'Introduction'). This rather unexpected
interpenetration of influences and connections serves to make much
more accessible the answer to Freud's implicit query about how Goethe
would have received psychoanalysis.
In fact,. Goethe's response would have been a mixed one, simply
because Freud himself experienced something of a crisis regarding the
scientific status of psychoanalysis - a crisis, it should be noted, that he
did not successfully address or resolve, at least in the forthright manner
in which he first drafted the Scientific Project itself. Here, some
additional details are needed.
During Freud's collaboration with Breuer on the Studies on
Hysteria, there had already begun to appear a substantial rift between
the two. First of all, just at the point at which Freud was working along
the lines of the Scientific Project, Breuer was apparently convinced that
the then-current science could not support a sustained connection
between psychology and brain physiology (or so Kris claims, though of
course Breuer had already committed himself to the thesis in a detailed
way, in his contribution to the Studies, as also earlier, in Briicke's
Institute, and as physician and consultant to Briicke and other like-
minded professionals at the Vienna medical school).6 Secondly, Freud
increasingly replaced the essential elements of Breuer's clinical concep-
tion with those of the emerging psychoanalytic technique, very early
characterized in the physiological terms favored in the Project. And
thirdly, to Breuer's dismay, Freud became increasingly convinced of the

important role of sexuality in the etiology of neurosis - which sorted
their views decisively, possibly even along lines that are just the reverse
of those Kris suggests. Nevertheless, during the same interval, Freud
himself experienced considerable perplexity regarding the scientific
import and status of his own innovations. This development preceded
by several years Freud's explicit self-analysis 7: hence, also, his
empirically scrupulous rejection of the childhood seduction claims of
his neurotic patients (who mysteriously 'ran away' from him anyway, in
the middle of an apparently successful therapy), the consequently
dawning insight into the Oedipus Complex, the mechanisms of the
unconscious - particularly "that there is no 'indication of reality' in the
unconscious" (Freud, 1977, p. 216), and the patterns of infant sexuality
- in short, the main lines of his mature psychology.
Far more important, however, at least as concerns Freud's concep-
tion of his own science, is his bewilderment regarding the methodo-
logically strange new tendencies that his developing psychoanalysis
forced on him. Perhaps the single most unguarded, almost plaintive,
confession of Freud's (during the period in question) comes from his
contribution (to the Studies on Hysteria) concerning the case of
Elisabeth von R.:
I was not always a psychotherapist, but was trained in local and electrical diagnosis like
other neuropathologists, and still find it a very strange thing that the case histories I
describe read like short stories and lack, so to speak, the serious imprint of science. I
must console myself with the thOUght that it is obviously the nature of the material itself
that is responsible for this rather than my own choice. In the study of hysteria local
diagnosis and electrical reactions do not come into the picture, while an exhaustive
account of mental processes, of the kind we are accustomed to having from imaginative
writers, enables me, by the application of a few psychological formulas, to obtain a kind
of insight into the origin of a hysteria. 8
In a stronger tone, Freud had already written Fliess by November 29,

1895: "I no longer understand the state of mind in which 1 concocted
the psychology [that is, the Scientific Project]; 1 cannot conceive how 1
came to inflict it on you. 1 think you are too polite; it seems to me to
have been a kind of aberration" (Freud, 1977, p. 134: letter no. 36).
Freud had sent the manuscript to Fliess no earlier than October 8.
Actually, he seems to have written the first and second parts only
shortly before, for he reports, in a letter of September 23, that he
began the Project during a train ride immediately after having visited
94 JOSEPH MARGOLIS
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
archetypal order; so saying catches up at once both Goethe's insistence

on the ideal or divine in nature and the illuminating power of
appropriate personal discipline that enables human wit to see the
Urphiinomen when it encounters it and for what it is. But the deeper
question concerns whether Goethe's insight can be adequately captured
by the more modern notion of the impossibility of segregating nature
perceived from human perceiver, or whether the very conception of
science must give way to a kind of ideality that is not expressible in
terms of human interaction at all. On the one view, Goethean ideality
represents a (potentially) necessary feature of the hierarchy of the
sciences; on the other, it represents the preestablished harmony of
ecological science and the imminent order of divine nature.
With regard to Freud's science, then, one could reasonably conclude
that the Scientific Project and all it represents would have been
condemned by Goethe as confusing the order of nature - in precisely
the same way as (much less convincingly) he believed Newton to have
done. Goethe would then have construed Freud's bewilderment regard-
ing the emerging phenomena of psychoanalysis as an inkling of a more
promising Urphiinomen (about the discovery of which, of course, there
could hardly be any 'abductive' rules) and also as a sign of Freud's own
increasing scientific wisdom.
It would be very tempting to read Goethe anachronistically, for
instance, as having grasped very clearly in his own time the full
problematic of the Naturwissenschaften and Geisteswissenschaften. He
could not have done so, of course. But it is not unreasonable to
suppose that the main themes of this problematic inspired his specula-
tions about science. The most succinct statement confirming this,
<
usually attributed to Goethe (which he could not quite remember, but

did not deny, having written), is the well-known fragment, "Nature,"
which Freud actually claimed influenced his choice of medicine as a
profession. l l Here, the main lines of the inexhaustible creativity of
nature, the telic lawfulness of the natural order, the special relationship
of man to nature, the ecological harmony required of and sufficient for
man, the natural hierarchy linking the physical and the spiritual, the
unity and mystery of nature are all reasonably explicit. Goethe's
retrospective criticism of Freud, then, would (we may imagine) have
stressed precisely those most troublesome features of Freud's new
science - that, we may suppose, caught up the genuine Urphiinomen of
the oedipal complex, rejected the false archetype of childhood seduc-
98 JOSEPH MARGOLIS
tion memories, and proceeded to elaborate the 'immutable' laws of

human nature - that alarmed Freud so, with regard to the model of
science he inherited from Briicke and Helmholtz, and that strike us,
now, as most congruent with the themes of the fragment on nature and
Goethe's entire output.
This is not the place to attempt a systematic account of these largely
methodological issues. But they have primarity to do with the theo-
retical significance of the following at least: (a) the importance, in
human cognition, of reflexive forms of perception or experience that
are not the same as or reducible to sensory observation; (b) the
ineliminability of interpretive, secondary elaboration in reporting the
materials of such reflection; (c) the intentional and intensional com-
plexities of such experience and such reporting; (d) the sui generis
lawfulness of phenomena thus construed; (e) the conceptual impossibil-
ity of accounting for such phenomena, or for the sciences that address
such phenomena, in terms of the paradigms of the physical sciences.
Freud was clearly troubled, already in drafting the Project, by the fact
that the psychoanalytic orientation could not be neatly integrated with
his empiricist orientation (Margolis, 1978). He persisted, however, in
holding to a strictly observational model of science,12 and he never
reworked systematically the scientific vision with which he began. In
fact, Freud never actually came to grips with the full conceptual and
methodological threat of his own innovations. What he did he did
magnificently - in terms of the high rigors of a scrupulous practice -
but he never discussed the natural, second-order questions his own
clinical practice and metapsychology imposed on him. These, however,
are just the concerns of the liveliest contemporary interest in Freud
(Ricoeur, 1970; Habermas, 1968; Derrida, 1976). They are, ironically,
also just the concerns that bid fair to redeem Goethe's conception of
science in ways that may incorporate Freud within a vision somewhat
alien to his own.
NOTES
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.
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
GOETHE'S COLOR STUDIES IN A NEW

PERSPECTIVE: DIE FARBENLEHRE IN ENGLISH*
It was related in antiquity that in atonement for their misdeeds the

daughters of King Danaus were made to spend eternity filling a vessel
with water. The bottom of the vessel was riddled with holes so that no
matter how they labored their task was never accomplished. The work
of the translator bears a certain resemblance to this penance of the
children of Danaus: the vessel provided by the second language is often
frustratingly inadequate in conveying the meanings found in the
original, and this frustration may yield to a sense of despair when the
fundamental impossibility of the task is realized.
The demands made on a translator of Goethe's works are par-
ticularly severe. Not only does Goethe build on the special creative
potential inherent in the structure and vocabulary of German, but he
also develops a symbolism which characterizes its subject while eluding
definition in any language. He has described this symbolism as a
process which transforms "the phenomenon into an idea, the idea into
an image, so that the idea within the image remains unlimited in its
effect and forever beyond our reach. Even expressed in every language,
it would remain inexpressible" (Goethe, HA 12, 470: Maximen and
Ref/exionen, 749).
It therefore comes as a pleasant but surprising discovery that
Goethe, who had a reputation in his own right as a translator,
discovered a positive aspect to translation. He offered the following
assessment in 1830 of Gerard's translation of Faust: "I no longer enjoy
reading Faust in German, but in this French translation everything is
once again entirely fresh, new and ingenious in its effect" (Eckermann,
1948: January 3,1830).
Although these words apply to one of Goethe's most deeply poetic
works, they offer some solace to the translator of his scientific works as
well. It might be expected that in the scientific arena the translator
would find his task simple once the appropriate technical vocabulary
was mastered. In the case of Goethe, however, this is not at all true. In
style and method his poetic and scientific works share many elements
which put the skill of the translator to a demanding test.
101
F. Amrine, F. I. Zucker, and H. Wheeler (eds.), Goethe and the Sciences:
102 DOUGLAS E. MILLER
The common foundation to Goethe's poetic and scientific endeavors

becomes especially clear when we observe two works which appeared
within twelve months of one another: his novel Die Wahlverwandtschaf-
ten [Elective Affinities, 1809], and his most extensive scientific treatise
Die Farbenlehre [The Theory of Colors, 1810]. These works share a
certain objectivity in their approach, and a strict, almost stern austerity
in style. Goethe also considered the two works closely connected in
theme (Schaeder, 1947, pp. 276-343). His diary for 1807 contains the
following entry:
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
section of Die Farbenlehre is questionable. We have already observed

that Goethe's presentation of events in nature incorporates a certain
artistry in weaving the experimental results into a revelation of the
underlying phenomena. We find an indication of this method in
Goethe's introduction to his Farbenlehre:
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).
The need for a "continuous series" in the presentation of observations

also impressed Eastlake. He noted in his 'Translator's Preface' that he
had originally intended to select portions of the color theory most
applicable to painting, but was soon persuaded to present the work in
its entirely. He writes:
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).
A second problem in the Van Nostrand edition deserves note.

Several of the new translations associated with the Farbenlehre preserve
elements of syntax peculiar to German but not to English; e.g. the
description of a Goethean color wheel as: "A doubled fitting-into-each-
other color scheme. The outer one is like each overall one of the first
figure with the totality of colors" (Goethe, 1970, p. 94). The same
turbidity - even opacity - of English style also characterizes the
translation of Goethe's letter of dedication to his patroness, Luise,
Duchess of Saxony-Weimar and Eisenach. In the German we find the
following graceful reference to the author's discomfort at committing
his observations of physical phenomena to paper:
Wenn es bei einem miindlichen Vortrage maglich wird, die Phiinomene gleich vor
Augen zu bringen, manches in verschiedene Riicksichten wiederkehrend darzustelIen,
so ist dieses freilich ein groBer Vorteil, welchen das geschriebene, das gedruckte Blatt
vermiBt. Mage jedoch dasjenige, was auf dem Papier mitgeteilt werden konnte, Hachst-
dieselben, zu einigem Wohlgefallen an jene Stunden erinnern, die mir unvergeBlich
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).
The Van Nostrand edition renders this passage as follows:

If it is at all possible to bring phenomena into view directly through conversation, to
present repeatedly much for different considerations, then this is truly a great advantage
as to what the written and printed page misses. May that which can be transmitted on
paper, your highest self, be of some satisfaction and remind you of those hours which
remain unforgettable to me, how all of your many kind intentions sweep uninter-
ruptedly before me for which, your most illustrious ladyship, in the most significant
moments of my life and among many others, I am eternally grateful (p. 70).
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.
Eastlake's work as a translator represents an accomplishment of a

much higher order. In the face of the most formidable difficulties in
syntax he never surrendered his sense of the English language; he
displays an admirable directness in his translation. His English may
seem difficult and out of date to the modern American reader, and his
renderings may sometimes be based on misconceptions about Goethe's
intention, but he rarely fails to find an elegant solution to even the
knottiest problems of syntax and meaning.
These qualities, both positive and negative, are exemplified in
his translation of the following lines from the Introduction to the
Farbenlehre.
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).
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).
Here we may observe the lucidity of style which is the mark of

Eastlake's work. At the same time we may also note that Eastlake tends
to eliminate some elements and cast the whole statement into a
metaphorical light by the addition of phrases like "may be said to" and
"as it were." This rather sovereign way of interpreting Goethe as well as
translating him often comes to the fore when Eastlake confronts the
concept of metamorphosis characteristic of Goethe's way of thinking
about physical phenomena. Goethe's reference to "gleichgiiltigen
tierischen Hiilfsorganen" is gone in the Eastlake version, and with it is
gone the background of evolutionary development, the image of man's
relation to animal, fundamental to Goethe's understanding of physiol-
ogy. The function of the eye as a bridge between "da,s innere Licht" and
"das auBere Licht" also disappears in the English phrase "the light it
contains corresponding with the light without." The translation of the
verb "entgegentreten" as "corresponding" is particularly misleading here
since it loses the active relationship between the inner and outer worlds
in which the eye serves as mediator. The following represents an
attempt to find a more adequate translation for this difficult passage:
From among the insignificant ancillary organs of the animals light calls forth one organ
to become its like, and thus the eye is formed by the light and for the light so that the
inner light may emerge to meet the outer light.
In Eastlake's rendering of this section we can observe a clear shift

away from Goethe's view of a constant dialogue between man and
nature, and toward a more static set of analogous phenomena.
Eastlake's consistent tendency to overlook the organic context and
biological shadings in Goethe's color studies, his inclination as a
translator to replace "das Lebendige" with the more abstract "vital
principle" (as he does in section 38), indicates that this was a part of
Goethe's method the translator preferred to avoid. The same problem
arises in connection with the well-known phrase in Goethe's preface
concerning the origin of color: "Farben sind die Taten des Lichts, Taten
und Leiden" (Goethe, HA 13, p. 315), which Eastlake translates as:
"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).
Eastlake renders the section as follows:

The circumstances which come under our notice in ordinary observation are, for the
most part, insulated cases, which, with some attention, admit of being classed under
general leading facts. These again range themselves under theoretical rubrics which are
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).
In Goethe's description this pro<;ess of recognition leads from

Eifahrung to Anschauen; in Eastlake, from "ordinary observation" to
"the senses." Goethe begins with empirical experience, a level prior to
'observation,' and he certainly does not have the senses as his goal.
While it is true that Anschauen implies perception, it involves much
more than simply letting the object in through the eyes; it is a
perception which is active and intuitive in nature, one which passes
through the senses into the inner activity of the observer. The following
translation represents an attempt to convey this progression more
accurately and also to correct certain other problems in Eastlake's
version such as the omission of the word "empirisch" in the initial
category of classification:
Events we become aware of through experience are for the most part merely those
which must be placed in general empirical categories after some observation. These
empirical categories may further be subsumed under scientific categories leading still
higher. In the process we become more familiar with certain necessary conditions
attached to what is manifesting itself. From this point on everything gradually falls into
place under higher principles and laws which do not reveal themselves to our intellect
through words and hypotheses but rather show themselves in equal measure to our
intuitive perception through phenomena. We call these phenomena archetypal phe-
nomena because nothing above them manifests itself in the world.
The Eastlake version of the Farbenlehre places an obstacle on the

English reader's path to Goethe in its distortion of Goethe's carefully
considered and inwardly consistent approach to metamorphosis in
nature. One must admire Eastlake for his ability to cast the difficult
German of the original text into clear English, but we must also
recognize that the Theory of Colours often changes or omits the context
in which the phenomena are presented.
As indicated previously, however, any translation of the Farbenlehre
is beset by great difficulties in conveying Goethe's thought intact. Even
a word as apparently simple to translate as Spektrum demonstrates this
fact. In section 49 Goethe speaks of the afterimage produced by
brightly colored pieces of paper or cloth:
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).
Eastlake renders this as:

Let a small piece of bright-colored paper or silk stuff be held before a moderately
lighted white surface; let the observer look steadfastly on the small coloured object, and
let it be taken away after a time while his eyes remain unmoved; the spectrum of
another colour will then be visible on the white plane. The coloured paper may also be
left in its place while the eye is directed to another part of the white plane; the same
spectrum will be visible there too, for it arises from an image which now belongs to the
eye (Goethe, 1970, pp. 20-21).
In modern English, the word 'spectrum' immediately calls to mind

the Newtonian array of colors, as we would expect in any treatise on
color phenomena. Such an interpretation would be entirely misleading,
however. When Goethe uses the word 'Spektrum' it is in the sense of
the English word 'spectre' or ghost, an image purely ephemeral in
nature; wry.en translating Newton's word 'spectrum' Goethe often used
the word 'Gespenst' (Hennig, 1954, p. 488). The modern reader is
naturally led astray by Eastlake's translation of Goethe's "Spektrum"
with the English "spectrum."
A more serious problem arises in connection with Goethe's use of
the word 'Bild.' In a text on optics the initial choice for translating this
word might be 'image,' but Goethe clearly indicates that the 'Bild' exists
both within the eye and outside it; he speaks of "einem Bild, das
nunmehr dem Auge angehort." The word 'Bild' appears quite fre-
quently in the text, and Eastlake often translates it as 'object' or 'image.'
The difficulty with this translation is that without further explanation
the identity between object and image established by Goethe is
obscured. In English the 'image' is often a secondary quality, a 'spectre'
produced by a primary quality in the real world. The intrusion of such a
distinction into Goethe's work is inconsistent with Goethe's view that
the healthy human eye is a precise and reliable measure of physical
phenomena. He writes:
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
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)
Whether applied to its occurrence in the eye or in the outer world,

Goethe had in mind a very specific definition for the term 'Bild.' He
writes in section 198: "Durch Verbindung von Rand und Flache
entstehen Bilder" (Goethe, HA 13, p. 373). Thus 'das Bild' must be a
surface which is at least partially bounded, so that dark and light stand
in juxtaposition to create the potential for color. Although there is no
English expression to convey all the aspects of Goethe's word BUd,
'form' seems close to what is meant here. The following translation of
section 49 incorporates the revisions suggested above:
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.
'Form' is frequently a practical translation for Goethe's BUd, but

there are a few occasions when the use of the word 'image' for BUd
seems clearer and perhaps even closer to Goethe's intended meaning,
such as in sections 220 and 221 where Goethe presents his explanation
for the appearance of color in refraction:
Wir konnen aber die Bilder iiberhaupt zu unsern chromatischen Darstellungen in
primiire and sekundiire Bilder einteilen. Die Ausdrucke selbst bezeichen, was wir
darunter verstehen, und nachfolgendes wird unsern Sinn noch deutlicher machen.
Man kann die primaren Bilder ansehen erstlich als urspriingliche, als Bilder, die von
dem anwesenden Gegenstande in unserm Auge erregt werden, und die uns von seinem
wirklichen Dasein versichern. Diesen kann man die sekundaren Bilder entsgegensetzen
als abgeleitete Bilder, die, wenn der Gegenstand weggenommen ist, im Auge zuruck-
bleiben, jene Schein- und Gegenbilder, weJche wir in der Lehre von physiologischen
Farben umstandlich abgehandelt haben (Goethe, HA 13, p. 378).
"Primare und sekundare Bilder" represent the effect of the form on the
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.
Our brief discussion of the complexities arising in the translation of

apparently simple expressions such as 'Spektrum' and 'Bild' will serve
as an indication of the precise yet subtle language created by Goethe in
developing his qualitative science. Instances of this linguistic complexity
are evident on almost every page of Die Farbenlehre; further examples
are found in Goethe's use of the word Purpur (translated by Eastlake as
"red"), the expression "sinnlich-sittlich" (translated by Eastlake as
"moral associations"), and even in the title itself, which does not speak
of theory, but rather of doctrine or teaching.
Goethe's way of presenting his views assumes several forms in Die
Farbenlehre, and these differing styles of presentation must also
concern the translator. Often, for example, Goethe creates for the
reader a concise image of the basic physical processes involved in the
creation of color, thereby building a methodical and unadorned picture,
quite concrete in nature. We find such a picture in section 145, where
he characterizes a transparent medium:
A space conceived of as empty would in every respect demonstrate the property of

transparency. If we then imagine this space filled in such a way that what fills it is
imperceptible to the eye, a transparent medium will arise which is material in character
and more or less substantial. It may be like air or gas, liquid, or even solid in form.
Elsewhere, Goethe steps back from the presentation of basic

physical properties to reflect on the processes of perception and
thought required to make sense of these properties. He again builds a
picture, but one wider in scope and more philosophical in character,
clear but less concrete and more complex. Earlier we observed an
example of this when we considered Goethe's discussion of the
archetypal phenomenon in section 175.
Goethe's depiction of the phenomena themselves lies at the heart of
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).
Viewed from the standpoint of translation, Die Farbenlehre brings

the contours of Goethe's scientific approach before us in a fresh way.
Nuances conveyed in Goethe's choice of word and phrase assume a
new importance, unexpected details surface constantly, and we find
ourselves required always to cast a critical eye on our own understand-
ing of Goethe's meaning and method. In experiencing the subtlety in
language revealed by Goethe's scientific work we may find a point of
similarity between Goethe and Newton. Despite his anger at Isaac
Newton, Goethe freely acknowledged Newton's stature as a mathe-
matician and stated that the full power of this mathematical genius was
exercised to construct a justification of Newton's view on color. Goethe,
likewise, turned the force of his genius - a genius at language - to
the task of presenting and defending his own approach to color

phenomena. Although the translator may find some measure of success
in bringing these thoughts about color before the English-speaking
public, he must always recognize Goethe's mastery of language and
symbol; the role assigned to him will properly remain that described by
Goethe when he wrote:
Translators must be viewed as busy matchmakers who extol a half-veiled beauty as
worthy of great love; they arouse an irrestible desire for the original. (Goethe, HA 12,
p. 499: Maximen and Reflexionen 947).
NOTE
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.
Department of Foreign Languages

University of Michigan/Flint
Flint, MI48503
u.s.A.
PART II
EXPANDING THE LIMITS OF TRADITIONAL

SCIENTIFIC METHODOLOGY AND
ONTOLOGY
CARL FRIEDRICH VON WEIZsAcKER
GOETHE AND MODERN SCIENCE*
"If in the whole you wish to delight,

The whole in the smallest you must find."
(Spriiche, HA 1, p. 304)
The smallest in a language is the word. In science, the word becomes

the concept. We will try to grasp something of the whole that is
Goethe's science by looking at some of its concepts.
But what does Goethe's science mean to us?
To begin with, it is the work of a human being, the work of the poet
Goethe. Just as the essence of a human being is expressed in each line
of the hand, so we encounter Goethe himself in each of Goethe's
scientific concepts.
Goethe would have scolded us if we used his science only as a means
for getting to know him. He searched for truth valid in itself, above and
beyond his person and his literary work. He sought to insert his science
as an integral li:rik in the objective scientific knowledge of modem
times.
We will not concern ourselves with Goethe's successful scientific
achievements, such as the investigation of subjective colors, the dis-
covery of the intermaxillary bone in man, the prelude to the theory of
evolution in his concept of metamorphosis. The starting point of our
discussion will be the unsuccessful attempts.
As is often the case, failure betrays itself in a need to polemicize. In
his critique of the prevailing theory of color, Goethe for forty years
misunderstood the clear meaning of Newton's writing and experiments.
Nor was he willing to reconsider his views in discussions with astute
experts such as Lichtenberg.
How could such a great and all-encompassing mind err that badly? I
have only one answer: he erred because he wanted to. He wanted to
because he could defend a crucial truth only by expressing anger that
manifested itself as this error.
Goethe's way of seeing and thinking is a whole. In modem science -
as seen from a historical perspective - it encountered a more encom-
passing whole. Goethe was ready to integrate his science into this larger
115
F. Amrine, f. J. Zucker, and H. Wheeler (eds.), Goethe and the Sciences:
116 CARL FRIEDRICH VON WEIZsAcKER
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
Trust, then, the senses,

Nor will they deceive you
While reason keeps you alert.
(Vermiichtnis, HA 1, p. 370)
GOETHE AND MODERN SCIENCE 117
Is it the faith in empiricism that connects Goethe to modem science?

Yes and no. The poem continues:
Observe with fresh eyes and full of cheer,

Pass deftly then and confidently
Through glens of our world.
(Ibid)
For modem science it is sufficient that one scientist has registered a

sense experience, and that others could in principle repeat it. What
matters is not the experience as such, but the data it gives us. And the
data itself is important not as an individual, but as a representative case:
for science, sense impression becomes 'experience' precisely because it
is repeatable. What is repeatable, however, is interchangeable.
The sense experience in which Goethe's science is rooted is his own,
is not-interchangeable. When he describes his results, nothing is closer
to his heart than to motivate the readers to become aware of their own,
irreplaceable observations. Of course, every good scientist knows the
importance of observing and learning to observe. When truth is the
objective, one should not absolutize any contradiction between differ-
ent people's sense experience. On the other hand, genuine consensus
requires the cleat observation of differences. Because his own sense
experience meant so much to Goethe, we should keep in mind how he
himself experienced and wanted to experience through his senses. The
poem cited above addresses this.
What is most lyrical and what is most matter of fact in Goethe, the
ecstasy of the moment and the inclination to collect and classify, strive
to become one through these deft and confident movements, this joyful
observing which continuously adds to the richness of his sense experi-
ence. How many pieces did he himself pry loose from a rock with the
geologer's hammer! How many flowers and trees did he observe on his
travels, grow at home; how many skeletons did he observe and touch!
How did the phenomena of color spring at him with his every glance
into nature, and are accurately observed and described, be it in the
midst of war or in a love poem of the Divan! Not the delighted eyes
alone took in the abundance: In walking, riding, climbing, and swim-
ming, his body experienced nature. And who can understand Goethe
but those who know how close all sense experience is to love?
DISTINGUISHUNG AND REUNITING
Within the infinite to find

Thyself, first sunder and then bind
My song takes wing and from the heart
Thanks him who told the clouds apart.
(Trilogie zu Howards Wolkenlehre, HA 1, p. 349; trans. from Magnus, p. 219)
These lines are dedicated to the English meteorologist Howard.

They speak of distinguishing and reuniting. The distinguishing comes
first.
The richness of the sensory world is inexhaustable, boundless. How
can we find ourselves in it? We must order it. The ordering begins
with categorization and classification, activities Goethe valued highly.
Nothing is arbitrary in correct categorization. It mirrors something of
the order of reality; even where the ordering appears somewhat forced,
it is the first step on the way that we as finite beings must take to orient
ourselves in the infinite.
But drawing distinctions must be followed by reuniting. As a matter
of fact, distinguishing itself is already a reuniting. If I want to order the
abundance of minerals, plants, and animals - an abundance in which
no individual is like another - I must connect similarities and distin-
guish between differences. Only because I am able to unite, am I able to
distinguish.
But how can I unite?
FORM AND LAW
The similarity that enables me to unite is inherent in the form. Goethe's

science is, for the most part, comparative morphology. But what is the
meaning of this 'form'?
I can call a form each individual reality that I encounter through my
senses: this one particular flower which blooms today and will wilt
tomorrow, this one mountain which has been forever in its place.
But when I compare two things by stating they have the same form
- say that of the spiral, of the crystal, or of the human being - then I
mean by form something different than the individual thing itself. What
is this form that makes a comparison of the formed possible?
To this question, popular philosophy of modern science would most
likely reply that a 'form as such' does not exist: form is not a thing in
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.
FORM AND IDEA
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
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:
Though you, to hide, a thousand forms assume,

Yet, all-beloved, you at once I see.
(West-Eastern Divan, HA 2, p. 88)
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
of plants in the Sicilian soil a naive misunderstanding of the Platonic

myth according to which the soul remembers the primal images it saw
before birth?
We have suggested this tension in the formula: Plato and the senses.
But if Goethe is not exclusively a Platonist, does that make him a bad
one?
Plato's theory of ideas has left us with a puzzle that has not been
solved yet. The theory is the source of the traditions of logic, meta-
physics, and the mathematical sciences. In logic, the idea becomes the
universal concept, while the thing participating in the idea falls under
the concept of the particular. The particular can be experienced
through the senses when it belongs to the "outside world," the universal
can "only be thought." But is this not a rather one-sided interpretation
of the idea, an interpretation which has totally lost its relation to
seeing? Could one conceive of an opposite, and if need be equally
one-sided interpretation according to which an idea is what, in the
strictest sense, one can see? Did perhaps Goethe, the artist who
claimed that he "never thought about thinking" (Spriiche, HA 1, p.
329), know something about the seeing of the idea that logic and the
sciences which came after logic cannot know?
Where Goethe encounters the notion of the universal concept, he
resorts to' paradoxes to defend himself.
What is the universal?

The individual case.
What is the particular?
A million cases.
(RA 12, p. 433)
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
We return once more to distinguishing and reullltmg. Certainly the

world of forms is immense, but it is everywhere interconnected. The
reuniting of what was formerly distinguished only traces the lines of the
actual connection. Separating is a necessary operation for the human
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
If the idea is present in the particular, then it participates in the

transformation of appearances:
The ever-alive acts

To transform the created
Lest it freeze into rigidity.
(Eins und Alles, HA 1, p. 369)
Here, the deep meaning of the Eleatic notion of the changelessness

of being is upheld by being dialectically fused with the theory of change
attributed to Heraclitus. An example is the fugue which connects Eins
und Alles and Vermiichtnis:
The eternal lives in all
For all must decay to naught
Were it to persist in being.
(Ibid. )
No being can decay to naught!

In all does the eternal live,
In all that is, feel your delight!
All being is eternal
Since laws guard the living splendors all
In which the universe so glories.
We hear the same thought expressed in yet another form when

Suleika speaks:
The mirror tells me I am fair!

To age, you say, is my lot, too.
In God all things forever stand,
Love him in me, for this brief span.
(West-Eastern Divan, HA 2, p. 41)
What is eternal is the essence. The essence is present in each of its

appearances. However, if the appearance insists on permanence, it
ceases to be the appearance of essence; precisely then it disintegrates
into nothingness. All that is transitory is only a parable because the
essence present in it is eternal. But only in the inadequacy of the
transitory does the essence manifest itself to us. It is the fulfillment of
our existence that this inadequacy becomes an event.
Thus only through constant transformation does form become event.
Comparative morphology must become the theory of metamorphosis.
This change in form becomes meaningful, becomes lawful, and, through
the continuity of forms, itself becomes a temporal form. "Laws guard
the living splendors all." Change in form is not simply a matter of
becoming and passing away. It is the passage through the sequence of
related forins, the upward and downward movement, the unfolding and
being alive. A primal plant, a primal organ, a leaf can manifest itself in
countless individual forms because these came into being by passing
through true transformations.
Thus, the aging Goethe welcomed the beginnings of the theory of
evolution. Most likely he would have rejected Darwin's causal-statistical
interpretation of the evolution of organisms, in which he would have
seen a transference of laws pertaining to a lower order to a higher
order; and most likely, just as in his critique of Newton, he would have
been both right and wrong.
POLARITY AND ENHANCEMENT
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
and enhancement. Polarity is the property of matter insofar as we conceive of it as

material; enhancement is the property of spirit, insofar as we conceive of it as spiritual.
The first is in continual attraction and repulsion, the latter in constant upward striving.
But since matter never exists without spirit, and spirit never without matter, matter is
capable of enhancing itself, and spirit has the power to attract and repulse. We have an
analogy in the fact that only an individual who has analyzed sufficiently is in a position
to synthesize, and only one who has sufficiently synthesized is in a position to further
analyze (pp. 48, 21-23; trans. from Miiller, with alterations).
We select a few of these passages for discussion.

Polarity is an ancient schema of the human mind. Spirit and matter
- and we will talk more about them soon - themselves constitute a
polarity. When Goethe assigns polarity specifically to matter, he thinks
of more alike pairs, which often appear as mirror images of each other:
positive and negative electricity, north and south magnetic poles. But
there are also less symmetrical pairs: male and female, light and dark,
inhaling and exhaling. Obviously, these pairs are not human inventions,
and thus their existence conceals the origin of the puzzle posed by the
essence and reality of number. This point remains obscure in Goethe,
however.
Just as matter appears to revolve in itself in the endless alternations
of breath, so spirit knows striving. It knows the true time; it knows
the difference between future and past. While the platonic tradition
thinks of the spirit as driven by the desire to perceive the supers en sible,
Goethe speaks of enhancement and thus includes the spirit in nature.
But what is the spirit in nature, and what then is enhancement?
SPIRIT AND MATTER
We now must pay attention to the interlocking of meanings in the

sentences above: "the matter insofar as we conceive of it as material ...
insofar as we conceive of it as spiritual ..." Are spirit and matter then
two realities or one?
As the answer to such question

I have found a sense that's true:
Is it not my song's suggestion
That I'm one and also two?
(West-Eastern Divan, HA 2, p. 66; trans. from Goethe, 1975).
These verses, intended both to reveal and to conceal Marianne's

126 CARL FRIEDRICH VON WEIZsACKER
participation in the writing of the Divan, serve our purpose as well.

Suleika is at the same time nature. Matter is nothing else than nature
insofar as nature is thought of in contrast to spirit. And the relation of
spirit to matter has always been depicted in the metaphor of the
relation between man and woman.
Do we then get no answer to our question, or just an ironical one?
When we attempt to express separating and reuniting in a single
sentence, the statement most likely will be a paradox. Perhaps to gain
clarity, we should go on playing Goethe's game:
Polarity and enhancement are both a dynamic dual. If polarity is
characteristic of matter, and if spirit and matter themselves constitute a
polarity, then spirit emerges from matter. However, if enhancement is
characteristic of the spirit, then this result itself is an enhancement
of matter. Now enhancement is not self-alienation, but becoming
authentic, advancing towards the essence. We advance toward the
essence by differentiating ourselves from transitoriness - "to immor-
talize ourselves, that's why we are here" (Spriiche, HA 1, p. 307). What
appeared directly as real or true on the lower level, on the higher level
becomes a metaphor.
Similar thoughts were occupying the minds of Goethe's younger
philosophical contemporaries. In Schelling, Goethe sensed a kindred
spirit; but from the petrification of this philosophy in Hegel's doctri-
naire constructions Goethe - not without subtle mockery - kept his
distance. Indeed, only in poetic suggestiveness, only as metaphor, did
he make use of the conception of the relation between spirit and matter
as developed by modern metaphysics and science.
Descartes thinks of spirit and matter as res cogitans and res extensa.
For him, matter is extended and nothing more, because he considers
geometrical extension as the only characteristic of bodies that can be
mathematized. His concept of truth allows only mathematical certainty
as truth. Therefore, matter is defined by its potential to be thought,
spirit by thinking; spirit and matter are subject and object par
excellence. However, being conceived of as separate entities, they are
being deprived of the relation that, through the process of separating
and reuniting, gives the polarity of subject and object its true meaning.
There are times that follow a hypothesis to its very conclusion; with
luck they finally adapt it to the needs of man and, in doing so, are
forced to relativize it. Hardly one of the modern thinkers has been able
to free himself from the Cartesian framework; especially those attack-
ing it turned out to be bound by it. As a result, modern science often

forgot the part of the subject, thus letting the split in its thinking slip
into a more dangerous place - into the unconscious. This is why the
rediscovery of the spirit has often been regarded as an overcoming of
"materialism", although it only restored the cause of materialism, the
split in reality. For Goethe, however, the presence of the spirit in matter
was as self-evident as the presence of the idea in the individual form.
Thus, he stands alien, and suffering in this alienation, yet fruitful in his
time.
TRUTH
True is solely what is fruitful.

This is one of Goethe's somewhat daring, somewhat angry state-

ments. The misuse of this thought during the last two centuries, and the
question whether Goethe was innocent of this misuse, does not concern
us here. We only ask what the statement means in our context.
In logic, 'true' is a predicate pertaining to judgements. But Goethe
does not hesitate to talk about a true human being. This truth is
something different from truthfulness; there is a false truthfulness, as
for instance in some confessions. In Goethe, one could often replace
'true' with 'innate.' What he calls the 'healthy' or the 'effective' resonates
frequently in his concept of 'truth.' Truth is the presence of essence in
the appearance.
But what has all this to do with truth, and with fruitfulness?
Goethe explains his insight to himself with the old concept of
correspondence. Only the "sun-like eye" is able "to see the sun" (HA 1,
p. 367; also HA 13, p. 324). And it is no coincidence that the eye is
related to 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).
Because the essence which is present in the whole exists also in me
as a part of this whole, and to the extent that it does so, I, the part, can
partially recognize the whole. And if my judgement, my thinking, my
action, my attitude are 'true' in this sense, then necessarily they are also
'fruitful.' For the richness of the whole can be grasped and truly unfolded
128 CARL FRIEDRICH VON WEIZSACKER
from a single individual in whom the essence of the whole is present.

Thus, fruitfulness can become a predicate and a test of truth.
This concept of truth contains the logical judgement of truth as a
special case: essence can also appear in a spoken sentence. The reason
why historically this particular form of truth has been singled out is due,
most likely, to the possibility of untruth, i.e. to the possibility of
mistrust. That untruth exists, be it as concealment, error, or lie,
preventing essence from appearing, is as mysterious as that truth exists,
and just as familiar. Logic exists because there are not only true but
also false propositions; truth can be equated with judgements because
judgements offer the most ascertainable and testable truth.
Were we to study the essentials of modem science, we should
continue here with our inquiries. But this would go far beyond the
scope of my essay. Still, enough has perhaps been said to make clear
why Goethe could not integrate himself into this science. What I can
accept as truth depends on where I can trust. Our ability to trust is not
rooted in our opinions or decisions, but in our way of being human.
Mistrust can protect against error, but it also can seal off sources of
truth. What we try to focus on here is what we come to see when we
place our trust where Goethe trusted.
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
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
nothing to reveal. The body of another human being is encountered as

a living being, and not as a res extensa.
To an artist, the gesture is the breath of life. But for Goethe, a direct
path leads from gesture to the symbol in nature. Not only human beings
but animals, plants, and stones are living beings to him. To a lover,
every bodily action becomes the language of love; so, in the outbursts
of his first great poems, Goethe expresses his love of mankind in a way
that to us may seem most remote: in the gesture of nature.
Like a giant towers

The fog-girded 6ak,
From the bushes peers darkness
With a hundred black glances.
(HA 1,p. 27)
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
which everyday 1anguage is taken seriously; but this seriousness is still

surpassed by the seriousness of the game itself. The differentiation of
sign and meaning gives poetry the flexibility that enables it to preserve
the treasures of mythology in a world of flexible thinking; which is also
why poetry, as all art, cannot be sacramental, and should not become a
substitute for religion.
What have we learned? Goethe's science has a poetic prerequisite.
The question of the reality of a symbol is connected with the question
of truth of poetry. One must concede to poetry a truth as rigorous as
the truth of science, but these are two different truths. How they meet
in truth itself, we cannot ask here. But we return once more to Goethe
to see how they meet in him, who was both poet and scientist. We
attempt to distinguish the steps he took on his way.
In Goethe's youthful works, sign and meaning are as united as they
had ever been in great literature. This power of immediate truth he has
never achieved again. In his mature years, in the decisive dialogue of his
life, the dialogue with Schiller, in the almost unbearable labor of
heightening his awareness, sign and meaning move apart, and, at the
same time, are held together by a concept of style. Because Goethe's
and Schiller's classicism is simultaneously natural and artificial, it could
become a formative [Bildungs-] ideal. The beginning of Goethe's
science is a part of this inner labor: what was felt in youth, should now
become visible and thinkable. As Goethe reaches maturity, meaning is
recognized as meaning; sign and meaning are easily differentiated and,
for that very reason, there exists between them the freest interaction,
the most manifold play. Now, nature understood scientifically will also
become sign of a meaning that is more than science. In the Divan,
Suleika stood symbolically for Marianne, the beloved for nature, color
for love, separation of lovers for the creation of the world, and the final
meeting for eternal reunion.
All this is true, but true because it may not be held onto. The poet
has received "poetry's veil out of the hands of truth" (HA 1, p. 152)
and he conceals behind the veil what cannot be said. The ineffable is
not only what man cannot ever articulate, but also what this particular
man, Goethe - who has met or has set his limits - has chosen to be
silent about. Goethe participated in the movements of his epoch. He
withdrew from the apodictic one-sidedness of modem times whenever
he was confronted with it in reality, be it in religion, science, or politics.
He learned to see the ambivalence in the seeming naivete of this
132 CARL FRIEDRICH VON WEIZsACKER
historical movement and he suffered it, no longer by participating in it,

but in his loneliness.
We ourselves have been carried far past the continent in which he
was able to take root. He does not offer us the ground on which we
could stand. But only - to switch metaphors - from afar do we
recognize that his light is not like that of a lighthouse signaling the
harbor, but like the light of a star that will_accompany us on all our
journeys.
NOTE
* Originally published as 'Uber einige Begriffe aus der Naturwissenschaft Goethes', in

Robert Boehringer. Eine Freundesgabe (ed. by E. Boehringer and W. Hoffmann), J. C.
B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), Tiibingen, 1957, pp. 697-711. Rpt. as 'Nachwort' to HA 13,
pp. 537-554. It was again reprinted in the author's volume Tragweite der Wissenschaft.
1. Band. Schopfung und Weltentstehung. Die Geschichte zweier Begriffe, Stuttgart, S.
Hirzel, 1964, pp. 222-243. Copyright is now with Beck Verlag, Miinchen, which
publishes current reprintings of the Hamburger Ausgabe and kindly gave permission to
publish this original translation by Annelies Fulscher, Ilona Karmel, and F. J. Zucker.
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
GOETHE AND THE CONCEPT OF METAMORPHOSIS*
In 1790 Goethe published his study on The Metamorphosis of Plants,

123 sections divided into an introduction and eight chapters. None of
Goethe's other writings on natural science approaches the inner unity
and intellectual scope of this treatise, with which only the Theory of
Color can compare.
In composing this work, Goethe had already emphasized that in the
future he would be just as active in the field of scientific research as in
literature. However twenty years later he also noted that, while he was
seeking in his scientific work to express a way of viewing nature, at the
same time he sought, as he says, "to reveal as it were myself, my inner
life, my way of being." We must keep in mind this admission of a very
broad intent if we wish to comprehend The Metamorphosis of Plants in
its full significance.
We must quickly survey the broad range of meanings encompassed
by the biological term 'metamorphosis.' In the history of Western
biology this concept encompasses first of all the remarkable variations
in form exhibited by the development of many insects and amphibians
- the butterfly and the frog are also the examples that Goethe himself
carefully observes, and displayed in the circles of the Court at Weimar.
He read Swammerdam and Reaumur; he knows the astonishing work of
the jurist LyonetI, his Traite de la Chenille, one of the most detailed
studies ever of the anatomy of a caterpillar.
In morphology, the term 'metamorphosis' also signifies the variations
in form within a larger circle of related creatures (i.e. of a type); Goethe
focused especially upon this kind of variation in his study of verte-
brates. The Metamorphosis of Plants, however, addresses itself to a very
particular transformation of structurally similar elements arranged
along an axis, that which we today call 'serial metamorphosis.'
I need not recount for this audience all of the stages that led to
Goethe's comprehensive treatment of 1790: his decisive experience of
the transformation of the leaves of a palm tree in the Botanical Garden
at Padua; the inner experience of an 'archetypal plant' [Urpftanze 1 in
Palermo and in Rome; nor of Goethe's psychological disposition upon
133
134 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
be traced back to a single, underlying form - "everything is leaf,"

in Goethe's much-simplified expression -; this insight had since
Nehemiah Grew! (1672, 1682) slowly gained acceptance; Malpighi set
it forth in 1671 as well; C. Fr. Wolff a century later in 1768. The
Genevan botanist Aug. Pyrame de Candolle thoroughly substantiated
the theory independently of Goethe in his Organographie vegetale.
Moreover, a third fact is important: Goethe's depiction of the inner
processes, of the forces at work in the plant, has its source in a mode of
thinking which the botany of that time was just beginning to overcome.
We shall have to examine more intimately the sources of Goethe's
thinking if we are to grasp the extent to which his point of view stood in
opposition to the work of botanical researchers of his time, yet how
significant the stance was for Goethe himself.
This aspect of The Metamorphosis, the mode of thinking, will
interest us particularly. Thus I shall give here only a quick survey of the
content of Goethe's treatise, in order then to consider its reception in
our time and finally to attempt an evaluation of Goethe's work in the
context of contemporary biological research.
The growth of the plant from seed to seed stands before us in an
exemplary fashion in the annual flowering plant, and enables us to form
an idea of the 'inner law governing formation: in the course of the
development of the axis of a shoot, lateral appendages follow rhythmi-
cally according to definite rules; these lateral appendages can be traced
back to the fundamental form of a leaf. The series of foliage leaves is
followed by a group of more tightly condensed structures that lead
from the calyx through the remarkable corolla to stamens and the
female organ of the pistil. Goethe marshals an abundance of evidence
showing the transformations of the foliage leaf, transitional forms
between foliage leaf and corolla, between corolla and stamens - all
evidence pointing to the metamorphosis of a singled, unified, funda-
mental form.
How is this interpretation of the growth of the annual plant regarded
by botanical researchers in our day? The answer requires a look at the
conclusions of early morphology and its relationship to the theory of
evolution, that guiding idea both of the nineteenth century and of our
own.
Comparative morphology, i.e. the science of biological form [Gestalt 1
prior to Darwin, had so firmly established the system of the animal and
vegetable kingdoms that it could be incorporated fully into the new
136 ADOLFPORTMANN
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.
A review of scientifically-based contemporary morphology shows on

the one hand that while Goethe did not collaborate directly in the initial
formulation and propagation of our conceptions of the metamorphosis
of flowering plants, a high rank as a researcher and thinker is neverthe-
less accorded him in recognition of the explanatory power of his theory
of metamorphosis. Yet this recognition within the context of specialized
research does not in any sense convey the true stature and place that
Goethe's work must be accorded within a more comprehensive view of
nature and the world. Goethe's work on the metamorphosis of plants
opens out into a much larger set of questions.
However much Goethe would have his treatise judged as science, it
bespeaks a much greater striving for insight into the essence of living
forms, and with it the essence of the human being and the world as
such. Goethe's accomplishment represents an interplay of many forces,
the effect of which was often self-contradictory; we must do justice to
all of them, if we want really to follow the flight of his spirit. And
finally, Goethe's striving in the field of morphology, if we take it deeply
seriously, must be measured not only against the results of specialized
research: it compels us to re-examine the conceptual foundations of
contemporary science as such. Only a small part of this can be
mentioned. Goethe's early, intensive preoccupation with alchemy left a
lasting mark upon his image of nature, a mark all the more permanent
in that it met Goethe's deep need for wholeness in a world-view and
satisfied his powerful imagination. Goethe himself recognized the full
meaning of this influence, and early on sought to hide this attraction to
alchemy. Yet the influence continues, even after his understanding later
condemned it. He seeks to grasp what can be known of a spiritual
world through a full experience of the sensory given. Thus colors
represent for him the "deeds and sufferings" of light. A powerful
expression of this alchemical imagination is the fundamental idea of the
rising and purification of saps in the shoot of the flowering plant, an
idea that compels him to interpret even the formation of pollen in the
stamens as a final purification of the fluids - and moreover to defend
this viewpoint still at a time (1820) when the role of pollination in the
reproductive process was known.
The idea of the refinement of matter in the ascent to the formation
of the blossom goes hand in ha.lld with a belief in the absolute value of
the objective experience of form, in the correspondence of formal
significance and factual significance that Goethe admires in Classical
art, especially after his journey to Italy. And we should not be surprised
138 ADOLFPORTMANN
when a later admirer of Classicism, the art historian Heinrich Wolfflin,

declares:
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. ...
The grand conception of culture as humanity's actual, higher nature

leads Goethe to conclude that certain creatures were privileged and
framed for culture from the moment of Creation. In looking at the
skeleton of a horse in d'Alton'sl illustrations, he felt he could "see how
through the gentle bending back of the anterior spinal processes and
the antithetical striving of the flat processes of the lumber vertebrae the
beautiful, natural saddle, and with it the horse in its perfect form and
greatest utility, are actually given shape." The higher world of human
culture ennobles (so Goethe thinks) the formation of wild creatures as
well. Even if
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.
If we wish to comprehend the significance of this stance toward

nature, then we must survey for a moment the methodology of our own
contemporary biology. This review will show us more clearly the
viewpoint from which Goethe's own vision is revealed in its deeper
meaning. I tum to the biology of our time because in recent decades the
self-contradictions within many aspects of this research have become
more noticeable. It is becoming more and more evident that living
organisms as objects of research are studied from two totally anti-
thetical points of view, something we experience as the tension of a
powerful polarity.
Allow me, if I may, to compare the wealth and variety of events in
nature with a grand drama performed before our eyes.
If I wish to satisfy fully my desire for a thorough comprehension of
this drama, then I must try to adopt at least two very different points of
view: the view from the front, and the view from behind the stage. Both
THE CONCEPT OF MET AMORPHOSIS 139
are important, indeed necessary; each has different requirements, and

provides answers to different problems.
Behind the stage I find all the paraphernalia, the technical under-
pinnings that make a performance possible: the wind and thunder
machines, the provisions that make possible even the apparition of
spirits.
In front of the stage completely different rules prevail: here it is a
matter of relationship between human beings. I must know the lan-
guage; must grasp the meanings of words and gestures; must give myself
over entirely to the sensory appearance and, if everything goes right,
experience nothing of the machinery that makes it all possible. I am not
to experience everything that is necessary in order to make Hamlet's
father credible as a spiritual apparition.
In contemporary scientific research the work behind the stage has
developed in a powerful and extremely specialized way. For many, it
represents true research, the actual goal. And yet there are many tasks,
e.g. ethology, which require a biologist, an observer of the drama, in
front of the stage, whether the drama is called "The Love Life of the
Thrush," or "The Bumblebee and the Monkshood"; whether one is
dealing with the mating dance of sticklebacks or birds, or a drama of
hunter and prey ..
That which I experience before the stage is not 'more correct' than
that which the physiologist, the microbiologist, the molecular biologist
fathom in his or her study behind the stage of life. Research proceed-
ing from each of the two starting-points has meaning; each way of
seeing has a different significance, a different propriety.
No one who knows Goethe's scientific work will doubt for a second
which point of view Goethe adopts as a researcher: was there ever a
more intensely empathetic observer before the stage, where Goethe
attends to a tremendous spectacle? Its language and gestures are not
immediately comprehensible, but he is convinced of their meaningful-
ness, even where the potential meaning remains hidden; where an alien,
barely comprehensible drama unfolds before the viewer.
Goethe followed one of these dramas again and again with pro-
foundest interest, and recorded what stood before his eyes in our own
language under the title The Metamorphosis of Plants. Simple forms are
the actors in this living drama; it is the annual flowering plants with
their clear, comprehensible development that are the classical heroes in
the drama of the life of plants. They are the grand figures who provide
140 ADOLFPORTMANN
us the key to less familiar phenomena, if we know how to look and

listen in the right way.
Out of the seed, the unity of the hidden potential, there unfolds
before our eyes the mysterious bifurcation into the first cotyledons.
Goethe took them to be a great symbol of the two sexes, one that
reminds us of the primal unity of the hermaphrodite and of the
heterosexuality of the plant shoot which grows toward the light, toward
that which is higher. Along the axis of this main shoot, a spiritual law
governs the growth of foliage leaves in a wealth of different arrange-
ments. We attend to the gradual intensification of these foliage forms,
which culminate at the zenith of the vegetative phase by creating a form
which places before our eyes an optimum of its possibilities, the 'climax
leaf of contemporary botany. This form is a realization of hidden,
secret potentials for the two-dimensional shoot-formation that is
specific to the leaf - something we see especially clearly in palmate or
pinnate leaves.
The main shoot, however, comes forth after the high point of the
foliage leaves with new surprises; the climax leaf is followed by a
contraction: there appear quite modest forms, yet in their constriction
they announce the plant's secret concentration on the great act to
follow, on the formation of the blossom.
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 ...
One can see
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.
Goethe sees this process of transformation in the powerful imagery

of the alchemists. Just as the audience lives within the mood of the
actors in a drama, Goethe lives within this hidden life. No chemical
analysis interferes with this activity; no experiment, no technological
intervention disturbs this ordered harmony. The spirit intimates what is
occurring there; the "gentle empiricism" of analogy guides the viewer of

a drama which moves closer and closer to the climax, the miracle of the
blossom. The formation of the blossom poses difficult questions to the
contemplative observer.
The formation of the chalice is straightforward: a spatially ingathered
collection of foliage leaves. But the blossom? It is certainly true that the
purer fluids favor the metamorphosis into the corolla. But is not the
radiant color perhaps also a further act of purification as well, of the
refinement of the fluids on the way towards their apotheosis, towards
fructification? For now the structures that could otherwise form green
leaves instead tum first into the stamens, long recognized as male, and
then into the pistil and its auxiliary structures which bear the egg cells.
What is the significance of the corolla?
In Section 45 of The Metamorphosis of Plants, Goethe remarks that
the color and fragrance of the corolla can probably be ascribed to the
presence of the male seed within them, and he considers that the
beautiful appearance of the colors, while representing a high degree of
purity, still does not represent the highest, where the blossom appears
white and uncolored. Here we see Goethe's theory of the exalted
stature of white already applied to the interpretation of the color of
blossoms - twenty years before the final version of his Theory of
Color.
The duality revealed in the germination of the twin cotyledons
manifests itself again in the formation of two sexes. These are destined
for union, whereby the original unity of the entity is reestablished and
the potential for a new drama of division, unfolding and reunion is
prepared through the seed in tum. Goethe interprets the climax of this
transformation of partial-shoots into the blossom and the visible duality
of the sexes in the light of a strong preconceived notion.
Camerarius in Tiibingen had recognized the sexual organization of
flowering plants already in 1694; in 1730, the young Linnaeus charac-
terizes this splendor of the blossom as "the nuptials of the flowers." By
1760, Kolreuter in Karlsruhe had achieved further clarity, and around
1787 (at the time of Goethe's journey to Italy), we see the beginnings of
observations by Konrad Christian Sprengel of Spandau on the collabo-
ration of insects during insemination. The cellular processes within
these tissues still remain entirely unknown. Only in 1815 does this new
phase begin, with important advances in 1842. At the time that Goethe
sought to depict the metamorphosis of plants, he had to make use of
142 ADOLFPORTMANN
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?
Goethe saw in Schelver's theory a redemption and purification of the

idea of the sexuality of plants. "We concede wind and insects, through
the idea of metamorphosis we are richly compensated," Goethe writes
against K. Chr. Sprengel. "The endless marriages" (this in 1820 contra
Linnaeus). "one cannot get rid of them! - whereby monogamy, the basis
of morality, law and religion, has become diffused into a vague
promiscuity: these 'marriages' remain totally offensive to sound human
sense."
Thus in looking at the flowering plant, Goethe holds fast to the idea
that the formation of pollen is the final purification of the fluids along
the axis of higher development. He interpreted the union of the sexes as
a hidden anastomosis at the summit of the plant axis, and his yearning
for highest fulfillment leads him to ask whether there is not somewhere
a true monandria monogynia, the pairing of a single male with a single
female element rather than the vulgar harem of male partners sur-
rounding a solitary female in the center. The hidden anastomosis also
signifies the highest concentration in space, the closest one can come to
the transcendence of space and time, a spiritual event, even a symbol of
the union of God and man. It is the "great moment" Goethe longed for
and sought to create after his experience of Italy. Blossoming and
fructification are the zenith of the life of the plant. Past and future
united, brought together in one great moment. The concept of the
"zenith of life" is essential to Goethe's concept of the organism. Thus
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
realm of our sensory experience, and in polar opposition to the

penetration of the invisible realm of matter; on the other hand,
environmental research as defence against a fatal threat brought upon
ourselves: each of these currents within the scientific thinking of our
time helps us to make conscious the often neglected experience 'before
the stage.' Yet there is more at stake. Attempts to fathom the drama of
nature as a viewer 'before the stage' lead to phenomena of mysterious
grandeur, that necessarily lead our thinking beyond the boundaries at
which the rigorous methods of conventional research must call a halt.
Life is always more than this research that intentionally restricts its
own method can say. Therefore our experience of the forms of nature
around us is also more than we can say with scientific certainty. Thus
the creative imagination will always strive to integrate the fragmentary
results of genuine research into a more comprehensive whole.
In just this way, Goethe's powerful longing for synthesis led him to
transgress the boundaries that scientific research has set itself in
conscious self-limitation. He saw his experiences of living nature within
the context of a grand vision built upon an expanded acceptance of
great archetyes of experience such as harmony, polarity and intensifica-
tion. But this vision also had to build upon sympathetic interpretations
from earlier times, such as those underlying the images of the Great
Chain of Being or the ancient symbolism of alchemy.
Those who come after us will build up their new interpretations out
of new insights; if they keep an open mind, they will look to Goethe as
one who rose spiritually to a comprehensive relationship with nature
that our rigorous science cannot yield. In its boldness of thought and
vision, Goethe's image of the metamorphosis of plants has placed
before oUr eyes the grandeur of living nature.
It is high time we rediscovered the exemplary nature of an attempt
such as that which Goethe has given us in his Metamorphosis of the
Plants - that we rediscovered this in an age which bears above all the
stamp of visual experience, in which the language of our eyes favors a
new, analphabetic form of life. The accelerated development of bio-
logical research in the direction of genetic engineering, that investigates
the visible realm in order to achieve mastery over the processes of
nature - this unavoidable development will result in a horrifying
impoverishment of our relationship to nature if we do not begin
immediately to take to heart the value of an extensive experience with
living form for the cultivation of the soul. New forms of science of
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
* 'Goethe und der Begriff der Metamorphose'. Originally published in Goethe 90

(1973) 11-21. Translated from the German by Frederick Amrine. This original
English translation published here with the kind permission of the Goethe-Gesellschaft
in Weimar.
1 'Lyonnet,' 'Crew,' and 'Dalton' in the original, all mistakes. - Tr.
GERNOTBOHME
IS GOETHE'S THEORY OF COLOR SCIENCE?*
1. INTRODUCTION
The ambivalence of scientific-technological progress has led in our

century to a widespread criticism of science, especially of modem
natural science.! Moreover, the conclusions derived from this criticism
have been manifold. They range from a radical rejection of science,
as seen in the anti-science movement, to the demand for a science
maximally comprehensive to society. Such criticism normally assumes
that science simply is as it is, and that decisions are made about its
benefit or harm to man only after it is put to use. Questions about a
'different' science are rarely raised, and remain tangential to a
conceptual exposition. Thus, it comes as no surprise when the term
'scientific' is defined in the context of science as it presently exists.
Whether or not sciences other than modem science are possible at all
can scarcely be determined theoretically, but rather, perhaps, can be
determined through the study of attempts at knowledge which in
another era could lay claim to the status of science, such as the science
of Plato (Bohme, 1976), or which, at least as a stumbling block within
the history of modem science, proved themselves to be a possible
candidate for an alternative science, as is the case with Goethe's theory
of colors. Only on the basis of such studies will the demands for an
'alternative science' attain some degree of substantiation.
Is Goethe's theory of colors science? Clearly, this question will be
answered negatively if one proceeds from a theory of science oriented
in modem physics with sharply outlined criteria for delimitation. How-
ever, in order to make possible any comparison at all, it is advisable to
proceed from the most meager definition of science possible, so that we
may point out step by step through analogous relationships the struc-
tures of a science which is clearly different from modem science.
We think of science in the most general sense as systematic knowl-
edge. If we were to interpret this definition in such a way that
knowledge must exist as a system of propositions in order to be valid as
science, then Goethe's theory of colors would have dim prospects for
147
F. Amrine, F J. Zucker, and H. Wheeler (eds.), Goethe and the Sciences:
148 GERNOT BOHME
gaining recognition as science. Goethe's theory of colors, however, does

present a systematic order within a certain sphere of phenomena. We
wish therefore to emphasize in a brief characterization of the theory
those principles and laws according to which this order is developed.
(II)
Doubts about the scientific quality of Goethe's theory of colors arise
on the one side from the view that his theory purported to be an
exclusive alternative to Newton's optical treatment of colors. Since,
however, Newton's optical theory, which is solidly established as an
integral part of modern science, cannot be called into question, Goethe
appears to have little chance in this argument. In order to clarify this
point, we must attempt to outline the main points in Goethe's polemics
against Newton. (III)
From a different perspective, doubts are raised by the fact that
Goethe's theory of colors did not establish any scientific tradition.
Modern science distinguishes itself by forming a continuous process of
research in which knowledge is accumulated. We therefore wish to
investigate how Goethe's theory of colors is to be judged under the
criterion of continuation, and in this respect, how continuation itself is
to be judged as a criterion for science. (IV)
Finally, Goethe's theory of colors is regarded as a questionable
scientific attempt because it enters. into the realms of subjective
perception. To be sure, it is precisely here that Goethe's theory of
colors has attained results which have found the greatest recognition.
These results proved that the regularity of color phenomena which had
been regarded earlier as accidental optical illusions conform to law.
Thus, it is all the more imperative to form an idea about the manner in
which the intersubjectivity of knowledge, necessary for science in
general, is to be secured in this sphere. (V)
II. GOETHE'S THEORY OF COLORS AS

SYSTEMATIC KNOWLEDGE
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
In the didactic section color phenomena, distinguished according to

their degree of stability, are treated as physiological, physical, and
chemical colors; a theory for the emergence of colors is established;
laws for the interrelationship of colors among themselves are developed
according to certain principles; the sensuous-moral [sinnlichsittlich]
effect of colors is treated; and finaIly the relationship of the theory of
colors to other sciences and to practice is formulated,
We will concentrate on the systematic features of the theory of
colors.
(a) Conditions for the Emergence of Colors

Goethe's description of color phenomena contains as a rule information
on the kinds of conditions which must be present or must be produced
so that a given color phenomenon can be perceived. He deals with
information about the incidence of light, the characteristics of surfaces,
the use of instruments, techniques of observation, and such things. This
information deals with the empirical conditions for the emergence of
color. Goethe then attempts to produce a general theory about those
conditions for the emergence of color which vary from case to case.
This general theory consists, briefly, of the following principle: Color
arises when light and darkness are mediated together through grey [die
Triibe 2 ].
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).
We see how Goethe attempts here to make a general formulation for

what appears under empirical conditions as light and dark surfaces, as
milky liquid, smoke, etc. Moreover, the universal that results from the
process of abstraction is itself of a phenomenal nature, and not
objective [gegenstiindlich]. As we see it, he thereby abstracts, on the one
side, from the conditions imposed by his apparatus, and on the other
side, from the physical conditions (light as a form of energy), and seeks
the condition of color phenomena directly in the sphere of visible
phenomenality. By light he does not mean an existing quantum, but
visible brightness; by semitransparency not a semi-transparent medium,
but restriction in the field of vision; by darkness not the mere absence
of light, but visible darkness.
150 GERNOT SOHME
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).
Light, darkness, and semitransparency are together an archetypal

phenomenon; that is, the archetypal phenomenon of colors. They never
appear isolated, but always exist in a mutual relationship to one
another; by themselves they cannot even be perceived. In a very general
sense, color is the manifestation of light, the act, or energeia, of light, as
Goethe once said. 3
Light appears in its most original, and thus purest state as yellow.
"At first, light appears to us as a color which we call yellow" (HA 13, p.
366). Grey [die Triibe] appears in its most perfect or extreme form in
white. "§ 147. The extreme degree of grey is white, the most indifferent,
brightest, first, opaque occupation of space" (HA 13, p. 362). The
original manifestation of darkness is blue (HA 13, p. 362). On the
other hand, light and darkness possess their permanent representatives
as surface colors in white and black. "§18. Black, as representative of
darkness ... white, as representative of light" (HA 13, p. 332).
One must therefore say that light, darkness, and semitransparency are
in themselves mere abstractions. They are contained in all color
phenomena, and appear particularly in them. Their status as conditions
for the emergence of color is thus not to be understood in terms of
their previous existence, but as a transcendental or formal condition;
they are to be understood as directions in which the essence of color
can diverge so as to appear (light/darkness), and as the medium in
which this diverging occurs. At play here is a more general principle:
every phenomenon is the presentation of a unity in polar opposition:
§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).
Appearance is always the emergence of the essence of something by

means of polarization.4 The conditions of the phenomenon are the

possible directions of its polarization and their mediation.
Presented in such an abstract fashion, that which we designated as
the theory of the emergence of color must strike one as quite specula-
tive. However, for one thing, we must keep in mind that we are dealing
here with a model of theory building which is rich in tradition, and
which has been very successful. Goethe himself refers to the theory of
polarity in the area of electrical and magnetic phenomena (HA 13, p.
488); he could have also mentioned the theory of music, harmony, and
rhythm in antiquity (Plato'S Philebus). Furthemore, absolutely no
speculative use is made of this theory, but rather we are shown in detail
how light and darkness, as a rule made concrete through their repre-
sentatives, white and black, cause colors to appear through semi-
transparency, that is, on semitransparent media. To be sure, the attempt
to derive these phenomena from the conditions sometimes goes beyond
their concrete representation, as for instance, when the origin of
refracted colors is explained by postulating a secondary image
[Nebenbild] which assumes the function of the semitransparency
(Physical Colors, XV. Derivation of the indicated phenomena, esp.
§238f).
(b) The Laws of Color

In the passage already quoted dealing with the principle of the
emergence of color, Goethe had shown that colors develop "likewise in
opposition." This passage continues (§175; 13, p. 368): "The colors,
however, point immediately and directly back to wholeness through
their reciprocal relationship." This statement already indicates what is
developed in detail in the laws of color, that is, the dominance of
polarity and totality over multiplicity. But most important is the notion
that colors are what they are only in their interrelationship: one color is
no color. The essence of color can be particularized only in a multi-
plicity, organized according to distinct laws, and color appears as a rule
only as such a multiplicity. Pressed for a definition, Goethe states,
"Color is law-like nature in relation to the sense of sight" (HA 13, p.
324). We believe that a certain emphasis is placed on the word "law-
like" [gesetzmiifiig]: Color is altogether only that optical appearance
which stands with others in law-like interrelationship. Here Goethe is
pointing to certain 'stylizations' which essentially determine phenomena
152 GERNOT BOHME
of the senses, but which cannot be fully reproduced in their physical

basis. In harmony, only those sounds are admitted as tones which fit
with others in a systematic interrelationship. An example provided in
music theory of antiquity, according to which tones exist in simple or
"overdivisible" proportions [that is, n: 1 or (n + 1) : n] even makes
good sense physically, but as the Well-tempered Clavier shows, the
musical stylization is not dependent upon it. The crucial point is, only
that is valid as color which fits in a law-like fashion into the totality of
color phenomena, just as only that is tone which has its systematic
location within the structure of the scale. 5
Goethe presents the totality of colors through their disposition
within the color circle. This circle is a structure of high order. It is
dominated by three principles of color relationship; polarity, intensifica-
tion [Steigerungj, and blending. Blue and yellow - those colors which
appear first in darkness and light - represent their original polarity.
Each can be intensified on its own, blue to violet, yellow to orange, in
order to meet at a common point of culmination - Purple. The other
principle of relationship, blending, produces green between yellow and
blue; likewise, violet which lies between red and blue, and orange
between red and yellow are to be viewed as their respective blending.
These relationships are represented in the specific positions within the
color circle: yellow, orange, purple, violet, blue, green, yellow. Likewise,
the color combinations viewed as significant occur according to the
order of their corresponding position within the color spectrum. Each
pair of opposing colors can be regarded as harmonic, or as we would
say, complementary color combinations. Regarded as a pair, they
represent the complete totality - and this can be demonstrated through
certain experiments involving reciprocal want and fulfillment. Each pair
of colors, between which there is a mixed color, constitutes a 'charac-
teristic' combination. Since of the six colors of the color circle only
green is actually a mixed color, we get four characteristic color
combinations: yellowlblue, yellow/purple, blue/purple, and orange/
violet. Goethe treats as the final type of color combination, corre-
sponding to the second in music theory, the so-called 'characterless'
ones. They are the combinations in which two colors next to each other
on the color circle are brought together, that is, colors that are related
by intensification or inclusion (yellow against green, blue against green).
Goethe develops the color laws discussed here in his chapter on the
sensuous-moral effects of colors. We have not treated these effects
here, but rather the systematic interrelationship of colors on which their

effects are based. The fact that Goethe proceeds from the sensuous-
moral effects might well be due to a historically conditioned interest in
the effects of colors in painting. Indeed, one could also present a theory
of harmony from the perspective of the effects of intervals. Historically,
mathematical laws were the point of departure and not until the seventh
century did music leave its place in the quadrivium (among the mathe-
matical sciences), and enter the trivium at the side of rhetoric, which
traditionally dealt with man's emotions and passions. The aspect of
color theory bound by laws is capable of mathematical formulation,
though with greater difficulty than is the case with music theory. To be
sure, Goethe himself states that color theory does not belong "before
the judgment seat of mathematics" (HA 13, p. 328, HA 13, p. 484).
Naturally, Goethe's rejection of Newton is associated with a restricted
view of mathematics as an art of measurement, a quite understandable
view for his time.
III. GOETHE VERSUS NEWTON
Because of his polemic against Newton, Goethe's theory of colors

represents a scandalous episode in the history of science. For his part,
Goethe regarded the Newtonian theory of color as a scandal. And thus,
the reaction today concerning the Goethean scandal is formulated with
almost the same words as Goethe used to express his astonishment
about Newton: 6 "How could a mind so great, so all encompassing, be
so wrong?" HA 13, p. 157, epilogue by C. F. von Weizsacker). With
such words we see that Goethe's mistakes are not regarded as inci-
dental ones which every investigator makes, but that critics feel
challenged to unravel them systematically and to determine a common
source for them.
Goethe attempted to formulate the source of Newton's 'mistakes' in
the psychological, or as he says, ethical area: he sees their basis in
Newton's personality (see Materialien zur Gesch. der Farbenlebre, LA
I, 6; pp. 295ff). He places Newton among the scientific personalities
who are avid attackers, and more disposed to theory than experiment.
Goethe ascribes to him a particular firmness of character which
manifests itself to his disadvantage in a tenacious clinging to precon-
ceived opinions. As a second 'ethical' reason, Goethe adds a supposi-
154 GERNOT BOHME
tion which is known today as a methodological principle for the

evaluation of theories. According to it, a theory is designated as
progressive when it is not only problem solving, but also problem
producing (Lakatos). Sensitive to this trait of modem science, Goethe
states, "that perhaps Newton found such pleasure in his theory because
it offered him new difficulties at each step of his experience"
(Materialien . .. ,HA 14, p. 176).
If one wanted to give a comparable 'ethical' basis for Goethe's
mistakes, it would be derived not so much from his character, as from a
difference in the sociological types of scientists represented by Goethe
and Newton. While Goethe belongs to the type identified as a sys-
tematically working lover of nature, Newton must be counted among
the scientific professionals. The first category consists in general of self-
taught men who work empirically, collecting and classifying. They had a
great significance for science all the way into the nineteenth century, up
to about the time of Gregor MendeU In our century, however,
advances in science are expected only from the professionals. Charac-
teristic for them is an education in science, a socialization based on
theoretical and experimental norms. One can designate Newton as one
of their first representatives. Goethe, however, was totally lacking in
any kind. of 'schooling' in mathematics and the natural sciences, and
from this fact one might explain a number of instances where he did not
understand what the present-day scientist views as "the clear meaning
of the work and experiments of Newton" (HA 13, p. 537, von
Weizsacker).
To be sure, this sociological classification would not explain the
whole scandal involving Goethe's polemics against Newton. It would
simply not do justice to Goethe's claim to be in competition with
Newton - that is, to his systematic and theoretical approach. It
therefore appears fitting to seek the root of the grievance precisely in
Goethe's claim; to search for the cause of all of his mistakes in his belief
that he indeed was dealing with the same subject matter as Newton and,
if we conceive that he was, even in the same respect. Heisenberg (1947,
p. 61) uses this approach when he proposes a theory involving different
levels of reality:
We can perhaps best describe the difference between the Goethean and Newtonian
theory of colors if we state that they deal with two entirely different levels of reality.
A. Speiser (1932, pp. 96-97) takes a similar view:

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 ....
One is led to such an explanation if one recognizes, as one should,

that the essential parts of Goethean color theory are contained in his
treatment of physiological colors. But if we do this, we should not
overlook Newton's very clear statement that he does not deal with this
type of color phenomena. Thus, there should be no quarrel at all, as far
as these phenomena are concerned. To be sure, Newton did concern
himself with 'subjective' color phenomena - he experimented with
afterimages to the point of endangering his eyesight, but he explicitly
excludes them from his basic thesis that all colors are composed of
homogeneous light:
All the colors in the Universe which are made by Light, and depend not on the Power
of Imagination, are either the Colours of homogeneal Lights, or compounded of these
... (Opticks, Book I, Part II, Prop. VII)
Newton therefore distinguishes unmistakably between physical and
physiological colors, but in addition, he also explains that his theory
does not actually deal with colors, that is, sensations of color, but with
the potential of to arouse such sensations of color:
Definition. The homogeneal Light and Rays which appear red, or rather make Objects
appear so, I call Rubrifick or Red-making; those which make Objects appear yellow,
green, blue, and violet, I call Yellow-making, Green-making, Blue-making, Violet-
making, and so of the rest. And if at any time I speak of Light and Rays as coloured or
endued with Colors, I would be understood to speak not philosophically and properly,
but grossly, and accordingly to such Conceptions as vulgar People in seeing all these
Experiments would be apt to frame. For the Rays to speak properly are not coloured.
In them there is nothing else than a certain Power and Disposition to stir up a
Sensation of this or that Colour. For as Sound in a Bell or musical String, or other
sounding Body, is nothing but a trembling Motion, and in the Air nothing but that
Motion propagated from the Object, and in the Sensorium 'tis a Sense of that Motion
under the Form of Sound; so Colours in the Object are nothing but a Disposition to
reflect this or that sort of Rays more copiously than the rest; in the Rays they are
nothing but their Dispositions to propagate this or that Motion into the Sensorium, and
in the Sensorium they are Sensations of those Motions under the Forms of Colours.
(1952,pp.124-125).
Goethe by no means overlooked these passages. 8 We are therefore

avoiding the real problem if we assume that Goethe wasn't dealing with
the same things as Newton. Goethe wished rather to compete with
Newton in the latter's special area, that is, in the area of physical colors.
156 GERNOT BOHME
This is especially true for the 'refractive colors.' Goethe formulated a

theory to explain them which, in contrast to Newton's, was not restricted
to these color phenomena, but ventured to treat all color phenomena in
a unified fashion. Only when we recognize that Goethe offered a theory
of all color phenomena, including those treated by Newton, are we able
to understand his so-calleq mistakes in a systematic manner. We can
then show in each individual passage why Goethe had to interpret the
Newtonian experiments differently; the so-called mistakes can be
understood either as alternative interpretations (frequently artificial),
ramifications of his own theory, systematic delusions, or finally, as
instances where Goethe's theory genuinely fails. As far as we can tell,
no one has attempted this tiresome task, and we do not wish to
undertake it either. Instead, using Goethe's arguments against Newton,
we shall attempt to characterize the broad differences between their
theories.
Goethe and Newton are competitors because they offer two distinct
theories for a phenomenon in need of explanation, that is, 'refractive
colors' or color phenomena which appear regularly in connection with
transparent media. The differences between the two theories are
enormous; that they can be compared at all sometimes seems possible
only they both are supposed to offer explanations of the same
phenomena.
First of all, we wish to discuss a difference between Goethe and
Newton which in a way precedes their respective theories, namely, their
different interests, and, related to this, the different relationship to
practice contained in their theories. "For there is a great difference in
the perspective from which we approach a science or branch of
knowledge, and in the door through which we enter" (Goethe HA 13,
pp. 329-330). Newton undertook his studies in optics with the
intention of improving the dioptric telescope. He was concerned with
eliminating the bothersome colored fringes which appeared at the edges
of objects observed through this instrument. His interest was thus not at
all directed at the colors as such: they were a concern to him as blurs in
an image which, to be sure, are then perceived subjectively as having
color. We see here how Newton's basic premise regarding dioptrical
color phenomena resulted from his interest in sharp images. The
phenomena should be understood as manifestations of the diverse
refrangibility of light: "Lights which differ in Colour, differ also in
Degrees of Refrangibility" (Book I, Part I, Prop. I., Theor. I). This
thesis, which makes color phenomena dependent upon a certain quality

inherent in light, that is, 'refrangibility', is to be understood as the result
of extensive experiments aimed at eliminating these color phenomena in
the dioptric telescope through variation of the external conditions, for
example, through changing the thickness of the glass, the size of the
opening, the incidence of light, and the boundaries of light and
darkness (Goethe, Materialien, HA 14, pp. 146ft). These experiments
were unsuccessful. Newton became convinced that the colored borders
in the dioptric telescope have their origin in a basic property of light
exhibited by this instrument, and that therefore nothing could be done
essentially to improve the situation: 9 "The Perfection of Telescopes is
impeded by the different Refrangibility of the Rays of Light" (Prof. Vll,
Theor, VI). Therefore, the only solution lay in constructing a telescope
which did not involve the refraction of light. This consideration led
Newton to the construction of the mirror telescope.
Newton thus became acquainted with colors as chromatic aberration
- as a disturbance of optic images which should be eliminated; he
found their cause in a property of light which is independent of
external conditions. On the other hand, Goethe, as he explains it, "came
to color theory from the direction of painting, from the perspective of
the aesthetic of surfaces" (HA 13, p. 329). This different approach to
color phenomena is indicative of a totally different view of the
phenomena themselves. It is no longer a question of whether one can
cause the color phenomena to disappear, but rather a question of their
proper delineation, their basic interrelationship, and their effects. For
the point is not to see sharply, as in the case with Newton, but to see
colors. If for the former, as Newton shows, the external conditions are
relatively insignificant, they become basic to the latter. Precisely
because colors are not properties of light, as Newton also states, the
conditions of their emergence are for Goethe the main theme of the
color theory.
Now that we have indicated the very different practical interests on
the part of Newton and Goethe, let us turn to the difference in the two
theories. One is easily inclined to set Goethe, the phenomenologist,
against Newton, the modern scientist who works with conceptual
models. The contraposition is incorrect to the extent that it is a special
trait of Newtonian science to present the phenomena themselves in
their orderly interrelationship without reference to conceptual models.
This is the meaning of his 'hypotheses non Jingo'. Indeed, he begins his
158 GERNOT BOHME
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
dispositions of light. Newton attempts to give such a psychophysical

correlation in Prop. VI. Prob. II in the second part of his first book of
Opticks. lO From the beginning, Goethe rejects the separation of the
objective properties of light from the SUbjective perceptions. To be
sure, the way he establishes his position is not satisfactory to someone
trained in modern theory of science [Wissenschaftstheorie]. Goethe uses
the language of Neo-Platonic mysticism concerning the identity of light
and eye (see the Introduction to Theory of Colors, HA 13, p. 324).
This account, which ascribes the quality of light to the eye itself, implies
theoretically that the perception of color arises from an interplay of
light issuing from objects with light emanating from the eye. Goethe
even refers to this theory which can be traced back to Plato: 11
"However, it becomes more comprehensible if we maintain that in the
eye there dwells a dormant light which is stimulated by the slightest
cause from within or without" HA 13, p. 324).
Once one has stripped this doctrine of its intuitive associations, as
Goethe did, and if one does not regard light as something objective
which is somehow propagated, then one is left with the thesis that
colors - from a Cartesian point of view - belong neither to the
category of res extensa nor in the category of res cogitans; they are
neither objective nor subjective. Instead, what does exist are objective
and subjective conditions for their emergence. In this theory Goethe
attempts to state these conditions in a systematic manner.
Now that we have followed Goethe's theory in its development, let
us further pursue the differences as seen in Goethe's objections to
Newton's theory. The latter explains color phenomena in transparent
media through the fact that light possesses properties of varying dis-
positions. He identifies the disposition responsible for color phenomena
as refrangibility. Consequently, it is mainly the 'hypothesis of refrangi-
bility' which Goethe attacks in his polemics. For Goethe, light is a
unitary entity; differentiations appear simply with differing conditions;
in particular, refraction varies only when the media causing the
refraction differ. Here we have established two of the main points
in Goethe's polemic against Newton: Goethe maintains that Newton
regards the simple as composite in nature, and the composite as simple,
and that, unlike Goethe, Newton does not concede "value and dignity"
to the conditions (HA 13, p. 528). We now proceed to set out the
further differences apparent between Goethe's and Newton's theories.
(1) Every science can be characterized by what is assumed to be
160 GERNOT BOHME
'simple' within it. In Newton's theory, homogeneous light is simple, and

by homogeneous he means light which possesses only one refrangibility,
and correspondingly, has merely a single disposition to being perceived
as color. For Goethe, colorless sunlight is simple, not a simple element
in a composite, but a simple condition for the emergence of
color. Colors themselves are not specifications of light, but appear at
borders through the restriction of light by the contrary conditions of
darkness (mediated through semitransparency.) According to Goethe's
theory, the multiplicity of colors is not in the least controlled by the law
of specification, but rather by the law of polarityP That means,
however, for Goethe that there are, strictly speaking, no individual
colors: they always appear at least as pairs in polar opposition.
(2) Since Newton establishes the basis for explaining color phe-
nomena in the characteristics of light, he attempts in his experiments to
exclude as far as possible the influence of 'conditions.' Goethe censures
these experiments consistently for their very neglect of conditions (such
as size of image, distance, incidence of light, conditions of brightness,
etc.), for it is precisely these conditions which in his theory are
the bases of explanation. In connection with this, Goethe frequently
reproaches Newton for regarding the prismatic image as something
complete, or finished, instead of something in the process of becoming.
To be sure, this reproach is frequently unjustified, but it does hit at the
crux of the problem. For Newton colors themselves (or more precisely,
dispositions of color) are invariable, and are only sorted out in various
ways by 'conditions,' for example, prisms, lenses, or screens which are
set up. For Goethe, however, there are no colors until the last condition
is determined. He thus rejects the synthesis of white from the spectrum
because no finished image exists in advance of the second prism. 13
. (3) Closely connected with Goethe's reproach that Newton neglects
the significance of the conditions in his experiments are all the
arguments against the idealizing method of Newton. In the descriptions
of experiments, Newton as a rule specifies the external conditions very
precisely, but without justifying the choice of these particular conditions
in any detail. Goethe recognizes that in each instance they are precisely
the conditions under which the phenomenon Newton intends to treat
can be shown in the best and neatest fashion. Goethe censures this
approach as one which shows Newton grasping at unique cases. Since
Newton's purpose is to determine certain properties of light he
naturally choose the conditions under which these properties can be

understood most clearly, and this implies the least possible interference
by other factors. For Goethe, who is concerned with the relationship
between conditions and phenomena, it is totally absurd to choose fixed
conditions for an experiment in order to receive 'pure' phenomena. On
the contrary, an experiment for him consists in producing a series of
phenomena by varying the conditions. 14 Goethe regards it as the
epitome of an unscientific approach when Newton in several instances
'corrects' the phenomena which his experiments demonstrate to him.IS
In cases where the experiment does not exactly show what his theory
maintains, Newton conjectures, for example, that the light he employed
was not entirely homogeneous, that the surfaces of the glass he used
were not in the best condition, etc. This procedure of exhaustion by
assuming sources of error - characteristic of modern natural science -
strikes Goethe as quite absurd: how is theory to explain phenomena if
one manipulates the phenomena in such a way that they fit the theory?
(4) This brings us to a fourth difference which Goethe does not
comment on explicitly. In his Principia Mathematica Newton draws a
distinction between true phenomena and phenomena as they merely
manifest themselves (verum et apparens). For Goethe who investigates
'nature' in the sense of 'what is given,' all phenomena are in principle
coordinate. This coordination requires, however, for its part, a
sequence of phenomena: there are the simplest phenomena and then
there is a first appearance of phenomena. Goethe reproaches Newton
for not heeding this 'natural' order. Instead, Newton goes in medias res
and begins his Opticks with the experiments which are characteristic
for his theory.16
(5) The above has its basis in the fact that Newton wants to 'prove'
his theorems with his experiments. Goethe maintains, to the contrary,
"actually nothing can be proven by means of experiences and experi-
ments" (Theory of Color, Polemical Section, LA I, 1.5: 12), and he is
certainly justified to some extent in this assertion. A special investiga-
tion would be needed to understand what Newton actually meant by
such proofs. It is certain that in contrast to Goethe, who endeavors to
present his entire experience with colors in his theory of color, Newton
uses only a very few selected experiments. Moreover, they clearly do
not serve to collect data, but are conceived step-by-step as experimenta
crucis in the presentation of his theory. As far as Goethe is concerned,
162 GERNOT BOHME
this procedure deals in stereotypes and lacks a basis in experience; for

him Newton was a mathematician who strove in monomaniacal fashion
to establish his theories, and who stood far removed from experience.
(6) Let us mention one more thesis which helps to distinguish
Goethe's science from Newton's, one which Goethe himself was not
able to develop properly. As essential feature of Goethe's theory of
colors is a history of the "theory of color. Goethe maintains "that the
history of science is science itself' (HA 13, p. 319).
Looking back, if we review the points which Goethe uses to set
himself apart from Newton, it becomes evident that he focuses sharply
on traits in Newton which are characteristic features of modem natural
science: idealization, exhaustion, elementarism, the hypothetically deduc-
tive character of theories, the theoretical preformation of phenomena,
Cartesiamsm, and ahistoricity. We have attempted to show how, in the
polemic against this concept of science, a quite different view emerges
with Goethe, and that as each attempts to explain certain phenomena,
a genuine competition of theories arises. At this point, we are con-
strained to postpone the question about the outcome of this competi-
tion - the question about the truth of the theories - for we regard it as
our most urgent task to first make the solution of this problem as
difficult as possible. If we should add a preliminary commentary to this,
it would be the following: Doubtless Goethe is able to explain very well
'in his manner' a great multiplicity of phenomena in the area of
refractive colors. His theory really seems to fail with precisely those
experiments which Newton constructed especially for the proof of his
'hypothesis of diverse refrangibility,' for example, with the evidence of
different focal distances of a lens in varying, monochromatic light
(Opticks, Book I, Part I, Exper. 2). Newton shows that sharp images
result from black lines on a background of diverse colors in varying
distances from the lens; Goethe, however, must take his refuge in ad
hoc hypotheses dealing with contrastive effects.17 Another typical
example of the failure of Goethean theory is provided by Newton's very
fine experiment on the 'diverse reflexibility' of lights. What Newton
calls 'diverse reflexibility' (see Opticks, Book I, Part I, Def. 3) is
basically only a consequence of diverse refrangibility: the angle of
incidence at which refraction changes into total reflection varies
according to the light. In dealing with the corresponding experiment of
Newton, Goethe restricts himself to polemics, without attempting to
give an explanation. ls Another group of experiments where Goethe's
theory is visibly inferior consists of those which Newton expressly

constructed 'to refute Goethe,' that is, the ones in which Newton
systematically excludes an influence of external conditions. As an
example, let us mention the experiment with which Newton claims to
refute the "Goethean," actually - as Goethe himself knows - the very
old thesis that the colors of refraction appear only on the borders of
light and darkness (Book I, Part II, Exp. I). Newton shows in this
experiment, by introducing an obstacle in a packet of rays, that
individual colors, consisting of an image of refraction produced by the
obstacle, can be screened out. At the same time, however, the colors
which do appear are totally independent of the obstacle. Goethe cannot
undersand this experiment at all, much less interpret it in a reasonable
manner; he simply makes the trivial observation that an image of
refraction (a colored border) again arises at the shadow of the
obstacle. 19 Finally, it should be pointed out that he foundered on one
thoroughly 'natural' phenomenon: as far as we know, he did not
succeed, within the context of his theory, in offering a convincing
explanation of the rainbow (Speiser, pp. 90f).
In developing his theory, Newton clearly moved from the originally
given phenomenon in need of explanation (chromatic aberration) to
the experimental presentation of phenomena which 'only' his theory
would fit. As a counterbalance on Goethe's side, we would have to
mention again the physiological colors. The Newtonian theory, for its
part, offers no explanation for them. In order to highlight this counter-
balance more effectively, it must be said that Newton essentially does
not, and cannot, achieve his goal of explaining color phenomena
produced by light. For the activity of perceiving is always stamped upon
that which is perceived; a stylization is produced which cannot be
derived solely from the objective cause of perception. The weakness of
Newton's theory is thus most clearly evident in his 'psychophysical law,'
the law about the synthesis of colors from the colors of the spectrum,
through which he attributes some kind of vaguely felt harmony of color
relationships to the dispositions of light. 20
The theories of Newton and Goethe are sparked by the very same
phenomenon in need of explanation. They diverge more and more from
each other as they are worked out, as each produces or searches for its
own distinctive phenomena. From this perspective, it is clear that one
can solve the conflict between the two retrospectively by restricting
each to those phenomena peculiar to it. In this way, Newton's theory is
164 GERNOT BOHME
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.
IV. UNRESTRICTED ACCUMULATION OF KNOWLEDGE
How is Goethe's theory of colors to be judged under the criterion of

accumulation of knowledge? Goethe himself saw his work as well
suited for continuation; he expressly desired to have followers. To a
certain extent he found them, for example, in Runge, who expended the
color circle into a sphere using the value of black. And yet, the theory
of colors has not been granted unrestricted accumulation, as apparently
has been the case with the rest of natural science.
But many (for example, Peirce), have regarded it as a characteristic
of science that a body of knowledge is capable of unlimited con-
tinuation. Can we agree with this? Surely, it could happen that the
knowledge associated with a certain subject area can be exhausted in a
finite number of steps. It is becoming clear that physics, in its basic
principles, now capable of being completed. But this would not mean
that the empirical side is necessarily finite. Indeed, we assume that it is
not, first, because of the infinite complexity of the contingent aspects,
and second, because we assume an infinite number of technically
producible effects. Naturally, doubts can be raised about both points.
The connection of the actual with the infinite is the attempt to
distinguish it from the determinateness of the possible. Now, it is
probably true that we do not grasp something actual by specifying a
finitely large number of determinations. But we don't need to draw the
conclusion that we therefore would require an infinitely large number
of determinations. For the "infinity" of the actual could indeed also be
interpreted as indeterminateness. Conversely, one can also attempt to
abandon the individuality of the actual (as in certain types of statistics;
compare also in this regard the production and destruction of particles
in modem physics). To say that the actual is infinitely complex seems
more than anything else to be an emphatic statement about its high
degree of complexity. It is also not a self-evident thesis that one can
produce technologically any number of new effects. A presumed finite
number of natural basic forces would indicate otherwise. Is one
supposed to be able to produce "incalculable" effects with them? This

would amount to a highly metaphysical thesis involving a kind of
technological emergentism. Such reflections make it very doubtful that
one can grant validity to the notion of infinite progression as a criterion
of science.
Let us ask again where this demand for endless progression comes
from. It appears to have its origin in Kant. According to him, percep-
tions belong to experiences insofar as they can be integrated into a
unity. It is precisely the possibility of their connection which makes
them objective - in this manner they can be distinguished, for example,
from dreams and hallucinations. (Clearly, one must take into account
here the intersubjective connection.)
The principles which establish this unity with Kant are of the kind
that require continuation:
(a) The integration of the real according to space and time
requires an extension of the experience to infinite space and
infinite time (quantity).
(b) The division of the real requires an infinite continuation of the
search for "elementary" building blocks (quality, reality).
(c) The givenness of the real as an effect requires an infinite
continuation in the search for its causes (relation).
(d) The determinateness of the real with respect to its existence
requires an infinite continuation in the search for conditions of
phenomenal existence (modality).
What makes experience a systematic unity are the cosmological ideas
which present the world as a totality of given phenomena, and which in
their regulative use require an infinite continuation of the research
process (understood here as the obtaining of information).
In such a context Kant describes experimental science as a kind of
historia naturalis which has the mission of recording the totality of
possible facts and of arranging these into a "historical," or more
appropriately, a cosmological system. The task of natural science is thus
not exhausted for Kant in the obtaining of basic laws; its object in not
only
"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
Once we have recognized the origin of the requirement for an

infinite progression of knowledge in connection with an extensional
relation of nature, it becomes doubtful whether this requirement can
still be mandatory for modem natural science. Independent of this
question, we can say at any rate that Goethe's interest was not, and
perhaps could not be directed towards such an extensional relation.
In this regard, we must not be misled by the fact that Goethe himself,
as perhaps all the eighteenth century, was interested in an extensive and
comprehensive collection of phenomena. But this is by no means to
imply that an extensional relation of phenomena was being sought. For
example, the purpose here might be directed towards classification, that
is, towards extensional collection without the extensional relation. In
contrast to this, the principles of natural science which Kant describes
are directed towards the network of relations constituting nature, space,
time, causality, and the existential conditionality of phenomena. To a
certain extent, this last principle integrates the others into one. In
relation to their existence, the phenomena are dependent one upon the
other, and relate one to another. Goethe is not in the least interested in
such a relationship. He inquires rather about the following:
1. The conditions for the appearance of phenomena. These
conditions, however, are not sought in other phenomena, at
least not in those of the same order.
2. The relationship of phenomena - not about their relation in
terms of existense, but about their structural relationship.
V. INTERSUBJECTIVITY
Any science which operates empirically will have to show how it

ascertains its object. Operational rules must be given so that we may be
certain we are dealing with the object of that science. One might say
that through this procedure the object itself is defined in an operational
sense. This appears to be the case especially in the natural sciences
which operate by means of measurement: temperature is that which we
comprehend thermometrically; inert mass is that which we determine as
the constant property of a body through experiments with acceleration
and deceleration.
To begin with, Goethe gives a wealth of empirical rules for pro-
ducing color. He is concerned with describing his experiments. From
case to case, these descriptions support the intersubjective confirmation
of the phenomenon of color. The character of intersubjectivity deserves

some attention here, because it is usually regarded as mandatory for a
scientific approach.
Goethe distinguishes between SUbjective and objective color phe-
nomena; however, in enumerating the rules by which the phenomena
are affirmed, he assures intersubjectivity for the both types. To be sure,
from the perspective of physics, all of the Goethean colors would have
to be designated as subjective. Goethe always deals with that which we
as human beings see as color, and not, for example, with the con-
stituents of light as determined by their wave length. There is, indeed, a
substantial difference here. For example, light mixed from two com-
plementary colors (which therefore physically contains only two wave
lengths) is seen as colorless in the same way as light mixed from
all colors. What Goethe designates as colors are always the color
phenomena which are seen. Among them he still distinguishes in a
meaningful way between SUbjective and objective colors. Objective
colors are those which are encountered in objects and with which
objects can be illuminated, that is, primarily, chemical, and in part,
physical colors. Subjective colors are those which either are produced
only in the eye of the observer (for example, when we look through a
prism), or by the capability of the eye, as in the case with the physio-
logical colors. In both instances, the color which one sees cannot be
captured anywhere with a screen. For both types of color phenomena
Goethe assures intersubjectivity by giving the conditions of the experi-
ment. Thereby the phenomenon first becomes one that can be repro-
duced. Only rarely does Goethe mention examples which are contingent
or unique as a personal experience, either in his life or in someone
else's. Consequently, the claim is made that different scientists must be
able to agree about phenomena. This agreement, to be sure, always
takes place at the primary level, that is, by seeing. No empirical
research can do without agreement at the primary level, but in contrast
to Goethe, it reduces the concrete wealth of phenomena to a few
elementary, alternative determinations, for example, to the swing of a
needle to the right or left. These elementary alternatives are generally
so chosen that one cannot argue about them. The whole process of
coming to an understanding is thus shifted to the relationship of
elementary occurrences and phenomena which must be established by
argumentation. (An example would be the response of a Geiger counter
as an elementary occurrence, and the decay of the radium atom as a
168 GERNOT BOHME
phenomenon.) With Goethe, the wealth of phenomena is not reduced,

and the point of agreement remains whether one sees or does not see a
certain given phenomenon, for example, the blue coloring of a shadow.
The expected intersubjectivity is, to be sure, thus burdened with greater
uncertainty than is the case with the other modern natural sciences;
however, it does not appear-to be basically of a different kind.
Closer consideration should perhaps be given to one difference. This
is related to the fact that Goethe is basically interested in what the
modern natural scientist would call subjective phenomena. That which
we previously called reduction to elementary occurrences is, as a rule,
a procedure in modern science by which we guarantee objectivity, in
that we can leave it to an apparatus to decide whether a phenomenon
is present or not. Naturally, in the final analysis, a human being must
determine if an apparatus has registered or not. However, what is
determined, seen, or heard in the process can be a phenomenon of
quite a different kind from that which is being investigated. In this case,
the sensitivity of the apparatus becomes relevant to the level of
phenomena in which we are interested; for this realm of phenomena,
the sensitivity of the human being is excluded from the experiment.
The inner organization of the apparatus, not that of the human being,
therefore becomes the criterion for the appearance of a phenomenon.
This step can be viewed in two different ways. First, we can say that
in this manner a phenomenon is registered which is objective; that is,
we exclude in this manner that which originates only from the inner
organization of the human organs of perception. This point of view,
which would eliminate subjective participation as illusion (physiological
colors as optical illusion), is problematic because it registers as a
phenomenon that which appears to the human being, and yet leaves it
to the apparatus to decide what the true phenomenon is. (We hold to
"color" as a phenomenon, and allow an apparatus to decide if a color is
present, although the apparatus only responds to impulses of energy in
a given frequency.)
Second, we can say that in this procedure we no longer regard the
phenomenon in question to be color, but rather, the electromagnetic
oscillations which are registered. Thus, the sensation of color becomes
a mere detector of such an oscillation, and a quite uncertain one at that.
For what is sensed as having color must first be reduced to a con-
siderable degree in order to have any validity as a detector of the
phenomenon in question.
In order to clarify this matter, we should perhaps distinguish here

between a phenomenon (or better, an effect) as the subject matter of
physics and a phenomenon as something affecting the senses. Physics
secures its objectivity by granting validity only to those phenomena
which correlate with other objects; its subject matter is indeed estab-
lished by the possibility of such' a correlation. Causality is therefore a
requirement for this realm of objects. Things are quite different with the
sensuous phenomena. Their phenomenality is not seen in relation to
another object, but in relation to the perceiving subject. This rela-
tionship, however, should not be regarded as causal. For we cannot
distinguish here between two conditions, as is the case in physics
between the physical object and the registered apparatus. The sensuous
phenomenon is at once object and representation. However, if we want
to call the physical object the cause of the sensuous phenomenon
(oscillations for color), then the condition of the subject, the sensation
of color, is not to be understood as an effect, but at most as a response
to a cause (colored shadows, evoked colors). If we therefore wish to
construct a science, that is, a systematic body of knowledge, dealing
with the realm of sensuous phenomena, then the principle of causality
cannot be used as a general model. It is rather a question, on the one
hand, of inquiring into the ordered conditions necessary for the
appearance of the phenomena to be investigated, and on the other
hand, of seeking their orderly relationship with one another.
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
equivalent can be noted. A linguistically ordered understanding about

sense perceptions corresponds to the identification of an object
through the regulated use of an apparatus. 22 The varying of conditions
and the thorough examination of all which appears as concrete in the
natural order of phenomena correspond to the establishment of fixed
conditions and variations in parameter, as is proper for an hypothesis.
A law which demonstrates the structural relationship between phe-
nomena corresponds to a law which demonstrates the functional
relationship of quantitative data. An explanation which states the
inducement of the emergence of phenomena by means of polarization
corresponds to an explanation which establishes cause and effect. The
theoretical unity of the original phenomenon corresponds to the
theoretical establishment of a unity of given data by reducing them to
their underlying entities (atoms, molecules). If it thus appears prob-
lematic from the standpoint of a modern scientist to use the terms
'data,' 'experimental method,' 'law,' 'explanation,' or 'theory' in refer-
ence to Goethe, we can nevertheless find in his science an equivalent
for all of these. 23
We have at least indicated that it is not absurd to ask about alterna-
tives to modern natural science. Whether or not alternatives with a
Goethean imprint will serve a useful purpose is not yet certain.
If Goethe's theory of colors did not establish itself as a science, this
does not appear to us to be one of its many weaknesses, as were
exhibited especially in the polemics against Newton. We find the main
reason it remained a historically and personally isolated segment of
scientific endeavor was because of the interest guiding the scientific
investigation. This was aesthetic in nature; above all, Goethe hoped to
accomplish something for painting with his theory of colors. Indeed, it
has always been the painters who were interested in Goethe's theory of
colors - although certainly not in the scientific side of it. A special
question would be why painters are not interested in a theory of color
phenomena; the fact is, at any rate, that for ages certain rules of thumb
and practical pointers have sufficed for them. If Goethe's theory of
colors were to gain relevance today, it would have to emerge (through a
reformulation with the help of modern mathematics) in a different
context of practically defined concerns.
These concerns might arise if the need were felt for a science of
perception, perhaps for the purpose of constructing a 'humane' environ-
ment. Interest in a science of this kind could always occur 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.
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."
Goethe's distance from the Platonic-Aristotelian ontology is expressed in this adden-

dum. Being has in its appearance not only a more or less powerful efficacy, but also
experiences an intensification through the 'distress' into which it falls. H. Schmitz
(1954, yspecially §§6,7) made this point the crux of his Goethe interpretation.
4 Highly similar reflections can be found in an early piece by Kant, namely, in the
Versuch, den Begrijf der negativen Groj3en in die Weltweisheit einzuJiibren. Here too,
there is an attempt to make an in many ways observed polarity, or opposition of the
real (Real-Repugnanz), as Kant says, a general principle of empirical reality.
5 We find a related interpretation by A. Speiser (1951, p. 86): "Just as in Music the
constant series of tones is determined by the disjunct scale, a fact which actually makes
music possible, the continuous color circle should be divided by the hexagon of colors
red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet, and thus cause the multiplicity of colors to
have a harmonious effect". .
6 Another example: "How would it be possible for one of the first mathematicians to
use an approach so lacking in method ..." (Materia lien, HA 14, p. 175).

7 In a recent study, an attempt is made to explain Goethe's work in the natural sciences
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).
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Biihme, G.: 'Platons Theorie der exakten Wissenschaften', Antike und Abendland 22
(1976) 40-53, now also in Biihme (1980).
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Heisenberg, W.: 'Die Goethesche und die Newtonsche Farbenlehre im Lichte der
modemen Physik', in Wandlungen in den Grundlagen der Natunvissenschaft, 7th
edn., Hirzel, 1947.
Kleinschneider, M.: Goethes Naturstudien, Bouvier, Bonn, 1971.
Newton, 1.: Opticks, Dover, New York, 1952.
Ravetz, R.: 'Criticisms of Science', in Science, Technology and Society (ed. by J. Spiegel-
Rosing and de S. Price), Sage, Beverly Hills, 1977.
Schmitz, H.: Goethes Altersdenken, Bouvier, Bonn, 1959.
Speiser, A.: 'Goethes Farbenlehre', in Die mathematische Denkweise, Rascher, Ziirich,
1932.
Speiser, A.: 'Goethes Farbenlehre', in Goethe und die Wissenschaft, Klostermann,
Frandfurta.M,1951.
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Physics 44 (1976) 327-33.
Institut flir Philosophie

Technische Hochschule Darmstadt
6100 Darmstadt, Schloss
DENNIS L. SEPPER
GOETHE AGAINST NEWTON:

TOWARDS SAVING THE PHENOMENON 1
Wer ein Phanomen vor Augen hat, denkt

schon oft driiber hinaus; wer nur davon
erziihlen hort, denkt gar nicht.
(Goethe, Maximen, No. 1227)
In all the scientific work of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe nothing is

more notorious than his polemic against Isaac Newton's theory of white
light and colors. This "great error" has been a constant source of
embarrassment to reverers of Goethe that seemingly can be explained
only by analyzing his psyche or his poetic metaphysics. Not a few,
including Hermann von Helmholtz, thought that precisely Goethe's
poetic talent prevented him from understanding modern natural sci-
ence. His advocacy of direct and immediate experience, it is said,
made possible his contributions to descriptive sciences like plant and
animal morphology but also kept him from real insight into the abstract
techniques and power of mathematico-physical science (1971, pp. 21-
44). His polemics against Newton are taken to be the clearest testimony
of Goethe's one-sidedness; the most one can say in his defense, it
seems, is that in the struggle to assert the rights of the world of
appearances he sinned against a truth that can only be uncovered
by methods that go behind and beyond the phenomena. Of course in
the twentieth century there has been a partial rehabilitation of the
Farbenlehre, especially in its treatment of physiological and psycho-
logical aspects of color, and a greater readiness to acknowledge its
virtues (e.g. concreteness) vis-a-vis modern theoretical physics. Yet we
still tend by and large to construe Goethe's undertaking as directed
against modern physics, not least because of the polemic against
Newton.
Is Goethe an opponent of modern physics? He opposed Newton's
optics; but few realize that he spoke approvingly of the wave-theory of
light, which was formulated in a much more sophisticated mathematics
than was Newton's.2 I do not propose to give an unambiguous yes or no
to the question of Goethe's attitude towards modern physics here;
175
F. Amrine,.F. J. Zucker, and H. Wheeler (eds.), Goethe and the Sciences:
176 DENNIS L. SEPPER
rather, I wish to reopen it by arguing that Goethe's theory of color and

in particular his polemic against Newton's theory have been largely
misconceived, even by Goetheans, as the result of ahistorical presup-
positions about the character and extent of Newton's achievement and
the principal aims of Goethe's science. To put things as succinctly as
possible: 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 writtings 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. Goethe made his initial foray into the sciences of optics
and color because he noted a condition that had been overlooked in
most eighteenth-century statements of the theory and that led to certain
inconsistencies between what was expected and what actually happened.
He went about this work with the intention of creating a rigorously
and comprehensively inductive science that kept facts or phenomena
strictly separated from hypotheses. Through research that was historical
as well as experimental, he become ever more aware how theory and
fact are intertwined, how every attentive look at the world already
involves theorizing.3 Yet he did not abandon the distinction between
theory and phenomenon as a result, for especially from the example of
Newton's theory he realized that the more one puts hypotheses and
abstractly theoretical statements (and their proof) at the focal point of
science the harder it becomes to look at the phenomena with an
unprejudiced eye; indeed, abstractly theoretical seeing distorts actual
seeing. In opposition to the theory-centered approach of Newtonian
chromatics Goethe proposed to make phenomena and their ways of
appearing the heart of science. Concomitantly he explored and tried to
incorporate into science the variety of ways in which phenomena can be
experienced and conceived (what he called the Vorstellungsarten -
'modes of conceptualization'). Accordingly the major aim of natural
science could no longer be to establish the truth of an hypothesis, e.g.
by showing there is an (approximately) exact fit between prediction and
experimental result in a few "crucial" cases, but rather to strive for
overall fidelity in one's way of seeing (theoria) to the variety
GOETHE AGAINST NEWTON 177
of phenomena conceived as comprehensively as possible. Far from

repudiating quantity and exactitude, this approach rather locates them
within the network of which they are a part: the array of knowledge,
praxis, and experience that ranges from the circumstances of everyday
life to the sophisticated and highly-instrumentalized inquiries of the
abstract theorist. Goethe feared' that by neglecting this context the
natural sciences risked becoming deracinated and irrational, and that in
cultivating hypotheses more intently than phenomena they exposed
themselves to the vagaries of undisciplined imagination.4
The Farbenlehre is thus far more than an alternative 'theory' or
'doctrine' of color; it is in fact a reconstitution of chromatics, the
science of color as distinguished from optics, and a refoundation of the
principles and methods of the empirical natural sciences. It embraces
experimental science, history of science, and philosophy of science,
understood not as independent undertakings but as the three major
aspects of the single human project of encountering and comprehend-
ingnature.
Elsewhere 5 I have substantiated the preceding claims and have
narrated how and why phenomenality became for Goethe the chief
foundational principle for the empirical natural sciences and their
historical continuity. Here I can indicate only in a general way the
origins of Goethe's confrontation with Newton and the historical
horizon of the Farbenlehre - and therefore run the risk of over-
simplification, a problem endemic to accounts of Goethe's science, both
pro and contra.
What was Goethe opposing when he criticized Newton's theory?
First and foremost, a theory that misrepresented the phenomena;
second, a method that misconceived the proper relationship between
theory and phenomenon; third, a community of science that for more
than a century had failed to examine critically work esteemed as much
for the sake of the man who wrote it as for its content.
Newton's optical work of course is considered today the foundation
of modern color science, and from his experimental techniques a
fundamental tool of modern physics, spectroscopy, grew. Moreover, if
we consider the history of the natural sciences in the eighteenth century
we recognize that the method Newton employed in presenting his
theory became that century's major paradigm of how experimental
science should be conducted and what it can achieve. With so much in
Newton's favor, both then and now, Goethe's critique was bound to
provoke incredulity. Nevertheless it was by and large justified, even

though it is marred by passages of excessive vehemence and a some-
times too all-encompassing condemnation of Newton's theory in every
aspect.
Newton's theory indeed has many aspects, and one cannot under-
stand the major thrusts of 'Goethe's critique unless one has a fairly clear
sense of at least a few of them. A bit of history can perhaps explain
some of the issues. Before Newton, optics and the science of color were
only tenuously connected; it would probably be an exaggeration to say
that before him there was a full-fledged science of color. But Newton
joined the two into a unified science by combining the mathematical
approach of geometrical optics with the approach of empirical physics
and thereby made the study of light and color a mathematico-physical,
empirical science. The chief tool of the new approach was the experi-
mentum crucis, or crucial experiment, the paradigm case of which is to
be found under that name in a letter of Newton's to the Royal Society
of London from February 1672 (1959, vol. 1, pp. 92-102). Into a
darkened room he admitted a beam of sunlight through a narrow
opening; this beam was refracted by a glass prism (with a large
refracting angle, approximately 60°); it was almost immediately inter-
cepted by a board with a small circular aperture; the light that passed
through this aperture proceeded to a second board, about 12 feet from
the first and also provided with a small circular hole; the light that
passed through this was immediately refracted by a second prism
similar to the first and cast on the wall. By rotating the first prism in
this set-up Newton was able to make the spectrum that appeared on the
second board move up or down, so that any small segment of the
spectrum desired might be made to fall on the hole; in this way
different rays could be isolated and refracted by the second prism. With
this apparatus and technique he was able to show that the light most
refracted the first time (i.e. the light appearing at the violet end of the
spectrum cast on the second board) is also the most refracted the
second time - with both prisms arranged to refract upwards it will
appear highest on the wall - and as you proceed through the spectrum
towards the opposite end you find that the second refraction is
progressively less, and at a minimum with red. Newton concluded that
ordinary light is composite, i.e. that different kinds of rays with different
degrees of refrangibility exist already in the original white light (the
doctrine of diverse refrangibility). Moreover, the same experiment
shows that there is a close correlation between refrangibility and color

(note that the crucial experiment seems to depend only on position, not
on color, though for the sake of easy reference it is convenient to
mention the colors), and Newton proceeded immediately to elaborate a
corollary theory of color, according to which there was a "very precise
and strict" proportion between degree of refrangibility and color. He
claimed that he had put the properties of diverse refrangibility and
color beyond suspicion of doubt, indeed that he had made the science
of colors mathematical.6
Although Newton later went on to explore other phenomena of
color and light, he retained this basic theory with only slight modifica-
tions. The first book of the Opticks presents it in a quasi-Euclidean
format, where the proof no longer depends on a single crucial experi-
ment but rather proceeds through series of them, each of which is
meant to prove theorems and confirm or refute propositions. 7
Scientists of the eighteenth century were greatly impressed and
influenced by this theory and its presentation. They accepted the basic
theory as proven fact, as clearly and indubitably true, just as Newton
had intended. Yet they seem also to have accepted that the science of
color was essentially complete - apart from leaving unexplained the
exact workings of the eye and the 'sensorium,' Newton certainly
cultivated this impression - and were thus discouraged from doing
further color research. After Newton the eighteenth century has rela-
tively little to show in the science of color and even in optics; and we
must always keep in mind when considering Goethe's polemics, which
savaged the inertia of Newton's successors even more than the errors of
the master, that the century he looked back upon had added virtually
nothing to the original doctrine and in many cases had corrupted it. We
who look back on the rich progress of chromatics since the middle of
the nineteenth century and who therefore know that a great deal
remained to be done tend to forget this. We also easily overlook that
after Goethe's lifetime the notion of what kind of certainty and
durability scientific theories can have started to change. A scientist
today could not responsibly make the kinds of truth-claims that Newton
did. Furthermore, historians in this century have revealed that Newton's
arguments are neither perfectly cogent nor free of underlying hypotheses
- Newton's assertions to the contrary notwithstanding - and that he
sometimes described phenomena tendentiously and even occasionally
misrepresented them. 8 If we ignore these things we will have over-
looked some of the major foci of Goethe's attacks, in particular the

fetish of exactitude and absolutely certain and exhaustive proof that was
integral to Newton's theory and that became an ideal manque of
eighteenth-century experimental science.
Thus, although there is no doubt that Newton introduced important
tools and concepts and -that many of his insights eventually proved
immensely fruitful, the immediate effect was not so fortunate. Besides
the dogmatism and the excessive claims about the theory's validity and
scope already noted, Newton created certain conceptual tensions in the
science of color. For example, today we commonly distinguish between
the physics of color and the perception of color, and we know that the
former, which corresponds to the bulk of Newton's work, cannot in
itself explain the latter.9 Although Newton occasionally drew this same
kind of distinction, the entire tendency of his work was to reduce color
to a simple function of refrangibility and to endow the colors of spectral
light with ontological primacy. The theory of (real!) colors was to be a
corollary of the theory of diverse refrangibility. Even as his later work
compelled him to make concessions to the difference between physics
and perception (e.g. with his color circle), he tried to assimilate the
results to diverse refrangibility. Indeed he had to, if he was to preserve
the lattet doctrine's aura of certainty intact, for its proof requires the
closest connection between refrangibility and color. lO
One does not need the sophisticated color research since Helmholtz
and Grassmann to discover a certain incommensurability between color
and the physical composition of light. For example, the phenomena of
colored shadows, which Goethe explored thoroughly already in the
early 1790s, demonstrate that light falling on the retina which is
physically the same can produce radically different colors under
different circumstances of ambient illumination. But one needn't go so
far afield: Newton's spectrum itself is a witness against the strong
version of his basic theory (i.e. that there is a strict proportionality or
equivalence between refrangibility and color in the spectrum). Refrangi-
bility is measured on an indifferent numerical or linear continuum; the
visible solar spectrum produced by Newton on the other hand is
continuous in the sense that it displays no gaps (with circular rather
than linear apertures absorption lines do not appear), but its chromatic
qualities are anything but indifferent. Arithmetically, 1.50 is equidistant
from 1.49 and 1.51, but the spectral color corresponding to a given
physical index (e.g. wavelength or refractive index) is very likely not to
be equidistant in perceptual terms from two colors whose correspond-

ing physical indexes are equally far from one another. Rather than
showing an 'infinite' number of gradations of color, Newton's spectrum
appears to display a limited number arrayed in broad, fairly distinct
segments, with hardly any obvious variation in hue across each
segment. Even if we isolate very narrow spectral bands and do a
side-by-side comparison, the number of discriminable hues will be
small compared to the several thousand we could enumerate in, say,
whole-numbers of Angstroms.!!
It is interesting in this connection that Newton typically described
the spectrum as consisting of red, yellow, green, blue, and violet (and
added sometimes orange and indigo) and, as he would go on to say, all
intermediate gradations. That is, despite the quantitative indifference
there are good perceptual reasons for emphasizing certain hues rather
than others, though on quantitative grounds all would have claim to
equal status. He also spent much energy in vain trying to show that
the proportions between the segments of color in the spectrum corre-
sponded to the ratios of the diatonic musical scale - which once again
reveals that there are relationships in the perceived spectrum that do
not simply reduce themselves to refrangibility. These phenomena may
not be as striking as the crucial experiment, but they intimate that some
other kind of approach is needed to extend the science of color and
make it more complete.
It is also highly significant that most subsequent eighteenth-century
accounts of the theory overlooked the infinite gradations and some-
times even asserted the existence of just seven kinds of raysP Newton
cannot be held accountable for all the mistakes of his followers, but
surely the consistent misinterpretation points to some dimly-felt need to
resolve the tension between the continuous and the discrete, between
the phenomenon according to theory and the phenomenon that is seen.
Goethe was chiefly interested in exploring precisely those properties
and relationships of color that escape the rather elementary mathe-
matics of the Newtonian theory. He tirelessly explored phenomena and
aspects of them that lay beyond the standard theory's ken, and he was
made all the more tenacious by the repeated insistence of his physicist
acquaintances that Newton had already "perfectly explained" (HA 14,
p. 260) the phenomena of color. He was, as it were, forced into a
critical attitude towards Newton and the Newtonians. At any rate, the
inertia of his contemporaries compelled him to undertake the effortful
work of reperforming and analyzing Newton's experiments and proofs,

of uncovering their misrepresentations of the phenomena, of elaborat-
ing their hidden assumptions and tendencies, and of bringing to light
the logic and rhetoric of Newton's presentation. The result was the
polemical part of the Farbenlehre, which is less a philippic than an
exegesis (of the first book of the Opticks), less a venting of spleen on
his great nemesis than an indictment pf those who had come after and
instead of setting about the work of reexamination, correction, and
extension had fallen down in adulation. Goethe believed that it was
necessary to refound chromatics, not as an appendage to optics but as a
science in its own right, and to lay a foundation of phenomena rather
than of theory. His efforts at elaborating from this foundation a positive
doctrine were tentative and sometimes defective, and they were greatly
weakened both by his failure to investigate light with the same
thoroughness he had employed in his analyses of color - the
Farbenlehre explicitly excludes a closer study of light from its scope, or
rather presumes the existence of such a study (HA 13, pp. 315 and
323) - and by his unwillingness to take advantage in any way of the
economy and precision that mathematical formulations and measure-
ments can lend when appropriately applied to the study of nature.
Although he did concede that number and measure could be applied to
his work and urged others to undertake the task, he greatly damaged
his cause by not showing from the beginning how they might be
fruitfully employed in the Farbenlehre.
It would be misleading, however, to leave the impression that Goethe
opposed Newton's theory for forty years and even resorted to polemics
simply because Newton had gotten a few things wrong and Goethe
wanted to' supplant him with his own chromatics. That may be a
viewpoint adequate for understanding his earliest studies but not their
continuation. More than anything else Goethe was combatting a
defective conception of science and scientific method that had helped
bring about the dogmatic entrenchment of diverse refrangibility. The
methodological focus of Goethe's critique, explained hardly at all in his
earliest publications on color, the two Beitriige zur Optik of 1791 and
1792, but at length in an essay written almost contemporaneously with
them (unfortunately not published until three decades later), The
Experiment as Mediator between Object and SUbject,' 13 is the question
of how one keeps one's experience of phenomena and experiments
separate from what one thinks and hypothesizes about them. According
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-
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
most rigorous inductivists. But he did not stop here, he went on to

elaborate a philosophical and historical vision of natural science that
rivals even the best 20th-century philosophy and history of science (a
vision which Friedrich Schiller christened rational empiricism).14 At
some point in the decade of the 1790s Goethe came to recognize that
there could be no single, comprehensive, and authoritative way of
conceiving and presenting the phenomena of color. There were many
factors at work in this development, including his attempts to continue
the series of the Beitriige zur Optik (which led to his discovery of the
fundamental importance of the so-called physiological colors), his
reading of Kant and his conversations with the Kantian Schiller, the
deepening of his historical studies, and his growing awareness that the
resistance to his work was motivated not simply by blockheadedness or
ill-will but by a different way of seeing and explaining the world that
had become inveterate in physicists and even in the educated public. In
response he began to note with avidity and assiduity the variety of ways
of (re)presenting the world, the Vorstellungsarten, for which the history
of the natural sciences is the richest source. These Vorstellungsarten, at
least in first approximation, appear to be ideal types of consciousness
that are historically rare in unalloyed form but that nevertheless are
fundamentally at· work in science, in experience, in language. The
historical part of the Farbenlehre, though it does not offer a formalized
schema of the Vorstellungsarten, is suffused with their presence. As we
read through it we see the continual emergence, interplay, adaptation,
ebb, and reemergence of - to name some of the chief ones - the
genetic and the atomistic, the dynamic and the mechanical, the concrete
and the abstract, the mathematical and the physical, the material and
the spiritual ways of thinking and conceiving things. One concrete
example: Newton's intelligence Goethe describes as atomistic, mechani-
cal, and above all mathematical; he himself inclines more to the genetic,
the dynamic, and the concrete. He understood these characteristic traits
as influencing all of one's cognitive life, right down to apparently
innocuous attempts at describing and organizing simple phenomena.
Ironic as it may be, the man who found himself compelled to
polemicize against the Newtonian theory of white light and color
because of the undue limitations and distortions it had imposed on
scientific seeing was really a scientific pluralist who believed that proof
and refutation can have only limited scope and thus can not be the
essential activity of science. The truth, to be comprehended, must be
approached from all its many sides. A priori there is no single,

authoritative way to approach a given phenomenon; and a single human
being, plagued by many kinds of one-sidedness, would scarcely be able
to produce a science on his own. Thus pluralism is not just one among
many desiderata but an absolute prerequisite for a constructive and
progressive science, whose goal is less to produce a set of true
propositions and indoctrinate scientists into their intention than to
amplify the human experience of nature - which includes amplifying
the store of technical means - and to enrich our comprehension of it
by cultivating our ability to see natural wholes (e.g. the unity of a
potentially infinite class of prismatic experiments) and to recognize the
complex of their interrelationships to which 'nature' refers. One
consequence is that mathematical exactitude is to be sought where it is
truly exacting, i.e. faithful to the disciplined scientific seeing that arises
from the comprehensive rehearsal of the phenomena; yet it cannot be
allowed to supplant actual scientific experience (in the way that
Newton's theory supplanted and obscured the phenomena of color so
that ultimately his followers either merely repeated his formulations or
used his experiments to reconfirm what he had said). The education
of scientists, the methods of research, the role of serendipity, the
standards. of rationality, the civilized conduct of debate: these and a
whole spectrum of other activities, entities, and relationships concomi-
tant with and sometimes essential to science can never be adequately
quantified or systematized. All these things are the scientist's concern;
let us then treat them as such, says Goethe, and not as secondary or
peripheral because our measuring stick won't work.
In twentieth-century philosophy of science the theory-Iadenness of
facts has led to the paradoxes of apparently self-validating theories (the
theory shapes the fact, the fact in tum is used to confirm the theory)
and the incommensurability of competing theories, with the result that
science and its changes take place on ground that is constantly in
danger of shifting. If there are no independent facts, and if no two
theories are strictly comparable with one another or about the same
things, then science and scientific change appear to suffer from a
fundamental irrationality that makes them subject to the preferences
and prejudices of individuals and institutions, to the winds of philo-
sophical fashion, to the vagaries of political interests, in fact to a whole
host of extraneous factors. The conclusion is of course alarming to
those who, like Goethe, see natural science as one of the noblest
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
tendentious than one undertaken in the spmt of unproblematic

factuality. Thus even though it is never possible in science to claim with
certainty that one has overcome all inappropriate preconceptions, it
may well be possible to present the phenomena in a way that, though it
reflects certain Vorstellungsarten, nevertheless will be useful even to
those who do not share these ways of conceiving things. Despite his
knowledge that the Farbeniehre was only a new beginning for chromatic
science and was inevitably marked by characteristic Vorstellungsarten,
then, Goethe could still argue that the didactic part of the work
had general utility. The mere existence of such a compendium of
phenomena, systematically arranged and more exhaustive than any that
had preceded, would help recall color scientists to the matter of their
subject and its proper forms, and might prevent overanxious theorists
from disregarding entire groups of phenomena or dismissing them as
unimportant or anomalous. It could serve the pedagogical function of
orienting beginners in the science, who otherwise would know the
phenomena only in the terms of theories. Even the circumstance that it
reflected certain Vorstellungsarten and not others could be a virtue: for
only when scientists confront other Vorstellungsarten can they well
assess the strengths and limitations of their own, and by seeing the truth
- even if partial - of other ways they may be able to amplify and
enrich their experience and conceptions of things. 17
Goethe frequently pointed out to friends that his scientific work had
made him many-sided by compelling him to entertain different points
of view, some of which he was able to incorporate into his own; and
by practicing sciences he gradually developed "organs" for experi-
encing and understanding that originally he had not possessed (see, for
example, LA 1.3, pp. 303 and 305). He had learned even to appreciate
the attractions and merits of notions that were not compatible with his
own way of seeing. By giving up the insistence that there is one and
only one truth, expressible in a set of propositions on which all could
agree and towards which all researchers would converge, yet retaining
the imperative of comprehensiveness in experience, he bade farewell to
the absoluteness of certainty in favor of a rich, many-sided scientific
culture, which in tum is embraced by the human culture in which
science takes place. For him, the rationality of science was grounded in
a human openness to the world that is always going beyond itself as it
seeks a way back to its origins.
We must not edify ourselves into thinking that this Goethean
rationality is easy; certainly the limited success of his Farbenlehre

should make us wonder. Perhaps it was Goethe himself who best
recognized the difficulties, as can be seen from the scientific essays of
the last decades of his life and even more in works like Wahlver-
wandtschaften, Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, and the second part of
Faust. The difficulties are perhaps starkest in the contrast near the end
of Faust between the contemplative, all-seeing watchman Lynkeus and
the dynamic but blind and dying Faust. To understand nature and the
world we must achieve a perspective from which we can perceive
everything as it has been and is: the situation of Lynkeus. In the struggle
to experience and understand, however, we must act; action is always
particular, and dealing with things particularly ordinarily cannot reveal
them in their wholeness, in fact it may alter them. The interests,
including self-interests, that our actions serve may even blind us to
tensions and contradictions we have fostered. This is the dilemma of
the mighty Faust, who has transformed the world in his quest to come
face to face with nature, simply, as a man alone. He has acted as though
truth is fundamentally remote and hidden (albeit manipulable once it is
discovered) and tried to force it to appear. In seeking what is furthest,
however, he has ravaged the object of his hope and pursuit. Even in
blindness, however, he seems to share in the truth; prepared as he is to
continue devastating earth and sea for the sake of his constructions, he
sees in imagination a world where he might find It possible and
desirable to live and abide. Is the conclusion that human erring is
inevitable but still oriented towards truth, if only partial truth, and that
even in the depths of errancy we in some sense anticipate it? This could
be reason for perseverant hope, if not optimism. The hope would be
that the passion for revealing a world in naked truth does not destroy
what is near and true but inconspicuous because of its constant
proximity; and that the light in our inward eye is not the blinding
fireball searing everything near and far. To realize this hope we would
need to remember that in trying to understand nature we likewise
reveal our own nature. Unless we are constantly attentive to both, we
shall surely, albeit darkly, live out the consequences of our science, in
all its magnificence, in all its partiality.
NOTES
I Earlier versions of portions of this essay appeared in papers delivered at the 1982
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
respond to the epistemological and material criticisms advanced earlier (1672-1677).

It is interesting to note that the last of the original critics died the year before the
Opticks was published.
8 Besides Shapiro(1980), one might also consult such works as Lohne (1968), Sabra
(1967), and Laymon (1978). Among recent philosophers and historians of science, only
Feyerabend (1970) has realized that this very type of critique had already been carried
out by Goethe.
9 The interested reader can fmd out more about the history of modern color science
and differences between physical and perceptual approaches from, for example,
Wasserman (1978). Though Ronchi (1957) deals chiefly with optics rather than color
theory, he is highly instructive about confusions between physics and perception.
Ronchi shows in astonishing detail how the relative successes of geometrical and
physical optics have led scientists to overlook even gross discrepancies between theory
and what is seen in actuality. Ronchi's desire to establish a science of optics (of the
seeing eye) independent of the science of radiation parallels Goethe's wish to set up a
chromatics independent of optics. We must not forget, however, that our articulation of
the sciences, and in particular our mathematico-physical science of radiation, has (and
probably always will have) roots going back into the phenomena and thus will not be
independent of the more phenomenally-oriented science.
10 In asserting this I take issue with the standard claim that Newton proved diverse
refrangibility without needing any reference to color. In order to see this, one must first
realize that the experimentum crucis depends very much on its context, a context that
relies heavily on the essential equivalence in the spectrum of refrangibility and colora-
tion. The proof benefits from the ambiguity created by what precedes it. I argue this at
length in Seeing and Knowing, part 3.
\I C. V. Raman (1968), pp. 22-28, discusses the appearance of the spectrum under
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
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
Bechler, Z.: 'Newton's 1672 Optical Controversies: A Study in the Grammar of

Scientific Dissent', in The Interaction between Science and Philosophy (ed. by Y.
Elkana), Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, N. J., 1974.
Feyerabend, P. K.: 'Classical Empiricism', in The Methodological Heritage of Newton
(ed. by R. E. Butts and J. W. Davis), Univ. of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1970.
Gogelein, c.: Zu Goethes Begriff von Wissenschaft auf dem Wege der Methodik seiner
Farbstudien, Hanser, Munich, 1972.
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
THEORY OF SCIENCE IN THE LIGHT OF

GOETHE'S SCIENCE OF NATURE*
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
196 HJALMAR HEGGE
The answer, then, to the question of what interest Goethe's research

can hold for modern theory of science is to be found by bringing these
principles to light. We must try to do what Goethe himself has done,
but not sufficiently systematically, namely, explicate the theoretical
assumptions underlying his research. The task here is virtually no
different from that confroI).ting the foundational researcher in mathe-
matics who tries to formulate the rules which the mathematician
implicitly adopts in his scientific practice.
If there is reason to believe that an analysis of Goethe's actual
research will disclose quite definite methodological principles, it is also
reasonable to assume that Goethe's remarks on the philosophy of
science, however fragmentary, will nevertheless be of the greatest value
in bringing these principles to light.
In the following we will therefore try to explain Goethe's view of
science by means of a combination of the two procedures indicated. We
will consider, on the one hand, his actual scientific work - particularly
the theories of colour and of the metamorphosis of plants - and, on
the other, compare the results of this investigation with Goethe's own
remarks on the nature of science.
II
If we look at the most developed and systematic part of Goethe's

scientific work, his theory of colour, its distinctive methodology is very
obvious. The traditional physical theory of light and colour consists
essentially of a quantitative mathematical treatment of the phenomena,
but characteristically Goethe never uses a quantifying method. While
the theory of light and colour in contemporary physics is in the main
a wave-theory, that is, a science of those aspects of the phenomena
of light and colour that can be described quantitatively, i.e. measured,
Goethe's theory of colour deals with these phenomena as qualities and
tries to explicate the relations between these.
It is further characteristic of Goethe's theory of colour that just as
little as it tries to bring the observations under quantitative-physical
concepts, so also does it avoid incorporating them within a causal
schema in which the causes lie outside the domain of the colour
qualities themselves. In this too it differs radically from traditional
theory of light and colour, for which it is precisely a basic principle that

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198 HJALMAR HEGGE
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
The continued influence of this judgment, delivered as it is with all

Helmholtz's scientific authority, upon contemporary appraisals of
Goethe's natural science may be felt, for example, in the attitude of a
distinguished historian of science, E. G. Boring, who dismisses Goethe's
theory of colour as an "excursion of a poet into science" (1942, p. 116).
GOETHE'S SCIENCE OF NATURE 199
III
The rejection of Goethe's theory of colour by nineteenth-century

philosophers of science, as well as physicists and physiologists, is thus
due to the fact that it holds that light and colour are in principle as
objective or 'outwardly real' -as the quantitatively and physically
describable waves and movements taken account of by physicists. But
was this because Goethe "lacked the concept of mechanical causality"?
The theory of primary and secondary sense-qualities has been
exposed to severe criticism since the end of the last century, a criticism
that has deprived it of the standing it once had in theory of science, and
today we must consider it to have been in the main abandoned (Hegge,
1957, pp. 142ff). The principal objection has been that it rests on a
false ontological interpretation of a particular method of research,
namely that of the quantitative-physical consideration and systematizing
of sense observations (Burtt, 1950). The fact that certain physical
properties, namely the mechanical properties of extension, movement,
impact, and pressure, as opposed to properties like colour, sound, etc.,
can be described quantitatively is no justification for attributing 'reality'
to the former class of properties while withholding it from the latter.
But in that case there is no warrant either for conceiving of 'a world
of invisible atoms and movements, of attractive and repulsive forces' as
causing all other phenomena, or for seeing the task of science as that of
tracing these phenomena back to such quantifiable mechanical-physical
'forces'. "Mechanics," Mach maintained already at the beginning of this
century, "does not grasp the foundation, nor even a part of the world,
but only an aspect of it" (1908, p. 554). So far, therefore, recent
criticism has removed the basis for the objections which the nineteenth-
century theorists of science, physicists, and physiologists, with Du
Bois-Reymond and Helmholtz to the fore, levelled against Goethe's
conception of science.
One could say, then, that far from lacking the concept of 'mechanical
causality,' Goethe's theory of colour, on the contrary, avoids the false
ontological interpretation of this concept which, with few exceptions,
stamped science and theory of knowledge all the way from Galileo to
Helmholtz. The fact that Goethe not only instinctively avoided this
interpretation in his research, but was also clearly aware at the
theoretical level of this ontological misuse of the quantitative or
mathematical-physical method in natural science, comes out in many
200 HJALMAR HEGGE
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
of the method which is expressed in the theory of primary and

secondary qualities, Goethe's view here has support in modem theory
of science. However, in his theory of colour Goethe rejects the method
altogether, and the question arises whether he has simply failed to
appreciate the scientific fruitfulness of the development of the kind of
all-embracing deductive system which the use of mathematics makes
possible.
IV
Goethe has expressed his views on the use of mathematics as a method

in a number of places, including two small essays. In the introduction to
'tIber Mathematik und deren Missbrauch' he says, among other things:
"I have heard myself criticized as if I were an opponent, an enemy, of
mathematics in general, which in fact no one can value more highly
than I" (1884-1897, 2, p. 45).
Just what this high opinion of mathematics amounts to he states
explicitly in another small essay, 'Der Versuch als Vermittler von
Objekt und Subjekt': "We have to learn from the mathematician the
careful cautiousness with which he proceeds step by step, deducing
each step from' the preceding one, and even where we employ no
calculation, we must always proceed as if we had to render account to
the strictest geometrician" (1884-1897, 2, p. 19).
What Goethe values in mathematics, therefore, is not the content of
mathematical statements concerning quantities, curves, planes, etc., but
its logical structure. This explains why his own theory of colour
includes no quantitative-mathematical items, whether arithmetical or
geometrical formulae, while he claims at the same time to have learnt
his method precisely from 'the mathematicians.' By a mathematical
method Goethe means much the same as, e.g., Spinoza's 'more
geometrico' or Leibniz's 'mathesis universalis.' For him, therefore, it is a
method whose use can conceivably be extended to areas other than that
of quantifiable phenomena or the geometrician's domain of curves,
planes, etc., for example to the domain of colour qualities.
So it is the rigour and certainty of mathematical validation that are
Goethe's methodological model. In other words, just like the geometer,
he attempts to construct a theory, in this case a theory of colour,
in which one link leads to another in a clearly discernible chain of
inferences. His aim is to arrive at a comparatively small number
202 HJALMAR HEGGE
of simple, well-defined elements, corresponding to the axioms of

geometry, that is, expressions which are not further reducible to others,
but express basic concepts in the system from which the other elements
are derived. Goethe calls these 'Urphanomene,' or primal phenomena,
and he describes them and their use as follows: "These [primal
phenomena] can be formulated in short, pregnant sentences, compared
and - as they are developed - arranged and brought into such a
relationship with one another that they, just like mathematical state-
ments, regarded individually or in their interrelationships, remain
firm."?
What Goethe attempts here, therefore, is an axiomatizing of the
domain of colour qualities. And why should not an axiomatizing be as
possible for colour qualities in science of colour as it is for curves,
planes, etc. in geometry? He asks: "What is exact in mathematics except
exactness itself? And this again, is it not a consequence of the feeling of
truth?" (Spriiche in Prosa: 1884-1897,4, p. 405). Goethe is aiming at
a deductive system for the phenomena of light and colour, but without
quantification of the phenomena. Just as in pure geometry one works
with a set of simple basic principles from which more complex ones can
be deduced, so also, thinks Goethe, in a science of colour it is possible
to develop· a system in which complex colour phenomena can be
deduced from 'primary phenomena.'
So far then, there is no discrepancy in principle between modem
methodology and Goethe's conception. Certainly, one may doubt the
practicability and fruitfulness ofaxiomatizing and developing deductive
systems in the domain of colour qualities, but one cannot deny the
possibility of doing so in principle. The reason why Goethe's work has
hitherto made no real impact on modem research must be sought
elsewhere, namely in the fruitfulness of the traditional theory of colour
first elaborated by Newton.
We indicated above the usefulness of mathematical-physical models
in theory of colour, as in other areas of natural science, and their
importance in the development of modem technology. Here Goethe's
theory of colour has played almost no part at all (an exception worth
noting being the development of colour television). On the other hand,
the theory has proved extremely fruitful for the art of painting and for
the artist's understanding of the phenomena of colour. The criterion of
fruitfulness is of course not to be understood simply as a measure of
technical utility (in the Baconian sense), inasmuch as what is regarded
as fruitful in a scientific method depends on an evaluation of the kind

of understanding it provides. The question is, therefore, in the first
instance more normative than empirical.
But it is always possible to point to factors which determine the
choice between one or another criterion of fruitfulness. With regard to
modern science's preference for mathematical-physical methods, for
example, Arne Naess has undoubtedly hit on something important
when he points out that the fact that "the shapes, movements, and in
general processes of solid, simple bodies dealt with in geometry and
mechanics are familiar to people ... has contributed to the fact that
many of the best known and most fruitful models are 'mechanical'." 8
It follows that convenience, in a certain sense, in the development
and use of scientific methods plays a significant part in their success.
Goethe's theory of colour, for its part, presents the researcher with
quite inconvenient requirements inasmuch as it is precisely not founded
on "the shapes, movements, etc. of solid, simple bodies." But the fact
that a scientific method is in this way more difficult to work with than
another is, of course, not a sufficient reason for rejecting it, so long as it
leads to an extension of knowledge or to some other positive cognitive
result, as is largely true in the case of Goethe's theory of colour vis-a-vis
that of Newton. .
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
matter of 'suitability.' However fruitful these theories might be in

certain respects, inasmuch as their systematizations of the purely
mathematical-physical aspects of the phenomena are of use, say, to
technology, this was a feature in which Goethe saw less significance,
though it was also one of which he was fully aware. 9
This might indicate that Goethe set special demands for scientific
method, demands which he thOUght Newton's theory of colour, for
example, failed to satisfy. Recall in this connection his remark to
Eckermann, that he himself was the only person in his century who
knew "the truth in the difficult science of colours." In order to under-
stand Goethe's conception of science, therefore, we must identify these
special methodological demands.
The quotation just given provides an appropriate cue. What makes
Goethe think, we might ask, or rather what warrant has he for claiming
that his own theory of colour is true and that Newton's is not? His
position seems to indicate that he attaches to his own theory an
ontological significance which he finds altogether lacking in Newton's.
But then isn't Goethe guilty of a misuse of ontological categories in his
own procedure corresponding to that of Newton and classical physics
in theirs? Or does his own point of view, as expressed in his theory
of colour, warrant ontological conclusions which cannot be warranted
from other points of view?
Modem theory of science would tend to reject this question a priori,
simply because an affirmative answer to it would contradict some of its
fundamental theses. For the question dearly implies that certain kinds
of scientific theories, that is, empirical statements, could be definitively
established as 'true,' that is as having an apodeictic character; and in
modem theory of science it is of course a generally accepted tenet that
scientific theories outside the so-called formal sciences (including
mathematics) have in principle the character of hypotheses.
This view is well based in analyses of the construction of actual
scientific theories, not least theories known to us in that most exact of
the empirical sciences, physics. Newton's theory of colour is a case in
point. Its quantifying of the phenomena of colour and organization of
them into mathematical-physical relations does not imply an apodeictic
conceptual system. The derived statements contain, in part, hypo-
thetical elements, and the basic statements which provide the founda-
tion for the deductive derivations are in part hypothetical in character.
The method involved in such a quantitative-physical investigation of
phenomena (e.g. colour) has been appropriately termed 'hypothetico-

deductive.'
The method requires that the phenomena of colour or the various
colour qualities be correlated with mathematical-physical data, wave-
lengths, and thus incorporated into a mathematical-physical system. But
the fact that, say, a green colour's wave-length has such and such a
shape and size, and no other, or that a specific colour phenomenon has
a specific relation to other colour phenomena is not entailed by this
system. In other words, the relations between the system's (theory's)
elements are, just as much as the system's basic statements themselves,
arbitrary from the point of view of the system; that is they are hypo-
thetical. The elements are to that extent externally related to one
another. The connections between them do not follow with necessity
from the elements (the colour phenomena or colour qualities) them-
selves. lO
Against this, the theory or system in Goethe's theory of colour is
based upon statements (referring to 'primal phenomena') which are
alleged to be both true and primary, and also upon the assumption that
the connections between the various elements are necessary.ll On
Goethe's view, there is such necessity in the particular connections
between the colour qualities green, yellow, blue, etc. and it is these
necessary connections which his researches are an attempt to uncover.
Clarifying such connections is for him the real task of science. A
scientific method which does not have this aim is therefore inadequate,
or, to the extent that it establishes other connections than these
necessary ones, simply mistaken, because misguided. The latter is,
according to Goethe, precisely the case with Newton's theory of colour,
which establishes relations between colour elements (according to their
kinetic, or motional, characteristics) on a quantitative-physical basis
where there are no qualitative connections. As an example one may
compare Goethe's qualitatively derived colour circle with the traditional
Newtonian spectrum which is based on the wave-aspect of colours
(Bjerke, 1961, p. 40 and Fig. 5).
The theory Newton proposes for the phenomena of colour has thus,
by virtue of his method, a hypothetical character (though admittedly it
was not until this century that this feature of it was first conclusively
brought to light), while Goethe seeks a method which can establish his
theory apodeictically. We could also put this by saying that, from a
methodological point of view, the relation which Newtonian theory of
206 HJALMAR HEGGE
colour bears to the one Goethe is aiming at is the same as that of

applied mathematics to pure geometry, when the latter's axioms are
considered true and exclusive (for purposes of deriving the 'theorems').
In both Newtonian and Goethean theory there is an attempt to set up a
deductive system for the phenomena of colour, but in the former case,
unlike the latter, the system is to be regarded as hypothetical. With
Newton's theory it is also true, of course, that one can infer, in
modus ponens, only from the conditioning to the conditioned, and not
conversely, while in Goethe's theory the conditioning elements are· not
only sufficient but also necessary conditions of the derived elements.
And here we get the full significance of Goethe's search for deduc-
tive relations in his theory of colour (cf. Section N above). His
intention is not merely to bring the phenomena into a systematic
structure, but to incorporate them into a system which is able to
disclose a necessary connection between them. It is Goethe's funda-
mental assumption that a system of this kind is not confined to formal
logic or, for instance, the mathematical domain of pure quantities and
geometrical figures, but can also be found within the domain of
qualities, e.g. colour qualities. He speaks in this connection of there
being "an exact sensory imagination [Phantasie]" (,Ernst Stiedenroth
.. .': 1884-1897, 2, p. 23) which is capable of developing such a
system, and which corresponds to mathematical intuition in, for
example, the domain of geometry. In claiming that in his own theory of
colour he proceeds "step by step, deducing each step from the
preceding one," Goethe means this in the sense in which scientific
concepts are traditionally constructed in pure mathematics (regarded as
apodeictic) and not as they are constructed in mathematical physics.
If we wanted to draw a methodological parallel. here we could
refer to Spinoza's "third way of knowledge," his "scientia intuitiva." But
then the objection can be immediately raised that Goethe is guilty
of the same misunderstanding that has been attributed to Spinoza,
among others, namely that he confuses, or identifies, logical nexi with
empirical, or causal, nexi. However, that Goethe's conception cannot be
cavalierly dismissed in this way by reference to a formal resemblance
with rational metaphysics (i.e. in respect of the establishing of purely
deductive systems with empirical implications) is shown by the fact
that his method, unlike that of speculative metaphysics, is thoroughly
empirical. His theory of colour is - as we shall see in more detail
below - distinctively empirical, indeed so emphatically oriented
towards observation and experiment that the theoretical principles (cf.

Section I above) are explicitly stated only in exceptional cases.
These features of Goethe's method and of his theory-construction in
the science of colour - the combination of the system's apodeictic
necessity and the fact of its being built upon empirical observation -
also provide the pattern for Goethe's other works in natural science.
The features in question are particularly obvious in his theory of the
metamorphosis of plants, which after the theory of colour is the most
developed part of his scientific work. Corresponding to the primal
phenomenon in his theory of colour, for example, we find in his
morphology of plants the 'primal plant' [Urpf!anzej, that basic element
from which the other forms are derived. As in the theory of colour, so
in the theory of metamorphosis of plants the derivations have an
apodeictic necessity even though in the latter theory these are logically
more in accord with a dialectical principle than with the rules of
traditional logic. Here Goethe's view has points of contact with the
idealist philosophy of his time, Schelling'S philosophy of nature, and
Hegel, who indeed regarded himself as the philosophical spokesman for
the Goethean conception of nature.J2
Consequently, just as the complex phenomena of colour are to be
seen as derived from the phenomena that are primal in their domain, so
the various forms of plants are to be regarded as developments of the
basic form which is the primal plant. Concerning this Goethe writes in a
letter to Herder: "With this model and the key to it, it will be possible to
go on for ever 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 shadowy phantoms of a vain imagination, but possess an inner
necessity and truth" (Letter to Herder, 17 May 1787: Goethe, 1926,
pp. 305-306, my emphasis). In his Italian Journey, Goethe speaks of
the metamorphosis of plants and of the primal plant as a basic form:
"From first to last, the plant is nothing but leaf, which is so inseparable
from the future germ that one cannot think of one without the other"
(1926, p. 363, my emphasis).
VI
Although Goethe tries to elaborate his theory of metamorphosis, like

his theory of colour, in constant association with experience, he does
not of course maintain that the connections between the phenomena
208 HJALMAR HEGGE
can themselves be derived from pure experience, from the objects of

sense as immediately apprehended sense-qualities. He is empirical, but
not an empiricist. Only thorough preoccupation with, in this case, the
phenomena of colour can disclose the properties of colour qualities and
thereby also the necessary connections between them. A propos of this,
Goethe refers to, among others, Giordano Bruno, with whose philoso-
phy he seems to find as much in common as he does with that of
Spinoza: "For, just as we do not recognize with one and the same sense
colours and sounds, so likewise we do not see with the same eye the
substratum of the arts and the substratum of nature [since we] see the
former with the sense-eyes and the latter with the eye of reason." 13
As immediate experience the phenomena of colour represent only a
'half reality; their nature can only appear mediately, as the result of the
researcher's organizing activity. This latter bestows form and con-
nectedness upon the given material. And this form, for Goethe, is not
something that is linked accidentally or contingently - that is, in an
external manner - to the objects of sense, according to subjectively
conditioned principles, but is something that appears as the real 'nature'
of the phenomena, as a kind of "higher nature within nature" (Goethe,
1882, pp. 24f), a higher experience within experience (Steiner, 1886,
1940, pp.,30ff).
Consequently it is only in respect of im-mediate experience that the
phenomena are "loose and unconnected," to use Hume's expression
(1962, p. 54), that, for example, a green colour exists in isolation
alongside or is arbitrarily conjoined with yellow and blue. Purely
external relations between the phenomena, however, are only a function
of the situation of the experiencing subject as a pure observer, and not
an expression of the nature of the objects (Steiner, 1926, pp. 168ff;
1950). The inner and thereby necessary connections between the
phenomena, connections which negate their mutual separation, are
what the researcher must try to uncover in his work. Goethe's concep-
tion of science therefore appears diametrically opposed to that of
empiricism. For Goethe it is precisely not the case that "anything may
produce anything," 14 that anything can follow from anything in the
world of experience. The phenomena are not just data in time and
space, they have an inner qualitative connection. Lemons don't grow on
spruce trees.
But this raises the pressing question, What are the specific theo-
retical assumptions in Goethe's science of nature which can underwrite
the possibility of research of the kind he claims to be doing? What

access can science have to qualitative connections that are apodeictic?
How is it possible to construct concepts which objectively express the
objects of experience, or the properties of the objects of sense, and
disclose their real interconnections? What, in short, does the concept of
"an exact sensOlY imagination [Phantasie]" amount to?
The obvious approach to an answer to this question is to consider
more closely Goethe's own procedure in his scientific work. That he
saw it as essential for an understanding of his methods that one should
grasp how they develop is shown by his own very full descriptions of
this development. Indeed he held in general that no sciences, methods,
and theories can be understood except through a description of their
history. In the preface to his Farbenlehre he says, for example, on this
topic, that "the history of science is what science itself is." He himself
has written a very comprehensive history of the theory of colour and
also a History of My Botanical Study (1884-1897, 1, pp. 61ft). In the
latter one can follow the development of his own methods and theories
in the theory of metamorphosis, from the first 'spelling out' and his
formulation of the primal plant as a 'hypothesis' to his claim to have
acquired in this primal plant a "key" to the understanding of the
morphological interconnections.
Goethe's own methods and theories are in any case clearly the
outcome of a successive development. They do not build on a sudden
'intuition,' but are laboriously elaborated through years of research, or
as Goethe himself concludes his remarks in this connection: "When at
last I have arrived at a happy result, then it is not through any special
talent or momentary inspiration, but, on the contrary, through per-
sistent and consistent effort" (1926).
From this we must conclude, therefore, that the "exact sensory
imagination" which Goethe talks about is not something that is simply
given a priori to the researcher in his scientific activity. On the contrary,
it is the result of a thoroughgoing preoccupation with the material of
experience. Here, then, we have a fundamental difference between this
form of knowledge and the common logical concepts which, though
not 'innate' in the sense criticized by Locke, are already present in the
most elementary conceptual articulation of the given, since they are
precisely presuppositions of this articulation. The same is naturally true
in principle of the Kantian forms of intuition and understanding, which
are to be understood as being already laid down in man's constitution
210 HJALMAR HEGGE
as conditions for the scientific structuring of the given. Although the

systematic use of these latter forms is conditioned by the researcher's
work, they exist in principle ready-made in man's cognitive make-up.
Goethe's "sensory imagination," on the other hand, refers to a form
of cognition which must first be developed by means of the researcher's
own work with the material of experience. It is not a part of his makeup
(except as a potential capacity), but is rather to be compared to an
organ (a word Goethe himself uses) which he can develop, or perhaps
better, train by systematic use.
Here Goethe's view of science breaks radically with the epistemo-
logical view prevailing today, and which on this point follows in part the
empiricist tradition and in part the Kantian. The basic assumption of
the prevailing view is that the a posteriori element in cognition is
contingent and that only the a priori is apodeictic, necessary. Or in
other words, inasmuch as there are apodeictic elements in cognition,
these it takes to be a priori, whether understood as forms of our
understanding, as "conditions of the very possibility of experience" in
Kant's sense, or in a more empiricist vein as 'conventions.' Goethe, too,
thinks that there are such a priori elements in our cognition, but
maintains that besides these, yet still precisely through experience, and
intimately linked with it through observation, experiment, and system-
atic classification of the given, it is possible to develop organs for a
widened apodeictic cognition.
This means that while the Kant-inspired tradition conceives the
cognitive capacity itself as in principle given, Goethe's view is that this
capacity is precisely something that can be developed, and that it is only
by its development that we can attain to a genuine science. Although
sensory imagination may not exist as a developed organ today, it may
do so tomorrow.
From which it also follows that whereas recent science has largely
directed itself towards those areas of cognition where man's cognitive
capacity is already well developed, a priori, namely mathematics and, in
general the quantitative (cf. N aess above), Goethe aims at a develop-
ment of corresponding capacities in other, namely qualitative, areas.
VII
The natural objection that will be raised to Goethe's conception of

science is of course that his concept of an 'exact sensory imagination'
represents a form of 'intuitionism,' and therefore introduces arbitrari-

ness into research. In principle, however, Goethe's method of natural
science is no more 'intuitionist' than a traditional method like the
mathematical one. An exact science like mathematics also builds upon
basic elements of 'intuition,' if only in its axiomatic presuppositions. (I
am ignoring here the question of 'logicism' or 'intuitionism' in regard to
mathematical derivations.) And Goethe's natural science does not
depart in principle from the mathematical model (cf. Sect. IV above).
The difference is only that the 'intuitive' element, which in mathematics
is given as a self-evident basic assumption, a priori, Goethe tries
consciously and systematically to develop in other areas of knowledge
(cf. the primal phenomenon in theory of colour).
To throw further light upon Goethe's scientific method it might be
useful to look at its relation to two basic principles in empirical
research, the experimental and inductive method. Goethe has expressed
his own attitude to experiment as a method in, among other works, the
essay already referred to, 'Der Versuch als Vermittler von Objekt und
Subjekt.'
The essay's very title reveals something important, namely that
Goethe regards the experiment precisely as a 'mediator,' as an aid to
knowledge. This' constitutes a positive attitude to experiment as a
necessary method in knowledge from experience, but at the same time a
delimitation of it. It is thus very far from the truth to say that Goethe
has neglected experiment in his work in natural science. His theory of
colour, for example, is built up by means of a systematic experimenta-
tion that leaves nothing to be desired in respect of exactitude and
thoroughness. For this his works have elicited profound respect, even
from those who do not share his conception of science.
On the other hand, Goethe's view is that the experiment in itself
proves nothing ('Enthiillung der Theorie Newtons': 1884-1897, 3,
'Beweis durch Experimente', §30). That a phenomenon C is shown by
repeated experiments to occur under conditions A and B in no way
shows that it necessarily occurs under those conditions, nor indeed that
the conditions are themselves necessary for its occurrence. In terms of
Goethe's requirement of a 'natural law,' as a necessary connection
between the phenomena, experiment in itself is insufficient. It gives no
insight into the phenomena A, B, and C such that C can be derived
apodeictically from A and B, i.e. such that the latter can be seen to be
both necessary and sufficient conditions of C.
212 HJALMAR HEGGE
So far, then, there is no discrepancy here between Goethe's view and

modern theory of science as regards the conception of experiment as a
method. The difference is that while modern methodology rests content
with experiment as a final authority in the testing of theories, which,
however much they are tested, remain therefore hypothetical in char-
acter and at best relatively valid, Goethe thinks that one must look for a
connection between the phenomena which is apodeictic (i.e. which
cannot be otherwise) and therefore cannot be revealed by experiment
alone.
But this does not mean that Goethe underestimates the experimental
method. On the contrary, he regards it as a necessary step in the
revealing of the connections in question, i.e. of the law-governed nature
of the phenomena. It is precisely by the painstaking use of experiment
that one trains "a sensory imagination," i.e. an organ for the cognition
of those particular phenomena with which the experiment is concerned,
e.g. the phenomena of colour in science of colour.
But a precondition of the training of this faculty is that the
researcher confines himself strictly to the qualitative domain in question
and does not introduce theories from other areas which, despite all
experimentation, can only reveal external relations between the phe-
nomena (d. Sect. V above). In this respect Goethe's experiments in the
science of colour differ radically from those of Newton, whose scientific
method did not include this further aim. In the case of Newton's theory
of colour, therefore, experimentation only leads to hypothetical connec-
tions, while in Goethe's qualitatively oriented theory of colour, it is
claimed to have the function of "mediating object and subject." 15
From what we have said here about Goethe's attitude to the experi-
mental method, a number of consequences for his view of induction
already follow. A simple generalization to a general theory on the basis
of a series of particular cases, a theory which therefore is and remains a
hypothesis, is for him no more than an external treatment of the
phenomena. It does not disclose the inner connections between them.
"Induction," he says, "I have never permitted myself, and if another had
set up such a method in opposition to mine, I would have had my
reason for rejecting it" (Spriiche in Prosa: 1884-1897,4, p. 363).
It is altogether foreign to Goethe's view to propose theories which
are in principle unverifiable, and he means 'verification' in a strict
sense, not just 'testability.' Hypotheses have only a preliminary function
in the process of knowledge. They are "scaffoldings erected round a
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
areas of knowledge. The actual development of research shows that it is

at least easier to attain insight in the quantitative than in the qualitative
area (cf. Section IV above). Indeed, so natural and commonly available
is insight in the former area that it is often overlooked that cognition
here, too, has in part the character described, namely that of a
developed, or cultivated, capacity.
This difference in the accessibility of the method does not, however,
imply any difference in principle in the character of the cognition. That
it is in fact more difficult to grasp connections between, for example,
colour qualities such as green, blue, and yellow, than it is to grasp them
between such quantities as the size of angles in bisected parallel lines,
bespeaks no difference in the availability in principle of apodeictic
knowledge in the respective domains.
VIII
That Goethe's method amounts in fact to a development of a new

cognitive capacity, or the training of a sense of qualities, emerges from
his own statements, for example in connection with the science of
colour. Here he constantly emphasizes the importance of the develop-
ment of a capacity of observation which leads to insights that are not
available to immediate observation. Goethe has great confidence in the
potentialities inherent in the cognizing subject in these respects: "Man
in himself, in so far as he uses his healthy senses, is the most powerful
and exact physical apparatus there can be"; and further, "in this
connection man stands so high that what otherwise defies portrayal is
portrayed in him. What is a string and all mechanical subdivisions of it
compared with the ear of the musician?"18 These statements are of
course relevant only to qualitative cognition.
One may naturally doubt the possibility of developing such a
qualitative scientific cognition. But it is hard to see how one can reject it
in principle as a theoretical possibility without simply dogmatically
postulating certain empiricist (or Kantian) epistemological assumptions.
What one does in that case is arbitrarily to lay down as a frontier for
science in general a line which is in fact only the boundary of one type
of science. But the fact that, say, Newton's theory of colour gets its
hypothetical character from the theoretical assumptions underlying it is
no reason in principle for requiring Goethe's theory, which rests upon
quite different assumptions, to have the same character.
I have tried to show here that the theoretical assumptions of

Goethe's natural science are precisely such that this science remains
unaffected by the critique of science which establishes the limitations,
say, of Newton's theory of colour. Being immune to these limitations,
Goethe's conception of science is to this extent well founded. How far
his scientific researches in fact accord with his claims is another matter,
and one that can be tested only at the Jactuallevel.
This, furthermore, considering that Goethe's natural science pre-
supposes the training of new cognitive capacities or organs through the
very activity of research, is in the very nature of the case. Goethe
himself frequently stresses that a 'genuine science' must be 'made' by
anyone who will dispose himself towards it. It cannot be judged by
theoretical study alone. Of his theory of colour, for example, he says "it
requires not only to be read and studied, but to be done . .." (1850, 2,
p.4l0).
NOTES
* Originally published as 'Noen vitenskapsteoretiske spersmai belyst ved Goethes

naturvitenskap', Norsk filosofisk tidsskrift, Vol. 2 (1967), No.2. English translation
from the Norwegian by Alastair Hannay and printed in Inquiry 15 (1972) 363-386,
republished by Universitetsforlaget, Oslo. Reproduced here by kind permission of the
publisher and the author. Some minor additions have been made in the new edition.
I Goethe's view here is to this extent the same as, e.g., that of Plato in, for instance, the
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
translation in accordance with the original German.

S 'In the rays they [the colours] are nothing but their dispositions to propagate this or
that motion into the sensorium, and in the sensorium they are sensations of those
motions under the forms of colours' (Newton (1931), Bk. I, Pt. 2).
6 Burtt (1950), p. 303. The fruitfulness of quantifying as a method has led many
216 HJALMAR HEGGE
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
(1921), p. 163; Steiner (1928), pp. 183-184.

13 Bruno (1882), p. 77, quoted, e.g., in Steiner (1950), p. 171.
14 David Hume (1962), Bk. I, Pt. III, Sect. XV, p. 224. It is no doubt in large part due
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
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
Burtt, E. A: The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science, Routledge &

Kegan Paul, London, 1950.
Carnap, R: Philosophical Foundations of Physics, Basic Books, New York, 1966.
Du Bois-Reymond, E.: Goethe und sein Ende, Buchdrukerei der Koenigl. Akademie
der Wissenschaften (G. Vogt), Berlin, 1882.
Goethe, 1. W. von: Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann and Soret (trans. by 1.
Oxenford), Smith, Elder & Co., London, 1850.
Goethe, 1. W. von: Dichtung und Wahrheit (ed. by T. Friedrich), Reclam, Leipzig, 1882.
Goethe, J. W. von: Goethes naturwissenschaftliche Schriften, 4 vols. (ed. and intro. by R
Steiner), Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, Stuttgart-Berlin-Leipzig, 1884-1897.
(= rpt. of Kiirschner's Deutsche National-Literatur, Vols. 114-117).
Goethe, J. W. von: Italian Journey (trans. by W. H. Auden and E. Mayer), Collins,
London, 1926.
Hegge, H.: Erkjennelse og virkelighet. Et bidrag til kritikk av teorien om sansekvalite-
tenes subjektivitet, Universitetsforlaget, Oslo, 1957 (Erkennen und Wirklichkeit,
with German summary).
Heitler, W.: Der Mensch und die naturwissenschaftliche Erkenntnis, 2nd rev. edn.,
Friedr. Vieweg & Sohn, Braunschweig, 1962.
Heitler, W.: 'Naturvitenskapens etikk', Morgenbladet, 9 March 1967.
Helmholtz, H. von: 'On Goethe's Scientific Researches', in Popular Scientific Lectures
(trans. by E. Atkinson), Longmans, Green & Co., London, 1893.
Hume, D.: A Treatise of Human Nature, Meridian, Cleveland-New York, 1962.
Mach, E.: Die Mechanik in ihrer Entwicklung, F. A Brockhaus, Leipzig, 1908.
Naess, A: Innforing i logikk og metodelaere, Universitetsforlaget, Oslo, 1963.
Newton, I.: Opticks, G. Brill & Sons, London, 1931.
Spinoza, B. de: The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza, 2 vols. (trans. by R H. M.
Elwes), Dover, New York, 1951.
Steiner, R: Goethe's Conception of the World, Anthroposophical Publishing Co.,
London, 1928. (published simultaneously by the Anthroposophic Press, New York.).
Steiner, R: Goethes naturwissenschaftliche Schriften, Philosophisch-Anthroposophis-
cher Verlag, Dornach, 1926.
Steiner, R: Goethes Weltanschauung, Berlin, 1921.
Steiner, R: Goethe the Scientist (trans. O. D. Wannamaker), Anthroposophic Press,
New York, 1950.
Steiner, R: Grundlinien einer Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen Weltanschauung,
Berlin-Stuttgart, 1886.
Steiner, R: The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception, Rudolf
Steiner Publishing Co., London, 1940. (published simultaneously by the Anthro-
posophic Press, 1940.).
Institutt for Filosofi, PB 1024

Universitetet i Oslo
BUndem, Oslo 3
Norge/Norway
ARTHUR G. ZAJONC
FACTS AS THEORY: ASPECTS OF GOETHE'S

PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE *
.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
220 ARTHUR G. ZAJONC
thought in Goethe's day and why the reception of his scientific work
was then so negative.
OF METAPHYSICS AND MECHANICAL PHILOSOPHY
When Helmholtz, in 1853, contrasts Goethe's scientific investigations

with those of his more orthodox colleagues, he does so in a manner
which places him, Helmholtz, squarely in the tradition of mechanical
philosophy begun in the seventeenth century. According to Helmholtz,
Goethe, even as a scientist, is "concerned solely with the 'beautiful
show' which makes it possible to contemplate the ideal." The true
natural philosopher, on the other hand, "tries to discover the levers, the
cords, and the pulleys which work behind and shift the scenes"
(Helmholtz, 1971, p. 73). Clearly the task of the scientist, according to
Helmholtz, is to look behind the scenes, to search out the true
mechanical causes which drive nature. In this he merely is paraphrasing
an oft enunciated Enlightenment ideal. Two hundred years earlier, in
1686, Bernard de Fontenelle employed the identical metaphor to
describe both nature and the task of the scientist:
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).
But it is of great concern to the scientist just how nature contrives to

create the phenomena we view. Although it is an exceedingly difficult
task, Fontenelle enjoins "modern philosophers" to engage in the
elucidation of nature in terms of wheels and counterweights: "... he
that would see nature as she truly is, must stand behind the scenes of
the opera." From such a vantage point, the universe becomes a
clockwork mechanism complicated in detail but simple in principle.
Seventeenth-century natural philosophy ends, as Fontenelle puts it, by
taking "the world to be in great, what a watch is in small" (Fontenelle,
1973, p. 30). As secretary of the Paris Academy of Sciences,
Fontenelle, although not a scientist himself, reflects the common rising
scientific world view of his age.
The rational, mechanistic explanation of natural phenomena repre-
sented for Fontenelle and his contemporaries a triumph over the
FACTS AS THEORY 221
ignorance of scholastic science. In place of Aristotelian physics, a new

view of science was promulgated which would embody the discoveries
of Galileo, Copernicus and Descartes. In this 'new science,' there was
no room for the 'substantial forms' or 'occult qualities' of Aristotelian
physics. The program of seventeenth-century science was one which
sought to purge such metaphysical vagaries from the vocabulary of
physical investigation. In order to do so, the very concept of explana-
tion needed revision. Consider for a moment the Cartesian and
Aristotelian explanations of the fall of a stone. l
One of the 'essential' qualities of the Greek element earth is,
according to Aristotle, gravity. Although a rock may be constrained
'accidentally' to sit on a shelf or in my hand, when that constraint is
removed it is carried to its own natural place. We should not imagine
that natural place is a cause. Place does not attract its corresponding
elements in any modem sense. Rather, "it [place] has some potency
[dunamis]" (Aristotle, Physics IV, 208 b 12). When Aristotle writes that
"the movement of each body to its own place is motion towards its own
form" (On The Heavens, IV, 310 b 33, 310 a 34), he locates the
separate, moving body within a larger unity, its own form. Following
Machamer's (1978) perceptive analysis of natural place and motion, I
understand the ,potency of natural place to be a result of the natural
or organic unity which place confers upon those things which are
inherently alike. Objects alike by nature stand in a particular spatial
relationship at any moment, but they also form an organic unity
through the potency of their common natural place. The formal cause
of natural motion thus becomes their organic unity. In moving toward
its natural place an object is actualizing a potential. In tuning a musical
instrument a potential is actualized. Likewise in the motion of the stone
toward its own form what existed only potentially becomes actual. Free
fall is certainly not a matter of attraction. Rather, it is similar, Aristotle
tells us, to other forms of generation and change, for example the
coming-in to-being of a plant (On the Heavens, IV, 310 a 23). One can
maintain, as Furley (1976) does, that the efficient cause of natural
motion was for Aristotle nature itself. For Aristotle writes, "Nature is a
cause of motion in the thing itself, force is a cause in something else ...
(Wallace, 1978, p. 401). For centuries thereafter, from Philoponus to
the young Galileo, nature was considered to be a principle inhering in
the object and causing its natural motion. Even Galileo in his Two New
Sciences conceived of the uniform increase of velocity with time as due
to nature (Galileo, 1954, p. 160). Whether or not Aristotle saw nature

as an efficient cause has been a matter of debate. Historically, however,
the matter is clear. By the sixteenth century, the perceived lack of a
proximate contact cause for natural motion has become a source of
dissatisfaction. It is during this period then that the modem concepts of
cause and force developed. By the time Fontenelle composed his
Plurality of Worlds at the end of the next century, Aristotle's account of
natural notion was considered no explanation at all. Motion of an
object towards its own form, actualization of a potential and so on, all
seemed only a smoke screen for ignorance. A program was therefore
mounted by seventeenth-century natural philosophy to criticize scholas-
tic science and to popularize the discoveries and explanations of the
new science. The purge of metaphysical notions from natural science
was to be complete. In its place a completely physical world comprised
of matter in motion, whose single principle of causation is concussion,
was elaborated. This is a view not without its own difficulties, of course.
The year after Fontenelle's Plurality of Worlds appeared, Newton
published his Principia with its rejection of Cartesian cosmology and
his own cautious description of gravitation. Moreover, from our vantage
point, it also seems clear that mechanical philosophy merely replaces
one metaphysics with another. But more about this later. Let us tum
very briefly to Decartes' explanation of free fall as an example of the
philosophy of which we have been speaking.
Descartes' explanation of falling bodies rests upon the explicit
doctrine that a void is a logical impossibility. Since space is extended
and extension is one of the primary qualities of matter, then space must
be filled with matter. The four Greek elements are conceived of as
variously shaped corpuscles. Even the smallest remaining spaces are
filled by a fine material plenum. Empty space is then, in Cartesian
physics, an atomistic ally conceived fluid in which vortices and other
motions can arise. One such vortex exists around the earth reaching as
far as the moon. It causes the phenomena we associate with earthly
gravity. The propagation of light, electric and magnetic phenomena
likewise find their explanation in terms of hidden corpuscular mecha-
nisms (Descartes, 1965, p. 264; Westfall, 1977). The 'forms' of
Aristotle's physics are replaced in each instance by an explanation
entirely in terms of mechanically conceived 'efficient causes' (Aristotle,
Physics II, 3; Posterior Analyties II, 11). Thus when, at the start of the
nineteenth century, Goethe turns away from such explanations and
writes,
FACTS AS THEORY 223
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)
the scientific community of his day saw the spectre of an ancient

physics once again rearing its head. Goethe is clear in his intentions.
His choice of methodology was not made out of ignorance. He was fully
aware of the reigning scientific paradigm. Yet he chose consciously not
to invoke what he considered but another kind of metaphysics in order
to explain nature. He greatly distrusted scientific hypotheses, calling
them "the lullabies that the teacher uses to lull his pupil to sleep"
(Maximen ... , 557: HA 12, p. 432). Working hypotheses he granted
as being of great use in the early stages of scientific inquiry. However,
they should not be elevated to or mistaken for reality:
Hypotheses are like the scaffolding errected in front of a building, to be dismantled

when the building is completed. To the worker the scaffolding is indispensable, but he
must not confuse it with the building itself (Maximen ... , 554: HA 12, p. 432;
Magnus, 1949, p. 229).
To "free the human spirit from an hypothesis which causes it to see

falsely or partially" is already a great service (Maximen ... , 555: HA
12, p. 441). Goethe was convinced that many hypotheses had in fact
been raised to the level of scientific dogma, the most infamous case
being the Newtonian theory of color:
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.
HYPOTHESES AND PHYSICAL THEORY
Already in the General Scholium which Newton included in his

Principia of 1687, the Cartesian doctrine of vortices in particular, and
Descartes' whole mode of explanation in general came under attack.
N ewton, after indicating that the "hypothesis of vortices is pressed with

many difficulties," goes on to admit that he himself had
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
different theoretical bases existed by which the phenomena could be

saved, epicycles and eccentrics. It becomes clear from this that any
finite set of data can, in principle, be 'fit' by several, indeed an infinity,
of different theories. Such considerations put any theory which begins
with hypotheses in an awkward position.
In refusing, at least in his Principia, to espouse a hypothetical cause,
Newton consciously joined a long astronomical tradition. Even though
he is conscious of the dangers of hypotheses, Newton often does not
recognize that certain hypotheses are hidden within the central proposi-
tions of his mechanics. For example, when Newton puts forth his
second axiom or law of motion, he clearly does not intend to introduce
any hypothetical entities: "The change of motion is proportional to the
motive force impressed; and is made in the direction of the right line in
which that force is impressed" (1947, p. 13). Newton goes on to use
force throughout as the dynamic agent of his mechanics. His universal
law of gravitation is framed in terms of it; objects fall because of a
universal force of attraction between masses. Even here Goethe saw the
insertion of a hypothesis, namely force, which is then taken to be a fact.
In 1793 he writes,
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).
In this distinction Goethe anticipates Ernst Mach who takes Newton's

second law as the definition of force rather than a law of motion (Mach,
1911, pp. 180-185; Nagel, 1961, pp. 187ff). Goethe then goes further
than Newton in carefully distinguishing facts from other theoretical
components of scientific inquiry. Thus it is not surprising that if Newton
was pointedly accused of reimporting occult qualities into science by
refusing to frame hypotheses, then Goethe's own efforts at developing a
methodology free from hypothetical constructs met with even less
sympathy. Newton's immediate followers often chose not to imitate his
care in framing hypotheses. Their cosmos was often far more explicitly
mechanistic and materialistic than their mentor's as Robert Schofield
has shown (1970). Helmholtz, writing 150 years after the Principia,
appears as part of this later mechanistic tradition and so he and his
contemporaries possess little understanding for the critique that an
'outsider' Goethe, gives of their methods and modes of explanation.
By the end of Helmholtz's life, the place of hypotheses, the tradi-

tional concepts of law, theory and explanation were all undergoing a
penetrating analysis, not because of Goethe's admonishings, but rather
at the hands of physicist-philosophers like Duhem and Mach. This
critique and its consequences - the so-called 'golden era' of the
philosophy of science - are important for us if we are to reconsider
Goethe's scientific work properly. Many of the conclusions reached
then were anticipated by Goethe. Yet while both Duhem and Goethe
dismantle a naive nineteenth-century science, the new understanding of
science they each put forth, its methodology, its goals and its ultimate
scope will differ radically. I will be at some pains to point out these
distinctions as they afford profound insight into Goethe's struggle with
science. They may also allow us to appreciate why he considered these
pursuits so significant for his own development: "Without my efforts in
the natural sciences, I would never have come to know man, as he is." 2
NEW VIEWS
When Newton refuses to advance a hypothesis as to the 'cause' of

gravitational attraction, he does so, at least in part, because his concept
of scientific theory is other than that of his Cartesian contemporaries.
In place of what the physicist Rankine (1881, p. 209) would later term
"hypothetical theories," such as those supplied by mechanical philoso-
phy, Newton utilizes an axiomatic or 'abstractive' method to establish a
representational theory. Imitating the presentations of Euclidean
geometry, Newton constructs an abstract set of 'absolute magnitudes' -
space, time, impressed force, etc. - which may be related to their
empirical 'sensible measures' by rules of correspondence. Thus the
empirical world of common or laboratory experience is set in corre-
spondence with a purely abstract or formal system of axioms, defini-
tions and theorems. The theoretical physicist may solve a problem by
framing the abstract counterpart of his problem - say orbital motion -
in terms of his formal system which relates the space and time coordi-
nates of an abstract mass to its initial conditions and the impressed
forces via the three laws or 'axioms' of Newtonian mechanics. Once this
is done, the equations of motion may be solved to give the coordinates
of the mass at any later or earlier time. These may then be set in
correspondence with their 'sensible measures' (Losee, 1972, Ch. 8).
FACTS AS THEORY 227
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
Mayer's declaration stands in sharp contrast to the attitudes of many of

his contempories. Lord Kelvin is a famous instance of someone with a
predilection for mechanical models: "I never satisfy myself until I can
make a mechanical model of a thing" (Thompson, 1884, p. 270;
Duhem, 1974, Ch. 4). Neither Mayer nor Goethe is debating the
usefulness of models. As evidenced by a previous quotation, Goethe,
like Rankine, sees these as productive beginnings, but they should not
be taken as an endpoint, nor mistaken for 'reality.' Rankine would have
a mature science advance from hypothetical to abstractive theories. To
ascribe reality or a genuine ontological status to hypotheses or models
is for Duhem and others, ironically, to imbue physical theory with
'metaphysical content.' Seventeenth-century mechanical philosophy,
which rode the wave of anti-metaphysics, thus finds itself criticized by
positivist philosophers and scientists as importing metaphysics into
physical theory! All aspects of science are now subject to careful
scrutiny as to implicit theoretical or metaphysical content. The mistaken
ascription of reality to primary qualities and to the hypothetical
schemes of the seventeenth century Whitehead calls the error of
'misplaced concreteness.' As a result of the ensuing confusion, he
declares, "modem philosophy has been ruined" (192 5, p. 55).
Goethe fully shares Whitehead's concern regarding the error of

misplaced concreteness. He writes in his Theory of Colors:
The investigator of nature should take heed not to reduce observation to mere notion,
to substitute words for this notion, and to use and deal with these words as if they were
things (1970, p. 283).
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).
We find here and elsewhere not only a warning against Rankine's

'hypothetical theories' characteristic of seventeenth-century mechanical
philosophy: Goethe is also cautioning against abstractive or representa-
tional theories which may even explicitly deny any measure of 'reality'
to their formal constructs. When N.R. Hanson writes, "What is it to
supply a theory? It is to offer an intelligible systematic, conceptual
pattern for the observed data" (1958, p. 121) he is stating a common-
place, and yet one which is nevertheless different from Goethe's view.
For Goeth.e, the distinction, so casually drawn between "observed data"
and "conceptual pattern" is less an essential characteristic of reality
than an accident associated with human cognition. The full sensual
experience of nature which Goethe embraces can only suffer at the
hands of an abstractive science. Nor will Goethe rest satisfied with a
purely 'descriptive' or 'instrumentalist' rendering of natural phenomena.
His is a search for the True, an attempt to catch nature showing an Idea
in a pure archetypal phenomenon. Goethe's critique of hypothetical
entities may sound like Mach or Duhem, but we must not confuse his
view of nature or the scientific enterprise with theirs. Goethe was
certainly no positivist born ahead of his time. He was remarkably
perceptive as to the hidden assumptions of science as he knew it in his
own lifetime. But his response was to develop a method of inquiry
different in nearly every respect from the positivist school which would
follow him. That the positivist program has had its difficulties is well
known. It is now time that we explored Goethe's own scientific writings
with an eye to the questions: what does Goethe take as 'theory' and
what is its cognitive status?
FACTS AS THEORY 229
COLOR: FRAGMENTATION AND POLARITY
The first chapter of the didactic part of Goethe's Theory of Colors

concerns itself with physiological colors; that is, those colors which
belong "to the subject - to the eye itself' (Goethe, 1970, p. 1). The
discussion which he presents is a lucid and vivid account of color
phenomena. These same phenomena stand even today as primary in the
field of color vision research. The attention which Goethe gave to these
phenomena led to the birth of a new discipline, for which he has often
been given great credit. For our purposes, however, the important
point is that in beginning with physiological colors Goethe stresses
immediately that his concern is with seen colors rather than a physical
theory or model of color generation. All subsequent experiments and
observations are to be viewed with the healthy human faculty of sight.
The phenomena investigated are always phenomena seen.
For Goethe, therefore, the primitives or elements of his color-studies
are authentic perceptions. Red, for instance, may appear in many
shades and with varying purity. It is initially with this individual
appearance of color that Goethe deals. Even when 'pure red' is
presented and discussed as a kind of ideal color, it occurs as a limiting
process of vision, something which is still seeable, although rarely if
ever truly manifest in nature. There is never, by any kind of Gestalt
switch, a time when red is replaced by 'rays differently refrangible' or
by waves of suitable wavelengths. The difference between Goethe and
Newton in this is obvious, but it can remain a source of confusion.
Contrary to some claims,4 Newton does not stay with the phenomena
throughout. Although he ''frames no hypotheses," his is, as we have
seen, an abstractive or representational theory. Goethe may idealize or
exalt phenomena, but he does not represent a color by anything other
than itself. Rather than penetrating through to some 'true,' hidden,
mechanical reality supposed to be at work behind the scenes, or
generating an abstract, formal system which corresponds to observation
at the necessary points, Goethe pursues his own unique path. His is
neither a hypothetical nor an abstractive theory. Instead he proposes
to let the facts themselves, when fully perceived, be the theory. Before
following up this point, I think it important to clarify briefly certain
specifics of Goethe's and Newton's color studies.
One of the critical misconceptions in the Goethe-Newton controversy
centers around the 'correct' scientific understanding of white light.
Newton's logic is absolutely rigorous in this instance. He maintains that

he has proven color does not arise through a modification of the rays
either by the medium or the shadow (Newton, 1952, p. 113). He is fully
aware that this assertion is contrary to the "constant and general
Opinion of Philosophers" (1952, p. 158). Rather, the rays, whose
"colorific qualities" give rise to the sensation of color, "keep those their
original Properties perpetually and the same without alteration" (1952,
p. 160). Any color we see must, therefore, be a mixture of such primary
immutable elements - colorific rays. Here is a color atomism which
Newton, in one of his more speculative moments, makes explicit in his
well-know Query 29 (1952, pp. 370-374), and which subsequently
became the corpuscular theory of light advanced by his students. The
spirit which pervades the argument is that of the inventor of infini-
tesimal calculus. In gravitational theory one considers a large mass as
the infinite sum of infinitesimal masses. Likewise, when explaining edge
spectra, a broad light source is decomposed into the infinite sum of
infinitesimal slits each producing its own full spectmm (Newton, 1952,
p. 161). It is against this 'proof of the immutability of rays that Goethe
battles. Recall that if this were merely a hypothesis, then there would be
little argument from Goethe. But when theory is taken as fact, here
a grave error inserts itself and Goethe will protest. In his essay
"Uber Newtons Hypothese der diversen Refrangibilitat" [On Newton's
Hypothesis of Diverse Refrangibility] of 1793, Goethe sets forth his
objections:
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).
Goethe goes on to write that although Newton may begin by consider-

ing his ideas only as a theory, "by and by he binds himself so in spirit to
his doctrine that he gives out diverse refrangibility as an actual fact."
Newton's followers continue in the same manner, taking what is theory
as actual fact. By trying to prove that the cause of spectral phenomena
"must lie with the light itself' and is not due to a modification of white
light by the prism, Newton falls, according to Goethe, into this his "first
and greatest error." It is an anticipation of the mind against which
Bacon warned and which only becomes more firmly entrenched by
Newton's skillful arrangement of selected experiments. Newton pro-
FACTS AS THEORY 231
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).
But he would seek a still higher logical level on which to experience

phenomena; this he termed the 'pure phenomenon' later to be called
the 'archetypal phenomenon.'
In writing of 'scientific phenomena,' Goethe likely has in mind
Francis Bacon's tables of presence, absence in proximity, and degrees
which are to act as the basis for induction to intermediate and general
axioms. That Goethe owed a great deal to Bacon is certain. Yet he is
also highly critical of Bacon's inductive method and the sterility of any
approach based on pure classification. Bacon captures a highly impor-
tant aspect of the enterprise, but, according to Goethe, his position is
unbalanced:
... he [Bacon] still has an excellent influence, so long as we appreciate that his doctrine
is one-sided and allow the mind to exert its influence also (LA 1.1 0, p. 295).
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).
By thus moving from one logical level of phenomena to another,

Goethe successfully meets an important criterion for explanation. As N.
R. Hanson points out (1958, pp. 59-60), it is impossible to express
causal relationships, or in any sense 'to explain' through language, if all
words are on an identical logical level. There must exist a hierarchy
allowing certain words, or in Goethe's case phenomena, to exhibit
meaningful theoretical content when experienced in a particular
context. They become "theory-loaded," to use Hanson's term. If Goethe
wishes to refrain from reducing "observation to mere notion, to
substitute words for this notion ... " (HA 13, p. 482; Goethe, 1970, p.
283); that is, if he wishes to remain within the phenomenal, then
FACTS AS THEORY 233
phenomena too must be theory-loaded. I hasten to add that by this I do

not mean that nature is seenin terms of a theoretical model such as is
very often the case in orthodox science. Rather, through the process of
investigation itself, certain otherwise ordinary phenomena become
representatives or symbols of very general relationships or principles
which manifest themselves within a finite phenomenal realm. We should
recall that the simple process of 'seeing' is not an uncomplicated one.
Consider Duhem's lovely example (1974, p. 145) of someone
walking into an electrical laboratory and innocently asking the scientist
present what he is doing. We see the bits of copper, batteries, vessels of
mercury, etc. Our eyes register accurately the forms and colors of all
objects in the room. Yet the surprising answer is, "I am measuring the
electrical resistance of a coil." Implied in this simple statement is a huge
body of electrical theory of which we may be unaware. Scientists often
'see' phenomena - meter movements, a flickering light, etc. - in terms
of the dominant theory. It becomes the language and conceptual grid
onto which all raw experience is projected. The collection of rods,
batteries, and other paraphernalia is 'seen as' an ohmmeter. Seeing is
obviously more than opening one's eyes.
In like manner the recognition of a pattern or ideal form is the
prerequisite for' any further analysis and is often based in "tacit
knowledge" (Polanyi, 1969, pt. 3). For the craftsman or artisan the
recognition is sufficient in itself; for the scientist it is usually merely the
beginning. Hanson puts it this way:
Perceiving the pattern in phenomena is central to their being "explicable as a matter of

course" ... This is what philosophers and natural philosophers were groping for when
they spoke of discerning the nature of a phenomenon, its essence; this will always be
the trigger of physical inquiry. The struggle for intelligibility (pattern, organization) in
natural philosophy has never been portrayed in inductive or H-D [hypothetico-deduc-
tive] accounts (Hanson, 1958, p. 87).
What Hanson describes as the "trigger of physical inquiry,"

becomes for Goethe the goal and endpoint of scientific inquiry. The
moment of discovery, of seeing a pattern in the phenomena, falls
outside of inductive and H-D accounts (Hanson, 1958). The aperr;;u is,
for Goethe, the explanation. Therefore when Goethe 'explains' the
phenomena of prismatic colors, he does so by tracing them back to
an antecedent and simpler one, namely the archetypal phenomenon
of light meeting darkness within a turbid medium. The archetypal
phenomenon is a natural form in the Aristotelian sense. Light, darkness

and the turbid medium are parts of an organic unity or form which also
includes the warm colors on the one hand and cool colors on the other.
When light, darkness and a semi-transparent medium configure them-
selves, or are configured by an experimenter, in the proper way, then
the form is complete only when the requisite colors appear. It is never a
question of efficient or mechanical causality. The division of the
monochord into two equal parts entails the octave. Likewise if the
'conditions of appearance' are present for certain colors, they will
manifest.
The physicist might wish to formalize the discussion by modeling
turbidity in terms of scattering from dispersion electrons sited on
regularly-spaced atoms or from randomly-spaced particles in the
atmosphere. Light and color then become suitably weighted integrals of
the spectral intensity over a large wavelength range, and so on. One
might ask: has the physicist through this program actually increased our
understanding of light and color? Goethe writes in a letter of 1823 to
Soret: "In science, however, the treatment is null, and all efficacy lies in
the Aperr;u." 5 The moment of insight expands into genuine under-
standing for Goethe. Any subsequent reconstruction of the perceived
regularity' in terms of hypothetical or abstracted constructs is gratuitous
and distracts from the phenomena themselves. Seeing, the highest sense,
becomes when fully developed, a metaphor for the much rarer faculty
of intuition:
Ordinary vision [Anschauen), correct inspection of earthly things, is an inheritance of
the general human understanding; pure vision of the outer and inner is very rare
(Maximen ... , 243: HA 12, p. 398).
The manner of scientific inquiry, then, which Goethe proposes, is

one which begins by thoughtfully exploring and arranging the circum-
stances and facts of experience. From these, knowledge of essential
relationships arise. They are not to be expressed abstractly by such
rules as: if these conditions prevail, then such-and-such occurs: Rather,
the elements light, darkness, turbidity and color are all seen as a unity.
Only our intellect breaks them down into cause and effect. In his late
nineteenth-century study of Goethe's science, Rudolf Steiner connects
this with Kant's distinction between Verstand, understanding or intel-
lect, and Vernunft, reason:
FACTS AS THEORY 235
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).
Goethe was well aware of Kant's distinction and interpreted it in his

own manner. After a full empirical investigation, the highest faculty of
.the mind may grasp the newly perceived unity in a moment. In so
doing it reaches beyond pure sense data; it reaches beyond the visible
pattern to be discerned in nature itself. It reaches, for Goethe, to the
ideal. The felt kinship between prismatic and atmospheric colors is
possible only because reason has given us, through the archetype, a
perception of the ideal. In conversation with Eckermann Goethe says:
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
The divine idea stands behind the archetypal phenomenon. It may

manifest through natural phenomena or in the mind as concept. It
quietly structures our very seeing and speaking:
The Idea is eternal and unitary ... All that of which we become aware and of which we
can speak are only manifestations of the Idea; concepts we express and in as much as
we do so the Idea itself is a concept (Maximen ... , p. 12: HA 12, p. 367).
The archetypal phenomenon is also unitary. Its impact can be so

powerful that in the heat of discovery one meets it not so much with
wonder as with fear and the faculty of analysis:
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).
The unitary idea can, however, manifest and be left unmolested if we

use reason in place of the intellect. Then also we will not be tempted to
treat the achetype as just another theory from which to make deduc-
tions, predictions or draw conclusions. Five years before his death,
Goethe wrote to Christian Dietrich v. Buttel:
Moreover an archetypal phenomenon is not to be considered as a principle from which
manifold consequences result, rather it is to be seen as a fundamental appearance

within which the manifold is to be beheld (3 May 1827: HA Briefe IV, p. 231).
Thus the archetypal phenomenon is neither to be arrived at by pure

induction, nor are we to deduce consequences from it. It can, I think, be
more fruitfully understood as akin to Aristotle's doctrine of forms, so
dreaded by seventeenth-century philosophers. By this I mean that the
seeming independence of empirical phenomena actually reveals an
organic or unitary form after one rises to the level of archetypal
phenomenon. Certainly one can go on to model the individual elements
and establish mathematical relationships. In so doing one is not
'explaining' phenomena, but only re-expressing selected aspects in a
theoretical language. Much is lost in the translation, although doubtless
the procedure is highly useful and even harmless if undertaken with
philosophical maturity, or as Goethe says, 'with irony.' If one were to
follow Goethe, the archetypal phenomenon would be left in its native
purity and simplicity. For the natural scientist:
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).
Heinrich Henel characterizes Goethe's attempt as one which "wished to

gain universals without abstraction" (1956, p. 651). Goethe, with
Schiller's help, came to realize fully the boldness of this attempt. To
bridge the gap between the real and the ideal, between the universal
and particular, to bring these two worlds closer together seemed an
unavoidable necessity:
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
synthetically universal and advances to particulars" (HA 13, p. 30;

Goethe, 1952, p. 223). The cognitive status which Goethe affords his
'theory' - the beholding of archetypal phenomena - is then quite other
than that associated with instrumentalist, or positivist positions. Goethe
is no nominalist. The Ideas of which he writes are real and potent, and
are not to be confused with their sensible reflections in nature, nor with
their mental image as concept. He is searching for the True and not just
the fruitful. If he finds the former, he is confident the latter will follow.
We do not have direct access to Truth:
The True is god-like: it does not appear unrnediated, we must guess it from its
manifestations ... Only in the highest and most general do the Idea and the Appear-
ance meet (Maximem ... ,11 and 14: RA 12, p. 366).
In the archetypal phenomenon we may hope to unite what arises within

as concept with that which confronts us as percept so that the Idea itself
stands in experience.
Clearly Goethe's science strides far beyond the normally accepted
bounds of strict scientific inquiry. About this one must be utterly frank.
He is expanding the horizons of science to include the ideal in reality,
to place spirit back into nature. He embraces metaphysics, but his is a
perceptual metaphysics in which the ideal, Schiller's criticisms notwith-
standing, does become experience. In this undertaking Goethe stands in
a long tradition, as Ernst Cassirer mentions (1970, pp. 198-202); one
which surfaces periodically and at times even dominates Western
intellectual history. Goethe recasts the tradition in a highly unique and
sophisticated manner. In his scientific investigations he seems every-
where to move patiently to and fro in the sense-realm rising from
empirical through scientific to archetypal phenomena. The phenomenal
world thereby becomes transparent for a supersensible reality:
... 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
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
When confronted by any group of raw sense impressions, how is it that

we come to 'see' them? It is a rich and complex question, one beyond
our means to summarize, but we need a few results from cognitive
psychology for a proper understanding of Goethe. The notion that we
receive raw sensory reports and subsequently sort and order them
according to a master algorithim leading to cognition has been dis-
credited for the most part by vision research itself (Tibbetts, 1969).
Even a minimum of experience with ambiguous figures like the Necker
cube leads one rapidly to the conclusion that sight at least is far from a
simple linear process. Studies of subjects surgically healed from lifelong
blindness support the conclusion that there is a great deal more to
seeing than a properly functioning eye. Phenomenologists have taken
Brentano's concept of 'intentionality' as a basis for the discussion of the
mental activity operative in vision. In that view the confused, swarming,
chaotic fiyld of colors and forms is structured unconsciously by the
individual. From this standpoint we can ask whether one ever sees
anything without seeing it as something. The central question of interest
to us here is, if we do in some sense 'intend' our own reality, then is it
perhaps possible to develop that faculty of intentionality so that reality
is restructured in another and perhaps more illuminating way?
This turns on its head the usual view that the goal of clear-headed
research is to free oneself from all preconceptions and prejudices.
Hans-Georg Gadamer was perhaps the first to point out that while
there are indeed bad prejudices, we must recognize "the fact that there
are legitimate prejudices, if we want to do justice to man's finite,
historical mode of being" (Gadamer, 1975, p. 245). To use the
metaphor developed by Rorty (1979), we must free ourselves from the
idea that the mind is a mirror-like glassy essence to be polished and
freed of all imperfections. If we were truly to succeed in this under-
taking, we would with the moment of success banish cognition or seeing
from the psyche as well. Obviously this is not to imply that we may
entertain prejudices without consequences. Quite the contrary, as we
now realize that prejudices are, in fact, "the biases of our openness to
FACTS AS THEORY 239
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
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).
Very revealing in this regard is Goethe's uncompromising position

taken in a conversation with Schopenhauer concerning the active nature
of light:
"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 active character of light or of phenomena more generally is central

to a proper understanding of Goethe's Weltanschauung. Although in a
distant past light may have called forth from passive animal organs the
organs of sight, in the present day we must be active ourselves in the
development of new faculties. We may possess innate talents, but these
must be developed and schooled. The organs of human cognition so
created move through the world as a magnet drawing forth from
isolated natural phenomena their hidden unity:
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).
The development of such organs of cognition demands profound

transformations of the human psyche. Such transformations are effected
precisely through scientific investigation. Goethe stands in awe before
the magnitude ofthe change. In a letter to F.H. Jacobi he writes:
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
The transformation of the human psyche occurs through concourse

with natural phenomena. Just as the eye as 'sunlike organ' is created by
the light, so organs of the mind may be created by each and every
object about us. "Each new object, well contemplated, opens up a new
organ within us" (HA 13, p. 38; Goethe, 1952, p. 235). Moreover, the
pedagogical task which nature constantly enacts can be imitated and
furthered in human creations. The formation or cultivation of human
sensibilities becomes then the task of the arts, as Shelley will argue in
his essay "Defense of Poetry" (1965).
Hence the boundaries of natural knowledge are pushed back in
Goethe's science not by prosthetic devices such as telescopes, micro-
scopes, photomultipliers and the like, but by the transformation of the
individual human psyche. The most important business of education
then becomes the schooling of faculties, not the mastery of information
(Broudy, 1979, p. 446). Long after facts as explicit knowledge have
disappeared from active memory, we will continue to perceive patterns,
solve problems, and make discoveries by means of the faculties we have
acquired. Polanyi will go so far as to declare that "all knowledge is
either tacit or rooted in tacit knowledge. A wholly explicit knowledge is
unthinkable (Polanyi, 1969, p. 144). The profound similarity between
perception and scientific discovery which I have attempted to elaborate
with regard to Goethe's struggle toward archetypal phenomena has
been developed at great length in an independent context by Polanyi:
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).
The recognition that scientific discovery proceeds by cogmtlve acts

essentially similar to perception opens up a new route for the under-
standing of Goethe's archetypal phenomenon. It is what Polanyi would
call a perceived coherence. Goethe would perhaps go further and call it
the universal in the particular, the ideal in the real.
The German poet Novalis - who, we must recall, was also a mining
engineer - writes eloquently concerning the organs needed for a full

and profound vision of nature:
But it is vain to attempt to teach and preach Nature. One born blind does not learn to
see though we tell him forever about colors, lights and distant forms. Just so no one will
understand Nature who has not the necessary organ, the inward instrument, the specific
creating instrument, no one who does not as if spontaneously recognise and distinguish
Nature everywhere in all things, nor one who does not with an inherent lust of Creation
mingle himself by means of Sensation in manifold relationships with all bodies, and feel
his way into them simultaneouly (1903, pp. 137, 108).
Although atrophied, the needed organs can be developed so that one

may become "a sentient instrument of nature's secret activities"
because, as Novalis writes, "Association with the forces of Nature, with
animals, plants, rocks, stones, and waves must of necessity mould man
to a resemblance of these objects" (1903, p. 141).
By refusing to translate seen phenomena into a hypothetical or
abstract theory, the full value and content of the phenomenal world
remains. The Ideal is not projected onto a limited conceptual grid
which stands ready to hand. Rather, faculties adequate to the Idea are
formed by reflection, practice and observation in the phenomenal field
itself. The retention of the full value or content of phenomena was
essential for Goethe who, we must always remember, comes to the
arena not only as scientist but also as artist. For the artist is interested
not only in 'conditions of appearance,' but also in the psychological
value of colors, their effect on the soul, both individually and more
especially in combinations. The seen archetype still possesses that
value. It is a phenomenon and as such we need only shift our center of
interest from the sensory to the 'moral' [sittlich] aspects of color. The
dynamic polarity of light and darkness then becomes a metaphor for
the vacillations and struggles of the soul. In this sense the final chapter
of Goethe's Theory of Colors connects with the introduction in which
he tells us that "Colors are the deeds and sufferings of light."
NOTES
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.
2 Goethe, quoted by A. Wachsmuth (1966), p. 6.

3 Mayer (1893), p. 181, quoted by Duhem (1974), p. 52.
4 Cf. Gernot Bohme's piece in this volume.
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.
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FACTS AS THEORY 245
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Department of Physics
Amherst College
Amherst, MA 01002
u.s.A.
CHRISTOPH GOGELEIN
THE THEORY OF COLOR AS THE

SYMBOLISM OF INSIGHT*
In a previous chapter we concluded a broad range of specific consider-

ations. We have examined a part of Goethe's Contributions to Optics
[Beitriige zur Optik] and with it certain detailed aspects of his theory
of color, as well as an essay on methodology. Building upon these
considerations, we have attempted, by considering 'phenomenon,'
'conceptual mode' [Vorstellungsart] and their relationship, to depict
Goethe's methodology and his epistemological stance. We found his
Theory of Color [Farbenlehre] to be exemplary in this regard. In the
chapter concerning his concept of nature (Gogelein, 1972, section 2.62
and p. 93) we went so far as to say that the theory of color is a symbol
of science (in Goethe's sense) as such. By examining nearly all of
Goethe's other scientific activities, we sought to see how they were
interrelated, and also the form his procedure takes in each case. We
now return to a more general consideration which, among other things,
also summarizes and builds upon this earlier material.
We claim: an analogy exists between the way in which color appears
(i.e., the content of the theory of color 1) and the way in which Goethe
understands insight 2 (Le. the act of cognition 3). This analogy does not
relate, as we did above, the method Goethe employed in his color
theory but rather its content to his way of doing science as such. This is
at the same time a pronouncement upon the human being's situation
within the world (i.e. upon the relationship human being/world) and
upon the human being's vocation. It follows that in defending his theory
of color, Goethe defends not only a truth (important though this is), but
at the same time his concept of truth itself.
We will now attempt to describe this 'analogy' and draw from it
certain consequences. Something takes place in the elaboration of the
theory of color. Something else takes place in the appearance of colors,
which after all appear without a theory of color as well. These two
things are to be compared. A linkage exists, since it is precisely the
theory of color that has something to say about the way in which the
appearance of colors proceeds. The contention is now: the theory of
color says something by way of analogy about its own elaboration.
247
248 CHRISTOPH GOGELEIN
Looking to Goethe's actual procedure in color theory, we have

attempted to say something about this elaboration in the chapter on
'phenomenon' and 'conceptual mode.' In the epistemological inquiry,4
the following terms and their interrelationships proved fundamental:
idea - condition - archetypal phenomenon -

phenomenon - conl.:eptual mode.
The fundamental terms of the theory of color were:
light - darkness - color - turbidity [Triibe]- eye.
Let me understand 'analogy' literally as 'identity of relationships.' Thus

we must begin by comparing the relations among the terms of the
theory of color with the relations among the epistemological terms. A
further comparison can then be made between corresponding terms in
each of these disciplines.
Actually, ordering the terms as we have below already asserts
, correspondences; but these still remain to be characterized.
In order better to survey the relationships, we arrange these terms
spatially ir:t a way that already exhibits these relationships as least in
part:
Idea Condition
Archetypal phenomenon
Conceptual Mode Phenomenon
Light Darkness
Color
Eye Turbidity
We must now attempt to describe the relationships and their corre-

spondences, even though this may prove cumbersome and initially
opaque. 5
The upper group refers to knowing (insight), the lower group to
appearance. In each case, what appears or what is being known stands
in the middle: 'color' and 'archetypal phenomenon.' These arise through
the interaction of the four entities indicated by the terms surrounding
THE SYMBOLISM OF INSIGHT 249
them. Their 'being' is an ongoing becoming in the tension of a duality,

the poles of which are in themselves neither visible (i.e. do not appear)
nor knowable. This idea (or the 'simple') and the conditions constitute
those interacting 'forces.' The idea is delimited by the condition. Light
acts in opposition to darkness. In the phenomenon, idea and condition
work together, and the idea can be known in the archetypal phenome-
non when the conceptual mode becomes active as well. In the turbidity,
light and darkness 'battle' one another, and light can become visible as
color when the eye acts both with and against.
1. The pair idea/condition stands in a position analogous to the pair
conceptual mode/phenomenon, as does the pair light/darkness to the
pair eye/turbidity. These are analogous (corresponding) in the following
regard: idea (and condition) as well as light (and darkness) have a
certain transcendence, are in and of themselves inaccessible and also
are not subject to human influence; they are not affected by human
activity. Conceptual mode (and phenomenon) as well as eye (and
turbidity), on the other hand, each belong to the world, to the world
accessible to human beings, the world in which the human being can
become active.
Idea/condition and light/darkness are, as it were, the transcendent
ground that reveals itself, through the immanent activity of conceptual
mode/phenomenon or eye/turbidity,6 in the human being respectively
as archetypal phenomenon and as color.
2. Next let us consider the relationship of the pairs on the right to
those on the left: idea/conceptual mode stands opposed to condition/
phenomenon as light/eye stands to the pair darkness/turbidity. This is
so in the following regard: the relationship is one of polarity, and the
left side is analogous to the right in the way that a unitary or unifying
entity or subject stands opposed to a multiplicity or manifold object, or
the way in which something that can be delimited stands opposed to the
delimitation or boundary. This is true above all for each of the upper,
'transcendent' parts, but also for the lower ones, for the eye is the
productively viewing organ of the subject just as the conceptual modes
can be ideas that the observing subject 'posits.'
The group on the left is the more active; the group on the right the
more passive.
3. Next, let us juxtapose the relationships between each of the outer
concepts and their intermediate terms.
2S0 CHRISTOPH GOGELEIN
(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.
4. Finally, we should attempt to characterize briefly the corre-

spondences between terms which the schema designates as analogous.
Actually, these correspondences are already characterized by the
analogies described above, so that what follows is but an elaboration

and in part a repetition:
(a) The archetypal phenomenon and color are both the dynamic
product of activities that have a different 'being' and as such do not
appear. The archetypal phenomenon and color, as dynamic products,
are dependent upon a polarity between two 'principles' that differ from
.them in ontological status.
(b) The idea (or the One, the simple) and light are both simple and
thus indivisible. Both are in and of themselves inaccessible. They are
held to be the highest. Yet each is paired with a second 'principle'; in
old age Goethe emphasizes more and more that the latter is irreducible
to the former.
(c) Condition and darkness are both 'principles' together with idea
and light. Neither light nor the idea has the character of 'substance,' so
that e.g. color would be a quality of light; rather, if one wants to speak
of substances at all, within the scheme these are the archetypal
phenomenon and color.
However, one must understand 'condition' not as the totality of
various visible, empirical conditions, but rather as conditioning itself,
perhaps in the sense of a limit or delimitation or resistence. In this way,
'counteracting' arises - just as darkness delimits light and is not a
nothing, but rather acts in opposition.
(d) The eye is the organ of sight. As a sense organ, it is charac-
terized 7 by its capacity for taking and giving, for acting and opposing.
This opposing is characterized in the introduction to the Sketch of a
Theory of Color [Entwurf einer Farbenlehre] as follows: within the eye
dwells a light at rest, which is excited from within or from without. The
eye is related to light. Conceptual mode plays the role here of an organ
capable of seeing relationships, order. It is related to the idea. The ideas
that the human being has, that are "awakened" (Goethe, HA Briefe 2, p.
419) in viewing nature, can be "a kind of organ" (Goethe, HA Briefe 2,
p. 237) for the comprehension of the objects of experience. Let us add
here to this analogy between eye and the 'mental organ' a passage from
ca. 1792: "... Thus we can say in the end that, just as our eye is
constructed in complete harmony with its visible objects, our ears with
the oscillating movements of vibrating objects, our spirit stands also in
harmony with the deeper, simpler forces of nature and can represent
these as purely as the objects of the visible world reproduce themselves
in a clear eye" (Goethe, LA 1.3, pp. 62-63).
252 CHRISTOPH GOGELEIN
(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:
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.
Rudolf Steiner Schule Bochum

4630 Bochum
PART III
CONTEMPORARY RELEVANCE:
A VIABLE ALTERNATIVE?
RONALD H. BRADY
FORM AND CAUSE IN GOETHE'S MORPHOLOGY*
Any modern reading of Goethe's morphologicat writings must struggle

with the author's apparent satisfaction. that his 'morphology' (Goethe
coined the term) was both a descriptive science and a causal one. This
unlikely attitude is made all the more difficult by Goethe's suggestion
that form - at least in the sense of 'archetypal form' - is itself causal.
That 'form,' which is normally thought to be the effect of causal
process, may somehow be identified with its origin, is counterintuitive
to our normal habits of thought. It is not surprising therefore that the
identity of 'form' and 'law' in Goethe's writings is generally treated as an
idealistic excess of Naturphilosophie which required no special effort to
understand. Members of that school showed a tendency to reify ideas
and had no misgivings about imposing such notions upon their observa-
tions. By the simple expedient of his inclusion in a homogeneous
Naturphilosophie Goethe can be made unproblematic. It is an attractive
solution, but an incorrect one.
I shall argue in this paper that Goethe's notion of archetypal form
represents an important advance in the phenomenology of organic
form, and that it does indeed have causal implications. I shall argue
further that the confusion of Goethe's ideas with those of other figures,
particularly the notion of an archetype as it is found in Oken and
Owen, is attractive just because it requires no departure from our
ordinary mental habits, and has led to a pervasive misreading of
Goethe's work. If my argument holds, however, the efforts of Ok en,
Owen, and even some modern Darwinians, must be seen in a new light,
for it would appear that these efforts fail in their intention to the degree
that they depart from Goethe's approach. Archetypal form may be
more central to morphological study than present attitudes allow, but
until we recover Goethe's actual concept we have no way of deciding
the question.
INTRODUCTION
Morphology is, as the term suggests, an account of form - an 'account'

257
F. Amrine,- F. J. Zucker, and H. Wheeler (eds.), Goethe and the Sciences:
258 RONALD H. BRADY
that allows us a rational grasp of the perceived morphe by making its

internal and external relations intelligible. I must ask my readers to
focus, as they read the following pages, upon the implications that one
form has for another, and not upon theorized processes that might give
rise to such forms. These processes would concern us only when the
relations between the forms were understood well enough to think
about origins - that is, when the task of morphology had been
completed. But before we reach this stage we must understand the
manner in which distinct forms reveal a commonality through com-
parison, and the logic by which such comparison is articulated. The
following discussion is an essay on the logic of form.
THE ANATOMY OF COMMON PLAN
Morphology studies the forms of organisms by juxtaposing them and

evolving, from this juxtaposition, a standard of comparison. Since the
work of Aristotle the most obvious standard of comparison has been
that of homology (a term made popular by Owen) or standard part
identity. Aristotle had noted, for example, that many animals seems to
possess identical parts - heads, limbs, etc., and that groups of animals
could be formed on the basis of common construction or common
Bauplan as this was later termed in German (Russell, 1916). The
possession of a common plan by a group of animals allows us to
identify standard parts, giving them common names. Thus, with regard
to any tetrapod, we may speak of the spine, the skull, the forelimb, or
the upper bone in the forelimb, the humerus. These are all types of
standard parts, the last being a single bone and the others complexes of
several bones.
Of course, these elements may take on very different appearances in
different animals (Aristotle's variation according to "excess or defect"),
and our recognition of standard part identity, or homology, depends
upon our recognition of identical position in the overall common plan,
or identical structure in the complex of the part - that is, upon
principles of position and composition.
Particular organs have been identified by such criteria since
Geoffroy St. Hilaire (1818) formulated his; 'principle of connections'
and 'principle of composition,' Geoffroy was particularly acute in his
insistence that it was plan, rather than function, that identified both
organisms and their parts, and his ideas of relation took their modern
GOETHE'S MORPHOLOGY 259
names at the hands of Richard Owen (1848) who termed functional

similarity analogy and standard part identity homology, The former he
defined as: "A part or organ in one animal which has the same function
as another part in a different animal," and the latter was "The same
organ in different animals und<;r every variety of form and function."
Neither Owen nor Geoffroy defined what they meant by "the same,"
but their meaning is easily recovered from the context of argument.
Geoffroy had claimed that a particular organ might go through almost
any transformation except transposition. Owen identified his homologies
by their connections and composition. The identify preserved by the
criteria applied is clearly one of position and structure, and one is
thought to imply the other.
The same concepts form the basis of most modern work, although
their significance is sometimes blurred by evolutionary explanations.
Thus Remane's (1971) first and second criteria of homology are (1) the
position or the organs within comparable systems and (2) direct
agreement between organs with regard to numerous features - i.e. the
'principle of connections' and the 'principle of composition.'
Both of the above criteria are logical derivations of the concept of
common structural plan (Bauplan). Homologous organs share the same
position on the overall map of the organism, and by extension of the
same map, share the same compositional structure. Structural compari-
son of organisms takes place by a conceptual reduction to schematic
identity, and if we put aside functional studies, there is little more
to modern morphology. Organisms are compared in terms of their
similarity and differences, and similarity rests on schematic identity.
Of course, direct comparison of adult morphology is not the only
manner of determining structural similarity, or homology, yet this does
not alter the conclusion above. Two important additions are embryol-
ogy and grouping, but both derive from common plan. This is relatively
easy to see with regard to developmental evidence, for although such
evidence will at times provide valuable information, comparison at this
level must rest on the very same foundation as the mode of comparison
discussed above. As Russell (1916) points out, the relation of em-
bryonic structures "are still determined solely by relative positions and
connections of parts, just as homologies are determined in the last of all
stages of development, the adult state." Developmental evidence, which
includes the entirety of ontogenesis as well as the adult form, provides
richer comparative material both quantitatively (more forms to com-
260 RONALD H. BRADY
pare) and qualitatively (in the comparison, otherwise unavailable, of

different stages of the same organism). Yet in spite of the richer
character of this evidence its application establishes homologies in
exactly the same way as adult evidence - i.e. by clarifying position and
composition.
The grouping of organisms does provide a further criterion of
homology (besides position and composition), but not independently of
common plan. Organisms sharing the same plan are for that reason
grouped together, and within the overall plan (within the phylum) those
sharing a particular variant of that plan form a sub-group. Thus, on the
basis of shared and unshared variations, organisms within a plan are
grouped in a hierarchical subordination of smaller groups within larger
ones. Since any particular homology will be a particular variant of that
standard part, which variant will either be unique or be shared by a
certain number of species, each hypothetical postulation of homology
carries grouping implications. In practice, the implications of a particu-
lar character (hypothesized homology) are compared with those of
the other characters while constructing a hierarchy of groups. If the
hypothetical homology is congruent with the aggregate of information
(with the grouping implications of the majority of characters) it would
seem to be correctly identified and passes the test. If it is not, it is
judged mistaken - i.e. it is not a true homology (Nelson and Platnick,
1981; Patterson, 1982). Although this is not a criterion of position or
composition, it is derived from the hierarchy of taxa that is itself
derived from their ordering according to shared and unshared varia-
tions of a common plan. A group within such a hierarchy is defined by
possession of a particular variant, or morphotype (since each variant of
the overall plan is itself a particular plan). We have still but one concept
of structural comparison.
Darwin (1859) thought so too, for the relations described above are
exactly those "mutual affinities of organic beings" to which his
thirteenth chapter refers. The patterns resulting from the study of these
relations were to Darwin the standing patterns of natural history, which
his theory proposed to explain by an evolutionary account. The
common plan of the phylum was, in Darwin's treatment, the plan of the
original progenitor of the line, preserved by heredity. Variation was
introduced by descent, and channeled into particular lines of develop-
ment by selective pressures. Since all variation preserved the same
original plan, and each evolutionary novelty (each new variant or
morphotype) could itself become a starting point for new departures

(by being the common ancestral plan preserved within a group of lesser
variations), the hierarchy of groups within groups was a record of
descent, and classification became phylogenetic.
The key concepts of homology and Bauplan remained purely
morphological, of course, for they describe relations that must first be
known before they can be explained. Thus Darwin borrows them from
pre-Darwinian morphology and simply provides a new name for the
latter. In chapter thirteen of the Origin Darwin writes; "the ancient
progenitor, the archetype as it may be called ..."
THE PROBLEM OF THE ARCHETYPE
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
following the transformation. A good (close) series of transitional forms

would settle the matter, but lacking such evidence, we may elect to try
another approach.
We could, for instance, imagine a form intermediate between fins
and limbs, which form would then provide a hypothesis of relation. Or,
in a related exercise, we could find a schema on which both fins and
limbs could be mapped - i.e. a schema which generalizes on them
both. Of course, the more distant the forms compared, the fewer
particulars they have in common, and the more general a common
schema will have to be. Thus, the progenitor of a phylum is usually
conceived as a rather simple organism, and the 'archetype' upon which
the progenitor was modeled was constructed from a very simple form
by repetition and transformation.
One of the latest and most influential versions of this notion of an
archetype was produced by Richard Owen (1848), who may have been
the last important representative of Naturphilosophie in England. Owen
has absorbed a great deal from this German heritage, particularly the
notion, found in Lorenz Oken (1807), that the plan of the vertebrate
phylum was essentially a series of segments. Thus Owen begins by
postulating a 'typical vertebra' (Figure 1) - a schematic 'map' generaliz-
ing on the vertebrae. He then projects each segment of the vertebrate
skeleton on this map. Thus, the thorax of a bird (Figure 2) becomes an
expanded vertebra. The section of the sternum shown becomes a
'haemal spine,' the sternal rib a 'haemapophysis,' and so on. Once he
has mapped all elements of the skeleton on this same schema Owen is
able to build that whole from vertebral sections by repetition and
transformation of parts.
Having reduced the varied structures of vertebrate skeletons to
transformations of the underlying 'typical vertebra,' he constructs on
this basis the 'vertebrate archetype' (Figure 3). The latter is an animal
with an axial skeleton that is minimally developed - i.e. is varied
enough to support life but not so much that it cannot be seen as a
series of transformations of vertebral sections. Even the skull is made
into a series of expanded vertebrae, and the vertebral schema is the
only irreducible element left.
The reduction to simplicity here is extreme, for Owen must unify
such distant structures, but the strategy is not unusual. Owen termed
the relation "in which a part or series of parts stands to the fundamental
type" general homology (which relation was thereby distinguished from
___ '- neuralllpine.
zygapophysi&. " .
"''C'
.. __ ----•.neurapophysill.
diapophysis.
---pleurapophysis.
parapophysia . .••..
bremapophYllis.
:'
zygapophysis. , .. , . . ,
..... -•. hremalspine.
Fig. 1.
what he termed special homology - the relation between identical

organs in different organisms described in the preceding section). Of
course, the general homology of several distinct elements with the type
indicates as well their homology with each other, but the crucial point
seems to be that their relation to each other could not be discovered
without the mediation of the type concept.
Owen's analysis of the limb, for instance, homologized the entire
structure with a single element in the 'typical vertebra.' Owen dismissed
the obvious differences - the multiplicity of elements in the limb,
which is a compound organ - by stating that the single bone of the
schema had become 'teleologically compound,' presumably for the
purpose of locomotion. Owen could affirm the homology of fins and
limbs in this manner, since both would be transformation of the same
vertebral element, but his approach is more legislation than discovery.
The real problem is not the extreme degree to which Owen pushed his
strategy, but the strategy itself. He is not alone in this mistake, however,
and we will be better able to examine the nature of his error in a
modem example.
264 RONALD H. BRADY
Natural typical vertebra: thorax of a bird.

Fig. 2.
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
Ideal archetype skeleton
Fig. 3.
form or schema which generalizes upon the forms under examination.

This can be done in two ways - either by constructing a hypothetical
intermediate between forms, or by constructing a schema simple
enough that it could serve as a common map. Either approach allows
one to hypothesize agreement between the forms compared on the
basis of the agreement of each with the mediating form, or their
'general homology.' But this strategy confuses evidence and theory. If
we follow out its present-day career we shall see why this is so.
Patterson (1982) reviews the Owen version of an archetype and
notes that the real problem is the notion of general homology, by which
"an idealization" is homologized with actual features through "abstract
transformations." He then argues that the same strategy can be found in
the contemporary practice of homologizing dissimilar organs on the
basis of the homology of each with the primitive version of the organ
in a hypothesized progenitor. Due to the use of such a strategy in
contemporary works, Patterson concludes that "archetypes are by no
means extinct," but live on in the form of speculative progenitors. These
modem versions are Darwinian, of course, but however far they appear
to be from Owen's idealistic schema, they result in the same difficulties.
Empirical determination of homologies is always by comparison,
either a direct comparison between two forms or a wider comparison
between all members of a hypothetical group. But if comparison is
our method of handling the empirical data, it would seem only logical
that the items compared the empirical forms. When we construct an
intermediate form to trace the positional relations between two organs,
266 RONALD H. BRADY
however, we begin to compare empirical forms with invented forms.

The procedure treats the invention as if it were an empirical discovery,
and results in the determinations that would follow from such a
discovery. Of course, if the grouping information were more complete,
we could have determined the homologies in question, and if we now
make it more complete by adding an imaginary taxon, a determination
will result. But the approach is quite arbitrary. The fact that we can
invent such forms means nothing, for when the relations are unclear we
can invent many - all possible intermediates - but none actually
found in nature. There can be no profit in the strategy.
A similar problem arises with regard to the hypothetical ancestor,
for this invention is equally without empirical foundation, and occupies
a space in our reflections that should be reserved for actual observa-
tion. If we can invent one ancestral form, we can invent many, and
lacking the evidence for which they substitute, there is no way to
determine which form, if any, is correct.
We must remember, while reviewing these problems, that the
mediating form was hypothesized because the data was inconclusive
without it. It becomes, therefore, an interpretive tool by which the
data can be given definition. The known forms are now interpreted
by the hypothesized ancestor (or intermediate), and what the existent
organisms do or do not possess will now depend upon what the
hypothesized ancestor (or intermediate) says they possess. If the
empirical forms must submit to interpretation by the hypothesis, they
cannot be used to test that hypothesis. For these reasons Patterson calls
general homology "vacuous," and I must concur. speCUlative construc-
tion of general forms and the paths of transformation that they suggest
may hold a certain fascination for the imagination, but the practice is
merely guesswork and can tell us nothing about the actual paths of
transformation. 'General homology' is not actual homology.
Patterson's critique of general homology shows us both how wide-
spread and how bankrupt the practice is, but it does not dissolve the
problem of the archetype. What Patterson has actually targeted is the
practice of legislating paths of transformation in order to interpret data.
Admittedly, most archetypal schemes did just this. But the problem to
which they were addressed is innocent of the response.
From the inception of this discussion the comparison of organic
forms has led to postulations of underlying unity, which unity is often
conveniently expressed in a schematic plan of positions (connections).
It seems but an extension of this practice to suppose that if forms which

appear distant to the eye are yet thought to be transforms of one
another, that transformation may be made intelligible by discovering
the positional schema that is common to both and therefore unchanging
in the transformation. Geoffroy's principles imply no less, for if organic
structure can pass through any transformation except transposition, the
unity which remains constant through these transformations must be a
positional schema. And unless we want to suppose the the vertebrae of
fish and those of tetrapods are not the same thing, such a schema would
underlie both fins and limbs.
GOETHE
At first glance it seems obvious that Goethe must have exerted an

influence on Owen, at least in so far as the latter figure looked to
Naturphilosophie for his notion of an underlying unity represented by
every part of an organic whole. This idea had been prominent in
German thought since Herder, and Goethe developed it in such a
manner that Owen may well have thought of Goethe's work as a
precursor to his. own. Yet the notion of an archetypal schema that
underlies the parts of an organism is really older than Goethe, and his
own contribution, developed mainly in botany, rests on a different
principle. Before I clarify that statement however, let me point out the
appearance of similarity that has led most commentators to make a
parallel reading.
We are privileged, in Goethe's case, to watch his botanical notions as
they grow. The basis of his Metamorphosis of Plants (published in
1790; English translation, 1946) was worked through during Goethe's
journey to Italy (1786-87) and reflected in his letters (collected and
published as the Italian Journey: Goethe, 1968). The following excerpts
bear directly on the emerging idea of an archetypal or primal plant
[UrpJlanze].
Padua Botanical Gardens

September 27,1786
To wander about among vegetation which is new to one is pleasant and instructive. It is
the same with plants as it is with other familiar objects; in the end we cease to think
about them at all. But what is seeing without thinking? Here where I am confounded
with a great variety of plants, my hypothesis that it might be possible to derive all plant
268 RONALD H. BRADY
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.
Botanical Gardens, Palermo, Sicily

April 17, 1797
Here where, instead of being grown in pots under glass as they are with us, plants are
allowed to grow freely in the open fresh air 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 [Urpflanze]? There certainly must be one. Otherwise, how could I recognize that
this or that form was a plant if all were not built on the same basic model?
I tried to discover how all these divergent forms differed from one another, and I
always found that they were more alike than unlike. But when I applied my botanical
nomenclature, I got along all right to begin with, but then I got stuck, which annoyed
me without stimulating me.
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.
Rome; second visit

July 31, 1787
While walking in the Public Gardens of Palermo, it came to me in a flash that in the
organ of the plant which we are accustomed to call the leaf lies the true Proteus who
can hide or reveal himself in vegetal forms. From first to last, the plant is nothing but
leaf, which is so inseparable from the future germ that one cannot think of one without
the other.
As other commentators have noticed (Arber, 1950; Cassirer, 1950;

Steiner, 1962), Goethe begins by speaking of his UrpJlanze as if it were
an ancestral form. His later references to it make clear, however, that it
is something abstracted from the empirical particulars. It seems unlikely

that this indicates an alternation in his approach, for when he speaks of
discovering the Urpf/anze "among this multitude" he probably does not
mean actually finding it among the plants of the Palermo garden but
seeing it through their mediation. After all, Goethe boasts, a month
later, that "Nature herself' would envy him the Urpf/anze, clearly
indicating that it was not a natural product. Unless he went through a
very rapid conversion, the Urpf/anze was probably a general plan -
rather than an ancestral species - from its inception.
In keeping with his notion of an archetypal plan, Goethe proposes
the general identity of all appendicular organs of the plant, or as it has
usually been interpreted, the homology of cotyledons, foliage leaves,
sepals, petals, pistils, stamens, ect. The germ of this idea is found as
early as Theophrastes, and related notions are developed by both Grew
and Malpighi. Wolff worked out a parallel idea based on common
embryonic forms nineteen years before Goethe's letter, but Goethe
seems to have been ignorant of these predecessors and thought he had
none. Earlier work is therefore without interpretive value for Goethe's
text (Arber. 1950).
Against the background of Naturphilosophie and the predilection of
its adherents to .emphasize the repetition of parts in the vertebrate
skeleton to the point at which the whole becomes only vertebrae,
Goethe seems to be postulating: (1) the 'general homology' of all
appendicular organs of the shoot; (2) a generalized plan for the under-
lying organ; (3) by repetition and transformation of the underlying
organ, a generalized plan for the whole shoot. Interpreted in this
manner, Goethe's work finds a parallel in both Oken (1807) and Owen
(1849, 1866), and too many figures have interpreted Goethe in this
fashion to list them here. (A few commentators - such as Arber,
Cassirer and Steiner - resist this reading, but they have not influenced
the majority.) This mistake is perhaps quite natural given the context in
which Goethe would be read, but it remains a mistake. The identity that
Goethe postulates between organs is not that of 'general homology,' nor
does his 'leaf [Blatt] perform the same function as Owen's 'typical
vertebra.' Nor, for the matter, can his Urpf/anze be an Owenian
archetype. Goethe attempted to define another solution to the problem
of the archetype, but the more influential work of such known
biologists as Owen has effectively prevented historians from making
a decent reading of his text (See for example: Russell, 1916;
270 RONALD H. BRADY
Nordenskiold, 1928; Singer, 1959). If we pay close attention to certain

details in Goethe's argument, however, the differences between his
notion and that of 'general homology' will become clear.
The point of 'general homology' is the homology of each element
with the type, but this notion of type is hardly distinct from ancestral
form. When Owen used the generalized plan of a vertebra for his type,
it was obvious that the 'typical vertebra' was, most directly represented
by actual vertebrae, and Owen was· imagining something like an actual
transformation from vertebra to ribs, limbs, etc. Of course, since the
vertebral form is the common one, it remains primary. The transforma-
tions described move from vertebrate to other forms, almost in the
manner that we imagine the transformation from an original progenitor
to its descendents. In a certain sense, in fact, Owen's notion contributed
to Darwin's idea.
In the thirteenth chapter of the Origin of Species (section on
morphology, 1859), Darwin suggests that the progenitor - "the
archetype as it may be called" - provides an explanation for the
homologies that obtain between various parts of the same organism. He
then goes on to read Goethe (he does not mention the name, but the
text is clear in its implications) in these terms. Noting that "in a flower
the relativ.e position of the sepals, petals, stamens, and pistils, as well as
their intimate structure, are intelligible on the view that they consist of
metamorphosed leaves, arranged in a spire," and that parallel relations
of homology are found in the vertebrata and the articulata, Darwin
concludes: "An indefinite repetition of the same part or organ is a
common characteristic (as Owen has observed) of all low or little
modified forms; therefore we may readily believe that the unknown
progenitor of the vertebrata possessed many vertebrae; the unknown
progenitor or the articulata, many segments; and the unknown progeni-
tor of the flowering plants, many spiral whorls of leaves." Read in terms
of Owen's general homology, Goethe's work seems to suggest that the
foliage leaf is the original form from which all other appendicular
organs were derived.
But this is actually a step which Goethe refuses to take. In the
Summary of his Metamorphosis of Plants (1946) we find a warning
against just this interpretation:
119
Just as we have now sought to explain the protean organs of the vegetating and
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.
Goethe's warning that the transformations must be run in both direc-

tions makes it quite clear that the foliage leaf cannot be taken as more
general than other forms or 'primitive' rather than 'derived.' Goethe's
choice of the term Blatt (leaf) for the general organ has confused some
commentators, but as Arber noted (1950), it must be understood as an
entirely general organ, while each of the actual organs of the plant are
particularized.
One might suppose, upon first reading, that if Goethe affirmed the
homology of foliage leaves, sepals, petals, stamens, etc., he must have
had some common schema in mind. Since a schema is itself a form,
however, Goethe must provide a form which is not only a possible
starting point for all plant appendages, but is also equally distant from
each and therefore specially related to none. This would be a for-
midable task if accepted, but Goethe did not accept it. He did not
produce a schema for his leaf, nor did he trace the identity of the
organs mentioned by means of position and composition. To call this
identity 'homology' may in fact be misleading, since that term has come
to mean 'identity of position and composition.' Goethe used other
criteria.
The various organs of the flowering plant are usually identified by
common recognition rather than any formula, for the foliage leaf, petal,
stamen, ect., all seem obvious. We may recognize something like a
positional information here, in that one expects each organ to occupy
272 RONALD H. BRADY
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
transitional forms may be found between them - or at least those are

the empirical criteria used. Clearly, this is not the identity by position or
composition that Owen, and most other biologists, were thinking of
when they postulated homology. Nor can we use this sort of identity as
the basic unit in a schematic 'archetype,' for it is not capable of taking
on schematic form. But if the immediate differences between Goethe's
approach and that summarized by Owen (and Darwin, for that matter)
are now visible, the import of these differences remains obscure. Before
we can penetrate to the real content of the Goethean method we must
review another point of contrast.
FORMATION, TRANSFORMATION, AND THE GRADED SERIES
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.
Cassirer (1950) is exemplary in his grasp of the principles set

forward in this introduction. Pointing out that the notion of 'type' is
fundamental to all the important figures of the day, he then proceeds to
distinguish Goethe's version from the rest:
To Cuvier or Candolle 'type' was an expression of definite and basic constant relation-
ships in the structure of living things that are fixed and unalterable and upon which all
knowledge of them depends. They follow rules no less inviolable than the purely ideal
figures of geometry. Candolle insisted that the disposition of the parts was the most
important factor for the establishment of the plan of symmetry of a plant. Likewise K.
Ernst von Baer explained the type as the "positional relationship of the inherent
elements and the organs." But this view was not Goethe's. He did not think geometri-
cally or statically, but dynamically throughout. He did not reject permanence, but he
recognized no other kind than that which displays itself in the midst of change, which
alone can discover it to us.
We can bring this opposition into clearer focus by considering two

different ways of treating the graded series, or as it was sometimes
called, 'serial homology.' During his argument against Owen's general
homologies of the vertebrate skull, Huxley (1858) offered a plausible
reconstruction of the mental steps by which Owen came to his 'typical
vertebra.' The tendency to abstract an idealized plan was only normal,
he suggested, for "a community of plan is discernible amidst the
manifold diversities of organic structure."
The tyro in comparative anatomy cannot fail to be struck with the resemblances
between the leg and the jaw of a crustacean; between the parts of the mouth of a beetle
and those of a bee; between the wing of a bird and the forelimb of the mammal.
Everywhere he finds unity of plan, diversity of execution.
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 ... ?
I have quoted Huxley's account because I find it a good example of

the approach usually made to the 'theme and variations' problem, as
well as the way in which such a theme, once detected, seems to suggest
further applications - i.e. to suggest the general homology of other
elements with the same schema. As long as we understand the 'theme'
as a fixed form which underlies all variations, Huxley's rhetoric seems
utterly lucid, and we should be surprised if the "vertebra in abstract"
did not "dawn" in the mind of a serious student. But there is another
way to grasp the 'gradual modification' of the series.
In order to the second possibility apparent, let us substitute the
series of foliage leaves presented by the field buttercup - Ranunculus
acris (Figure 4; shown in ascending order from bottom left to bottom
right) for the vertebral series that Huxley used. The series covers an
extensive range and is gradual enough to create the impression of
overall unity. Should we attempt to assign an underlying schema to the
series, however, we shall run into difficulty. What form shall we
choose? The simplest schema, patterned after the three-part leaf at the
lower right, is preserved by the whole series but tells us almost nothing
about the complex forms. The reverse procedure, beginning from the
most complex form, gives a schema which can map the other forms
only by deletion. And neither can tell us anything about the progression
itself. The information content of this approach is trivial unless we use
the schema we pick to extend the transformation into as yet unrelated
forms, as Owen did when he worked out the general homology of the
skull in Huxley's account above. But as I argued earlier, such a step
may represent nothing more than an arbitrary legislation.
On the other hand; were we to begin our study of the series from the
progression itself rather than from a single form, we will obtain a very
different result. Let the reader imagine, for a moment, how one could
276 RONALD H. BRADY
Fig. 4.
decide whether an additional form, not included in the series as yet,

could be 'placed within it. By what criterion could the judgement be
made? (Since I have performed the experiment with luckless class-
rooms of students - mostly ignorant of biology - I can report that the
solution is almost immediate for most observers.) The forms of a
graded series have the peculiar property of appearing to be arrested
stages - we might call them "shapshots' - of continuous 'movement.' If
we begin with the first leaf on the stalk (lower left) and follow the
transformation to the last (lower right), we have the sense that we are in
fact watching the form on the lower left tum into the form on the lower
right. Because we 'see' the series in the context of this imagined or
'intended' movement (to use the phenomenological term), an adequate
criterion for accepting or rejecting a new member is near at hand.
We must reflect that the 'movement' of the forms becomes more
apparent in the actual phenomena to the degree that the 'missing
pictures' - the forms transitional between the shapes we have - are
supplied. The movement we are thinking would, if entirely phenomenal,
be entirely continuous, leaving no gaps. Thus as gaps narrow the
impression of movement is strengthened, and the technique by which a
new form can be judged consists in placing that form within one of the
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
continuous movement into a series of 'shots,' which then become

transparent to the movement they portray. For the purpose of our
intention, the arrested stage, or Gestalt, is an abstraction. It is held in
arrest by our sensible experience, but when we attempt to detect the
relation between stages, we must dissolve that condition in the mind.
We move our intentional focus from text to context, from the individual
particulars to the unifying movement.
I have already remarked that Huxley is not unusual in supposing that
the continuity of the series is due to the mediation of a single under-
lying form. Were someone to remark, when viewing such a series, that
'they are all the same thing,' the meaning of the statement would seem
immediately apparent. But no single schema can generalize upon the
series, for each schema, being itself a type of Gestalt, will be closer to
one stage or the series than it is to the others. This is very apparent with
the leaves, but it holds true of the vertebrae as well. Yet the notion of a
'single form' may still be correct, for 'form' may be a more subtle matter
than Gestalt.
Compare, for example, the Gestalts of two leaves extracted from
differing zones in the series (Figure 5). Compared in isolation from the
." \
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.
FORM AS MOVEMENT
When we compare the information content of these two strategies - i.e.

the idealized schema and the overall movement - the contrast becomes
particularly pointed. The series of Figure 4 could be mapped upon a
common schema, but this unvarying element would tell us nothing
about the differential that runs throughout. The movement, on the other
hand, specifies that differential, and by so doing, specifies the forms
possible to the series. The latter approach, it would seem, does succeed
in generalizing upon the series while the former does not.
The movement of the series cannot, of course, demand that any
particular potential will be realized, but it does give the range of
potential forms - those which would become actual were the imagined
continuous transformation to become actual. Whether an actual leaf
will realize this or that potential is determined by something else, but it
is the movement which defines the potential forms. Of course, this is
why it serves as a standard of inclusion or exclusion with regard to the
introduction of new members, but this is not to say that the new forms
must empirically exist. Since all potentials are specified by the move-
ment, it can also generate those intermediates which we do not actually
find in nature. After all, the movement is perfectly continuous, and
capable of giving rise to any number of discontinuous Gestalts for that
reason. The movement specifies forms, it would seem, by generating
them.
It might seem counter-intuitive to speak of movement, rather than an
object making the movement, as generative, but between the forms and
their movement there is only one possibility. We must remember that
no single Gestalt, qua Gestalt, can generate a movement between forms.
We detect the movement through the differential between forms, but no
one form can give us this. The movement, on the other hand, is a
continuity which must contain, in order to be continuous, multiple
Gestalts. Thus the movement is not itself a product of the forms from
which it is detected, but rather the unity of those forms, from which
unity any form belonging to the series can be generated. Individual
forms are in this sense 'governed' by the movement of the series in
which they are found - their shape and position in that series are both
functions of the overall transformation.
At this point in the argument, the project of description must
permanently shift from static to mobile form, for the latter generalizes
280 RONALD H. BRADY
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
consideration, not of the products, but of the generative field of

movement. This turn has been carried through in a very promising
manner by Bockemiihl (1982), who describes certain 'transformations'
[Bildebewegungen] within the development of individual leaves and
argues that these constitute the basic formative 'gestures' of the plant.
Bockemiihl speaks of four such 'gestures', which he names as 'shooting',
'articulating', 'spreading', and 'stemming' [Spriessen, Gliedern, Spreiten,
Stielen]. 'Shooting' is apical growth which extends the leaf tip outword,
and 'articulating' is a continuation of this through the development of
multiple apices. 'Spreading' is the filling-in of the leaf plane; 'stemming'
is growth at the base of the leaf which extends it from the main stem
(and thus forms a secondary stem on the leaf). These same 'gestures'
are found as well in the sequential movement of stem leaves, and are,
by Bockemuhl's argument, adequate to describe, and generalize upon,
all such series. The 'gestures' by which leaves grow are evidently
fundamental to the transformations between them.
I cannot proceed with this account in the present discussion, for
from this point onward the actual investigation must be an empirical
one. The nature and possibility of such an investigation should now be
clear, however, even if the concept of movement as a form-making
principle leads .the exposition into difficulties of expression. Such
difficulties are to be expected when a new subject must be communi-
cated. (In this respect Bockemiihl seems to possess an exemplary
sensitivity to the difficulties of portraying form in the context of
movement, and his own language as well as his comments on Goethe's
locutions provide an illuminating interpretation of Goethe's botanical
writings. A partial bibliography of Bockemiihl's publications may be
found in the references, and I refer the reader who wishes to read
Geothe to these articles as well. I have found them invaluable.) How
movement can be a 'making' principle rather than a 'thing made,' and
can be spoken of in language that implies causal efficacy, however, is
not a linguistic problem but a conceptual one. If we are unable to move
beyond the usual notion of causality such treatment must remain
merely a figure of speech. The next section, therefore, will attempt to
clarify the concept by which the topic must be approached.
FORM AND POTENCY
Although I have spoken of form-making movement, implying a causal

282 RONALD H. BRADY
aspect, it is possible to understand the account I have produced thus far

as the discovery of a descriptive differential (or differentials) which
could be expressed mathematically as well. If we take this approach, the
dynamic aspect of the forms becomes little more than an artifact of
perception, and should we choose to call it generative, in that it
specifies all forms potential to the series, there would seem less reason
to suppose it causal. After all, a mathematical differential, however
predictive of future forms, is not a productive power but a specification
of relations. It shows us how the finished product is structured, but not
how it was caused.
Let me try to clarify the distinction. Were we able to isolate a single
differential within a metamorphic series, we could then point to it as the
relation held constant through all changes. But if this would give us the
formal parameters governing the transformation, it does not in itself
demand that there be a transformation - i.e. that anyone form be
superseded by any other. If there is a supersession, the differential
predicts its form, but does not explain its necessity. The fact that we
may describe the forms of the plant in terms of 'transformations' is
evidence that we may perceptually detect a general relation between the
forms (Le. the mathematical differential), but not that we are able to
perceive the making power by which this regularity is effected.
If the argument above follows from the given assumption (i.e. that
the movement reduces to a mathematical differential), the assumption
itself is somewhat problematic. The differential properly exists only
between Gestalts. At the moment that we detect the continuity of the
series, the empirical experience is dynamic rather than static, and the
forms are seen within the context of movement. It would seem to follow
that the empirical forms, at this stage, are something other than
Gestalts.
Form, in morphological study, is never entirely static. Morphology
proceeds by comparison, and the interest of the morphologist is
focused upon what is revealed by the juxtaposition of forms. As our
familiarity with transformation sequences increases, however, so does
the capacity of a single form to bring other forms to mind, or of two
forms to build a connecting bridge between them. The morphologist not
only 'sees' that two distinct configurations are still 'the same,' but is
made aware, by the same faculty, of nascent potentials that seem to
arise from every juxtaposition. This peculiar potency of organic form
has acted as a constant spur to thought, and a fair amount of theory -
including speculations on 'vital force' and 'final cause' - has responded

to it As we have seen, however, neither Owen's foray into Natur-
philosophie por Huxley's hardheaded analysis produced a satisfactory
account of the mediating element between the members of a trans-
formation. But both Owen and Huxley, as well as the mathematical
approach above, take it for granted that form means Gestalt, neglecting
just that aspect which gives organic form its peculiar character.
Goethe's own investigation produces a different sense of form and a
unique notion of cause.
Goethe began from the 'potency' of organic form described above,
but he knew better than to attempt any reduction to a schema. He had
learned that a static form could not generalize upon botanical trans-
formations by the time he wrote his Metamorphosis. That text is
structured upon his notion of Bildung, and attempts to follow the
transformations that lead to and from each organ of the plant, remain-
ing, as he remarks later, "as active and as plastic as the example she
[Nature] sets for us." His attempt to achieve a 'spiritual participation' in
the operation of plant metamorphosis led him to exercises of imagina-
tion - or as we might now say, intentionality - by which he attempted
to follow the movement between forms. The goal of these investigations
was to observe the manner in which the law - 'the eternal' - entered
into 'the transitory,' something which he expected to trace through his
own intentional activity (which activity constituted his 'participation' in
the activity of nature). It was through these exercises that he became
conscious of the difficulty that had stopped others at this juncture.
In a note of 1818 entitled Indecision and Resignation (Bedenken und
Ergebung: 1963), Goethe considers the Kantian argument that the
'ideas of reason' cannot be sensibly portrayed or analytically grasped,
and admits that there seems to be "an inherent difficulty, which does
not always enter clearly into consciousness":
The difficulty of uniting idea and experience appears very troublesome in all scientific
research, for an idea is independent of space and time but research is confined to them.
In an idea, the simultaneous and the successive are intimately bound together, whereas
in experience they are always separated, and an action of Nature which we are obliged
to think in conformity to the idea - i.e., as both simultaneous and successive - seems
to drive us to a species of madness. The understanding cannot think united what
sensibility transmits to it divided, and so the conflict between what is sensibly grasped
and what is thought through the idea remains forever unresolved.
(The point of the last, rather untranslatable sentence, is the opposition

284 RONALD H. BRADY
between the Kantian Verstand and Vemunft - 'understanding' and

'reason' in the customary translations. Verstand works in 'concepts,' is
analytic, and duplicates the separations forced upon us by sensible
conditions. Vemunft deals in 'ideas,' which are synthetic, and capable of
unifying elements that must be separate for Verstand. Kant supposed
that although the 'ideas of reason' provide a framework for investiga-
tion, they could never constitute scientific knowledge, for unlike the
'concepts of understanding,' they cannot be 'filled-in' by perception. He
argued in The Critique of Judgement that we are simply fated, by our
mode of thought (which is dependent upon sense-perception and the
analytic approach of Verstand) , to represent the organic in a manner
that we would never fully comprehend, since it was by intention beyond
analysis - i.e. a whole that creates its own parts.)
The 'action of nature' which we must think in conformity to the idea
is organic metamorphosis, for here we have presumably a law by which
the plant produces its multiplicity of forms, a whole which designs its
own parts. The comprehension of such a whole would oblige thinking
to move from the whole to the parts, rather than the other way round
(the manner in which thinking approaches analytic wholes). We cannot
picture nor even think - in our usual analytic mode - the unity that
generates multiple potentials. Yet we intend such a unity when we
perceive the· movement of a metamorphic series. It we are not satisfied
to remain content with the Kantian paradox that we may intend what
we cannot understand, we can follow Goethe in attempting to work
through the structure of our intention, or if we use the Kantian term,
representation. (I will use these almost interchangeably, because there
are distinct advantages to each. 'Intention' emphasizes our own willed
activity, 'representation' suggests symbolic structure - i.e. the manner
in which one level of meaning can 'represent' another level to the
mind.)
The capacity of perceived form to suggest potential form is derived
from the context in which the empirical forms are viewed - i.e. the
movement of transformation. When forms are so contexted they are no
longer independent and complete in themselves. Each form will now
call for a before and after, from which it arises and to which it develops
(which is the sense of Bildung that Goethe evokes), thus suggesting the
'missing pictures' of the transformation. The single image now becomes
transparent to the whole 'gesture' - which it now seems to express -
and that gesture moves toward perceptibility as the individual forms
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
which it discloses the larger whole produces a tension between the

sensible arrest and the identification of the single image with other
forms before and after. The visible image is not static, nor sensibly
moving, but displays by its very configuration a felt potency to be
otherwise. Here is the origin of the productive power that we sense in
such form, but notice that the sensed power is at the same time logical
necessity.
The new form that has supplanted the Gestalt (in the context of the
movement of the series) has its identity in the whole which it represents
to the mind. Its unity includes other members of the series, and thus
it is becoming other in order to remain itself. Its own identity will
demand that the visible form be superseded by another, and then
another. The form that appears in the context of movement contains
logically what the mathematical model failed to provide - the necessity
of change.
A time-form turns out to be a causal form due to the mode of
representation it demands - i.e. that a stage in a succession represent
the whole (in Kantian terms, a sensible image here represents an idea).
The limitations of sensible conditions are such that unless the image is
intended in the context of continuous change it will lose its representa-
tive function - lose its identity. That this demand of identity, when
contrasted to the sensible conditions - i.e. when in opposition to the
sensible arrest - should also be felt as power, may give us pause with
regard to the way we ordinarily think of causality, yet it is clear that
the sense of power is part of the logical structure of the form, and not a
SUbjective reaction on our part. We may choose whether we shall
represent organic form in this manner or not (we could, after all, insist
on its Gestalt level), but once we have accepted the dynamic context
the rest follows of its own necessity rather than by any further choice
on our part. And this quality of form will have an important effect on
the theoretical views by which life is approached.
(Note: I am aware of course that the coincidence of logical necessity
and causality is something that one does not think to see after the work
of Hume and Kant. With regard to Kant I can only point to the
potential breakdown of his system that threatens to emerge from The
Critique of Judgement. Goethe may be understood as exploiting the
seeming contradiction that we can intend what we cannot understand.
Of all our experiences, intentionality is potentially the most clear, for
what we do ourselves is open to our intimate gaze. Kant did not
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 FORM OF LIFE
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
first place, and as a result we sometimes speak as if life were something

one could add to the corpse in order to vitalize it. But if life is a
context, it is an immanent rather than transient cause, and where it is
not immanent it cannot by definition be added.
In a somewhat Aristotelian manner, Goethe spoke of the 'entelechy'
that was the immanent cause of any life form, and understood this
through the immanence he had discovered in his concept of 'Type'
(Typus - Goethe used this term in his later writings). Of course, this
notion provided more than a morphological principle - it was a way to
understand the organic per se, and this is how Goethe applied it. But
we should not associate his 'entelechy' principle with the speculative
excesses of the period. Goethe discovered this concept through his
morphological studies, and made it abundantly clear that its use did not
imply either a 'vital force' or a 'purpose' in nature, although these are
often attributed to him. Perhaps the best way in which to understand
his concept is to see how it led him to reject both these concepts, since
this reiection is evidently based on the notion of entelechy.
Goethe had read various speCUlations concerning a 'vital force'
which would account for the realm of life, but he thought it to be an
obscure explanation, borrowed from mechanical habits of thought and
made red.undant by what we actually know about life. The parts of an
organism, for example, are no more separable from their context than is
the entire animal - they are all equally alive. Such parts, singly or
collectively, are continually transformed by development, and are but a
partial disclosure of that development at any point in time. They are, as
parts, inseparable for the potential-to-be-otherwise that constitutes
becoming, for if we think of them without this we think them out of
context - they lose their identity and their intelligibility. (Corpses, as I
have already noted, make sense only by reference to the generative
mode from which they came.) On the other hand a 'force' in the
mechanical sense of the term is quite separable from the object to
which it may be applied, and the affected object is in existence prior to
that application and sometimes after its cessation. The objects of a
separable force are not made, but simple moved, by the force. The
parts of an organism owe their very existence to their potency. In order
to exist at all they must be potent (corpses must have been potent) and
do not need the addition of another power to make them change.
Of course, the notion of 'vital force' might be defended by suggesting
that it should not be applied to explain the perceptible changes of
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.
DESCRIPTION, EXPLANATION, AND PARSIMONY
Goethe remarked that morphology "nur darstellen und nicht erklaren

will," which may be poorly translated: "is intended merely to present
and not to explain" (Goethe, 1963: Vorarbeiten zu einer Physiologie der
Pflanzen). A Darstellung was, in Arber's gloss (Goethe, 1946: introduc-
tory essay), the "representation of an object, brought into relation with
others in such a way that its significance is revealed." Goethe did not
advance hypotheses in the sense that the term is applied to an explana-
tory account added to the phenomena by a speculative act. His science
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
appearance of the same. We may call such description the discovery of

pattern or of regularity, but only if these terms are interpreted by the
present discussion, their usual meaning being somewhat impoverished.
Whatever name we give to this stage of the scientific endeavor,
however, it should be clear that it must precede the stage of hypo-
thetical explanation. Prior to this sort of description difference is
opaque - it does not present a rational structure for our theories to
explain. (When Darwin advanced his theory he thought that the
common plan of organisms was one of the 'facts' that it must explain.)
At this point description becomes a phenomenological project of
some profundity, for the formal relations to be found in our perception
of a transformational series go far beyond our habitual concepts. Yet if
the adoption of movement as a descriptive approach makes difference
intelligible, it passes the only test we know. If that movement demands
new concepts for its description, these bear with them the same
credentials - they are the intentional relations by which we make
change intelligible.
The task of explanation begins when we have something definite to
explain - one would normally say some clear pattern or regularity,
since these would appear to be causally significant. But 'something to
explain' means not only something definite, but also something that
needs explanation - i.e. an effect to which a causal account must be
added. If description is successful it brings us to 'something definite,'
that is its purpose. Must we suppose, however, that the described
'reappearance of the same in difference' will always further explana-
tion? We would normally suppose this were the case when we consider
the time-sequences involved in our patterns. But if the sequence is an
organic becoming, each of the parts of a transformation will be made
representative of the whole (in our intention and therefore also in our
description) in order to make their differences intelligible. The intuited
whole will then be a unity which displays itself in time only through
continuous change. Since this notion of form unifies the distinctions of
time (even as spatial form unifies those of space), it also lends necessity
to the events by which it unfolds. But necessity in time - in sequential
events - is causal necessity.
It would seem that at least one type of causal account is precluded
by this description. We need not ask how the organic is derived out of
the inorganic world, for it is not so derived. The 'organic' principle of
the organism, the time-form, is derived out of itself. If objections are
raised at this point I can only suggest that they should have been raised
earlier. If my descriptive account of form in transformation is accepted

the rest follows. The difficulty one may feel with regard to a principle
which determines itself is a problem of recalcitrant habit rather than of
logic. A time-form cannot need causal explanation - the principle by
which time-sequences are made necessary is causal explanation.
Thus we come to the rejection by parsimony that Goethe uses with
regard to 'vital force' and 'final cause.' Both theories are redundant in
that they seek to add what is already superfluous. This notion of
parsimony is perhaps stronger than most, for it is not merely a matter
of the multiplication of explanatory principles, or even of explana-
tions. Here the question is not only whether we shall multiply elements
beyond what we need, but whether we shall treat a simple unity as if it
were multiple. The principle of form that Goethe has developed cannot
be distinguished from a principle of cause. To seek for further explana-
tions is to violate this identity.
EPILOGUE: RELATIONSHIP TO MODERN BIOLOGY AND

PHYLOGENETIC MORPHOLOGY
The popular commentators on Goethe's work have been split between

those who would make Goethe a forerunner of Darwin, and therefore a
true scientist, and those who would have him an exponent of Natur-
philosphie, and therefore a fantast. A few astute critics, like Cassirer
(1950) and Steiner (1962), have rejected the dichotomy. Cassirer, for
instance, had high praise for Goethe's abilities as a researcher and his
contributions to botany, yet with regard to Goethe's relationship to
descent theory he wrote:
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.
Instead of supposing this distinction between the 'dynamic' and the

294 RONALD H. BRADY
'historical' to represent an opposition, Cassirer argued that the two

approaches were complementary. Goethe was concerned with princi-
ples of biological law rather than historical process, but life has a
history as well as a law, and the study of the latter cannot deny the
former. With regard to those whose study is historical, Cassirer added
that biological laws were already 'presuPP?sed' by any study of
historical process.
We have only to remember our most basic impressions of living
things in order to understand the argument. The simplest behavior of
an organism, for example, will always display the self-regulation of the
organism. This arises for the mind when we become aware that the
influence of external factors upon the organism is never unmediated
(unless the organism is destroyed). The organism alters itself to meet
each influence, and selects a response appropriate to its own nature.
The same tree planted at tree-line, on high slopes, or on valley floors,
will present three different shapes, but each will be a modification of
the characteristic form. An organism possessed of irritability responds
to stimulus, but we cannot understand the response as the mechanical
effect of the stimulus without supposing the organism to be dead. Any
individual organism manifests a constant identity through whatever
local modifications it is forced to make. If we fail to understand the
organism in this manner we fail to notice that it is alive. Biologists, like
anyone else, must intend the self-regulation of the organism in order to
perceive its 'life,' and must therefore tacitly assume whatever principle
this entails.
The principle that this entails, at least according to Goethe, is the
'entelechy,' for in distinguishing the self-determining element from the
external conditions we have implied a mode of change that cannot be
environmentally derived (as are the alterations properly treated by
mechanical or chemical law, both of which explain change by deriving it
from external additions). Of course, one should not equate this identity
with the physical organism but rather with its internal principle. The
relation of this to the empirical organism was reviewed by Steiner
(1962) in a rather long, technical discussion, a part of which is quoted
below. Having explained Goethe's 'entelechy' as a whole which deter-
mines its own parts and which "of itself, calls itself into existence,"
Steiner distinguishes the principle from the physical organism, which
cannot be a pure expression of the entelechy:
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
tionary understanding of morphology depends upon the recognition of

an underlying commonality within a phylum - a constant within
change. Unfortunately, the nature of the constant remains obscure. We
propose therefore to clarify it by the only explanatory principle that
remains to us - i.e. change. Whatever the common structure of the
vertebrates, it was simply a transformation of something earlier, for
'everything is a transformation of something else.' Again, we have left
no space for the question oflaw.
Turning to modern morphology we find, of course, that the historical
element has eclipsed the dynamic, and morphology is at a far remove
from what the term indicated when it was first applied. The purpose of
today's studies is largely phylogenetic - i.e. the classification of
organisms according to their genealogies - a direction initiated by
Darwin's own suggestions. The relations between the general and the
specific detected by these studies are taken as indicative of lines of
descent, and the branching diagrams which display these relations give
'evolution by descent with modification' a visible shape. The plan
common to the organisms of the diagram is the plan of the common
ancestor (unfortunately unknown), and commonality within transforma-
tion is understood as the common possession of static form (in practice
this possession is decided on the basis of a few general characters) .
. Of course, if "the theory of metamorphosis has nothing to do with
this question of the historic sequence of the appearances of life," and is
"quite separate from every sort of 'theory of descent'," as Cassirer says,
then we should expect Goethe's notion of classification to rest on
another principle, and so it does. The Type, as Goethe explained,
designates potential rather than actual forms. He had considered the
problem of the evolution of empirical forms, admitting that both
heredity and environment would playa part in releasing or constraining
the underlying potentials (Goethe, 1963: Versuch einer allgemeinen
Verpleichungslehre), but he never progressed far enough to work out such
an account. We can already see, however, that while the actual forms
cannot be pure expression of the Type, they also could not be merely
historical. If we must distinguish between potential and actual forms, we
must also distinguish between environmental constraints and the
underlying constant. Classification, the study of the relations of empirical
forms, rests between organic law and history, and is a record of both.
I have already indicated that Goethe's Type could not be derived
from anything but itself. It is thus a-historical. But historical influences
will modify its productions, and when we study these productions we

must treat them as the self-modifications of a constant entity respond-
ing to historical conditions. But that would classification into a logical
problem as well as a historical one. "Once one has grasped the idea of
this type," wrote Goethe (Entwurf einer vergleichenden Anatomie:
translated in Cassirer, 1950.),
he will see how impossible it would be to set up a single order as a criterion. An

individual cannot serve as a standard of the whole, and so we must not seek the model
in anyone. Classes, orders, species, and individuals are related as cases to a law; they
are included under it, but do not constitute it.
Goethe's argument begins by rejecting the assumption, common to

both Darwin and Owen, that transformation is to be understood by
treating the Gestalt from which the transformation begins as the theme
underlying the variations. As we have already seen in a purely morpho-
logical study, no one form can generalize upon a transformation series.
It is the same for historical development. Whatever comes first in actual
history provides only certain boundary conditions, not the law that
must realize itself within them. Since the response (the actual organism)
to boundary conditions will be determined by that law, rather than the
conditions, it is to the former we must look for understanding.
Given a principle that comprehends 'all potentials, classes and orders
must be determined, with regard to their possibility, by this same
principle. In order to understand what they are - i.e. what common-
ality they represent and how they modify it - we must have recourse to
a principle powerful enough the generalize on transformation. I have
already given Goethe's reasons for believing that the schema will not
perform this task. Instead, he thought to follow the derivation of all
organic forms from his Type. In order to understand how this or that
potential came to realization, however, he would be forced to
reconstruct, at least in part, the historical process by which it took
place. The history of life becomes the history of the accidental
(historical) realization of a set of pre-determined potentials.
(A word of caution at this junction. The suggestion that the poten-
tials of a phylum, or even of biological life as a whole, are pre-
determined does not mean that some underlying schema is preserved
by all forms, but rather that all answer to the same law, which is quite
another matter. As the preceding discussion shows, morphological 'law'
298 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
of form. In a certain sense this community already knows too much to

return to the basic question of biological form as a realm of order. They
are no longer addressing the problems that faced Geoffroy, or Owen,
or Goethe, but have moved on to derivative problems.
That transition, however, is clearly based on the supposition that the
nature of form in transformation is properly understood by the concept
'of a static 'theme' preserved in all 'variations.' This was the very notion
that Goethe successfully criticized, even though his contribution did not
make its way into the mainstream of biological thought. His own
approach is consistent, and cannot really be faulted for its distance
from modem morphology since he began from a fundamental criticism
of that morphology. The difficulties which have emerged from this
comparison are not Goethe's difficulties. Whether future work will
address them remains to be seen.
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
* A preliminary version of this paper, entitled 'The Causal Dimension of Goethe's

Morphology', was 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) 345-356. The present version was 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.
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
Bockemiihl, J.: Elemente der Naturwissenschaft 10 (1969).

Cassirer, E.: The Problem of Knowledge, Yale Univ. Press, New Haven, 1950.
Darwin, c.: On the Origin of Species, John Murray, London, 1859.
Geoffroy, E. st. Hilaire: Philosophie Anatomique, J. B. Bailliere, Paris, 1818.
Goethe, J. W. von: in 'Goethe's Botany,' Chronica botanica 10 (1946), 63-126 (trans.
A. Arber).
Goethe, J. W. von: Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 39, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Miinchen,
1963. For English translations see J. W. von Goethe, Goethe's Botanical Writings
(ed. and trans. Bertha Mueller), Univ. of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1952.
Goethe, J. W. von: Italian Journey, Schocken, New York, 1969.
Huxley, T. H.: Proc. Roy. Soc. 9 (1858), 391-457.
Mayr, E.: in Methodological and Historical Essays in the Natural and Social Sciences,
Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 14, Reidel, DordrechtlBoston,
1974.
Nelson, G. and Platnick N.: Systematics and Biogeography, Columbia Univ. Press, New
York, 1981.
Nordenskiold, E.: The History of Biology, New York, Tudor, 1928.
Oken, L.: 'Uber die Bedeutung der SchiideIknochen', Partial translation and summary,
in T. H. Huxley, Lectures on the Elements of Comparative Anatomy, London, 1864.
Owen, R: Report on the Archetype and Homologies of the Vertebrate Skeleton, Voorst,
London, 1848.
Owen, R: On the Anatomy of Vertebrates, Vol, 1, Longman, Green and Co., London,
1866.
Patterson, c.: 'Problems in Phylogenetic Reconstruction', in Systematics Association
Special Volume No. 21, Academic Press, London, 1982, p. 21.
Remane, A.: Die Grundlagen des natiirlichen Systems der vergleichenden Anatomie und
der Phylogenetik, KoeItz, Konigstein-Taunus, 1971.
Russell, E. S.: Form and Function, John Murray, London, 1916.
Singer, C.: A History of Biology, Abelard-Schuman, New York, 1959.
Steiner, R: Goethes Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften, Verlag Freies Geistesleben,
Stuttgart, 1962. For an English translation, see R Steiner, Goethe the Scientist,
Anthroposophic Press, New York, 1950.
71 Eagle Valley Rd.

Sloatsburg, NY 10974
U.S.A.
FREDERICK AMRINE
GOETHE AN METHOD IN THE WORK OF

JOCHEN BOCKEMUHL *
In memory of John Davy

All this talk, this theorizing about Goethean science - however
profound - is of course very un-Goethean. After all, Goethe himself
said that his work had to be done to be understood. There is a real
pitfall here, and not every commentator on Goethe's science has
managed to avoid it. Take Helmholtz, for example: having analyzed The
Metamorphosis of Plants, he reduced the entire text to the single
proposition "the parts of the flower are the lateral appendages of the
axis," and then proceeded to dismiss the manifest because the language
in which it was expressed was tautologous. But Goethe was not trying
to make a propositional statement about the plant: he was trying to
teach us how to see it. Thus I propose an intermezzo in which we
practice a little Goethean morphology together, and I hope that this
entr'acte performed by a non-botanist will prove, if not instructive, at
least entertaining ..
Moreover, I propose that we rehearse not Goethe's own work, but
rather that of Jochen Bockemiihl, a contemporary botanist who has
sought consciously to work in a Goethean manner. We had hoped that
Dr. Bockemiihl himself would be able to speak at the symposium; since
he was not, I will try myself to provide 'second best.' Bockemiihl's main
research has been conducted at the Forschungslaboratorium am Goethe-
anum at Dornach, Switzerland, and the results published almost
exclusively in the journal Elemente der Naturwissenschaft. But again,
my principal intent is not to report on Bockemiihl's work, but rather to
use it as an occasion for practice in Goethean 'gentle empiricism.'
Bockemiihl's work is perfectly suited to this end: it is rigorous, subtle,
and meets all the requirements of a 'Goethean' methodology -
including that of being highly aesthetic. Yet it is also thoroughly original
in its vocabulary and application. Thus it also offers a unique, contem-
porary perspective on Goethe's morphology.
We shall consider a single study entitled 'Transformations in the
Foliage Leaves of Higher Plants' (Bockemiihl, 1966). Perhaps the best
way to describe his procedure is to borrow a metaphor Goethe himself
301
F. Amrine, F. J. Zucker, and H. Wheeler (elis.), Goethe and the Sciences:
302 FREDERICK AMRINE
employed in his late poem 'Schillers Reliquien' ('Schiller's Remains'):

the ancient tapas of 'reading the script' of nature. Bockemiihl first reads
from simple 'sentences' of leaf forms an elementary 'grammar' of form-
creating processes, which he then applies to ever more complicated leaf
series until, having mastered these 'primers,' we are ready to 'read'
formal 'texts' of the utmost intricacy. These three progressively complex
levels of 'sentences,' 'primers' and 'texts' correspond to the morpho-
logical series of the individual leaf, the foliage as a whole, and finally
the development of all the leaf forms in the entire plant over different
time scales and in varying environments. The development of the
individual leaf will be seen to recapitulate in a characteristic way the
development of the foliage leaves, which represent in turn a microcosm
of the development of the entire plant.
We begin with the first of the 'sentences' (Figure 1), the development
of one of the first leaves of Cardamine hirsuta, or Pennsylvania
Bittercress. First, a small tip or apiculus is differentiated from the
growing point. It continues to grow, and differentiates, so that we soon
recognize five distinct apiculi. Between these, the leaf blade then begins
to extend. The entire periphery of the blade is engaged in the growth of
the green surface. The leafstalk or petiole is differerentiated in such a
way that, the leaf blade is borne away from the plant. The leaf apices
Fig. I.
THE WORK OF JOCHEN BOCKEMUHL 303
still hasten on ahead. However, the individual apices become rounder

and rounder, until they are finally 'rounded out.' The leaf blade,
previously articulated into projections or crenatures, is now uniformly
round, and is differentiated from the petiole, which has in the interim
become quite long.
I have followed Bockemiihl's description very closely here - nearly
translated it, in fact - because it is such a fine example of a 'Goethean'
method. There are, as Bockemiihl himself writes, many other ways to
describe the growth of a leaf. A common approach is to locate the leaf
within the three dimensions of the Cartesian coordinate system, and
then determine the length, breadth and thickness of the leaf at each
stage. Yet this is to import into the plant a thought model that might be
foreign to its own nature. Bockemiihl avoids this danger by remaining
resolutely phenomenological, by describing appearances as much as
possible in their own terms. Bockemiihl's language is neutral: he seeks
to avoid abvstract scientific terminology, favoring instead adjectives and
verbs that convey the qualities of the forms. Which brings us to the
second important feature of his mode of describing: it focuses not so
much upon the individual leaf forms as upon the generative movements
between them.
Bockemiihl next step is to withdraw from the phenomena momen-
tarily in order to clarify this polarity that has arisen in the act of
'reading': one can focus either upon the formal elements ('leaf apex;
'petiole' and 'blade'); or, one can focus upon the 'transformations'
moving between the forms. It is this second possibility that interests
Bockemiihl: viewing the plant as a nexus of formative "Tatigkeiten" -
"activities." In order to accomplish this, we must bring mobility into our
thinking. And, we must find a language appropriate to describe it.
Bockemiihl's solution to the latter problem is to label thsese activities
not with abstract substantives, but rather with gerunds, thereby preserv-
ing their active quality.
Returning to the 'script; Bockemiihl isolates four fundamental 'verbs'
within the 'sentence' of cardarnine: "shooting," "articulating," "spread-
ing" and "stemming" (the German originals are "Spriessen," "Gliedem,"
"Spreiten" and "Stielen"). The contour of any individual leaf can be
seen as a function of the intensity, timing, and duration of each of these
activities in its interaction with the others. In the development of
Ground-ivy (Glechoma hederacea) (see Figure 2), we see that the same
four activities can interact to produce a substantially different form. In
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 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-
cally Goethean principle of locating and then mastering easier 'primers'

before proceeding to the more complex. One notes immediately that
the earlier phase of development is characterized by a gradual separa-
tion of stem and blade; the latter, by their fusion. The intermediate
phase reveals various stages of interpenetration. Yet simple as this
transformation is, the four typical activities of 'stemming,' 'spreading.'
'articulating' and 'shooting' are more difficult to observe in these series
of foliage leaves. They manifest "themselves here even less in the
phenomena - that is, in the individual leaf forms - and even more in
the movement between them. Our thinking must participate more
actively - must contribute more - in order to construct the experi-
ence. Or, in other words, while remaining within the phenomena, we
have moved a step closer towards apprehending something ideal.
We have seen that in Valerianella locusta the activities of 'spreading'
and 'stemming' predominate, although hints of 'articulating' appear later
in the suggestion of points at the periphery of the leaves, and hints of
'shooting' in the elongated forms of the last several stages. Even in such
a simple development all four activities are present, although the last
two are very nearly subsumed within the first. The interplay of the four
activities looks very different when we return to the foliage leaves of
our first example, Cardamine hirsuta (see Figure 4). And the inverted
nature of this development in relationship to that of the individual leaf
of the same plant is strongly underscored. Again 'stemming' and 'spread-
ing' come initially to the fore. Then, very early on, there begins the
process of 'articulating,' which now manifests itself in such a thorough-
going way that the activity of 'stemming' can carryon into each of the
separate. 'articulations' - each separate leaf is carried away from the
petiole, just as earlier the petiole had carried the leaves away from the
main stem. 'Stemming' now appears as it were within the 'spreading' of
each separate leaf. The 'articulated,' yet still rounded leaves now grow
more slender as 'shooting' finally comes into play. We see this same
sequence once again (see Figure 5) in Medicago sativa or common
alfalfa. What is especially striking here is the strong polarity between
the first and last leaves in the sequence: apices form where there
had originally been notches. We have seen the same polarity within
Glechoma pederacea (see Figure 2); only here, in the development of
the foliage leaves (see Figure 5), we are shown the mirror image. All
four activities manifest themselves in the developing foliage leaves of
every plant; the modes of their interaction are, however, infinitely
...
Fig. 4.
varied. Each variation creates characteristic 'motifs' - distinctive

'signatures,' as it were, by which the various species identify themselves.
Before passing beyond the stage of 'primers' to the next level of
intricacy, let us stop for a moment to clarify the progress we have made
thus far. We have been working at three different levels. First, at the
level of the phenomena themselves - in this case, the individual leaf
forms in series. Second, at the level of 'transformations': of 'shooting,'
'articulating,' 'spreading' and 'stemming.' These 'light up' within the
phenomena; they move not apart from, but through the phenomena.
One could at this point attempt to clarify the distinction by invoking
the scholastic terms natura naturata and natura naturans. Better yet,
:-----------;.....
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
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
"".h.,
'ft ..
.! :.. , .. .
. ..
,
Q "
,.
t t
;.
"
I
6
"
Q
4
J "'
Fig. 7.
employing as his example Lapsana communis or Nipplewort. Here,

numerous plants were allowed to germinate simultaneously and grow
together. Then plants were harvested at weekly intervals and their
leaves pressed. After 13 weeks (the vertical dimension), leaf develop-
ment had run its full course. The individual leaves are numbered from
left to right (although the numerals may be too small to see). The leaf
forms drawn in outline are those that had withered away by the time of
harvesting. 'Reading' the series from bottom to top, one can see that the
inverse cycle is intense and full in the lower leaves, but that it weakens
in the upper: the 'wave' moves to the right and exhibits a smaller
relative amplitude as one 'reads' vertically from series to series. The
initial rhythm, full in the lower leaves, is hardly recapitulated at all in
the upper series as they progress toward and through the stage of the
blossom. According to Bockemiihl, there is one very tiny 'wave' just

before the blossom that is lost in reproduction of the Figure. But that is
the only hint of another full rhythm. The same series can be arranged in
concentric 'semi-lemniscates,' as before (see Figure 8). Here, one must
again move from right to left at the beginning of each new rhythm, as
we did following the white arrows in the earlier example of Sisymbrium.
Fig.S.
The nature of this weakening on the larger scale can be demon-

strated again and further clarified by looking to its mirror image on the
smaller scale, the embryonic development of individual leaves (see
Figure 9). The mode of depiction is the same that we saw in Figure 2:
n- f\\ /\ f1t\ ,;
,C,,;
6
. .t N'
. t
Fig. 9.
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
n n-IJ1
t.
32
28
n,
n
25
17
• • I 'J
r. :1 .. .. :
n_n_(! I:-_ .arc

"'.3 I :.
, t
9
Fig. 10.
illustrations (Figures 9 and 10). The straight radii connect forms in

which the four activities stand in approximately the same relationship to
one another. Note, for example, that in the forms along the third and
fourth straight radii counting clockwise, 'spreading' clearly predomi-
nates, while in the sixth straight radius, we see the predominance of
'articulating.' Here Bockemiihl points out that if the plant grew linearly,
like a crystal, the growth of each leaf form would follow the straight
radii. But the plant does not grow in this way. Rather, each form
represents a nexus or confluence of complex growth rhythms. The first
'gesture' of each leaf form is a step in the direction of the blossom,
molded by 'shooting.' But only the blossom itself carries this initial
gesture through into its fully developed form. All the other forms are as
it were 'bent back' around the circle counterclockwise by the inverse
growth rhythm that moves through the fully developed leaves. Take, for
example, the embryonic sequence leading to leaf number 2 (counting
clockwise again): all four activities are present in this full and intense
rhythm - so much so that the original 'shooting' has completely
disappeared in the rounded final form. It is as though the inverse series
'stemming,' 'spreading,' 'articulating' and 'shooting' were working back-
wards through the finished leaf forms to counteract the initial
embryonic activ.ity. Again, we see that the full regulative cycle is most
intense in the lowest leaves, while it manifests itself only weakly in the
upper. We also see that each of the finished leaf forms is an image
created by inverse rhythms flowing across one another.
Following Bockemiihl through first the individual leaf forms, then
the four generative activities, and finally the two regulatives of 'sepa-
rating' - 'interpenetrating' - 'fusing' and 'inversion,' we have been able
to distinguish three levels of increasing ideality. But not of increasing
abstraction! The greater ideality of the latter two levels is not a function
of their remoteness from the phenomena, but rather of the degree of
intensity with which we participate mentally in the phenomena. These
ideal activities, seen as moving through the empirically given, are
Goethean 'archetypal phenomena.' Goethe himself had trouble convey-
ing the nature of this experience to others. He tried to convey it to
Schiller at their first meeting: as Goethe reports it, he became quite
animated, and even accompanied his description of an "ideal plant"
with graphic pen sketches. Schiller listened intently - "with unerring
comprehension," as Goethe himself says. But Schiller's reply was that of
a trained Kantian, a Cartesian dualist: "That is not an empirical
experience; that is an idea." The answer nettled Goethe, and he

responded tartly: "How grand that I have ideas without knowing it, and
can see them with my very eyes." But it continued to nettle him: for ten
years Goethe struggled with Schiller's objection, casting about in one
short essay after another for the right way to formulate and defend his
view. Today, when philosophers argue that all observation is 'theory-
laden,' and that scientists with different paradigms 'live in different
worlds'; when psychologists have begun to claim that what we see
depends upon our 'perceptual readiness,' the notion of something ideal
manifesting itself within and through empirical phenomena is perhaps
less difficult to think. What matters, though, is to gain this as an
experience. Experiencing it requires practice in 'reading' such as we
have undertaken in following Bockemiihl. Each intensification of our
mental activity in viewing enhances the phenomena in tum. We see
them, as it were, with new eyes. Perhaps this is what Goethe meant
when he wrote: "Every object, well contemplated, awakens a new organ
within us."
NOTE
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
Bockemiihl, J.: 'Bildebewegungen im Laubblattbereich haherer Pflanzen', Elemente der

NaturwissenschaJt 4 (1966) 7-23.
Brady, R.: 'Goethe's Natural Science. Some Non-Cartesian Meditations', in Towards a
Man-Centered Medical Science (ed. K. E. Schaefer, H. Hensel and R. Brady),
Futura, Mt. Kisco, N.Y., 1977,pp.137-165.
Germanic Languages
3110 Modern Languages Bldg.
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor Ml 48109-1275
U.S.A.
JONATHAN WESTPHAL
WHITENESS*
INTRODUCTION
Goethe's celebrated maxim, "Seek nothing beyond the phenomena.

They are themselves the theory" was deeply congenial to Wittgenstein.
But Wittgenstein believed that a synoptic ordering of the phenomena
["iibersichtliche Darstellung"] is grammar, and that essence is given by
grammar, not by scientific theory. He claims that "Someone who agrees
with Goethe believes that Goethe correctly recognized the nature of
colour" (Remarks on Colour, 1977, I 71). He adds, ''Nature here is not
what results from experiments, but lies in the concept of colour." This is
Wittgenstein's interpretation of Goethe's Farbenlehre: it is a grammati-
cal inquiry mistakenly believed by Goethe to be an empirical scientific
investigation. Yet Goethe did perform a mass of scientific experiments
from which a picture of the nature of colours was meant to emerge.
This paper is a defence of Goethe against Wittgenstein's linguistic
idealism on the one hand and the crudities of the wavelength theory of
colour on the other. In Remarks on Colour Wittgenstein raises a
number of puzzle questions which, I claim, cannot be answered by
<. science with the foundational muddles inherited from Newton. I
.lttempt to solve them by offering an iibersichtliche Darstellung of the
relevant facts, derived from Goethe's theory. My criticism of Wittgen-
stein is that he was the victim of one narrow image of what form
science must take. Since the science of whiteness was, for him, the
Newtonian picture of different corpuscles or wavelengths and all that
this involves, it could not solve either his or Goethe's problems, and it
was necessary to seek something beyond science. This was logical
grammar. If my solutions to the puzzles are correct, the grammatical
inquiry is a dead end. What is needed is not a return to what we already
know, but a more refined understanding of what we don't. If the
possibilities of science were indeed as restricted as Wittgenstein seems
to have believed, our only recourse would be to join him in defending
'the nature of colour' by means of grammar. It is one purpose of this
paper to demonstrate, in the case of whiteness, the harmony between
319
© 1987 by 1. Westphal.
320 JONATHAN WESTPHAL
grammar, commonsense phenomenology and science in both the New-

tonian and Goethean forms. The source of this harmony, I believe, is
the nature of the colour.
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?
Moby Dick, "The Whiteness of the Whale"
The truly best therapy is a sensible theory of the world

Hilary Putnam
"Why is it", Wittgenstein asks in Remarks on Colour (1977, I 19),

"that something can be transparent green but not transparent white?"
The answer to this question, Wittgenstein claims, does not belong to the
physics, physiology and psychology of colour, but to something he calls
"logic of colour concepts," the "geometry of colour," or "a sort of
mathematics of colour." The relevant sciences cannot answer the
question as he means it, Wittgenstein says (1977, I 22). How he means
it, however, is something which is only fixed when we see what he
countenances by way of an answer. Unfortunately either the answer he
gives is unclear, or he doesn't give an answer at all. I hope the answer I
give is clear, even if it is mistaken and I have not understood the
WHITENESS 321
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
show either that white glass is transparent or that white glass is as

transparent as red. Some white glass - the most nearly transparent -
has the same degree of transparency as some red glass - relatively
untransparent red glass. So Wittgenstein's question why there cannot
be a transparent white glass is not mistaken. Goodman's answer, which
is that there can be transparent white glass because there is, is itself
mistaken. Moreover, even if Goodman's answer were correct, it would
leave over a variant of Wittgenstein's question. Why is white glass less
transparent than red glass or glass of any other colour? Why is
transparent white glass less common than transparent glass of other
colours? Why, for example, are there no white tinted spectacles?
There is in fact a crucial difference between white and the other
colours which do allow transparency. White is essentially a surface
colour, never a film or volume colour 1 (Katz, 1935, p. 7; see also
Bartleson et al., 1963, pp. 50-51). Katz reports observations by Gelb
concerning the loss of perception of surface colour by a patient as a
result of an occipetal lesion. "The patient was unable to localize the
colours of objects" at precise distances, "colours appeared to the
patient to have a spongy texture," they ''failed to lie flat on the surfaces
of objects," and "the patient had to reach into the colour in order to
touch the of the coloured object. He had to plunge farthest in
when the paper was black and least when the paper was white" (Katz,
1935, p. 14). This patient never used the terms 'black' and 'white' to
report his non-swface colours; he always used 'bright' and 'dark'
instead. Katz says of surface colours,2 which David Wiggins has usefully
classified as barrier colours, that paper coloured these colours "has a
surface in which the colour lies. The plane in which the spectral colour
is extended in space before the observer does not in the same sense
possess a surface. One feels that one can penetrate more or less deeply
into the spectral colour, whereas when one looks at the colour of a
paper the surface presents a barrier beyond which the eye cannot pass.
It is as though the colour of the paper offered resistance to the eye"
(Katz, 1935, p. 8). Why should this be, and what exactly is the
"resistance" which white, more than any other colour, offers? Is it in
fact true that it is the colour rather than the surface which offers the
resistance? Why is white essentially a colour which can only appear in
the surface mode?3
Wittgenstein says that, "Opaqueness is not a property of the white
colour. Any more than transparency is a property of the green" (1977,
WHITENESS 323
145.). It is not clear what is being contrasted with the accented

'property,' and I shall take Wittgenstein to mean that the colour green, if
we can put it this way, is not what is transparent, although the accent
on 'property' rather than colour does make this a very improbable
reading.4 So what is it that is transparent or opaque? Wittgenstein's idea
may ultimately be that transparency and opacity are properties of
objects, substances, media, etc.: milk, glass, paper, perspex, water,
cotton, magnesium oxide and so on, and not properties of the colour
itself. This seems correct. Why it is will emerge later.
As with the other impossible colours discussed in Remarks on Colour
(reddish green, pure brown, glowing grey, etc.) Wittgenstein's interest is
fixed not on the non-existence of transparent white, in the sense in
which there was no such colour as mauve before Perkin synthesized a
mauve coal tar dye in 1856, but on its impossibility or inconceivability.
Why is it that something can be transparent green but not transparent white? (1977,
119)
Why can't we imagine transparent-white glass, - even if there isn't any in actuality?
Where does the analogy with transparent coloured glass go wrong? (1977, 131)
Notice the "something" in the first of these remarks, "glass" in the

second. Wittgenstein also says (1977, 123) that we cannot describe
(paint) something simultaneously white and clear, and we cannot give
any account of how such a thing would look. He adds that this means,
"we don't know what description, portrayal, these words demand of
us." White water and clear milk are "inconceivable." (Why would clear
cream not be thick enough to be cream - creamy? 'Cream' is also a
colour term. Is it phenomenology, logic, synaesthesia (psychology) or
nonsense that cream is a thick colour?)
In a review of Remarks on Colour H.O. Mounce says that Wittgen-
stein is wanting to replace the question why white water is incon-
ceivable, etc., with the question why we don't know what the words
'transparent white' demand of us (1980, pp. 160-161 )."Wittgenstein
suggests that this question should be replaced by another." This seems
wrong, even apart from the fact that Wittgenstein doesn't actually make
this suggestion anywhere in Remarks on Colour or say that this is what
he is wanting to do. A study of the text will show that he doesn't even
ask Mounce's second question why we don't know what the words
demand of us. All he says is that we don't. In fact Mounce's second
question, the one Wittgenstein doesn't ask, is Wittgenstein's answer to
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
Wittgenstein also makes a useful point at I 46. There he says that it

is not enough to say that the word 'white' is used only for the appear-
ance of surfaces, because we would still be left with the question why
just this colour term was reserved for the opaque surface appearance
and why we do not have two words for 'green', one for green surfaces
and one for transparent green objects. "The question would remain why
there existed no colour word corresponding to the word white for
something transparent." But many things are left hanging. What exactly
is the status of the 'rule of appearance' of I 20 and III 173? We shall
see later on that not only is it not necessarily true, it is empirically false;
and there is no must about it. Why should it be white which, lying
behind a transparent coloured medium, appears in the colour of the
medium? What exactly is absurd or wrong with saying that white seen
through white glass would have to appear as it does through un-
coloured glass? Why would it be wrong to describe a piece of glass as
transparent and green if white behind it didn't appear green? Red
things seen through green glass look black, so why shouldn't white
things seen through green glass not look green but some other colour?
The rule of appearance is at best contingently true.
These may well be objections to Mounce's Wittgenstein rather than
to Wittgenstein, ·but one is left with the feeling that, although there is
much in Wittgenstein's 'solution', we have not arrived at the central
features of the concepts of whiteness and transparency whose hidden
logical interrelationships must be responsible for the problem. We don't
get a formal contradiction from Wittgenstein, which it would be helpful
to have if we are to follow him in speaking of the impossibility or
inconceivability of transparent white (it would explain why one doesn't
know what one should imagine here) and we don't get to the bottom of
the problem. "Why can't we imagine transparent-white glass?" The
spade is turning - are the italics the italics of desperation?
In order to solve Wittgenstein's puzzle we need to be able to say
something about what whiteness and transparency are or give their
concepts (in the sense in which the concept of X is what it is to be X).
We must be able to do more than identify them by gesturing at them
and hoping that a word emitted will follow the gesture through to the
intended target. We must do what the empiricists have told us we
cannot, namely 'unpack' the concept of whiteness and resolve it into
simpler concepts. If this can be done, then colours (at least one of
them) will have been shown not to be logical simples.
An acceptable conception of whiteness will have to simultaneouly

connect the phenomenal property (the colour, as I would prefer to say)
and the physical property said to be its objective correlate. It will have
to do more than supply a deictically based psychophysical correlation
between the physical magnitude and the quality, conceived somehow as
a property of a psychological or physiological state, or else the problem
will emerge in an even darker and more unregenerate form. Why
should just this correlation hold? Why should it be phenomenal white,
and not some other colour, which correlates with maximum impurity in
the Fourier analysis sense and a particular pattern of spectral selec-
tivity? Could not the correlation have been with phenomenal green
instead? Is it perhaps physiological functions which prevent this?
We need a conception of whiteness which will connect the colour
with the asymmetrical physical property ('asymmetrical' in the sense that
the other colours do not have it) - opacity - which is our explanan-
dum. Opacity is, like transparency, a physical property of objects,
surfaces, etc. The conception must not allow the physical property and
the phenomenal quality to part company, or we will lose the prospect of
finding here a necessity, if there is one to be found, which is the main
element in Wittgenstein's puzzle. I now offer such a conception. It
makes clear what the logical element in the proposition that nothing can
be white and transparent is. It is not, however, a complete conception.
Much more needs to be said, for example, about white in black/white
contrast effects and related phenomena. It could be made complete,
though this is not necessary for the solution of the puzzle. The
conception will, I hope, make good some of the large claims already
made.
A white surface is a surface which scatters back or reflects nearly all
of the light incident upon it. It is a surface with a reflectance of more
than approximately eighty percent across the spectrum either for white or
colourless light. If the reflectance percentage were much less than eighty,
more light would be absorbed or transmitted than reflected, and the
result would be something other than white. The ratio of the reflectance,
absorbance and transmittance of a surface will for all colours except
white vary across the spectrum; but in all cases the sum of the three is
naturally (necessarily?) constant. s
What then would a transparent white surface be? It would be a
surface (i) which transmits almost all the incident light - it is trans-
parent - enabling us to see what lies beyond it, and (ii) which scatters
WHITENESS 327
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,
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
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
Blue Cyon Grun Yellow Red

I LLUMINANT COLOUR
Fig. 1. Spectrophotometric curves for four substances.
a particular substance will reflect. If the illumination is blue, the

vermililion pigment reflects less than 10%, whereas if it is red, the
pigment reflects nearly as much of it as a white substance would. This is
why red and white coloured things can appear more or less indistin-
guishable in red light.
Figure 2 shows an ideal white substance, whiter than magnesium
oxide or freshly fallen snow, which absorbs perhaps 5% of the light.
The ideal white substance absorbs none of the light; it is a perfect
100
90
80
PERCENTAGE
OF
I LLUMIN ANT 70
REFLECTED
(REFLEC TANeE
PERCENT)
60
SO
40
30
20
10
Fig. 2. Spectrophotometric curve for ideal white substance.
reflector. The curves for all of the other substance colours, in an

obvious sense, range between black and white. Imagine the curves of
Figure 1 gradually being transformed into the ideal whiteness curve of
Figure 2. The colour of the substances depended, before the trans-
formation, on the reflection of a characteristic proportion of the light
for each different illuminant colour. Both the amount of reflected light
and the pattern of selectivity for different colours are lost when the
substances are whitened. 13 Ideal whiteness is the theoretical limit of the
WHITENESS 333
process which gives substances their colour. Coloured substances

change both the quantity and the colour of the reflected light; white
objects do neither. In this respect they are comparable to transparent
objects. Not changing the light can count as a very special way of
changing the light. On the other hand the limit of the processes which
produce colour can be regarded as the absence or final disappearance
bf colour. How do we choose when to say that white is a colour and
when to say that it is not? My suspicion is that white is counted a non-
colour when we are concerned with processes such as mixing colours,
dyeing, painting pictures, etc., in which white has an active role and its
special properties have an effect. When white is not involved in such
processes and stands as an 'inactive' object colour, its very special
properties are not evident. Looking at white alongside the other
colours does not tell us anything about these properties. So the colour
of a motor-car can be white and white motor-cars are not regarded as
colourless or unpainted.
All of what has been said so far is quite independent of the theory of
what light is. The proposed explanations are consistent with a theory
which says that light is made of light-gnomes, wavicIes, photons,
anything at all provided that we end up with the right properties of
light, e.g. that it illuminates, is reflected, makes shadows, can be adapted
to, etc. A physicalist reduction of colours to light-emissions of different
wavelength, such as David Armstrong (1978, pp. 126-127) has
proposed in order to solve the problem of colour incompatibility, is
simply irrelevant to Wittgenstein's puzzle. It selects quite the wrong
kind of property, and cannot explain the necessary opacity of white
things. The important point here is borrowed from Putnam's Pythago-
rean discussion of why a rigid square harmonia 14 won't go into a round
hole. The right answer is geometrical (it won't fit), not quantum
electrodynamical, an explanation of a kosmiotes of stuff - any stuff. It
is not relevant, Putnam says (1975, p. 296), what the peg is made of,
just as it is not relevant what the string of a monochord is made
of; it will give a harmonic octave when halved. The explanation is
autonomous, in Putnam's sense. The spectral composition of the light
reflected from the surface is not relevant to the question why the
surface cannot be transparent. What the spectral composition of
reflected light is isn't even relevant to the question whether the surface
is white. The right or best logical level of explanation is fixed by what is
relevant to these questions. It determines and is determined by what
kind of thing ('logical grammar') whiteness is. To know what "light

waves are actually being emitted at the surface"lS is not to know
anything which is relevant to the opacity of the surface. Blue and white
things can be reflecting light of exactly the same spectral composition
and appear quite different because their relation to the illumination is
different. What is relevant to the solution of Wittgenstein's puzzle is
that a white surface will reflect any l.ight, light of any colour or spectral
composition, like a mirror. (Why would it be wrong to say that a mirror
image or specular reflection is a light emission of a certain disjunctive
group of wavelengths?) The whiteness we see is not complex. (See
Figure 2 for an illustration of this!) To say that high reflectance for all
coloured lights is complex in the sense of being composed of anything
is nonsense. Reflecting a high proportion of the light is what the white
object does to the light, and this doing could not intelligibly be said to
be composed of anything.
Consider again Figure 1. It differs from standard photometric curves
in that I have made the x-axis illuminant colour and not wavelength, in
order to bring out the significant fact that the curves can be obtained
independently of the wavelength theory by direct observation. The
vermilion pigment, for example, placed successively in the bands of a
spectrum. on the screen will turn very dark in the blue/cyan/green
bands and then suddenly very bright in the yellow/red. This is the
principle of the spectrophotometer which is used to obtain the curves
of Figure 1. It records how bright and how dark the sample is in lights
of different colours, or how much of the different coloured lights of the
spectrum the sample reflects. The older visual spectrophotometers,
which used the human eye, have been replaced by modern photo-
electric spectrophotometers which use a photo cell whose current gives
a measure of the quantity of light reflected by the sample. The
wavelength values provide a convenient metric for these purposes, but
nothing more. The principles of spectrophotometry are independent of
the wavelength theory.
It is clear by now why whiteness (being white or the being white of
something) has no relationship to wavelength of reflected light or
spectral composition. But there is a whole family of colours "the quality
of which does not depend on wavelength or combinations of wave-
length" (Wallach, 1963). These are the neutral colours, white, greys and
black - and also brown. 16 It would be very surprising if a uniform
account could not be given of all the colours. White is, in a sense given
WHITENESS 335
by Figure 2, the simplest of the colours. It is certainly the simplest to

understand. I believe that a sensible strategy to the understanding of
colours whose curves are not straight would be to take the basic
principles extracted from the study of the neutral colours, and then to
add extra conditions and factors to these. The central concept to be
elucidated, perhaps, is Michael Wilson's Goethean notion of selective
darkening - of which white shows one or a minimal amount. A
phenomenalized version of the key definition, due to Richard Mort, is:
"A white surface is a surface which does not darken the light" - and
therefore does not darken it selectively. One could also bring Figure 1
into line with this phenomenalist approach by inverting it so that it
represents the degree of perceived darkening of the samples in a given
light. The photometric curves would then represent selective darkening
rather than reflection. The need for such an approach was perhaps felt
by Wittgenstein. At the end of Remarks on Colour II he observes that
"I don't see that the colours of bodies reflect light into my eye." We
know that at one stage of his career he was attracted to the thought of a
view of colour and perception which would contain nothing hypo-
thetical, no references to light waves, cones, etc. But for him this would
not have been the thought of a scientific theory.
Some final caveats about the proposed conception of whiteness are
needed. As it stands it makes metallic surfaces, mirrors and perhaps
highlights (transitorily) white. This may not be such a bad thing (it was
not a bad thing in Homeric Greek phenomenology) but in order to
prevent it all we need is the distinction, already referred to, between
specular and diffuse reflection. In specular or directional reflection the
image is preserved. There is an obvious point to a concept which will
bring out the connections between 'white' and other non-colour
concepts such as 'mirror,' 'sparkle,' 'brilliance,' 'glitter,' 'dazzle,' 'light,'
etc. There are also good reasons to emphasize the dissimilarity between
white and the related physical phenomena and the similarity between
white and the other colours. As far as I can see there is nothing to
prevent us retaining both the wider and the narrower concepts simul-
taneously, for different uses and purposes.
I suppose that nothing I have said so far absolutely shows that
whiteness or the being white-coloured of an object is the very same
thing as its disposition to reflect diffusely a very high proportion of the
illumination (reflectance is already a dispositional concept). In fact I
don't think that this theoretical definition is complete. It does not
handle whiteness in contrast effects, for example, and something must

therefore be said about relative reflectance values as well as absolute
values. So adaption is relevant as well, and this brings in the whole
perceptual system. But it is a part of the right definition. It easily
handles all the Wittgensteinian (aporiai, which must be some kind of
evidence, since these puzzles are about the whiteness we see). It is the
whiteness we see (phenomenal whiteness, as it is called in contem-
porary philosophy, but what other kind could there be?) which is what
is necessarily untransparent, and it is no accident that the explanation
of this necessity is entirely physical - but not in the low-level reduced
sense of physicalism. And if the concept (definition, essence) of
whiteness did not explain the necessary or essential properties that it
has, I cannot see that anything could. If the Remarks on Colour are
anything to go by, the successors of 'grammar' in Wittgenstein's thought
(which gets not a single mention in his book), the "logic of colour
concepts," the "geometry" and "mathematics" of colour, are a pretty
poor bet. But these fragile metaphors did enable Wittgenstein to frame
some of the more suggestive and far reaching questions that can be
asked about colour, both in connection with white and with the other
colours.
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
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
Armstrong, D. M.: A Theory of Universals, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1978.

Armstrong, D. M.: 'Color Realism', in Contemporary Philosophy in Australia (ed. by R.
Brown and C. D. Rollins), George Allen and Unwin, London, 1969.
Ayer, A. J.: The Central Questions of Philosophy, Weidenfeld, London, 1973.
Bartleson C. J. et al.: Color: A Guide to Basic Facts and Concepts, Wiley, New York,
1963.
Berlin, B. and Kay, P.: Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution, Univ. of
California Press, Berkeley, 1969.
Campbell, K.: 'Colours', in Contemporary Philosophy in Australia (ed. by R. Brown and
C. D. Rollins), George Allen and Unwin, London, 1969, pp. 132-157.
Clulow, F. W.: Colour: Its Principles and Applications, Fountain, London, 1972.
Goodman, N.: Review of L. Wittgenstein, Remarks on Colour, Journal of Philosophy
75 (1978) 503-504.
Irwin, E.: Colour Terms in Greek Poetry, Hakkert, Toronto, 1974.
Katz, D.: The World of Colour, Kegan Paul, London, 1935.
Mounce, H. 0.: Review of L, Wittgenstein, Remarks on Colour, Philosophical
Quarterly 119 (1980) 160-161.
Putnam, H.: 'Philosophy and our Mental Life', in Mind, Language and Reality. Philo-
sophical Papers, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1975, Vol. 2, pp. 291-303.
Wallach, H.: 'The Perception of Neutral Colours', Scientific American, January 1963.
Westphal, J.: 'Brown', Inquiry 25 (1982) 417-433.
Wilson M. H. and Brocklebank, R. W.: 'Goethe's Colour Experiments', in Year Book of
the Physical Society, The Physical Society, London, 1958, pp. 3-12.
Wittgenstein, L.: Culture and Value, Blackwell, Oxford, 1980.
WHITENESS 339
Wittgenstein, L.: Remarks on Colour (ed. by G. E. M. Anscombe, trans. by L.

McAlister and M. Schiittle), B. Blackwell, Oxford, 1977. (Published simultaneously
by Univ. of California Press, Berkeley.)
Wright, W. D.: The Rays are not Coloured, Hilger, London, 1967.
Honorary Research Fellow,

University of Kent,
Eliot College,
Canterbury CT2 7NS,
England
GUNTER AL TNER
GOETHE AS A FORERUNNER OF
ALTERNATIVE SCIENCE*
ill our world of ever-increasing destructiveness the call for wholeness is

unmistakable. The universal demand for greater ecological awareness
is an unambiguous sign of this longing for greater wholeness.
Ecology is the science of the interrelationships between living crea-
tures and their environment. Humans also belong within this context to
the extent that they are social beings, especially considering the fact that
humans, by virtue of the faculty of reason lent them by nature, are able
to set themselves apart from nature and subordinate it to their scientific
and economic interests. It is here, however, that the great problems
begin. Putting into practice ecological thinking in the sense of greater
wholeness is not just a matter of allowing respect for life and considera-
tion of the environment to play a larger role in the technological
application and the economic assessment of scientific knowledge.
Welcome as such a practice would be, it does not lead us any closer to
the heart of the 'question, namely the conditions under which greater
wholeness and integrity would become possible.
Is it not much more important today to ask questions concerning the
structure of scientific cognition and its consequences? Concerning the
viability of scientific thinking itself?! The ideal of exact science that has
been embraced ever more warmly since Descartes, of making calculable
in nature everything that can be made calculable, has to a great extent
transformed nature into an object, and shattered it into ever
entities. The conceptual mode of the sciences - let us be perfectly clear
about it - is itself a form of power. The cognizing self that isolates
itself from nature in the subject-object relationship subjects nature to
the methodology of its experimentation and calculation. It degrades
nature as a living encounter; the self destroys the wholeness of nature in
making it an object of human experience.
And it is just here that Goethe attacks the problem. In his assessment
of Newton's theory of color he makes the following criticism:
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.
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.
Goethe opposes this with his own point of view:
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.
Not counting, measuring, weighing; but rather experiencing, viewing,

observing, contemplating, joining, discovering, inventing - these are
the methods that Goethe brings into play in his science. Here one
must not create false oppositions. Goethe is entirely in favor of (}xperi-
mentation, but only of experiments in which one arrives by means of
the human senses at a living and immediate contemplative viewing
[Anschauung] of nature. In observing, describing, measuring and seeing
connections, Goethe had no equal.
He dissects coconuts, contemplates skulls, analyzes shellfish, con-
structs a geological model and observes the phases of the moon with a
telescope. He prevails upon Frau von Stein to have mosses collected for
him, and upon the apothecary Buchholtz to raise plants for him in his
garden. In Ilmenau, where Goethe in his office as privy counsellor was
charged with reviving the dormant silver and copper mines, mine
inspector Mohr is constantly supplying him with fossils and minerals.
A vital contemplation that is also active and. practical - that is
Goethe's passion. In this he is a true forerunner of alternative science.
That Goethe engaged in a living, practical interaction with nature is not
merely an adventitious side-effect of his political duties in Weimar: his
way of dealing with nature has method to it, is driven by a passionate
desire for knowledge and is programmatic. Or, in the contemporary
idiom: Goethe favors a very specific scientific paradigm, which he
consciously sets up in opposition to the paradigms of eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century physics. In doing so, he remains fully aware that the
momentum of history is not in his direction. Faced with the physicalism
of the nineteenth century, the eighty-year-old man writes Zelter: "We,
and perhaps still a few others, shall be the last of an era that will not
soon return."
A FORERUNNER OF ALTERNATIVE SCIENCE 343
Goethe was to prove right. With the departure of Klopstock, Herder,

Kant and Schiller, Niebuhr, Stein, Hegel, Schleiermacher and the
Humboldts, a scientific tradition died out the likes of which was not to
return again. Instead, the triumphant march of physicalism extended
into all realms of science. In the middle of the century, Emil du Bois-
Reymond expressed it in the formula: "There is no knowledge other
'than mechanical knowledge, no form of scientific thinking but the
mathematical-physical."
This stance, that dared claim to be able to explain and comprehend
nature as such for all time in a way completely objective and necessary,
was soon to be followed by deeds. "Objective world, number, statistics,
ballistics, imperishables, - wasn't it grand, great progress, the uni-
versity Chancellors could stand next to the court preachers, and
cathedral and lecture hall together provided the imperium with the
basis for its panther-leaps" - this is how Gottfried Benn describes the
triumphant march of the mechanistic ideology in the nineteenth cen-
tury. And he continues, now addressing directly the industrial and
economic consequences of this scientific revolution:
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!
Here Gottfried Benn refers to the mechanistic interpretation of

Darwin's theory of natural selection and its political consequences: the
fight for life, survival of the fittest, colonialism, racism, mass annihila-
tion. At the end of this telegram-like chain of SUbjugations of the
biosphere, we stand today with our problems of the environment, the
Third World, overpopulation and peace, and feel our very survival
threatened. The mega-machine Progress, set in motion finally in the
nineteenth century, has in the interim taken hold of us completely. It
threatens to subject us to the same mechanistic compulsions that we
have hitherto inflicted upon the natural world. The fulfillment of our
personal and social lives stands and falls with the constraints and
dangers of technological civilization.
Indeed, Goethe's epoch has not returned. Goethe's view of nature
has fallen by the wayside, but the longing for that view of nature
expresses itself more loudly than ever, not only among those who, as
344 GDNTER ALTNER
scientific 'outsiders' or historians, appreciate Goethe's significance in

the history of culture. Today, one sees on many sides an unconscious
linking up with Goethean traditions, without those involved always
remembering the connection. Weare witnessing today a change of
paradigms in science - certainly in the course of 'normal science' as
well, but above all in alternative research institutions.
In Austria, in Switzerland and in West Germany more than forty
such research groups have arisen in the course of recent years. In the
majority of cases, these groups have entered into the daily struggle
against the consequences of progress gone astray. They work according
to the principle of expert recommendations and counter-recommenda-
tions; using new models of a holistic thinking, they attempt to oppose
and dismantle the dominance of mechanistic and technocratic world-
views, even in the planning stage. The antithesis between objective, value-
free and ecologically-oriented, holistic science comes into sharpest focus
in the battle over hard vs. soft energy paths.
In direct opposition to the aims and consequences of establishment
research in industry and government centers, Hartmut Bossel formu-
lates the characteristics of an ecologically-oriented science as follows:
1. The goal of this ecologically-oriented science is the preservation

and development of the ecological community. This community
is the network of partial systems within human society and the
natural environment today and in the future viewed as one
coherent whole.
2. The research program of this ecologically-oriented science is
necessarily interdisciplinary and predominantly holistic.
3. The organization and practice of this ecologically-oriented
science and research must be centered around the independent
work of the individual scientist and groups of scientists working
in partnership.
Doubtless there stands behind this initiative a strong ethical com-

ponent which comes to expression also in the value-system of the
ecological movement. Communication by means of interacting value-
creating processes within the field of man's relationship to nature -
one might characterize the fundamental position underlying ecolog-
ically-oriented science in this way. Here one does not find the great
chasm between man and nature, subject and object, nor the unilinear
and one-dimensional succession of cause and effect presupposed as the

basis of the classical science of the previous century.
From the perspective of ecologically-oriented science, nature is a
constantly unfolding, infinitely interconnected process of equilibration
that is ever achieving new homeostases and is irreversible in its
transformations and transcendences. In a world where everything is
connected on all sides, in which each present moment represents the
ongoing transition from the past into the present, one has also rid
oneself of the illusion of being able to describe nature as such in terms
of the laws established by science.
The objective time presupposed in the laws of classical physics is a
cognitional mode that is dependent upon the scheme of measurement
chosen. In the case of the objective time presupposed in the laws of
mechanics, time is conceived as a straight line running on forever, and
measured in terms of the regular progress of bodies along identical line
segments. In this way, the spatial movement of bodies makes possible a
dissection of time into time-segments. This is the basic principle of the
clock, the running of which is governed in accordance with the great
universal clock, the movement of the planetary bodies.
Yet Heisenberg's Uncertainty Relationship has shown once and for
all that such things are all posited arbitrarily; that they reveal to us
something about nature that follows from the model we have imagined,
but that they do not represent nature as such. It may be that for the
large bodies of classical physics one can ignore the implications of the
experimental constellation and the cognitional mode determined
thereby, but at the atomic level one cannot ignore them. The concept
that atoms are like little micro-planets under the influence of the laws
of mechanics was exploded in the moment that atomic physics realized
its experimental conditions called forth differing reactions from the
atomic phenomena that vary according to the kind of data sought. In
the observation of electrons, either the location or the velocity
depending upon the experimental situation - remains indeterminate.
Let us hear Heisenberg's own words on the subject:
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.
That is very 'soft' formulation. There is no question: Goethe advocated

alternative science! He expressed with surprising clarity a need that is
slowly dawning upon us only now: the need to think and act in open
systems. One can detect a note of resignation when Heisenberg, having
surveyed Goethe's work, concludes that
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
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.
Goethe felt it is only in the deficient form of transitory phenomena

that the universal presents itself to us. It was this same problem that
occupied him in following the debate between Geoffroy de Saint-
Hilaire and Cuvier as well: Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire took the side of
348 GUNTER ALTNER
Naturphilosophie, Cuvier that of analytic research. Goethe sides with

Geoffroy. Goethe shares with him a predilection for viewing the whole,
without denying the subordinate passion for the particular. In his
accompanying remarks, Goethe says: "Perhaps a better way of putting it
is: like it or not, it is unavoidable that one proceeds from the whole to
the part, from the part to the whole; and the more lively these mental
faculties, the better it will be for the sciences and their friends."
Again we see Goethe standing before the problem - one still
relevant today - of how the manifestation of the particular can be
thought in conjunction with the whole. Rudiger Lutz, a proponent of
alternative science, says today "we must take as our starting point that
in reality everything is connected with everything else. There are no
separate worlds and events, but only one indivisible whole." Yet if it is
so that the universal appears in the fluctuation of forms and that the
scientist must remain so plastic in contemplating natural forms that he
or she achieves a living contemplation of that dance of forms, then the
individual stance of the researcher must be accorded great significance.
For this reason Goethe was inordinately interested in the subjective
dimension of science. He makes inquiries about the biographies of
individual scientists; he seeks contact with those scientists to whom
nature has 'gladly revealed itself.' And he likewise reports at great
length concerning the history of his own botanical studies, going deep
into his own biography. This dimension of the personal and collegial
also characterizes Goethe as an alternative scientist, for alternative
scientists see themselves today as a partnership organized along the
lines of the ecological community.
The tendency toward the practical in the form of networks, institutes
to study the future and biological projects, so characteristic of eco-
logically-oriented science, is to be found in Goethe. Goethe's scientific
studies go hand in hand with the effort to increase the yield of forest
and field by means of agricultural and silvicultural practice. His work
for the reopening of the copper and silver mines at Ilmenau he under-
stands likewise as an act of participation in nature.
Thus let us [so says Goethe in his dedicatory address] not view the little opening that
we make today in the surface of the earth with indifferent eyes; let us not consider the
first strokes of the pickaxe as an insignificant cermony. No, we want rather to feel
deeply the importance of this act, to be glad in our hearts that we were chosen to
undertake it and bear witness thereto.
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.
Eternal progress, this motive force underlying Goethe's thinking - it

was this that brought to his science a feature that strikes us even today
as still a highly relevant challenge. One cannot grasp the significance of
Goethe's view of nature from the point of view of classical physics, just
as it is hardly possible to appreciate the significance of thinking in open
systems in the alternative sciences from the point of view of the exact
sciences and with reference to the mathematics that serve them. The
new can be grasped only when the old is abandoned. The greatness of
Goethe's view of nature is that it gives us courage today to make the
change.
350 G DNTER AL TNER
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
KLAUS MICHAEL MEYER-ABICH
SELF-KNOWLEDGE, FREEDOM, AND IRONY:

THE LANGUAGE OF NATURE IN GOETHE*
Humanity today through its science of

nature is in danger of destroying the very
realm of nature in which it lives and which
is subject to its intervention. A knowledge
which manifests itself in the destruction of
what it seeks to know cannot be true
knowledge. We are therefore forced today
to question the truth of our science of
nature.
(G. Picht, 1973, p. 1)
1. INTRODUCTION
Every science presupposes decisions concerning what one would like to

know; that is, what is to be learned from the scientific inquiry. In the
modern science- of nature, for example, it is considered worth knowing
how phenomena can be produced and reproduced. The ideal of knowl-
edge - the guiding conception of the scientific truth to be sought - is
thus at the very outset that a state of affairs is understood when we can
produce it; in other words, it is the acquisition of power in nature. The
value judgement concerning what is worth knowing, then, precedes
scientific work, lies in its background, and shows up in the objects of
science only in the type of interest we take in them, which is common
to them all. In particular, the pre-existing concern with domination, in
the light of which all objects of natural science are seen, is itself not a
theme of the prevailing science of nature. It is only in this sense that
science is valuefree, or rather, value-blind.
It is in just this way that Max Weber wished the notion of 'value-
freedom' in science to be understood: "No science is totally without
assumptions and no science can justify its value to one who rejects
these assumptions" (1946, p. 132) he writes in his oft-quoted lecture on
Science as a Vocation. It is of course true that one can study the
relationship of a body of scientific knowledge to the assumptions
according to which it is worth having. This relationship is in particular a
351
ARe-Appraisal, 351-37l.
352 KLAUS MICHAEL MEYER-ABICH
theme of philosophy. Although it is true that not even philosophical

reflection can demonstrate the scientific truth or falseness of the
interests and life-choices which underlie the individual disciplines, it
can at least show that, to use an image of Weber, you serve this god and
offend that other, when you act in one manner rather than another.
The essence of Weber's message is: there are many gods, and science
can be conducted in the service of one or another of them. What is
considered worth knowing will depend on this preliminary choice.
Evidently even the content of a science depends on the god it serves. If
we are not content merely to settle for polytheism which, as a matter of
fact, is very close to the 'pluralism' of industrial society, then we must
confront the question: Does present-day science follow the one true
God, or does it follow false gods ?
We know much, perhaps too much, that has 'side effects' which
under existing political circumstances are destructive of conditions
essential to life. While it is certainly true that political conditions are
co-responsible for this, science also is co-responsible. If, for instance, in
a given historical situation someone discovers a new possibility to
acquire competitive advantages over others at the cost of destroying
certain environmental conditions necessary to life, he cannot place the
responsibility on politics alone if, in consequence, the environment is in
fact (at least temporarily) destroyed (Meyer-Abich, 1984, pp. 207ff).
What would be worth knowing is what in the present situation, and
particularly in the resolution of existing conflicts, would serve life and
be in tune with the human embedment in nature. We are thus called
upon to choose between Good and Evil in our scientific actions, i.e. in
the cognitive activity of the scientist, just as we are in all other actions.
And we dare not make it easy for ourselves by posing the question only
for science in general; rather the question concerns specific sciences,
alternatives in scientific development, and thus every individual scien-
tific undertaking anew.
Historically, the question of what is good to know and who shall
have access to the particular branches of scientific knowledge was until
modem times a political question to be decided by church or state.
General religious and intellectual freedom in the face of church and state
resistance, as it exists today in the Western-style liberal democracies, is
an achievement of only the most recent times, and is a political experi-
ment whose outcome seems today once again about as uncertain as it
was at the time of Galileo. The traditional justification for science and,
THE LANGUAGE OF NATURE IN GOETHE 353
especially, for the expenditure of public resources needed for scientific

inquiry, always comes down to the fact that science is in the public
interest. Accordingly, for example, the constitutional right to freedom
of scientific inquiry as determined by the constitutional court of the
Federal Republic of Germany [Bundesverfassungsgericht], is justified on
the basis ofthe usefulness of science (1970, p. 370).
Thus science shall serve the common good; this is the goal set for
science, and science is free to this end. In the past, there were good
reasons to assume that a that did not orient itself explicitly
according to external objectives but rather followed its immanent,
historically evolved regulatives, best served its external function of
usefulness to the community. Even today everything argues for the fact
that a science which has turned its back on political objectives can very
effectively serve just those objectives. However, a discrepancy has
grown up between these goals, i.e. between the political impact of
science and the publicly legitimated goals of state and society, so that
today politicians usually chase behind scientific and technical develop-
ments and try to accomodate their effects to the goals of society.
Some examples of the confusion which science, once it is emancipated
from the regime of church and state into intellectual and economic
freedom, increasingly brings to this regime are:
The repercussions of microelectronics so overwhelm any economic
or employment policy that politicians basically can merely put their
hope in the capacity of society to adapt tolerably to the new
engineering and economic realities.
Nuclear energy having already, in its weapons-technology develop-
ment, become the determining factor in international politics, is
now developing into a paradigm for a failed relationship between
state and society in the domestic arena as well.
But this is not what had been intended. What goals, therefore, ought to
henceforth inform scientific and technical thought so that its force no
longer escapes the control of liberal democratic institutions?
The fact that, since the trial of Galileo, ecclesiastical influences on
the course of scientific research have practically vanished, by no means
implies that the evolution of science is no longer subject to religious
goal-setting. Quite the contrary, the Weberian 'strife of the gods' has
flared up all the more fiercely since the church of the one God has no
longer been able to prevail in the struggle. The conflict has merely been
extended to a wider public, which has the advantage of a certain

democratization, even if only within the scientific community, although
often at the expense of some lowering of the theological level of the
debate. And in fact high points in the struggle for the direction of
scientific progress that have a significance no less than that of the
Galileo trial keep recurring. One of these was Goethe's challenge to
Newton. Other examples are the controversy between Bohr and Einstein
concerning the ontology of quantum theory and that between mechan-
ism, vitalism and holism concerning the cognitive ideal of biology.
At issue between Goethe and Newton was the truth of classical
physics. Goethe until now has always lost out in this struggle of the
gods over the priority of what is worth knowing. However, in view of
the threat posed to conditions essential to life by the economic activity
of industrial societies, the victory of classical physics of a Galilean-
Newtonian character, on which modern industry rests, over Goethe's
holistic and more life-oriented experience of nature, must become
increasingly problematic. Characteristic of this turning point are the
introductory words of Georg Picht's Lecture on Nature from the winter
semester of 1973174:
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.
2. FEATURES IN COMMON BETWEEN CLASSICAL PHYSICS AND

THE PHYSICS OF GOETHE
It is said that physics is an empirical science. And it is in fact one of the

inviolable principles of the guild of physicists that a statement can only

be considered a proposition of physics and be in this sense worth
knowing when it makes a difference empirically whether the statement
is true or false. A classical avowal of this physical empiricism is
Newton's "hypotheses non fingo": although he could account for the
motions of the planets in terms of gravitation, he could not derive
gravitation in its turn from deeper lying causes, "and I don't invent
hypotheses. In order words, what does not follow from the phenomena
is a hypothesis, and hypotheses, whether physical or metaphysical,
mechanical or concerning occult qualities, cannot be accepted into
experimental physics" (1934, p. 547). For physics otherwise would be
no better than the scholasticism from which it has emancipated itself.
The question of the ontological nature of physical reality and of
its intelligibility, important though it was to the debate between Bohr
and Einstein, is certainly not at issue between Goethe and Newton.
Goethe's good standing as an empiricist is beyond question. For him,
too, the concern is with sense impressions and he is not keen on explor-
ing behind the phenomena for the essence of things. "For it is really a
vain effort to attempt to express the essence of a thing. We experience
effects, and a complete history of these effects would in each case
constitute the essence of that thing." Similarly we often enough vainly
try "to describe the character of a person; if instead we were to exhibit
his actions, his deeds, we would obtain from them a picture of his
character" (HA 13, p. 315). Therefore the scientist, too, shall "not tire
of investigating and working out all possible aspects and variations of a
particular experience or experiment. ... / ... The variegation of every
experiment is therefore the true duty of a scientist", for it permits him
to arrive at "higher-order experiences" (HA 13, pp. 17f; cf. HA 14, p.
141).
In his own scientific research as well, Goethe always remained true
to his empiricist maxim, so that no one can reproach him with not
having adhered closely enough to experience. On the contrary, Goethe
was forced to conclude that "the requirement that one stick faithfully to
the phenomena and assemble them in their natural order" (HA 13, p.
524) had been much better satisfied in other branches of science than
in the theory of color. "When, during the renaissance of science, people
turned to experience and attempted to repeat what they observed in
experiments, they used these to quite different ends. The highest was
and always will be to know a phenomenon of nature, which shows itself
to us under its various aspects, in all its totality. Many investigators of
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;
rather here the empiricist Aristotle again appealed directly to the

perception that the heavens revolve around the earth and that the four
elements fall downwards or rise upwards: "all indications that he has
the intention to mislead us by a sleight of hand and to accommodate
the blueprint to the completed structure, rather than to erect the struc-
ture according to the provisions of the plan" (1967, p. 16; "accomodar
l'architettura alla fabbrica, e non construire la fabbrica conforme a i
precetti dell'architettura").
But what kind of a notion of empirical science is this, for which it is
not a question of adapting the plan-to-be-discovered to the finished
world but rather, first, of constructing the world according to the
prescriptions of the plan? Is this the same Galileo who elsewhere so
conscientiously places experience above reason (for example in the
letter to Liceti of Nov. 15, 1640), and who complains that others
construct the facts as they are needed to support their claims instead of
"adapting their claims by step to the facts" (1967, p. 116)? Galileo
accuses the Aristotelians (the Scholastics) of his day of browsing too
much in old books and too little in the book of Nature, but is it an
accident that he has none other than the Aristotelian Simplicia con-
stantly insist on sense experience only to rejoin to him then that he
should be much more cautious before giving his assent to the results of
mere speculation (1967, p. 94)? When the question is raised whether-
if the earth rotates about itself - its curvature would cause cannon
shots' toward the west always to fly somewhat too high and those
toward the east somewhat too low, it is Simplicio who urges that an
experiment actually be carried out to decide the matter. As Salviati
responds that there are no cannoneers who can shoot accurately
enough to make the outcome of such an experiment significant, Simplicio
again lapses into a thought that is so typical for an empiricist in such
a case: then one would have to repeat the experiment many times in
succession. Salviati, on the other hand, had just shortly before explained
in another context that "the execution of an experiment demonstrates
the correctness of these facts only to one who cannot or will not
understand their rational basis", i.e. one can think out what must
One need not constantly run around in the completed edifice in

order to take its measurements for the blueprint, rather one can know
the blueprint and, once it is known, construct the edifice according to it.
In this way, the edifice, the world, while not then first produced or
created, is therewith reproduced. It comes into existence before our

mental eye, and exists there just as the architect-creator imagined it and
constructed it; that is, just as it in fact is. This is the decisive turn in
Galileo away from the phenomenological physics of Aristotle.
From the Galilean notion of science it is but one further small step
to modern technology, which is based on the work not only of the
artisan, but of the scientist as well. First we imagine the creator as
architect, then we uncover the laws of nature as laws of the construc-
tion of the world, and thirdly we place ourselves in the position of the
architect and construct the modern world. This intrinsic directedness
toward technology is combined in Galileo with the empiricist's principle
that, in the final instance, truth is to be found in experience - but it is
not itself an essential feature of empiricism. Do we now have here the
essential difference between Galilean and Goethean science? If we were
to follow Goethe against Galileo and Newton, would there perhaps be
no environmental problem just because the union of science and
technology would never have come to pass?
Interestingly, however, as I see it, it is not the technological orienta-
tion that constitutes the essential difference between the ruling science
and that of Goethe. In fact, as Goethe himself explained, "If we have
avoided dealing with the mathematician in our studies, we have on the
other hand tried to keep in mind the techniques of the dyer" (RA 8,
p.485).
We also consider it a serious error on the part of Francis Bacon that he held the
mechanical endeavors of the artisans and manufacturers too much in contempt ... The
sciences are more indebted to the independent technical and artistic spheres of activity
than is brought out, because these industrious persons are often looked down upon as
themselves tool-like. Had anyone at the end of the sixteenth century betaken himself to
the workplaces of dyers and painters and simply contented himself with an honest and
thorough description of what he found there, we would have a much fuller and more
systematic contribution to our present undertaking [the Farbenlehre] than the response
to a thousand Baconian questions could ever have been (HA 14, p. 92).
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
of Galilean-Newtonian persuasion, to his criterion of truth: "It cannot

be repeated often enough that the best confirmation of a theory is that
it facilitates the judgement of the practitioner and that it assists his
applications (HA 14, p. 229); and thus "practice is ... the touchstone
of what we receive from the mind" (HA 8, p. 44).
Now, Goethe's concern with practice and his pragmatic conception
of truth still do not necessarily meap. that he allowed himself to get
drawn into the theology of God-the-architect. Even here, however, one
still finds, at least in Goethe's conception of himself, a remarkable
degree of agreement with the dominant science. In his Metamorphosis
of Plants, for example, he believes "to have understood Nature as she
goes to work, in accord with definite laws, to create the living form
as the model for all artificial form" (HA 13, p. 102). And in the
Farbenlehre he writes:
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
on the plants" (HA 13, p. 60), or to want to "expose dyestuffs to light in

bell jars that are evacuated or contain common air or special types
of air" (HA 13, p. 458), in order in this way perhaps to find decay
products and to be able to draw conclusions concerning the possibility
of more lightfast colors. Even the classical 'nothing-but' formula which
expresses the scientific-technical subjugation of an object: it is 'nothing
but .. .' (for example 'love is nothing but chemistry') is not lacking in
Goethe, for example in the Metamorphose der Pflanzen where it finally
comes down to "all calyxes are merely petals that are pulled together on
their periphery" (HA 13, p. 95).
It certainly cannot be claimed, then, that Goethe had something
against technology (as such). This will not please those who have
something 'against technology' and would like to claim Goethe for their
side; but it makes Goethe that much more interesting if one has nothing
against technology as such but nonetheless questions the ecological
compatibility of the dominant technology today and looks for alterna-
tives to it. Given, then, the present-day threat to the environment, what
is to be learned from Goethe where his science differs from classical
science?
3. THE DIFFERENCE: A TOTALITY THAT DECLARES ITSELF
"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
as such correctly, in accordance with a true insight into the interrela-

tions on which it feeds, right up to Judgement Day, then a balance
must be sought in the struggle. If insight into the relationship between
humankind and environment is lacking then it can come to the situation
which threatens us today; that our victory over nature is at the same
time our own defeat, because we are ourselves a part of nature, and
thus as victors are also the vanquished.
It is Goethe's opinion that the correct balance should come as a
result of the growth in us of a feeling of reverence toward the rest of
the world, in which we become aware that in this relationship lies the
possibility of our own humanization as well.
When ... man begins to measure himself in the struggle with nature, he at first feels an
overwhelming drive to subjugate the objects to himself. But it is not long before they
impress themselves on him with such force that he sees clearly how much reason he has
to acknowledge their power as well, and to revere their effects. As soon as he convinces
himself of this mutual influence, he becomes aware of a double infinity: in the objects
themselves - the diversity of being and becoming and the interrelations that criss-cross
full of life; in himself, on the other hand, the possibility of a never-ending education, in
that he trains his receptivity as well as his judgement to new forms of assimilation and
reaction.(HA 13, p. 53).
Compared with this chance of becoming better human beings in

forever new forms of assimilation and reaction in the struggle with the
rest of the world, Goethe can only discover spiritual emptyness in
classical natural science and, therefore, in modern technology. And it
has come to that point because bourgeois society - following Kant's
redeeming idea - has sought to insure its freedom by mercilessly
abandoning Nature to mechanical causality.
When people banished teleological explanation, they robbed nature of understanding;

they lacked the courage to ascribe reason to her, hence at the end she had been left
lying there bereft of spirit. What was required of her were technical, mechanical
services and in the end man found her understandable and graspable only in this sense
(HA 14, p. 122).
How different we would have to behave in Nature, on the other hand, if

she were assigned not only mechanical tasks and were not supposed
to be merely a mechanical servant of man, on the grounds that pos-
sibilities of human development would thereby be squandered. In
addition to the key word reverence, brief mention is also made in the
Theory of Color of the criterion of the symbolic use of things: "A ...
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
what is derivative, an effort is thereupon made to explain it in terms of

the derived ... If, on the other hand, the physicist can arrive at a
knowledge of what we have called the archetypal phenomenon, then he
is saved and the philosopher with him" (HA 13, pp. 482f).
None of this sounds particularly controversial - for who indeed
would want to confuse the derived with the primitive? and yet it is
precisely here that we have. come to the point where Goethe chose a
fundamentally different path from Newton's. At issue here is certainly
not the principle of choosing the right beginning in science; it is rather
that, according to Goethe, Newton chose a wrong beginning, namely in
placing a derived, complex entity at the beginning of his theory of color,
i.e. in attempting to explain the simpler from the complex (HA 14, pp.
243, 263), namely light from color. At issue here is not some scientific
detail on which one should be able to come to agreement with one's
colleagues, but rather that, in Goethe's judgement, Newton's false
beginning in science is nothing less than a downright blasphemous
presumption. In contrast, Goethe's theory of color "does not presume
to develop color out of light, it seeks rather to demonstrate through
countless examples that color is created in one out of light and that
which opposes itself to the light" (HA 13, p. 528).
But how can' it be a blasphemous presumption, in explaining the
origin of light, to fail to take into consideration what opposes itself to
light, i.e. darkness? This question is about as far-reaching for the
philosophy of nature as is the question in ethics whether evil is but the
absence of good or possesses an independent reality in which it is
perhaps related to the good. In my opinion both problems are actually
identical in the final analysis, as we read in the Old Testament: "I form
light and create darkness, I make peace and create evil. I am the Lord
who do all these things", Isaiah 45.7. At issue here is the correct
conception of nature, i.e. the preconception as to what is worth know-
ing which guides cognition and precedes any science of nature. For, if
one recognizes the existence of light only and not of darkness as well,
then a fundamental feature is missed: its dialectic or its polarity. A
science of nature that does not begin with this recognition gets a false
start and cannot succeed in determining any natural order of things.
Goethe "taking his cue from nature . .. wished to introduce the
expression of polarity into the theory of color" (HA 13, p. 493).
Newton's false beginning in science is not false in the sense of an error
within science, i.e. it is not the opposite of a scientifically correct
statement; rather we are dealing here with the philosophical presup-

position of science - with the light which illuminates everything there
is. Truth and falseness manifest themselves here in the sense of a
knowledge gained that it is not good to possess and that, if used as a
guide to action, would lead to error in practice. A discussion of what is
right and wrong in this context can only be conducted as a discussion of
a religious truth, of which we cannot be scientifically certain and which
is nonetheless vital. For this reason I not only find Goethe's arguments
most worthy of consideration, but also his irritation with Newton or
classical physics both understandable and justifiable.
In the following I first treat Goethe's conception of nature, in terms
of polarity, as the fundamental structure, and then several features of a
science of nature that would regard this conception as the one worth
knowing.
3(a) Nature: Reason, Freedom, Life and Totality

Goethe opened up "a new theoretical (my italics) path in science for
that initial realization that prismatic color phenomena exhibit vigorous
diverging, opposing, distributing, differentiating tendencies, or however
one wanted to describe these, which I summed up for myself in the
term polarity" (HA 13, p. 264). After the first look through the prism,
there was no need "for long reflection before I saw that a boundary is
needed to produce color, and I immediately said out loud to myself, as
though instinctively, that the Newtonian doctrine was false" (RA 14, p.
259). An image arises only where a difference exists, or a boundary
between two entities; i.e. when some kind of duality is present. "And
Newton ignores these boundaries entirely" (RA 13, p. 259). Goethe's
archetypal phenomenon is as follows: "We observe on the one side
light, brightness, on the other darkness, the shadowy. Between them we
introduce turbidity. And out of these opposites, by the intercession of
the turbid medium, the colors evolve, likewise in opposition, to point
back presently, by virtue of a mutual relation, to commonality."
Now the polarity of nature is no more proven by Goethe's prism
experiment than it is refuted by Newton's. Niels Bohr, in referring to
the complementarity he discerned in atomic physics just as Goethe had
discerned polarity in optics, liked to say that in reflecting on atomic
phenomena he had found himself 'reminded' of the condition that we
observe nature while being ourselves a part of nature. Similarly Goethe
\
when looking through Hofrat Buttner's prism at the window frame in
his room, must have felt 'reminded' of the fact that the diversity of the
world of the senses rests on a primal opposition or a fundamental
duality - which is why there is no spectral decomposition when one
looks at a white wall, while there is when one observes the boundary
between light and dark. However, this recollection then points beyond
the immediate occasion that gave rise to it. Thus, even in the context of
the Theory of Color Goethe describes the polarity of nature also quite
independently of optical phenomena.
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).
Here Goethe gives his answer to the Kantian question: what do we

know in advance about whatever is given to us a's a phenomenon
merely from its phenomenality as such? Expressed in traditional philo-
sophical language his answer reads that in anything that occurs, we
experience the diversity in unity or the unity in diversity. However, in
contrast to Kant, Goethe locates the basis for this not, as in the philos-
ophy of subjectivity, in the structure of transcendental apperception,
but rather in the inhaling and exhaling, or in the swaying back and forth
of nature; that is to say, in the fact that not only humankind but also
nature possesses a soul. In these terms, however, he explains what Kant
too wanted to explain, and that is the spatial and temporal separateness
of all things.
Here the philosophy of nature of the ancients, this time in the
context of modern subjectivism, arises once again, in a quite unassum-
ing form but one of very far reaching significance given the present
ecological crisis. In the rocking to and fro of nature we recognize the
Heraclitian-Platonic logos which, stretched out as a dia-Iogos to encom-
pass the diversity of the world, encompasses itself. This reason (i.e., the
Vernunft part of 'mind') in nature is the first fundamental determination
of Goethean philosophy of nature. In contrast, no one in the modern
366 KLAUS MICHAEL MEYER-ABlCH
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-
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).
When he speaks of Nature's action of separating and unifying, of

syncrisis and diacrisis, Goethe may well have recalled the historical
example of Anaxagoras, which is somewhat confusing in that, given the
Platonic criticism of Anaxagoras's materialism, the rest of his doctrine
could hardly have met with Goethe's approval. What was at issue for
him here, however, is the fourth fundamental characteristic of nature
after reason, freedom, and personal vitality, and that is her totality. In
any case, when Goethe otherwise refers to Anaxagoras, he emphasizes
the "homoiomeries or the parts which presage and constitute the
whole" (HA 13, pp. 137, 132), that is the manner, as conceived by
Anaxagoras, in which the whole could be present in all of its parts,
namely in that all individual objects are but mixtures in differing
proportions of the same fundamental components. Thus we must also
"imagine color and light ... as inherent in all of nature; for it is nature
herself who, by means of color and light, wants to reveal herself,
particularly in the sense of sight" (HA 13, p. 315) and "nothing is more
characteristic of Nature than that she puts into effect even in its
smallest part, what she intends in the whole" (HA 13, p. 134).
Now if Nature is as Goethe understands her, and if classical physics
to the contrary is dealing with a non-nature, then only that science in
which Nature is conceived in terms of reason, freedom, life and totality,
can be a true science. If this science succeeds, it would at the same time
resolve a fundamental contradiction of classical physics, namely that
it is out of freedom that the physicist knows while being at the same
time a part of Nature, so that there is no place for him in that Nature
which he knows. Goethe's view of Nature offers against this the
possibility of semantic consistency since thought, too, and thus natural
science itself is a process in nature; for conceived in terms of reason,
freedom, life and totality, man himself can be thought of as a part of
nature.
3 (b) The Science of Nature

If Nature is to be experienced in science as possessed of reason,
freedom, life and totality, then we ignore her essential qualities in
constraining her to appear before the Kantian tribunal of classical
physics (1929, B XIII). But it is possible to experience her uncon-
strained in that, given her totality, each of her individual parts always
'proclaims' the whole and that she herself, as Goethe says, "wants to
reveal herself . .. totally." This holds not only for light and color but
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).
Thus Nature wants to reveal herself to us and she discloses herself to

us by speaking to herself and to us in empirical phenomena, for we, too,
belong to her and can articulate her totality in the special manner of
our science. "To enrich and enlarge ... the language of Nature by
means of the theory of color, by means of the diversity of phenomena,
and in this way to facilitate the communication of higher insights among
the friends of Nature, was the primary purpose of the present work"
(HA 13, p. 316).
Therefore we should not prescribe to nature her movements,
whether according to the criteria of transcendental philosophy or those
of the industrial economy; rather we must listen to nature and hear
what she reveals to us when we open ourselves appropriately to her.
We can then articulate in language what is revealed to us, as can no
other part of Nature: in the Logos, since human beings are those living
beings who have the Logos. This is, I believe, the particular task
entrusted to the natural historical species homo sapiens, and it is thus
that Nature - as it reads in the Tobler Fragment - "propels herself
along with us" (HA 13, p. 45). As against this, the anthropocentric
assumption that the part propels itself along with the whole is mistaken
and is a blasphemous presumption.
As for opening oneself to what reveals itself, Goethe carried it some-
times to (as he says himself) "a way of staring at nature peculiar to me"
(HA 13, p. 110), just so as not to bring forth prematurely, in accord
with a scheme of his own, what should find its own expression in him.
"I do not rest until 1 find a pregnant point, from which can be derived,
or rather, which freely brings forth much out of itself and offers it to me
(italics by the present author), since 1 go to work carefully and faithfully
in my effort and receptiveness (HA 13, p. 40). For in the appropriately
variegating approach to the appearances, "slowly with time a totality
arises which declares itself' (HA 13, p. 380). Descartes on the contrary
"does not seem to linger calmly and lovingly over the objects, in order
to elicit something from them; he attacks them with some haste as
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.
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
Bundesverfassungsgericht, Urteil zum Hessischen Universitiitsgesetz vom 1.3.1978,

BVerfGe 47.327-386.
Galileo Galilei, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems - Ptolemaic and
Copernican (trans. by S. Drake), Univ. of California Press, Berkeley and Los
Angeles, 1967.
Kant, I.: Critique of Pure Reason (trans. by N. K. Smith), St. Martin's Press, New York,
1929.
Kant, I.: Critique of Practical Reason (trans. by L. W. Beck), The Liberal Arts Press,
New York, 1956.
Meyer-Abich, K. M.:· Wege zum Frieden mit der Natur - Praktische Naturphilosophie
flir die Umweltpolitik, Miinchen, 1984.
Newton, L.: Mathematical Principles (ed. by F. Cajori), Univ. of California Press,
Berkeley, 1934.
Picht, G.: Der Begrijf der Natur und seine Geschichte, Lecture Manuscript, Heidelberg,
1973/74.
Weber, Max: 'Science as a Vocation', in From Max Weber, Essays in Sociology (trans.
byH. Gerth and C. W.Mills), Oxford Univ. Press, New York, 1946, pp. 129-156.
Translations into English of the quotations in HA 13 from Goethe's writings will be

found in:
Goethe's Botanical Writings (trans. by B. Mueller), Univ. of Hawaii Press, Honolulu,
1952.
Goethe's Theory of Colors (trans. by C. L. Eastlake), Frank Cass and Co., Ltd., London,
196 7 (and other editions of same).
37 Hamburgerstrasse
2000 Hamburg 76
FREDERICK AMRINE AND FRANCIS J. ZUCKER
POSTSCRIPT
GOETHE'S SCIENCE:
AN ALTERNATIVE TO MODERN SCIENCE OR
WITHIN IT - OR NO ALTERNATIVE AT ALL?
As described in the Introduction, the following is a highly reworked

version of a Round Table held at a Harvard conference on Goethe and
the Sciences in December, 1982. Many contributions have been highly
condensed or only summarized, but it was possible to include all of the
major points raised in response to the crucial question asked in the title.
We felt that those of our contributors who could not be present at
the Round Table ought to have their say on this issue as well. Thus
pertinent passages from each of the papers have been quoted, or the
implicit or explicit views of their authors on this question briefly
characterized. We therefore hope that the Postscript can stand as a
fitting conclusion to the volume as a whole.
(1) Goethe's Science is no Scientific Alternative at all

This judgement, forcefully argued in a talk by the great Sir Charles
Sherrington (1942), was echoed in his talk at Boston University by
Prof. Jerome Lettvin of M.I.T., who claimed that not only had Goethe
not understood Newton, but that he had in fact never read him. At the
Round Table, this point of view was represented only by Prof. Joseph
Agassi (York University and Tel Aviv University):
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:
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.
Regarding Helmholtz's verdict on Goethe, the reader should of course

compare Jeffrey Barnouw's paper in the present volume, which offers a
rather different assessment.
The essays by von Weizsacker and Portmann translated and re-
printed in the present volume fall in one respect under this rubric, but
are at the same time considerably more ambivalent. Von Weizsacker
sees Goethe as having been "both right and wrong" in his critique of
Newton; his 'poetic' truth is "as rigorous as the truth of science, but
these are two different truths." Goethe's scientific understanding of
nature is also "sign of a meaning that is more than science." He gives us
no ground upon which to stand, but he is "like the light of a star that
will accompany us on all our journeys." Portmann also regards Goethe
as lying outside the mainstream of science ("Goethe did not collaborate
directly in the initial formulation and propagation of our conception of
the metamorphosis of flowering plants"), and as having recourse to pre-
modern conceptions of nature such as alchemy or The Great Chain of
Being. Thus Goethe's science is for Portmann something less than
modem science, yet at the same time 'a much greater striving,' an
'exemplary' attempt to create the 'new science' that is needed if we are
to avoid the "horrifying impoverishment of our relationship to nature"
that will necessarily result if reductive approaches are pursued exclu-
sively. Here Portmann has come very close to the seemingly antithetical
view that Goethe's science is a scientific alternative to modem science,
which shall be discussed as a third possible stance below.
(2) Goethe's Science is an Alternative within Modern Science

Of the contributors to the present volume and the participants in the
Round Table, those adopting this second stance constituted a somewhat
larger minority, but a minority nevertheless. The essays by Kuhn and
Lenoir argue implicitly that Goethe is to be considered part of the
mainstream of science: both accord him a rank equal to that of other
late eighteenth-century biologists and philosophers of nature such as
Buffon, Kant, Blumenbach, von Haller and the Humboldts. The barriers
POSTSCRIPT 375
that kept Goethe from adopting a notion of biological evolution closer

to Darwin's were, Kuhn argues, not methodological (the usual dismissal
of Goethe's 'idealistic morphology' as opposed to 'Rea/genese'), but
rather theological and ethical obstacles that none of his contemporaries
were able to surmount either. Burwick alludes in his paper to the work
of Purkynje, Miiller, Hering and Land as a kind of 'Goethean' research
tradition, while Sepper argues strongly that
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. .
While emphasizing the major differences, Zajonc sees Goethe as

actually having anticipated several of the important developments in
late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century philosophy of science, such
as Duhem's and Mach's critiques of the traditional concepts of law,
theory and explanation, Whitehead's attack on 'misplaced concreteness,'
Rankine's warning against 'hypothetical theories' and especially Hanson's
argument that all perception is necessarily 'theory-laden.' Moreover,
Zajonc goes so far as to argue that "his [Goethe's] understanding of the
'business of science' was often more thoughtfully conceived and con-
sistent than that of his more orthodox contemporaries." A number of
the other papers also stress this very contemporary side of Goethe, if
only in passing: Margolis claims that there are ways of characterizing
Goethe's science in which it "is bound to strike the modem reader as
extraordinarily up-to-date and enlightened"; Sepper stresses Goethe's
call for conscious cultivation of different, and even mutually contradic-
tory'Vorstellungsarten' (a feature that might be seen as anticipating
Kuhn and Feyerabend); and Hegge sees "no discrepancy ... between
Goethe's view and modem theory of science as regards the conception
of experiment as a method" (although Hegge also does go on to outline
other important differences). And finally Westphal argues both against
Wittgenstein, who felt that Goethe's theory "is a grammatical inquiry
mistakenly believed by Goethe to be an empirical scientific investiga-
tion," and against an excessively narrow view of science that would
376 FREDERICK AMRINE AND FRANCIS J. ZUCKER
exclude Goethe, and is the source of both Newton's and Wittgenstein's

enigmas - puzzles that a 'Goethean' approach is in fact able to solve.
While Miller reminded participants at the Round Table that Goethe
himself would likely "be uncomfortable with the term 'Goethean
science' . . . when in fact his whole effort was to be included in the
scientific undertaking," and Stephen Edelglass (Green Meadow School,
Spring Valley, N.Y.) also argued that we can exclude Goethe from the
scientific mainstream only by mistaking the methods of inorganic
science for the methods of science as such, it was Bamouw who
advocated this position most vigorously and unequivocally:
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.
Here Miller contributed a remark by Goethe very much in the same

vein: on hearing of the ninety-nine denominations in the New York of
his time (as against the single established church in each German
principality), he said that it ought to be the same in science. However,
Brian Kelly (Harvard) objected to drawing a parallel between Goethe
and late nineteenth-century physicists:
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 ...
For most of the contributors and participants, it was indeed Goethe's

ability to overcome limitations (or transgress the boundaries) of modern
science in this and other ways that makes him attractive, so that one
might indeed say
(3) Goethe's Science is a Scientific Alternative to Modern Science

As mentioned earlier, Portmann adopts this position at the end of his
contribution, where he terms Goethe's approach 'exemplary' of a much-
needed 'new science.' Of the other contributors to the present volume,
the strongest advocates of this assessment are Altner and Meyer-Abich.
Altner allies Goethe with nascent "alternative research institutions";
with an "ecologically-oriented, holistic science" that is emerging as a
"change of paradigms." Goethe "expressed with surprising clarity a need
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
advocated taking this path agreed that it leads somewhere short of

Goethe's goal: to the discovery of the footprints of his archetypes in the
realm of formal structures, but not to the direct experience of the
archetypes themselves. These ideas and speculations have been sum-
marized below (again including parallels from the essays by our otht<r
contributions 'absent' from the Round Table) under the rubrics 'From
Enhanced Empiricism to the Apprehension of the Archetype' and
'Goethe and "Qualitative" Mathematics.'
FROM ENHANCED EMPIRICISM TO THE APPREHENSION OF

THE ARCHETYPE
Goethe's own powers of apprehension were legendary. Accounts of two

exceptional 'feats' were recalled at the Round Table: one in which
Goethe, upon looking at the color in the sky, said that there had been
an earthquake somewhere in Europe during the previous night - which
proved correct (Brady), and another episode from his student days in
Strasbourg. There Goethe attended a party at which there was an
argument about the unfinished second tower of the cathedral. How
would it have appeared had it been completed? Several people made
guesses, and some, including Goethe, even made a sketch. Goethe's
second tower looked quite different from the finished first tower, yet it
was found, on comparison with the original plans, to be precisely what
the architects had intended (Robert Oeihaf, Hawthorne Valley School,
Hariemville, N.Y.). How is one to explain such abilities, and have they
any bearing upon the nature of scientific apprehension? One member
of the audience objected strongly to the examples as smacking of
mysticism; other countered equally strongly that the examples had not
been so meant, and need not be thus interpreted; that they were in fact
illustrative of the kind of 'enhanced empiricism' Goethe had con-
sciously and deliberately cultivated in himself as a scientific faculty.
All sides agreed however, that the crucial question had been raised:
can we spell out in a rational and rigorous way a method that informs
this empiricism (Amrine)? Is this method replicable by others (Brady),
and might it be the key to Goethe's enhanced perceptual abilities, which
he claimed aJ.lowed him to apprehend the archetype whereas others,
such as Schiller, felt that he had only gotten hold of an 'idea'? And,
most important, can such a faculty or intentional stance in fact be
schooled not only for the phenomena Goethe himself studied, but for
other fields of inquiry, such as the search for homologies of morpho-

type? (peter Taylor, Harvard).
Certain of the essays in the present volume and a number of con-
tributions at the Round Table offered tentative answers, or at least ways
of approaching answers, to these questions. Goethe himself, both in his
Theory of Color and in his morphology, bids us learn the 'language of
nature,' and points to 'polarity' and 'enhancement' (or 'intensification',
'Steigerung') as its basic vocabulary. In attempting as it were to uncover
the grammar of this language, Gogelein's paper makes a point as
fundamental as it is novel: by showing that the relation among the basic
terms in Goethe's epistemology (his 'methodology of insight') is an
exact analog of the relation among the basic terms in his Farbenlehre
itself (which now must not be translated' Theory of Color,' since the
performance of the experiments is an integral part of the Lehre) -
i.e. by showing that methodology and ontology are strict correlates,
Gogelein provides a systematic basis for a study of Goethe's method
- which includes the training of perception - that other papers
(especially Zajonc on color theory and Brady on morphology) elabo-
rate in much greater detail.! Bockemiihl's work, as described in
Amrine's paper, is a particularly pure and striking example of Goethe's
"gentle empiricism" ("zarte Empirie"), and would seem to have two
further advantages: it allows us to consider 'Goethean' method in a
form not tinged by Goethe's own personal perceptual habits and style,
and is exceedingly self-conscious in its methodology, guiding the reader
step by step through ever more demanding exercises leading to experi-
ences of ever-greater ideality within the phenomena.
On this subject Brady argued at length that the method Goethe
employs to enhance scientific empiricism is not only defensible in terms
of the epistemology of science, but in fact necessary to any intelligible
account of ordinary perception itself:
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
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.
Brady also alluded in the Round Table discussion to the essential

role played by the element of time in developing a sense for the
aliveness of nature (a subject he treats at greater length in his paper): by
rehearsing forms in movement, for example in plant growth, one learns
to appreciate 'becoming' as a feature of nature in its truest sense.
Goethe never doubted the ontological primacy of natura naturans
(nature in the process of becoming) over natura naturata (nature as a
finished product), but he demanded (as Amrine reminds us in his
paper) that this primacy should be an experience, not merely a con-
ceptual construct. Dr. Edelglas suggested that one must go even further;
one must have a way of controlling that experience:
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.
Prof. Konrad Oberhuber (Harvard) compared Goethe's method to

that of the conoisseur in art, whose
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.
Viewed in this way, might Goethe's notion of scientific method offer

some prospect and hope of reconciling the arts with the sciences once
again?
GOETHE AND 'QUALITATIVE MATHEMATICS'
Several participants in the Round Table speculated on the possible con-

vergence of certain currents in contemporary science with a 'Goethean'
approach. In a talk on color theory given at the B.u. symposium?
Zucker defended this undertaking as useful both to Goethe and to
mainstream science; to the latter, because it shows, in Feyerabendian
fashion, that an epistemological and metaphysical framework may be
utterly foreign to the normal self-interpretation of science and yet not
be ruled out by its empirical and formal content; to the former, because
compatibility with the formalisms of science removes obstacles that
have traditionally prevented us from entertaining seriously the idea that
Goethe might be relevant to us today. And it should perhaps be added
that an attempt to reconcile Goethe with mathematics such as that
described below would address a weakness in his scientific work
perceived by at least three contributors to the present volume. In this
regard, Sepper concedes that Goethe's attempts to develop a "positive
doctrine" of color were "greatly weakened ... by his unwillingness to
take advantage in any way of the economy and precision that mathe-
matical formulations and measurements can lend when appropriately
applied to the study of nature," while Hegge is moved to ask "whether
he has simply failed to appreciate the scientific fruitfulness of the
development of the kind of all-embracing deductive system which the
use of mathematics makes possible." And Bohme feels that Goethe's
science might gain relevance today "through a reformulation with the
help of modern mathematics."
In the Round Table, Zucker sought to extend this argument to
morphology, starting from contemporary 'system theory' (or 'universal
dynamics') 3 - the abstract framework for mathematical model

construction.
A principal feature of system theory which makes it 'Goethe-friendly' is its 'Comtean'

nature: by this I mean that the mathematical models can be constructed to reflect the
observables on whatever level of system complexity one chooses to describe, without
introducing extraneous elements that reductionist enthusjasm invariably used to import
in order to ground the functioning of in a lower level, down to that of
molecules and atoms. (Comte had said that each rung of his ladder of scientific
disciplines deserves its own intrinsic concepts and laws.) Even better, one can prove in
system theory that the splitting up of a global system into subsystems usually leads to
the loss of some of the global features - perhaps the very ones in which morphology is
most interested. One usually cannot have both the atoms and the global patterns at the
same time - an instance of Niels Bohr's 'complementarity,' which can now be shown to
be applicable in all fields of formalizable knowledge, not only in quantum mechanics (as
Bohr surmised, but couldn't demonstrate).
Here Dr. Edelglass, anxious to second Zucker's attempts at recon-

ciliation, adduced Brian Goodwin's mathematical experiments in bio-
logical modeling and Lawrence Edwards's 4 applications of projective
geometry to plant morphology as examples of a kind of 'qualitative'
mathematics to which Goethe would not have objected:
... 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.
This prompted Zucker to mention in turn
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.
This elicited a long response from Zajonc, who wondered whether

one could hope to capture the essence of Goethe's work in such
formalisms. Afcer recalling that Goethe had distinguished three stages
of scientific inquiry: investigation of 'empirical phenomena,' of 'scien-
tific phenomena,' and of 'pure' or 'archetypal phenomena,' and declar-
ing mathematics to be appropriate to the middle realm, he argued that
Goethe's scientific activity, taken as a whole,
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.
Edwards's work was put forth as an example.
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
mathematized. But if we bring in the archetype as generative in some sense - I don't

know in what way, but as an active agent, then we feel ourselves to be standing on
shaky ground. Is it possible to mathematize the archetype?
To this Amrine added a further objection:

I wonder whether this mathematization you are talking about doesn't in fact terminate
the central process in what we have been calling 'Goethe's science,' namely the
restructuring of one's intentional faculty, as Ron Brady described it, on the phenomena.
The moment one leaves the phenomena, doesn't that halt the process? Isn't Goethe
trying to achieve objectivity in a very different way, not by reducing qualities to the
mathematical formalisms but rather - as has been said - in the way in which an artist
tries to achieve objectivity, by schooling his faculties?
"It is true that if, using a computer, we generate some kind of

archetypal form or a formative force function, or whatever you might
want to call a dynamic form, we are engaged in a non-Goethean
process," Dr. Edelglass conceded, but countered by asserting that these
seeming antitheses might be reconciled by adopting a suitable method,
"... that it is possible to engage in a projective mathematics that has its
origins in a purely qualitative endeavor that calls upon perhaps similar
faculties to those needed to apprehend the archetype."
Zucker agreed that the distinction between a scientific model -
however non-reductionist - and a direct apprehension - on whatever
level of ordinary or trained perception - must never be lost, and
Goethe demanded the latter. However, in introducing the mathematics
of universal dynamics, one deals with a formalism that is by no means
confined to kinematics, but also covers dynamics. Thus the line
between Goethe's second and third stage of science cannot be identified
with a line drawn between a mathematizable and a nonmathematizable
stage. "The forces introduced by this 'universal dynamics' are not
necessarily 'centric,' i.e., acting in a point," Zucker continued,
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
help, since it is an offspring of the sciences whose mathematical abstractness Goethe so

dreaded that now appears to compete with what he tried to do.
Zucker then said he agrees with Brady's earlier statement that it is

the element of time which enters decisively into the difference between
the necessarily tenseless mathematical formalism describing movement
(or change in form) and its associated forces (no matter how different
from those of mechanics) on the one hand, and the experience of
archetypal 'causation' on the other. In Goethean terms, the latter is
given to us only in the 'lebendig augenblickliche Erfahmng des Unerforschlichen,' the

'live, immediate experience of the ineffable.' 'Augenblicklich' also means 'momentary,'
and I think this points to the non-manipulability of this experience, to a spontaneous
element in its flash-like happening. So we can apprehend an archetype in its activeness
only in the 'now' of an experience. If then you have a mathematical form, you must not
get stuck in the platonistic (I am not saying Plato'S) heaven of eternal forms; perhaps it
was because of this possibility that Goethe feared mathematics so deeply. He would
have been afraid of contemporary mathematical models even when they are projective
and non-reductionist. Can one perhaps train one's mathematical perception, as Dr.
Edelglass seems to suggest, to discern the archetype, just as many here have said one
can train one's sense perception? That would be welcome, but I do not know the
answer.
Zucker is on a more modest inverse. track here: how to interpret the

formalisms offered by contemporary science so that they reveal the
footprints of the archetypes. From that point of view, mathematical
forces quite naturally appear as the 'representatives,' in the formal
domain, of an experience which in itself cannot be objectified. This, if
true, would mean that the two are complementary in the sense of Bohr:
they belong together in that they are about the same 'thing,' but access
to them is mutually exclusive.
The last two topics of this postscript must remain open-ended. Very
few people say (or intimate) that they can apprehend archetypes in the
Goethean manner; most of the material on this faculty is therefore
drawn from Goethe himself. And neither systems theory nor the kind
of 'qualitative mathematics' described above has advanced sufficiently
far (as yet?) to allow us to point to its fruitfulness either in support of,
or in competition with, Goethe's approach to science. Only as progress
in made along these two lines can Goethe's way, it seems to us, become
directly relevant to our time.
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
Ann Arbor Ml 48109-1275
52 Hastings Rd.
Belmont MA 02178
FREDERICK AMRINE
GOETHE AND THE SCIENCES:

AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

TABLE OF CONTENTS
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
EdN Elemente der Naturwissenschaft = [No. 464].
GA Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe, 354 vols. projected, Verlag

der Rudolf Steiner-NachlassverwaltungiRudolf Steiner-
Verlag, Domach/Schweiz, 1961- [ef. No. 17].
GNw2 Goetheanistische Naturwissenschaft. 2: Botanik [= No.

495].
Goethe The organ of the Goethe-Gesellschaft in its various guises:

1880-1913, Goethe-lahrbuch; 1914-1935, lahrbuch
der Goethe-Gesellschaft; 1936-1937, Goethe. Viertel-
jahresschrift der Goethe-Gesellschaft. Neue Folge des
lahrbuchs; 1938-1944, Goethe. Viermonatsschrift der
Goethe-Gesellschaft. Neue Folge des lahrbuchs; 1947-
1971, Goethe. Neue Folge des lahrbuchs der Goethe-
Gesellschaft; and 1972- , Goethe-lahrbuch once again.
The enumeration is even more confusing: new sequences
were begun in 1914 and 1936 with the change in title,
while the 1972 issue was published as Vol. 89 of a newly-
established, single sequence beginning with 1 (1880). (The
publication did not appear in 1923, 1945, 1946 and
1948.) Cf. the 'Konkordanz' at the end of Goethe 89
1972).
IFDH lahrbuch des Freien Deutschen Hochstifts.
LA J. W. von Goethe, Die Schriften zur Naturwissenschaft.

Vollstiindige mit Erl. verso Ausg. hrsg. im Auftrage der
Deutschen Akademie der Naturforscher (Leopoldina) zu
Halle [= No. 46].
l'esprit Goethe et l'esprit Actes du colloque international

de Strasbourg. 23-27 Avril 1957 [= No. 380].
393
Mandelkow Goethe im Urteil seiner Kritiker: Dokumente zur Wirkungs-

geschichte Goethes in Deutschland, 3 vols. [= Nos. 416,
418 and 422].
Vortrage Goethe und die Wissenschaft: Vortrage gehalten anlasslich
des Internationalen Gelehrtenkongresses zu Frankfurt am
Main imAugust 1949 [= No. 143].
WA J. W. von Goethe, Goethes Werke: Hg. im Auftrage der
Grossherzogin Sophie von Sachsen (,Weimarer Ausgabe')
[=No.21].
Wachsmuth A. B. Wachsmuth, Geeinte Zwienatur. Au/satze zu Goethes
naturwissenschaftlichem Denken [= No. 170].
INTRODUCTION
The literature on Goethe and the sciences is immense. Gunther Schmid's

compilation, reasonably complete through 1932, contains 4,554 entries;
a full accounting of the intervening half-century might yield as many
again. Improbable though it may seem, the following bibliography of
500 titles is but the tip of an iceberg.
The search attempted to be systematic through 1982. Subsequent
publications (including two known to be forthcoming) have been
included in a very few cases. In making the selection, my first concern
was to include not only those studies which were most illuminating, but
also those which have proved to be most influential in the reception of
Goethe's science (unfortunately, the sets are not identical). Translations
of such studies were included wherever they could be found. My
second priority was to prefer recent literature over older, especially
since the latter i1'! readily accessible through Schmid. Of the 500 entries
in the bibliography, only 69 were published prior to the 'Goethe-year'
1932. Thirdly, I have sought where possible to include pieces on
Goethe by important scientists, philosophers and artists, whose words
carry the weight of their achievements in other fields: these can be
located quickly by consulting the index to the volume as a whole. And
finally, mindful of the wide distribution of the Boston Studies series, I
have sought to include literature in as many major languages as pos-
sible; inevitably, this required that I omit a disproportionate number of
otherwise fine pieces in German. I also regretted very much not being
able to include more studies in Spanish or Japanese: of the few
references I could find, all but a handful were inaccessible. Translations
have been fully cross-referenced throughout. For works in Russian, I
have made use of the transliteration system employed by the Harvard
University libraries, where I did most of the research. The bibliographic
format conforms to that of other works in the Boston Studies series.
Since accuracy is of paramount importance in a bibliography, I have
taken pains to inspect each entry wherever possible myself. Entries that
for one reason or another could not be inspected have been indicated
by asterisks. The one exception is accorded to entries also in Schmid,
395
who followed the same procedure. In most cases, entries marked by

asterisks were confirmed by multiple bibliographic sources; they are
likely, therefore, to be reasonably accurate. Nor should the reader
assume that an entry preceded by an asterisk will necessarily be difficult
to find.
The bibliography is divided into twelve sections: to the extent these
categories are not self-explanatory, they are defined in the brief intro-
ductions that precede them. Within each section entries are arranged
chronologically by date of first publication. This arrangement was
chosen because it alone affords a clear historical overview. Simultane-
ous publications and the most recent reprint follow immediately within
each entry. A fully annotated bibliography would have greatly exceeded
the allotted space; a full bibliographic essay was precluded a fortiori.
Thus essential factual annotations have been appended to only a small
number of entries.
On the other hand, it seemed that a modicum of guidance might be
desired by readers new to the subject. Thus in the introduction to each
section I have, where appropriate, singled out certain studies as 'clas-
sics', and others - at least one in German and one in English - that
represent valuable introductions. By 'classics' I do not mean the works I
myself find most penetrating, but rather those which have remained at
the center of critical discussion or done most to determine the recep-
tion of Goethe's work within a specific period. Despite strong tempta-
tions to the contrary, I decided as a matter of principle that no study
published after 1960 could yet be considered a 'classic'. There are also
lengthy notes on bibliography and on the various editions of Goethe's
works.
There is great need for a comprehensive bibliography of the litera-
ture on Goethe and the sciences since 1932. There is an even greater
need for a full and coherent account of Goethe's scientific achievements
and the reception of his work - one that might help to correct an
image distorted by uncritical enthusiasm, nationalistic pride, political
ideology and misplaced condescension. The following is offered as a
small down-payment on both projects.
1. BIBLIOGRAPHIES AND REFERENCE WORKS
There exist two comprehensive bibliographies on the subject of Goethe

and the sciences: those of Schmid (No.5) and Richter (No.4). Unfor-
AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY 397
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
sichtigung der wissenschaftlichen Probleme. Verlag Rudolph Pfau, Berlin,

1938.
[5] Schmid, G.: Goethe und die Naturwissenschaften: Eine Bibliographie (ed. by E.
Abderhalden), Kaiserlich Leopoldinisch-Carolinisch Deutsche Akademie der
Naturforscher, Halle (Saale), 1940. xv, 620 pp.
[6] Nicolai, H.: Goethe-Bibliographie 1951ff, in Goethe 14/15ff (1952/1953ff). Ed.
by H. Henning beginning with the bibliography for 1970.
[7] Goethe-Bibliographie (ed. by H. Pyritz, P. Raabe et al.), 2 vols., Carl Willter
Universitatsverlag, Heidelberg, 1955-1968.
[8] Ruppert, H., ed.: Goethes Bibliothek: Katalog (Goethes Sammlungen zur Kunst,
Literatur und Naturwissenschaft, 16), Arion Verlag, Weimar, 1958.825 pp.
[9] *Amano, K.: 'Bibliographie: Goethe in Japan', Hikaku bungaku 3 (1960) 132-
155. In Japanese.
[10] Driesch, C. H. and Schlager, P.: Goethe-Bibliographie 1912-1950 (K. Goedeke,
Grundriss zur Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung aus den Quellen, Vol. 4, Pt.
5; ed. by H. Jacob), Akademie-Verlag, Berlin, 1960. iii, 997 pp.
[11] Hahn, K.-H.: Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv. Bestandsverzeichnis (Bibliographien,
Kataloge und Bestandsverzeichnisse. Hrsg. von den Nationalen Forschungs-
und Gedenkstiitten der klassischen deutschen Literatur in Weimar, 3), Arion
Verlag, Weimar, 1961. 333 pp.
[12] *Schiller-Nationalmuseum MarbachiNeckar. Bestandsverzeichnis des Cotta-Archivs
(Stiftung der Stuttgarter Zeitung). Bd. I: Dichter und Schriftsteller (Veroffent-
lichungen der Deutschen Schillergesellschaft, 25; ed. by L. Lohrer et al.),
Stuttgart, 1963.441 pp.
See the section on Goethe, pp. 97-105.
[13] Hagen, W.: Die Drucke von Goethes Werken, Akademie-Verlag, Berlin, 1971.
xxi, 382 pp.
Previous editions were published under the title Die Gesamt- und Einzeldrucke
von Goethes Werken. '
[14] Avanzi, G. and Sichel, G.: Bibliografia italiana su Goethe (1779-1965)
(Universita di Genova. Facolta di Lettere e Filosofia. Pubblicazioni dell'
Instituto di Lingua e Letteratura Tedesca e di Filologia Germanica, 2),
Olschki, Firenze, 1972. vii, 255 pp.
[15] Zhitomirskaia, Z. B.: Iogann Vol'fgang Gete: Bibliograficheskii ukazatel' russkikh
perevodov i kritcheskoi literatury na russkom iazyke 1780-1971. Izdatel'stvo
'Kniga', Moskva, 1972.616 pp.
[16] *Bahr, E. and Stewart, W. K.: Internationales Verzeichnis der Goethe-Disserta-
tionen. 1952-1976. (Monograph Publishing: Sponsor Series), University
Microfilm International, Ann Arbor, 1978. xvii, 85 pp.
[17] Ubersichtsbiinde zur Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe, 3 vols., Rudolf Steiner
Verlag, DornachiSchweiz, 1980-1983.360,814 and 557 pp.
Vol. 1: Bib/iographische Ubersicht: Das literarische und kiinstlerische Werk von
Rudolf Steiner, 1st edn. 1961; 2nd rev. edn. 1983. Vol. 2: Sachwort- und
Namenregister der Inhaltsangaben, 1st edn. 1980. Vol. 3: Inhaltsangaben, 21st
edn.1982.
[18] Bahr, E. and Stewart, W. K.: 'North American Goethe Dissertations: 1896-
1980', Goethe Yearbook 1 (1982) 177-196.
[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.
II. EDITIONS OF GOETHE'S WORKS
Only one edition of Goethe's works attempts to be comprehensive: the

so-called 'Weimarer Ausgabe' (No. 21), completed in 1919. Pt. II
of the WA is devoted to Goethe's scientific works: these volumes are
listed separately in the following section. Dissatisfaction with the WA
has since led to new editorial undertakings: the 'Akademie-Ausgabe'
of Goethe's literary texts (No. 24) is intended to replace WA Pt. I,
while the 'Leopoldina-Ausgabe' (No. 46; cf. the introduction to the
following section) is meant to supplant WA Pt. II. Both editions remain
incomplete.
The WA is notoriously difficult to use: thus I have included two
other recent scholarly editions, Nos. 22 and 23. These are less com-
plete, but highly reliable and in wide use. Again, the volumes in these
editions devoted to Goethe's scientific works are listed separately in the
following section ..
No. 25 is a useful edition of Goethe's letters. Others are available,
including an edition (still incomplete) of Briefe an Goethe in the same
format. Goethe's scientific correspondence has been published sepa-
rately (again see the introduction to the next section).
No. 20 belongs here, even though not authored by Goethe himself
(indeed, the best scholarly edition is a volume of the 'Gedenkausgabe'!).
Eckermann's Gespriiche is an invaluable record of Goethe's thoughts
late in life on innumerable subjects: many of his most important
pronouncements on science in general and on his own scientific works
in particular are to be found there.
[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.
[23J Goethe, J. W. von: Werke. Hamburger Ausgabe in 14 Banden (ed. by E. Trunz),

Christian Wegner Verlag, Hamburg, 1948-1966.
Rpt. 12th, rev. edn. C. H. Beck, Miinchen, 1981.
[24J Goethe, J. W. von: Werke Goethes. Hrsg. vom Institut fUr deutsche Sprache und
Literatur der Deutschen Akademie der Wissenschaftler zu Berlin (ed. by E.
Grumach), Akademie-Verlag, Berlin, 1952-
[25J Goethe, J. W. von: Goethe Briefe. Hamburger Ausgabe, 4 vols. (ed. by K. R.
Mandelkow et al.), Hamburg, Christian Wegner Verlag, 1962-1967.
III. EDITIONS OF GOETHE'S SCIENTIFIC WORKS
The standard editions of Goethe's scientific works are the WA Pt. II

(No. 21; separately as Nos. 29-42) and the LA (No. 46; also sepa-
rately as Nos. 47, 50, 51, 52, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 61, 62, 64, 66 and
70). Both editions appeared over the course of many years: thus I felt it
important to list them separately, so that it would be clear which texts
were available in reliable form at what time. Pt. I of the LA, the texts of
Goethe's works, was completed with the publication of LA I. 11 (No.
66) in 1970. Of the commentary in Pt. II, however, only four of the
projected eleven volumes have appeared (Nos. 58, 61, 69 and 70).
Thus R. Steiner's commentary and notes in the WA are still valuable. It
is easiest to locate individual texts by consulting the index to LA I at
the end of No. 66: it is arranged alphabetically by title or, if untitled, by
the first line of the text.
It was mentioned in the previous introduction that the LA was
undertaken in order to address perceived shortcomings in the WA.
Actually, the story is considerably more complex than that, and
represents in itself a revealing chapter in the reception of Goethe's
science. Only part of the history can be recounted here: more details
are to be found in Nos. 60 and 68.
The plan to bring out a new edition originated with W. Troll, a
botanist, and K.-L. Wolf, whose training was in physics and chemistry.
The initial motivation was not dissatisfaction with the WA; in fact, they
at first thought the WA quite adequate textually, and planned to reprint
it, adding such commentary as would make Goethe's writings accessible
to contemporary scientists. The Kaiserlich Leopoldinisch-Carolinisch
Deutsche Akademie der N aturforscher in Halle agreed to support the
undertaking (thus the name of the edition), and G. Schmid, who had
published his comprehensive bibilography on the subject in 1940, was
soon engaged as a third editor. Wolf was chosen to head the project.
The edition was to be divided into four major sections:

I. Geology, Mineralogy and Mining
II. Optics and Theory of Color
ill. Morphology
IV. Science in General
Everything Goethe wrote pertaining to these sciences - even passages
from his diaries and poems - was to be reprinted from the WA, but
now in strictly chronological order. Short comments and notes would
be interpolated into the texts themselves, while marginal notations
would refer to longer commentaries in separate volumes. The first two
volumes to appear (Nos. 47 and 50) were prepared in accordance with
this plan, but it quickly became evident that both the text of the WA
and the arrangement of the texts in chronological order were too
problematical to continue in the same way (here the reader is again
referred to Nos. 60 and 68).
Around 1950, the structure of the edition was changed: it was
decided that a new critical edition of the texts was needed, and that text
and commentary should be kept entirely separate. Moreover, it was
decided that many of the letters, unpublished mss., etc., that had been
printed in the fiTSt two volumes together with the more important texts
ought rather to be printed as part of the commentary. The edition
would still be divided into four parts, but these would now contain:
I. Texts
II. Supplementary Material and Commentaries
III. Goethe's Scientific Correspondence
IV. A comprehensive study of Goethe's scientific work as a whole
Part I was to be prepared according to the same editorial principles as
the 'Akademie-Ausgabe' (No. 24; cf. introduction to Section II), so that
the two editions together would constitute a complete critical edition of
Goethe's works. Part ill was to replace the incomplete and otherwise
problematical edition of Goethe's correspondence by Bratranek (No.
28). As late as 1960, it was still envisioned that Wolf and Troll would
together write Pt. IV.
However, by 1953 the original vision of an edition addressed to
contemporary scientists was abandoned in favor of a 'historical-critical'
edition. In 1954, the journal Neue Hefte zur Morphologie (No. 454) was
founded as a series of Beihefte to the LA in order to accomodate
studies that were too long or otherwise inappropriate to the new

conception of the edition: the title refers to a series of publications
Goethe himself edited between 1817 and 1824.
Sometime between 1960 and 1971, it was decided to restructure the
edition yet again. The letters that would have been included in Pt. III
will now be included as appropriate in Pt. II, while the comprehensive
study envisioned as Pt. IV will now be placed at the beginning of LA
II.l (still in preparation). A detailed description of the forthcoming
volumes of LA II is provided by D. Kuhn in No. 68. Editional work
continues today under Kuhn, Mathhaei and von Engelhardt.
Nos. 26 and 27 are the first editions of Goethe's two most important
scientific treatises: the remaining editions of all his works are to be
found in No. 13. Nos. 63 and 65 are the standard editions of Goethe's
sketches, drawings, etc. relating to the sciences. A paperback edition of
the Farbenlehre containing all the necessary colored plates is No. 71.
Troll's edition of the morphological writings (No. 45) contains ex-
tremely helpful illustrations; it is now out of print, but Mueller's
translation (No. 77) and Freies Geistesleben's paperback edition of the
Metamorphose der Pflanzen t both reprint Troll's plates. On Nos. 48,
49,53 and 59, see the introduction to the previous section.
[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.
[33] Goethe, J. W. von: Zur Naturwissenschaft iiberhaupt. Mineralogie und Geologie.

/. Theil (WA 1l.9), Hermann B6hlau, Weimar, 1892. vii, 409 pp.
[34] Goethe, J. W. von: Zur Farbenlehre. Historischer Theil I (WA II.3), Hermann
B6hlau, Weimar, 1893. xxiv, 400 pp.
[35] Goethe, J. W. von: Zur Morphologie. Ill. Theil (WA II.8), Hermann B6hlau,
Weimar, 1893.362 pp.
[36] Goethe, J. W. von: Zur Naturwissenschaft. Allgemeine Naturlehre. /. Theil (WA
II.11), Hermann B6hlau, Weimar, 1893. vii, 382 pp.
[37] Goethe, J. W. von: Zur Farbenlehre. Historischer Theil II (WA II.4), Hermann
B6hlau, Weimar, 1894. viii, 512.
[38] Goethe, J. W. von: Zur Naturwissenschaft iiberhaupt. Mineralogie und Geologie.
I/, Theil (WA II. 10), Hermann B6hlau, Weimar, 1894. viii, 282 pp.
[39] Goethe, J. W. von: Zur Naturwissenschaft: Allgemeine Naturlehre. II. Theil (WA
II.12), Hermann B6hlaus Nachfolger, Weimar, 1896. vii, 382 pp.
Contains name and subject indices to vols. II.6-II.12.
[40] Goethe, J. W. von: Chromatik (WA II.5.1), Hermann B6hlaus Nachfolger,
Weimar, 1897. x, 479 pp.
[41] Goethe, J. W. von: Nachtriige zu Band 6-12 (WA II.13), HermannB6hlaus
Nachfolger, Weimar, 1904. x, 565 pp.
[42] Goethe, J. W. von: Paralipomena zu Band 1-5. Register zu Band 1-5, 2.
Abtheilung (WA II.5.2), Hermann B6hlaus Nachfolger, Weimar, 1906. xix,
532 pp.
[43] Goethe, J. W. von: Goethes naturwissenschaftliche Schriften, 4 vols. (in 5) (ed.
by R. Steiner; pref. by K. J. Schr6rer), Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft,
Stuttgart/Berlin/Leipzig, [1921].
This is a reprint of Deutsche National-Literatur. Historisch-kritische Ausgabe
(ed. by J. Kurschner), Spemann, Berlin & Stuttgart; Union Deutsche Vergsge-
sellschaft, Stuttgart, 1882-1897, Vols. 114-117, Goethes Werke 33-36.
Rpt. Rudolf Steiner-Verlag, Dornach/Schweiz, 1975 (pb. edn. 1982).
[44] Goethe, J. W. von: Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen (ed. by J. Schuster), W.
Junk, Berlin, 1924. 148 pp.
[45] Goethe, J. W. von: Goethes Morphologische Schriften (ed. and intro. by W.
Troll), Eugen Diederichs Verlag, Jena, 1926.486 pp.
Rpt.1932.
[46] Goethe, J. W. von: Die Schriften zur Naturwissenschaft. Vollstiindige mii Erl.
verso Ausg. hrsg. im Auftrage der Deutschen Akademie der Naturforscher
(Leopoldina) zu Halle, 2 pts. (ed. R. Matthaei et al.), Hermann B6hlaus
Nachfolger, Weimar, 1947-.
Pt. 1: texts; Pt. 2: supplementary material and commentary. The vols. that have
appeared to date are listed separately below.
[47] Goethe, J. W. von: Schriften zur Geologie und Mineralogie 1770-1810 (LA 1.1;
ed. by G. Schmid), Hermann B6hlaus Nachfolger, Weimar, 1947.393 pp.
[48] Goethe J. W. von: Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften. Erster Teil (Gedenkausgabe
[see No. 22], Vol. 16; ed. by. A. Speiser), Artemis-Verlag, Zurich, 1949,997
pp.
Rpt. pb. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munchen, 1977.
[49J Goethe, J. W. von: Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften. Zweiter Teil (Gedenkaus-

gabe [see No. 22J, VoL 17; ed. by H. Fischer), Artemis-Verlag, Ziirich, 1949.
1030 pp.
Rpt. pb. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Miinchen, 1977.
[50J Goethe, J. W. von: Schriften zur Geologie und Mineralogie 1812-1832 (LA 1.2;
ed. by G. Schmid), Hermann B6hlaus Nachfolger, Weimar, 1949.438 pp.
[51J Goethe, J. W. von: Beitriige zur Optik und Anfiinge der Farbenlehre 1790-1808
(LA 1.3; ed. by R. Matthaei), Hermann B6hlaus Nachfolger, Weimar, 1951. ii,
539 pp.
[52J Goethe, J. W. von: Morphologische Hefte (LA 1.9; ed. by D. Kuhn), Hermann
B6hlaus Nachfolger, Weimar, 1954. xi, 389 pp.
[53J Goethe, J. W. von: Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften (Hamburger Ausgabe [see
No. 23J, VoL 13; ed. D. Kuhn and R. Wankmiiller; Afterword C. F. von
Weizsiicker), Christian Wegner Verlag, Hamburg, 1955. 644 pp.
Rpt. 12th rev. edn. C. H. Beck, Miinchen, 1981. 648 pp.
[54J Goethe, J. W. von: Zur Farbenlehre. Widmung, Vorwort und didaktischer Teil
(LA 1.4; ed. by R. Matthaei), Hermann B6hlaus Nachfolger, Weimar, 1955.
266 pp.
[55J Goethe, J. W. von: Zur Farbenlehre. Anzeige und Obersicht, statt des supple-
mentaren Teils und Erkliirung der Tafeln (LA 1.7; ed. by R. Matthaei),
Hermann B6hlaus Nachfolger, Weimar, 1957.135 pp.
[56J Goethe, J. W. von: Zur Farbenlehre. Historischer Teil (LA 1.6; ed. by D. Kuhn),
Hermann B6hlaus Nachfolger, Weimar, 1957. xvii, 450 pp.
[57J Goethe, J. W. von: Zur Farbenlehre. Polemischer Teil (LA 1.5; ed. by R.
Matthaei), Hermann B6hlaus Nachfolger, Weimar, 1958. viii, 195 pp.
[58J Goethe, J. W. von: Zur Farbenlehre. Historischer Teil. Ergiinzungen und
Erliiuterungen (LA II.6; ed. by D. Kuhn and K. L. Wolf), Hermann B6hlaus
Nachfolger, Weimar, 1959. xxx, 640 pp.
[59J Goethe, J. W. von: Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften. Zweiter Teil (Hamburger
Ausgabe [see No. 23J, VoL 14; ed. by D. Kuhn et al.), Christian Wegner
Verlag, Hamburg, 1960.719 pp.
Rpt. 12th rev. edn. C. H. Beck, Miinchen, 1981. 766 pp.
[60J Wolf, L.: 'Plan, Struktur und Stand der Arbeiten an der "Leopoldina-Ausgabe"',
Weimarer Beitriige 6 (1960) 1161-1167.
[61J Goethe, J. W. von: Beitriige zur Optik und Anfiinge der Farbenlehre: Ergiin-
zungen und Erliiuterungen (LA II.3; ed. by R. Matthaei and D. Kuhn),
Hermann B6hlaus Nachfolger, Weimar, 1961. Iii, 453 pp.
[62J Goethe, J. W. von: Naturwissenschaftliche Hefte (LA 1.8; ed. by D. Kuhn),
Hermann B6hlaus Nachfolger, Weimar, 1962. vii. 427 pp.
[63J Goethe, J. W. von: Die Zeichnungen zur Farbenlehre (Corpus der Goethezeich-
nungen. Goethes Sammlungen zur Kunst, Literatur und Naturwissenschaft,
VoL 5A; ed. by R. Matthaei), VEB E. A. Seemann Buch- und Kunstverlag,
Leipzig, 1963. 120 pp.
[64J Goethe, J. W. von: Aufsiitze, Fragmente, Studien zur Morphologie (LA 1.10; ed.
by D. Kuhn), Hermann B6hlaus Nachfolger, Weimar, 1964. vii, 408 pp.
[65J Goethe, J. W. von: Die naturwissenschaftlichen Zeichnungen mit Ausnahme der
Farbenlehre: Bestiinde der Nationalen Forschungs- und Gedenkstiitten der
klassischen deutschen Literatur in Weimar sowie aller iibrigen offentlichen und

privaten Sammlungen (Corpus der Goethezeichnungen. Goethes Sammlungen
zur Kunst, Literatur und Naturwissenschaft, vol. 5B; ed. by D. Kuhn et al.),
VEB E. A. Seemann Buch- und Kunstverlag, Leipzig, 1967. 132 pp.
[66] Goethe, J. W. von: AujSiitze, Fragmente, Studien zur Naturwissenschaft im
allgemeinen (LA 1.11; ed. D. Kuhn and W. von Engelhardt), Hermann
Boh1aus Nachfolger, Weimar, 1970. viii, 416 pp.
[67] Goethe, J. W. von: Farbenlehre (sel. and comm. by R. Matthaei), Maier,
Ravensburg, 1971. 208 pp.
[68] Kuhn, D.: 'Goethes Schriften zur Naturwissenschaft. Uber Inhalt und Gestaltung
der Leopoldina-Ausgabe', Goethe 33 (1971) 123-146.
[69] Goethe, J. W. von: Zur Farbenlehre. Didaktischer Teil und Tafeln. Ergiinzungen
und Erliiuterungen (LA II.4; ed. by R. Matthaei and D. Kuhn), Hermann
Boh1aus Nachfolger, Weimar, 1973. xxviii, 379 pp.
[70] Goethe, J. W. von: Zur Morphologie. Von den Anfiingen bis 1795. Ergiinzungen
und Erliiuterungen (LA II.9A; ed. by D. Kuhn), Hermann Boh1aus Nachfolger,
Weimar, 1977. xxviii, 607 pp.
[71] Goethe, J. W. von: Farbenlehre. Mit Einleitungen und Kommentaren von Rudolf
Steiner, 3 vols. (ed. by G. Ott and H. Proskauer), Verlag Freies Geistesleben,
Stuttgart, 1979.351,256 and 285 pp.
Rpt. 2nd edn. 1980.
IV. TRANSLATIONS
Words of warning are in order regarding English translations of

Goethe's Farbenlehre: the translations by Eastlake (No. 72) and Aach
(No. 85) are highly problematical (cf. the essay by D. Miller in the
present volume). The extant translations of Goethe's other writings
(Nos. 74, 75 and 77) serve him better, and the rendition of Die
Metamorphose der Pflanzen by the botanist Agner Arber is especially
fine. Nevertheless, the forthcoming edition by D. Miller (No. 89) is
certain to become the standard English translation of all Goethe's
major scientific works.
I am not prepared or inclined to comment upon the extant transla-
tions into other languages (especially since I was unable to locate a
number of them), except to say that Goethe himself collaborated in the
preparation of No. 73, and that I regretted very much not being able to
find any Japanese translations besides No. 79. According to H. Tsuji,t
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.
Goethe's complete works have been published in Japanese five times

since 1914, with a new 15-volume edition soon to appear. Whether or
not any of these editions in fact contain translations of the scientific
works, I have not been able to determine.
It need hardly be added that the following list is far from exhaustive.
[72J Goethe, J. W. von; Goethe's Theory of Colours (trans. by C. L. Eastlake), John

Murray, London, 1840. xlvii, 423 pp.
Rpt. (Cass Library of Science Classics, 3), Frank Cass & Co., London, 1967.
xlviii, 428 pp.
Rpt. The MIT Press, Cambridge/Mass., 1970. lxii, 423 pp.
Rpt. Gordon Press, New York, 1975. lxii, 423 pp.
[73J Goethe, J. W. von: Versuch iiber die Metamorphose der ptlanzen/Essai sur la
metamorphose des plantes (trans. w. hist. notes by F. Soret), In der
Cotta'schen Buchhandlung/J. G. Cotta, Librairie, Stuttgart, 1831. 239 pp.
[74J 'Goethe's Botany. The Metamorphosis of Plants (1790) and Tobler's Ode to
Nature (1782)', Chronica botanica 10, No.2 (1946) 63-124.
Trans. by A. Arber.
[75J Goethe, J. W. von: Wisdom and Experience (sel. by L. Curtius; trans., ed. and
intro. by H. J. Weigand), Pantheon, New York, 1949.299 pp.
Publ. simultaneously by Routledge & Paul, London.
Cf. esp. the sections 'Nature' (pp. 85-112) and 'Science and Philosophy' (pp.
113-148).
[76J *Goethe, J. W. von: Fiirgliira. Med kommentarer av Rudolf Steiner samt bilaga med
experimentmaterial, 5 vols. (ed. A. Thelander), Kosmos forIag, Stockholm,
1951-1955.51,31,29,64 and 43 pp.
The five vols. were published separately, partly with separate and partly with
consecutive pagination. Accompanied by numerous loose plates and a prism.
[77J Goethe, J. W. von: Goethe's Botanical Writings (trans. by B. Mueller; intro. by C.
J. Engard), Univ. of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1952. x, 258 pp.
[78J Goethe, J. W. von: Scienza e natura. Scritti vari (trans. by A. PeIIis; intro. by F.
Albergamo), Laterza, Bari, 1952. 174 pp.
[79J *Goethe, J. W. von: Shikisai-ron (trans. by E. Kikuchi), Tokyo, 1952.395 pp.
A Japanese translation of the Materialien zur Geschichte der Farbenlehre.
[80J *Goethe, J. W. von: Teoria de los colores, in Obras literarias, 3 vols. (trans., sel.
and intro. by R. C. Assens), Ediciones Aguilar, Madrid, 1952.
Vol. 3 (not part of the 1st edn., 1944) contains a translation of the Farbenlehre.
*Rpt. in Obras completas, 4th edn. (ed., intro., notes and trans. by R. C. Assens),
Madrid, 1963, vol. 1.
[81 J *Gete, I. V.: Izbrannye sochineniia po estestvoznaniiu (Klassiki nauki; trans. by
I. I. Kanaev; ed. by E. N. Pavlovskii), IzdateI'stvo AN SSSR, Moskva, 1957.
553 pp.
[82J *Goethe, J. W. von: Viixternas metamorfos (trans. by K. A. Thelander; intro. and
comm. by R. Steiner), Kosmos forlag, Stockholm, 1959.66 pp.
[83J Goethe, J. W. von: Opere, Vol. 5 (ed. by L. Mazzuccetti), Sansoni, Firenze,
1961. xi, 1083 pp.
[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.
V. METHOD AND GENERAL ASSESSMENTS
The literature that falls within this broadest category is of course

immense, which has made it even more difficult to narrow down
the choices here than elsewhere. Many valuable studies could not be
included. Therefore in this section it is especially important that the
reader be mindful of the criteria for selection set forth in the introduction.
Here one finds many of the real 'classics'; Helmholtz (Nos. 90 and
94), Steiner (Nos. 93, 95 and 101), Magnus (No. 96), Heller (No. 137),
Lehrs (No. 144), Weizsacker (No. 158; in English in the present
volume) and Heisenberg (No. 172). Of these, the studies by Helmholtz,
Steiner and Heisenberg are the most important. One should also note
that many other important scientists, philosophers and literary figures
have written on the subject. Of the more recent literature in German,
Weizsacker (No. 158; reprinted in English translation in the present
volume) or Wachsmuth's collected essays (No. 170) would make
excellent introductions; of that in English, Hegge (186; reprinted in the
present volume) and Brady (No. 195) are especially recommended. No.
184 is one of very few Japanese studies I was actually able to inspect:
therefore I have described its contents in some detail.
[90] Helmholtz, H. von: 'Ueber Goethe's naturwissenschaftliche Arbeiten', Allge-

meine Monatsschrift fUr Literatunvissenschaft und Literatur (1853) 383-398.
Rpt. in his Philosophische Vortriige und Aufsiitze (ed. by H. Harz and S.
Wollgast), Akademie-Verlag, Berlin, 1971, pp. 21-44.
Rpt. in Mandelkow, Vol. 2, pp. 401-416.
Translations: English, No. 179; French, No. 92.
[91] Virchow, R: Goethe als Natuiforscher und in besonderer Beziehung auf Schiller,
Verlag von August Hirschwald, 1861. vi, 127 pp.
[92] Helmholtz, M. H.: 'Goethe naturaliste', Revue des cours scientifiques de la
France et de l'etranger7 (1870) 18-25.
A French translation (by L. Koch) of No. 90.
[93] Steiner, R: Grundlinien einer Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen Weltanschauug
mit besonderer Riicksicht auf Schiller. Zugleich eine Zugabe zu Goethes
'Naturwissenschaftlichen Schriften' in Kiirschners 'Deutscher National-Lite-
ratur', Verlag von W. Spemann, Berlin/Stuttgart, 1886. iv, 92 pp.
Rpt. 7th edn. (GA 2), Rudolf Steiner-Verlag, DornachiSchweiz, 1979. 143 pp.
Translations: English, No. 115.
[94] Helmholtz, H. von: 'Goethe's Vorahnungen kommender naturwissenschaftlicher
Ideen. Rede gehalten in der Generalversammlung der Goethe-Gesellschaft zu
Weimar den 11. Juni 1892', Verlag von Gebriider Paetel, Berlin, 1892.55 pp.
Rpt. in his Philosophische Vortriige und Aufsiitze, [ef. No. 90], pp. 337-364.
[95] Steiner, R: Goethes Weltanschauung, Verlag von Emil Felber, Weimar, 1897. x,
206.pp.
Rpt. 5th edn. (GA 6), Rudolf Steiner-Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach/Schweiz,
1963.223 pp.
[96] Magnus, R: Goethe als Natuiforscher. Vorlesungen gehalten im Sommer-
Semester 1906 an der Universitiit Heidelberg, Verlag von Johann Ambrosius
Barth, Leipzig, 1906. vii. 336 pp.
[97] Belyi, A. [Bugaev, B.]: Rudol'f Shteiner v mirovozzrenim sovremennosti,
'Dukhovnoe znanie', Moskva, 1917. viii, 344 pp.
[98] Cassirer, E.: 'Goethe und die mathematische Physik. Eine erkenntnistheoretische
Studie', in his Idee und Gestalt. Goethe, Schiller, Hoiderlin, Kleist. Fiinf
Aufsiitze, Bruno Cassirer, Berlin, 1921, pp. 27-76.
Rpt.1924.
[99] Haldane, R B.: 'Goethe als Denker' (Heidelberger Akten der von Portheim-
Stiftung 7, Materialien zur Naturphilosophie, III), Carl Winters Universitats-
buchhandlung, Heidelberg, 1924. 16 pp.
A German translati6n of the following entry.
[100] Haldane, R B.: 'Goethe as Thinker', Contemporary Review 12 (1923) 137-148.
Rpt. Publications of the English Goethe SocietyNS 1 (1924) 1-19.
Translations: German, No. 99.
[101] Steiner, R: Goethes naturwissenschaftliche Schriften. Samtliche Einleitungen zu

Goethes Naturwissenschaftlichen Schriften in 'Kiirschners Deutsche National-
Literatur, Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag am Goetheanum,
DornachlSchweiz, 1926. 264 pp.
Originally published 1883-1897 (cf. No. 43].
Rpt. 3rd edn. (GA 1), Rudolf Steiner-Verlag, DornachlSchweiz, 1973. 350 pp.
[102] Steiner, R: Goethe's Conception of the World (trans. by H. Collison), Anthro-
posophical Publishing Co., London, 1928. xvi, 193 pp.
Pub!. simulataneously by Anthroposophic Press, New York.
*Rpt. Haskell House, New York, 1973.
An English translation of No. 95.
[103] Walther, J., ed.: Goethe als Seher und Erforscher der Natur. Untersuchungen Zll
den Problemen der Natur, Kaiserlich Leopoldinisch-Carolinisch Deutsche
Akadernie der Naturforscher, Halle, 1930. viii, 323 pp.
[104] Benn, G.: 'Goethe und die Naturwissenschaften', Die Neue Rundschau43 (1932)
463-490.
Rpt. (Arche-Bucherei, 1208), Verlag Die Arche, Zurich 1961. 56 pp.
[105] Berthelot, R: Science et philosophie chez Goethe (Bibliotbeque de philosophie
contemporaine), F. Alcan, Paris, 1932. 190 pp.
[106] *Cassirer, E.: 'Der Naturforscher Goethe', Hamburger Fremdenblatt, 19 March
1932.
[107] Cohn, J.: 'Goethes Denkweise', Archiv for die Geschichte der Philosophie 41
(1932) 1-56.
[108] Gebhardt, M.: Goethe als Physiker. Ein Weg zum unbekannten Goethe, G.
Grote'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Berlin, 1932. viii, 163 pp.
[109] Weinhandl, F.: Die Metaphysik Goethes, Junker & Dunnhaupt, Berlin, 1932.
400 pp.
Rpt. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt, 1965.
[110] Walden, P. Goethe und die Naturwissenschaften (Bremer Beitrage zur Naturwis-
senschaft, 1, No.1), G. A. v. Halem Export- und Verlagsbuchhandlung,
Bremen/Leipzig, 1933. 53 pp.
[111] Heinemann, F.: 'Goethe's Phenomenological Method', Philosophy 9 (1934)
67-81.
[112] Heinemann, F.: 'La Methode phenomenologique de Goethe', Revue d'Historie de
la Philosophie et d'Histoire Generale de la Civilisation NS 16 (1936) 326-
350.
[113] Jablonski, W.: Goethe e Ie science naturali. Saggi (Biblioteca di cultura moderna,
315), Guis. Laterza & Figli, Bari, 1938. 289 pp.
[114] Steiner, R: Grenzen der Naturerkenntnis. Acht Vortrage, gehalten vom 27.
September bis 3. Oktober 1920 am Goetheanum, Dornach (ed. by G. Wachs-
muth), Naturwissenschaftliche Sektion am Goetheanum, Dornach bei Basel,
1939.107 pp.
Rpt. 5th edn. (GA 322), Rudolf Steiner-Verlag, DornachlSchweiz, 1981. 137 pp.
[115] Steiner, R.: A Theory of Knowledge Based on Goethe's World Conception.

Fundamental Outlines With Special Reference to Schiller (trans. by O. D.
Wannamaker), Anthroposophic Press, New York, 1940. 131 pp.
Rpt. 2nd edn. 1968.
[116] Holder, H.: Grenzfragen naturwissenschaftlicher Forschung. Ein Beitrag zur
Grenziiberschreitung empirischer Methodik, gestiitzt auf Goethes Naturfors-
chung und einige Beispiele aus der Gege!lwart (Tiibinger naturwissenschaftliche
Abhandlungen, 16), Verlag von Ferdinand Enke, Stuttgart, 1941. 46 pp.
[117] Wachsmuth, A. B.: 'Die Entwicklung von Goethes naturwissenschaftlicher
Denkweise und Weltanschauung von den Anfiingen bis zur Reife', Goethe 6
(1941) 263-284.
Rpt. in Wachsmuth, pp. 5-25.
[118J Sherrington, c.: 'Goethe on Nature & on Science. The Philip Maurice Deneke
Lecture Delivered at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, on the 4th March 1942',
Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1942.32 pp.
Pub!. simultaneously by Macmillan, New York.
*Rpt. 2nd enlarged edn. Cambridge Univ. Press, 1949.53 pp.
Rpt.1stedn. Theoria to Theory 14 (1981) 205-225.
[119J MicMa, R.: Les Travaux scientifiques de Goethe (Cahiers de I'Institut d'etudes
germaniques, 5), Aubier, Paris, 1943. 191 pp.
[120J Schierbeek, A.: Goethe als Natuurondezoeker, H. Meulenhoff, Amsterdam, 1944.
184 pp.
[121 J *Steiner, R.: Le opere scientifiche di Goethe, Bocca, Torino, 1944.246 pp.
[122J Gadi)ffier, H.-G. 'Goethe und die Philosophie. Vortrag im Nov. 1942' (Humboldt-
Biicherei, 3), Volk u. Buch Verlag, Leipzig, 1947.33 pp.
Rpt. in his Kleine Schriften II: Interpretationen, C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck),
Tiibingen, 1967, pp. 82-96.
[123J Andrade, E. N. da c.: 'Goethe as a Natural Philosopher', Nature 164 (1949)
338-340.
Cf. the reply by R. Weale, No. 263.
[124J Baravalle, H.: 'Goethes Methodik und hie moderne Physik', Die Drei 19 (1949)
329-337.
[125J *Bertalanffy, L. von: 'Goethes Naturauffassung', Atlantis 21 (1949) 357-363.
Translations: English, No. 142?
[126J Goethe: Festschrift zum 200. Geburtstag (Chronik des Wiener Goethe-Vereins,
52153; ed. by E. Castle), Osterreichische Bundesverlag fur Unterricht,
Wissenschaft und Kunst, Wien, 1949.
[127J Griinthal, E. and Strauss, F.: Abhandlungen zu Goethes Naturwissenschaft
(Berner Beitriige zur Geschichte der Medizin und der Naturwissenschaften,
10), P. Haupt, Bern, 1949. 115 pp.
[128J Henel, H.: 'Goethe und die Naturwissenschaft', Journal of English and Germanic
Philology 48 (1949) 507-532.
Rpt. in his Goethezeit. Ausgewiihlte Aufsiitze, Insel Verlag, Frankfurt a.M., 1980,
pp. 130-157.
[129] Magnus, R: Goethe as a Scientist (trans. by H. Norden), Henry Schuman, New

York, 1949.253 pp.
Rpt. Collier Books, New York, 1961.
[130] Meyer, H.: 'Goethe as a Scientist. A Problem in Historical Method', Monatshefte
41 (1949) 415-423.
[131] Michea, R: 'Goethe, savant meconnu', Etudes Germaniques 4 (1949) 162-173.
[132] Neuschlosz, S. M.: 'Goethe y las ciencias fisico-naturales', Anales de la Uni-
versidad de Chile 107 (1949) 147-172.
[133] Trapp, M.: Goethes naturphilosophische Denkweise (Kleine philosophische
Reihe, 2), F. Fromann, Stuttgart, 1949.93 pp.
[134] Whyte, L. L.: 'Goethe's Single View of Nature and Man', German Life and Letters
NS 2 (1949) 287-297.
[135] Fischer, H.: Goethes Naturwissenschaft, Artemis-Verlag, Zurich, 1950. 91 pp.
[136] Hartner, W.: 'Goethe and the Natural Sciences', in Goethe and the Modern Age.
The International Convocation at Aspen, Colorado (ed. by A. Bergstrasser),
Regnery, Chicago, 1950, pp. 75-94.
Rpt. in Goethe. A Collection of Critical Essays (Twentieth Century Views; ed. by
V. Lange), Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1968, pp. 145-160.
[137] Heller, E.: 'Goethe and the Idea of Scientific Truth', Cambridge Journal 3 (1950)
451-471.
Originally an inangurallecture, University College of Swansea, 1949.
Rpt. in his The Disinherited Mind. Essays on Modern German Literature and
Thought, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1975, pp. 3-34.
The former is actually a condensed version of the latter, although it was
published earlier.
Translations: German, 150.
[138] Kantor, J. R: 'Goethe's Place in Modern Science', in Goethe. Bicentennial Studies
by Members of the Faculty of Indiana University (Indiana Univ. Publications,
Humanities Series, 22; ed. by H. J. Meessen), Indiana University, Bloomington,
1950, pp. 61-82.
[139] King, R: 'Goethe and the Challenge of Science in Western Civilization', in Goethe
on Human Creativeness and Other Essays (ed. by R King et al.), Univ. of
Georgia Press, Athens, Ga., 1950, pp. 223-252.
[140] Steiner, R: Goethe the Scientist (trans. by O. D. Wannamaker), Anthroposophic
Press, New York, 1950. 280 pp.
[141] Albergamo, F.: '11 contributo del Goethe alla logica della scienza', Letterature
Moderne2 (1951) 510-520.
[142] *Bertalanffy, L. von: 'Geothe's Concept of Nature', Main Currents 8 (1951)
78-83.
An English translation of No. 125?
[143] Goethe und die Wissenschaft: Vortriige gehalten anliisslich des Internationalen
Gelehrtenkongresses zu Frankfurt am Main im August 1949, V. Klostermann,
Frankfurt a.M., 1951. 171 pp.
[144] Lehrs, E.: Man or Matter. Introduction to a Spiritual Understanding of Nature on

the Basis of Goethe's Method of Training Observation and Thought, Faber and
Faber, London, 1951. 378 pp.
Rpt. 2nd rev. and enlarged edn. Faber and Faber/Harper & Brothers, 1958.456
pp.
[145] Wachsmuth, A B.: 'Goethes Naturforschung und Weltanschauung in ihrer
Wechselbeziehung', Goethe 14/15 (1952/1953) 43-62.
[146] Willoughby, L. A: 'Goethe - the Natural Philosopher', in Goethe after Two
Centuries (Louisiana State Univ. Studies. Humanities Series, 1; ed. by C.
Hammer, Jr.), Louisiana State Univ. Press, Baton Rouge, 1952, pp. 1-19.
[147] Lebrs, E.: Mensch und Materie. Ein Beitrag zur Erweitemng der Naturerkenntniz
nach der Methode Goethes, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt a.M., 1953.
Rpt. 2nd compl. rev. and expo edn. 1966.
A German translation of No. 144.
[148] *Portmann, A: 'Goethes Naturforschung', Neue Schweizer Rundschau NS 21
(1953/1954) 406-422.
*Rpt. in his Biologie und Geist (Herder-Biicherei, 137), Herder-Bucherei, Freiburg
i. Br., 1963, pp. 273-292.
[149] Raine, K.: 'The Elements and Goethe', The New Statesman and Nation 45, No.
1141 (1953) 72-73.
A review of R. Gray, Goethe the Alchemist [No. 371].
[150] Heller, E.: 'Goethe und die Idee der wissenschaftlichen Wahrheit', in his Enterbter
Ge.ist. Essays iiber modernes Dichten und Denken, Suhrkamp Verlag,
[Frankfurt a.M.], 1954, pp. 15-60.
Rpt. pb. 1981.
[151] *Hene!, H.: 'Goethe and Science', in Literature and Science: Proceedings of the
Sixth Triennial Congress, Oxford 1954, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1955, pp.
216-221.
[152] Brauning-Oktavio, H.: Vom Zwischenkieferknochen zur Idee des Typus. Goethe
als Naturforscher in den fahren 1780-1786 (Nova Acta Leopoldina, 126. NS
18,1956), J. A Barth, Leipzig, 1956. 144 pp.
[153] Dyck, M.: 'Goethe's Views on Pure Mathematics', Germanic Review 31 (1956)
49-69.
[154] Gerlach, W.: 'Aufgabe und Wert der Naturwissenschaft im Urteil Goethes',
Goethe 18 (1956) 1-25.
Rpt. fahrbuch der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (1956) 62-100.
[155] Hene!, H.: 'Type and Proto-Phenomenon in Goethe's Science', PMLA 71 (1956)
651-668.
[156] Schadewalt, W.: 'Goethes Begriff der Realitat', Goethe 18 (1956) 44-88.
[157] Barfield, 0.: Saving the Appearances. A Study in 1dolatry, Faber and Faber,
London, [1957], 190 pp.
Rpt. Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., New York, [1965].
[158] Weizsacker, C. F. von: 'Uber einige Begriffe aus der Naturwissenschaft Goethes',
in Robert Boehringer. Eine Freundesgabe (ed. E. Boehringer and W.

Hoffmann), J. C. B. Mohr (paul Siebeck), Tiibingen, 1957, pp. 697-711.
Rpt. as 'Nachwort' to Vol. 13 of the Hamburger Ausgabe [see No. 23).
[159] Dyck, M.: 'Goethe's Thought in the Light of his Pronouncements on Applied and
Misapplied Mathematics', PMLA 73 (1958) 505-515.
[160] King, R. and Hene!, H.: 'Goethe and Science', PMLA 73 (1958) 433-443.
[161] Lambrecht, W.: 'Die Goethesche und die Newtonsche Farbenlehre im Lichte der
Erkenntnistheorie', Zeitschrift flir philosophische Forschung 12 (1958) 579-
595.
[162] Weizsacker, C. F. von: 'Goethe und die Natur. Rede, gehalten in der Pauluskirche
bei der Verleihung des Goethe-Preises der Stadt Frankfurt am Main am 31.
August 1958', Gegenwart 13 (1958) 555-557.
[163) Schmitz, H.: Goethes Altersdenken im problemgeschichtlichen Zusammenhang,
Bouvier, Bonn, 1959. 584 pp.
[164) Doke, T.: 'Subjekt-Objekt-Problem in Goethes Dichten und Denken', Weimarer
Beitriige6 (1960) 1077-1090.
[165) Dyck, M.: 'Goethes Verhaltnis zur Mathematik', Goethe 23 (1961) 49-71.
[166] Gauss, J.: 'Der Weg von Linne zu Kant', in her Goethe-Studien, Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, Gottingen, 1961, pp. 40-66.
[167) *Roubiczek, P.: 'Goethe's Thought in the Context of Today', in German Studies
Presented to W. H. Bruford on his Retirement by his Pupils, Colleagues and
Friends, George G. Harrap & Co., London, 1962.
[168) *Kanaev, 1. I.: Iorgann Vol'fgang Gete. Ocherki iz zhizni poeta-naturalicta (AN
SSSR. lnstitut istorii estestvoznaniia. i tekhniki), 'Nauka', Moskva/Leningrad,
1964.261 pp.
[169] Pendlebury, D. L.: 'The Scientific Activity of J. W. von Goethe', Systematics 3
(1965) 93-11l.
[170] Wachsmuth, A. B.: Geeinte Zwienatur. Au/siitze zu Goethes naturwissenschaft-
lichem Denken (Beitrage zur deutschen Klassik, 19), Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin!
Weimar, 1966.351 pp.
[171] *Hegge, H.: 'Noen vitenskapsteoretiske sp0rsmal belyst ved Goethes naturvitens-
kap', Norskfilosofisk tidsskrift2 (1967).
[172] Heisenberg, W.: 'Das Naturbild Goethes und die technisch-naturwissenschaft-
liche Welt', Goethe 29 (1967) 27-42.
Rpt. Mitteilungen der Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung 13 (1967) 5-17.
Rpt. in his Schritte iiber Grenzen. Gesemmelte Reden und Aufsiitze, 2nd expo edn.,
R. Piper, Miinchen, 1973, pp. 243-262.
Cf. the response by K. L. Wolf, No. 174.
Translations: Portuguese, No. 175.
[173] *Kursanov, G. A.: '0 estestvennonauchnom mirovozzrenii Gete', Priroda 6 (1957)
63-68.
[174) Wolf, K. L.: 'Goethe und die Naturwissenschaft. Betrachtungen zu einem Vortrag
Werner Heisenbergs', Goethe 29 (1967) 289-293.
Cf.No.I72.
[175] Heisenberg, W.: 'El concepto goethiano de la naturaleza y el mundo tecnico-

cientifico', Humboldt 33 (1968) 5-15.
A Portuguese translation of No. 172. The quarterly is published by Ubersee-
Verlag, Hamburg.
[176] Wells, G. A.: 'Goethe's Scientific Method and Aims in the Light of his Studies in
Physical Optics', Publications of the English Goethe SocietyNS 38 (1968) 69-
113.
[177] Heitler, W.: 'Die Naturwissenschaft Goethes. Eine GegenlibersteIIung Goe-
thescher und modern-exakter Naturwissenschaft', in Der Berliner Germanisten-
tag 1968. Vortriige und Berichte (ed. by K. H. Borch und R. Henss), Carl Winter,
Heidelberg, 1970, pp. 13-23.
Rpt. in his Naturphilosophische Streifziige. Vortriige und Aujsiitze, Friedr.
Vieweg + Sohn, 1970.
[178] Kanaev, I. I.: Gete kak estestvoispytatel' (AN SSSR Nauchnobiograficheskaia
seriia, 44), 'Nauka', Leningrad, 1970.467 pp.
[179] Helmholtz, H. von: 'The Scientific Researches of Goethe', in Selected Writings of
Hermann von Helmholtz (ed. by R. Kahl), Wesleyan Univ. Press, Middletown!
Conn., 1971, pp. 56-74.
[180] Helmholtz, H. von: 'Goethe's Anticipation of Subsequent Scientific Ideas', in
Selected Writings . .. [Cf. previous entry), pp. 479-500.
[181] Kleinschneider, M.: Goethes Naturstudien: Wissenschaftstheoretische und ges-
chichtliche Untersuchungen (Abhandlungen zur Philosophie, Psychologie und
Paqagogik, 75), Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann, Bonn, 1971. 208 pp.
[182] Kuhn, D.: 'Uber den Grund von Goethes Beschaftigung mit der Natur und ihrer
wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis', lahrbuch der Deutschen Schillergesellschaft 15
(1971) 157-173.
[183] *Brady, R. H.: 'Toward a Common Morphology for Aesthetics and Natural
Science. A Study of Goethe's Empiricism', Diss. State Univ. of New York,
Buffalo, 1972. 327 pp.
[184] Goethe-lahrbuch (Goethe-Gesellschaft in Japan) 14 (1972).
[With separate title page in Japanese).
The issue, entitled 'Goethe als Naturforscher', is devoted entirely to aspects of
Goethe's scientific work. German abstracts of all thirteen contributions, pp.
1-10. One essay in German (P. Kapitza, 'Zeitgenosse im chemischen Zeitalter.
Zu Goethes Rezeption der Chemie', pp. 11-31). The remainder in Japanese
[separate pagination beginning at opposite end of the volume]: M. Numata,
'Goethes Stellung in der Genealogie des biologischen Typus-Gedankens', pp.
1-19; Y. End6, 'Versuch liber Goethes Biologie', pp. 21-44; H. Fujimori,
'Warum interessierte Goethe sich fur MedizinT, pp. 45-69; T. Matsumoto,
'Die moderne wissenschaftliche Morphologie und die Morphologie Goethes -
aus der Sicht eines Pathomorphologen', pp. 71-86; M. Omori, 'Goethe und
Linne', pp. 87-107; Y. Takahashi, 'Goethe und die Deszendenzlehre', pp.
109-133; K. Iida, 'Goethe und Georg Agricolas "De Re Metallica''', pp. 135-
148; J. Mori, 'Uber Goethes Farbenkreis', pp. 149-168; I. Muraoka, 'IntelIek-
tuelle Anschauung', pp. 169-188; T. Matsuyama, 'Der Erdgeist im "Faust" und
die Naturanschauung des jungen Goethe', pp. 189-203; T. Sakamoto, 'Goethe

und Cusanus (Die Verwandtschaft ihrer Anschauungen iiber Natur-Mensch-
Gott nach dem "Faust"', pp. 205-226; N. Kimura, 'Uber die naturwissens-
chaftliche Bedeutung von Goethes Kosmogonie', pp. 227-248.
[185] Gogelein, c.: Zu Goethes Begriff von Wissenschaft auf dem Wege der Methodik
seiner Farbstudien (Einzelarbeiten aus dem Max-Planck-Institut zur Erfors-
chung der Lebensbedingungen der wissenschaftlich-technischen Welt, 1),
Hanser Verlag, Miinchen, 1972.
[186] Hegge, H.: 'Theory of Science in the Light of Goethe's Science of Nature', Inquiry
15 (1972) 363-386.
An English translation (by A Hannay) of No. 171.
[187] Kuczynski, J.: 'Goethe tiber die Beziehungen von Kunst und Wissenschaft',
Weimarer Beitriige 18, No. 12 (1972) 142-151.
Rpt. in Bild und Begriff. Studien uber die Beziehungen zwischen Kunst und
Wissenschaft (ed. by J. Kuczynski and W. Heise), Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin!
Weimar, 1975, pp. 29-41.
[188] Wells, G. A: 'Goethe', Dictionary of Scientific Biography (ed. C. C. Gillispie),
Scribner's, New York, 1972, vol. 5, pp. 442-446.
[189] Brednow, W.: 'Zum Begriff des "Pathologischen" bei Goethe', Medizinhisto-
risches Journal 8 (1973) 257-289.
[190] Jaszi, A: Entzweiung und Vereinigung. Goethes symbolische Weltanschauung
(poesie und Wissenschaft, 24), Stiehm, Heidelberg, 1973. 159 pp.
'Unter Mitarbeit von Michael Mann.'
[191] Mori, Y.: 'Vom Wesen der symbolischen Naturanschauung bei Goethe' [in
Japanese], Doitsu Bungaku 53 (1974) 53-64.
With a German summary.
[192] Hart Nibbrig, C. L.: 'Weltwarts nach innen. Zur Erkenntnistheorie von Goethes
dichterischer Welt-Anschauung', Euphorion 69 (1975) 1-17.
[193] Neubauer, J.: "'Die Abstraktion, vor der wir uns rurchten". Goethes Auffassung
der Mathematik und das Goethebild in der Geschichte der Naturwissenschaft',
in Versuche zu Goethe. Festschrift fur Erich Heller. Zum 65. Geburtstag am 2Z
3.1976 (ed. by V. Dtirr and G. von Molnar), Lothar Stiehm Verlag, Heidelberg,
1976, pp. 305-320.
[194] Thuillier, P.: 'Goethe l'heresiarque', La Recherche 64 (1976) 146-155.
[195] Brady, R.: 'Goethe's Natural Science. Some Non-Cartesian Meditations', in
Toward a Man-Centered Medical Science (A New Image of Man in Medicine, 1;
ed. by K. E. Schaefer, H. Hensel and R. Brady), Futura Publishing Co., Mt. Kis-
co, N.Y., 1977,pp.137-165.
[196] Kreutzer, L.: 'Wie herrlich leuchtet uns die Natur? Der Naturwissenschaftler
Goethe - Portrat eines Verlierers, daher aus erstaunlicher Niihe', Akzente.
Zeitschriftfur Dichtung25 (1978) 381-390.
[197] Seamon, D.: 'Goethe's Approach to the Natural World. Implications for Environ-
mental Theory and Education', in Humanistic Geography (ed. by D. Ley and M.
Samuels), Maaroufa Press, Chicago, 1978, pp. 238-250.
[198] Strolz, W.: 'Das Naturgeheimnis in Goethes Anschauungskraft', Scheidewege 8
(1978) 535-557.
[199] Wells, G. A: Goethe and the Development of Science, 1750-1900 (Science in
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.
VI. MORPHOLOGY
1 have included under this single rubric both plant morphology and
osteology. A. Hansen's studies (Nos. 215 and 216) are 'classics'. R.

Brady's essay (section V, No. 195), recommended earlier as an intro-
duction to Goethe's method generally, would also serve as an excellent
introduction (and more) to Goethe's morphology. Among the important
philosophers and scientists who have written on the subject are Cassirer
(No. 226), Arber (No. 220) and Portmann (No. 245; translated in the
present volume): all three constitute excellent introductions, as does D.
Kuhn's study of 1978 (No. 247).
[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.
[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.
[229] Weyland, H.: 'Goethes Urpflanze im Licht der modemen Stammesgeschichte.

Eine Betrachtung iiber die Wandlung des EntwickJungsgedankens', Sudhoffs
Archiv for Geschichte der Medizin und der Naturwissenschaften 38 (1954)
219-233.
[230] Kanaev, I. I.: 'Gete kak morfolog', Zoologicheskii zhurnal 34 (1955) 248-258.
[231] Wolf, K. L. and Kuhn, D.: 'Goethes morphologische Methode', Universitas 12
(1957) 815-822.
[232] Weinhandl, F.: 'Der Gestaltgedanke in Goethes Lebenswerk', lahrbuch des
Wiener Goethe- Vereins 65 (1961) 12-38.
[233] Kuhn, D.: 'Das Prinzip der autobiographischen Form in Goethes Schriftenreihe
"Zur Naturwissenschaft iiberhaupt, besonders zur Morphologie"', Neue Hefte
zur Morphologie 4 (1962) 129-149.
[234] Brednow, W.: 'Goethes Studien zur Natur von Tier und Mensch', Neue Sammlung
5 (1965) 425-439.
[235] Brednow, W.: 'Tier und Mensch in Goethes naturwissenschaftlicher Sicht',
Forschungen und Fortschritte 39 (1965) 170-173.
[236] Brednow, w.: 'Symbol und Symbolik in der Biologie Goethes', Goethe 28 (1966)
236-262.
[237] Nisbet, H. B.: 'Herder, Goethe, and the Natural Type', Publications of the English
Goethe Society NS 37 (1967) 83-119.
[238] Remane, A: 'Methodische Probleme in Goethes biologischen Arbeiten', in
Gestalt und Wirklichkeit. Festgabe for Ferdinand Weinhandl (ed. by R. Miihiher
and J. Fischl), Duncker + Humblot, Berlin, 1967, pp. 477-490.
[239] Wells, G. A: 'Goethe and Evolution', Journal of the History of Ideas 28 (1967)
537-550.
[240] Wells, G. A: 'Goethe and the Intermaxillary Bone', The British Journal for the
History ofScience 3 (1967) 348-361.
[241] Auersperg, A: 'Das Phiinomen des Personalen in Goethes Biologie und seine
pathologischen Abwandlungen', lahrbuch for Psychologie, Psychotherapie, und
medizinischeAnthropologie 16 (1968) 30-42.
[242] Kanajew, I. I.: 'Die Entwicklung des Problems des morphologischen Typus in der
Zoologie bei Goethe', Goethe 30 (1968) 202-226.
'Die vorliegende Arbeit ist das leicht gekiirzte Kapitel VIII, "Goethe", eines
Bandes von I. I. Kanajew unter dem Titel: "Beitriige zur Geschichte der
vergleichenden Anatomie vor Darwin. Die Entwicklung des Problems des
morphologichen Typus in der Zoologie." Herausgegeben von der Akademie
der Wissenschaften der UdSSR, Moskau, Leningrad 1963, S. 126-147. Aus
dem Russischen iibersetzt von Oskar Tome' (Goethe).
[243] Froebe, H. A: "'Ulmbaum und Rebe": Naturwissenschaft, AIchymie und
Emblematik in Goethes Aufsatz "Dber die Spiraltendenz" (1830-1831)"
lFDH (1969) 164-193.
[244] Callot, E.: La Philosophie biologique de Goethe, Editions Marcel Riviere, Paris,
1971. 186 pp.
[245] Portmann, A: 'Goethe und der Begriff der Metamorphose', Goethe 90 (1973)
11-21.
[246] Eyde, R. H.: 'The Foliar Theory of the Flower', American Scientist 63 (1975)
430-437.
[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.
VII. COLOR THEORY AND OPTICS
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
Aquarellen des Verfassers und fiinf Abbildungen im Text)', Goethe 5 (1940)

71-96.
(260) Heisenberg, W.: 'Die Goethesche und die Newtonsche Farbenlehre im Lichte der
modernen Physik', Geist der Zeit 19 (1941) 261-275.
Rpt. in his Wandlungen in den Grundlagen der Naturwissenschaft. Zehn Vortriige,
10th expo edn., S. Hirzel Verlag, Stuttgart, 1973, pp. 85-106.
Translations: English, No. 267; Russian, No. 268; Italian, No. 305.
(261) Matthaei, R: 'Mein Weg zu einer Beurteilung der Farbenlehre Goethes',
Hamburger Akademische Rundschau 3 (1949) 665-684.
(262) Matthaei, R: 'Uber die Anfiinge von Goethes Farbenlehre', Goethe 11 (1949)
249-262.
(263) R[onchi), V.: 'Della Teoria dei colori', in Dizionario Letterario Bompiani. Opere,
Velantino Bompiani Editore, Milano, 1949, Vol. 7, pp. 376-377.
(264) Wea1e, R: 'Goethe and Colour', Nature 164 (1949) 629.
A reply to Andrade, No. 123.
(265) Weizsacker, V. von: 'Zur Farbenlehre. Aus der lahresfeier der Heidelberger
Akademie der Wissenschaften am 22. Mai 1949', in Goethe und Heidelberg, F.
H. Kerle Verlag, Heidelberg, 1949, pp. 351-360.
(266) Wilson, M.: What is Colour? The Goethean approach to a fundamental problem,
Goethean Science Foundation, Clent, Stourbridge/Worcestershire, 1949. 52
pp.
(267) Heisenberg, W.: 'The Teachings of Goethe and Newton on Colour in the Light of
Modern Physics', in Philosophic Problems of Nuclear Science (trans. by F. C.
Hayes), Faber and Faber, London, 1952, pp. 60-76.
PubI-. simultaneously by Pantheon, New York.
Rpt. Fawcett Publications, Greenwich, Conn., 1966, pp. 67-86.
(268) *Geizenberg, V.: 'Uchenie Gete i N'iutona 0 tsvete i covremennaia fizika. Lektsiia,
prochitannaia v Budapeshte 5 maia 1941', in his Filosofskie problemy atomnoi
Jiziki (trans. N. F. Ovchinnikov), Moskva, 1953, pp. 54-71.
A Russian translation of No. 260.
(269) Matthaei, R: Goethe zur Farbe und Farbenlehre (Die Gedenkstatten der
deutschen Klassik), Goethe-Nationalmuseum und klassische Statten, 1955.40
pp.
(270) Buchwa1d, E.: 'Uber Goethes Farbenlehre', in his Fiinf Kapitel Farbenlehre
(Physikalische Schriften, 4), Physik Verlag, Mosbach, 1955, pp. 116-144.
(271) Matthaei, R: 'Neue Funde zu Schillers Anteil an Goethes Farbenlehre', Goethe
20 (1958) 155-177.
(272) Matthaei, R: 'Zur Morphologie des Goetheschen Farbenkreises' (Die Gestalt.
Abhandlungen zu einer allgemeinen Morphologie, 29), Hermann Biihlaus
Nachfolger, Kiiln/Graz, 1958.28 pp.
(273) Wilson, M.: 'Goethe's Colour Experiments', Year Book of the Physical Society
(1958), pp. 3-12.
(274) Wachsmuth, A. B.: 'Goethes Farbenlehre und ihre Bedeutung fiir seine Dichtung
und Weltanschauung', Goethe 21 (1959) 70-93.
[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.
[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.
[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.
[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.
[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.
[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.
[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.
[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.
IX. OTHER SCIENCES
I have restricted entries in the following section to the four 'other

sciences' of psychology, medicine, meteorology and (stretching the term
a bit) history of science. Phelps (No. 322) and Schone (No. 327)
present Goethe's meteorological work concisely, while Kuhn (No. 324)
and Reuter (No. 326) provide good introductions to his Materialien zur
Geschichte der Farbenlehre. There is a surprisingly large literature on
Goethe's relationship and putative contributions to chemistry, physics,
anatomy, civil engineering, astronomy - nearly every science or quasi-
science one could name. However, the amount of work Goethe devoted
to these other fields is so small in proportion to his other scientific
work that I have chosen not to include them. Most of the important
literature on Goethe and these other sciences can be found relatively
easily by consulting Schmid (No.5) and, for the years 1933ff, the ISIS
bibliographies. The question of Goethe's relationship to mathematics,
on the other hand, is so central to any understanding of his method that
I have placed such studies in section V (cf. Nos. 153, 159 and 193).
[318] Klages, L.: 'Goethe als Seelenforscher', JFDH (1928) 3-44.

Rpt.Ath edn. Bouvier, Bonn, 1971. 92 pp.
[319] *Husemann, F.: Goethe und die Heilkunst. Betrachtungen zur Krise in der Medizin,
Dornach/Schweiz, 1935. 176 pp.
Rpt. 2nd rev. edn. Verlag Freies Geistesleben, Stuttgart, 1957. 128 pp.
[320] Husemann, F.: Goethe and the Art of Healing. A Commentary on the Crisis in
Medicine (trans. by R. K. MacKaye and A. Goudschaal), Anthroposophic
Press, New York/London, [1938]. viii, 165 pp.
An English translation of the previous entry.
[321] Schneider-Carius, K.: 'Goethes Erlebnis und Erforschung der atmosphiirischen
Erscheinungen', Goethe 12 (1950) 276-309.
[322] Phelps, L. R.: 'Goethe's Meteorological Writings', Monatshefte 48 (1956) 317-
324.
[323] Kanaev, I. I:: 'Gete kak istorik estestvennykh nauk', Trudy Instituta istorii
estestvoznaniia i tekhnikiAN SSSR 24, No.5 (1958) 3-20.
[324] Kuhn, D.: 'Goethes Geschichte der Farbenlehre als Werk und Form', Deutsche
Vierteljahresschrift flir Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 34 (1960)
356-377.
[325] Sander, F.: 'Goethe und die Morphologie der Persiinlichkeit', in F. Sander and H.
Volkelt, Ganzheitspsychologie: Grundlagen, Ergebnisse, Anwendungen.
Gesammelte Abhandlungen, C. H. Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Miinchen,
1962,pp.321-341.
[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.
X. GOETHE'S SCIENTIFIC WORKS IN RELATION TO

HIS OEUVRE AS A WHOLE
Although there exists no single comprehensive study of the relationship

between Goethe's scientific studies and the remainder of his oeuvre,
numerous studies deal with the reflection of Goethe's scientific thinking
in single works, especially in Faust and the two Wilhelm Meister-
novels. Of these, Miiller's essay on the Lehrjahre (No. 332) and
Wilkinson's on Tasso (No. 333) have attained the status of minor
'classics'. Wachsmuth's study of 1959 (No. 338) will serve as a good
general introduction to the subject.. Particularly noteworthy are the
Faust-studies (No. 347) by Cottrell (who also edited the forthcoming
English edition of the scientific works, No. 89), and the essay on the
Wahlverwandtschaften by the physicist and philosopher von Weizsacker
(No. 350).
[331] Matthaei, R.: 'Die Farbenlehre in Faust', Goethe 10 (1947) 59-148.

[332] Miiller, G.: Gestaltung - Umgestaltung in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahren, Max
Niemeyer Verlag, Halle (Saale), 1948. 100 pp.
Rpt. in his Morphologische Poetik [ef. No. 477], pp. 419-510.
[333] Wilkinson, E. M.: '''Tasso - ein gesteigerter Werther" in the Light of Goethe's
Principle of "Steigerung''', Modern Language Review 44 (1949) 305-328.
[334] Jockers, E.: 'Morphologie und Klassik Goethes', in Vortriige, pp. 63-81.
Rpt. in his Mit Goethe. Gesammelte Aufsiitze, Carl Winter, Heidelberg, 1957, pp.
178-192.
[335] Wilkinson, E. M.: '''Tasso - ein gesteigerter Werther" im Licht von Goethes
Prinzip der Steigerung. Eine Untersuchung zur Frage der kritischen Methode',
Goethe 13 (1951) 28-58.
A German translation (by E. Grumach) of No. 333.
[336] Willoughby, L. A: 'Faust als Lebensorganisation', in Vortriige, pp. 35-51.

[337] *Biickmann, P.: 'Goethes naturwissenschaftliches Denken als Bedingung der
Symbolik seiner Altersdichtung', in Literature and Science [ef. No. 151], pp.
228-236.
[338] Wachsmuth, A B.: 'Goethes naturwissenschaftliches Denken im Spiegel seiner
Dichtungen seit 1790', Sinn und Form 11 (1959) 20-42.
Rpt. Schriftenreihe Geist und Zeit 5 (1959) 32-52.
[339] Diener, G.: Fausts Weg zu Helena. Urphiinomen und Archetypus. Darstellung und
Deutung einer symbolischen Szenenfolge aus Goethes Faust, Ernst Klett Verlag,
Stuttgart, 1961. 618 pp.
[340] Wachsmuth, A B.: 'Goethes naturwissenschaftliche Erfahrungen und Oberzeu-
gungen in dem Roman "Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre"', Weimarer Beitriige 6
(1960) 1091-1107.
[341] Willoughby, L. A: 'Goethe's Faust. A Morphological Approach', in E. M.
Wilkinson and L. A Willoughby, Goethe. Poet and Thinker. Essays, Arnold,
London, 1962, pp. 95-117; 232-233.
Pub!. simultaneously by Barnes and Noble, New York.
[342] Glockner, H.: "'Eins und Alles". Drei philosophische Gedichte Goethes', in his
Kunstphilosophische Perspektiven. Studien und Charakteristiken aus der
Sphiire der Individualitiit (his Gesammelte Schriften, 4), H. Bouvier, Bonn,
1968, pp. 590-597.
[343] Schadel, C. H.: Metamorphose und Erscheinungsformen des Menschseins in
Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahren. Zur geistigen und kiinstlerischen Einheit des
Goetheschen Romans (Marburger Beitrage zur Germanistik, 20), N. G. Elwert
Verlag, Marburg, 1969.339 pp.
[344] Salm, P.: The Poem as Plant. A Biological View of Goethe's Faust, The Press of
Case Western Reserve Univ., ClevelandlLondon, 1971. xx, 149 pp.
[345] Muller-Seidel, W.: 'Naturforschung und deutsche Klassik. Die Jenaer Gesprache
im Juli 1794', in Untersuchungen zur Literatur als Geschichte. Festschrift fUr
Benno v. Wiese (ed. by V. J. Gunther, H. Koopmann et al.), Erich Schmidt
Verlag, Berlin, 1973, pp. 61-78.
[346] Staiger, E.: 'Goethes Wolkengedichte', in his Spiitzeit. Studien zur deutschen
Literatur, Artemis-Verlag, ZurichIMunchen, 1973, pp. 55-78.
[347] Cottrell, A P.: Goethe's Faust. Seven Essays (Univ. of N. Carolina Studies in the
Germanic Languages and Literatures, 86), Univ. of N. Carolina Press, Chapel
Hill, 1976. xvi, 140.
[348] Steer, A G.: Goethe's Science in the Structure of the Wanderjahre, Univ. of
Georgia Press, Athens, 1979. xi, 170 pp.
[349] Brenn, W.: Hermetik, geschichtliche Elfahrung, Allegorie. Die konstitutive
Funktion von Goethes hermetisch beeinflusster Naturphilosophie fUr die
allegorische Struktur des Faust II, S. Fischer, Frankfurt a.M., 1981. 568 pp.
[350] Weizsacker, C. F. von: 'Natur und Moral im Lichte der Kunst. Eine Notiz zu
Goethes Wahlverwandtschaften', in Studien zur Goethezeit. Erich Trunz zum
75. Geburtstag (Beihefte zum Euphorion, 18; ed. by H.-J. Miihl and E.
Mannack), Carl Winter Universitatsverlag, Heidelberg, 1981, pp. 281-292.
XI. GOETHE'S PLACE IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE
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.
[351] Hegel, G. W. F.: Encyclopiidie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse,

2nd edn., August Osswald, Heidelberg, 1827. xlii, 544 pp.
[352] Saint-Hilaire, E. G. de: 'Sur les ecrits de Goethe lui donnant des droits au titre de
savant naturaliste', Annales des sciences naturelles 22 (1831) 188-193.
[353] Feuchtersleben, E. Freiherr von: 'Gothe's naturwissenschaftliche Ansichten', in
his Beitriige zur Literatur, Kunst- und Lebenstheorie, J. G. Ritter, Wien, 1837,
pp.99-140.
Rpt. 'Aus: Gothes naturwissenschaftliche Ansichten (1837)', in Mandelkow, Vol.
2, pp. 165-174 (excerpt).
[354] Whewell, W.: 'Vegetable Morphology. Gothe. De Candolle', in his History of the
Inductive Sciences, from the Earliest to the Present Times, 3 vols., John W.
Parker, London, Vol. 3, pp. 433-441.
[355] Carus, C. G.: Goethe, zu dessen niiherem Verstiindnis, Leipzig, 1843.

Rpt. 'Aus: Gothe. Zu dessen naherem Verstiindnis (1843)" in Mandelkow, Vol. 2,
pp.238-255.
[356] Huxley, T. H.: 'On the Theory of the Vertebrate Skull', Proceedings of the Royal
Society of London 9 (1859) 381-457.
[357] Bois-Reymond, M. E. du: 'Universite de Berlin. Goethe', Revue scientifique de la
France et de l'etranger 3 (1882) 769-776.
A French translation of the following entry.
[358] Bois-Reymond, E. du: 'Goethe und kein Ende. Rede bei Antritt des Rektorats der
Koenig!. Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universitat zu Berlin am 15. October 1882'.
Verlag von Veit & Comp., Leipzig, 1883.44 pp.
Translations: French, No. 357.
[359] Sommerfeld, A: 'Goethes Farbenlehre im Urteile der Zeit', Deutsche Revue 42
(1917)100-106.
[360] Ostwald, W.: Goethe, Schopenhauer und die Farbenlehre, Verlag Unesma,
Leipzig, 1918. vi, 145 pp.
[361] Naef, A: Idealistische Morphologie und Phylogenetik (zur Methodik der
systematischen Morphologie, Verlag von Gustav Fischer, Jena, 1919. vi, 77 pp.
[362] Meyer-Abich, A: 'Goethes Naturerkenntnis. Ihre Voraussetzung in der Antike,
ihre Kronung durch Carus', JFDH (1929) 196-233.
[363] Troll, W.: 'Die Wiedergeburt der Morphologie aus dem Geiste deutscher
Wissenschaft', Zeitschrift fUr die gesamte NaturwissenschaJt 1 (1935/1936)
349-356.
Rpt. in his Vergleichende Morphologie der hoheren Pflanzen, Otto Koeltz,
KonigssteiniTaunus, 1967, Vol.1,pp.1-8.
[364] Schlechta, K.: Goethe in seinem Verhiiltnis zu Aristoteles. Ein Versuch
(Frankfurter Studien zur Religion und Kultur der Antike, 16), Vittorio
Klostermann, Frankfurt a.M., 1938. 136 pp.
[365] Schmid, G.: 'Die Goethe und seinem Andenken gewidmeten Bucher aus dem
Gebiet der Naturwissenschaften und der Medizin. Eine Bibliographie',
Philobiblion: Die ZeitschriJt der Biicheifreunde 12 (1940) 244-253.
[366] Troll, W.: 'Gestalt und Gesetz. Versuch einer geistesgeschichtlichen Grundlegung
der Morphologischen und physiologischen Forschung', in his Gestalt und
Urbild [ef. No. 446], pp. 20-50.
Rpt. 2nd rev. edn. 1942.
[367] Cassirer, E.: 'Goethe and the Kantian Philosophy', in his Rousseau, Kant, Goethe.
Two Essays (The History of Ideas Series, 1), Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton,
1945,pp.61-98.
[368] Hennig, J.: 'Goethe's Interest in British Botany', Proceedings of the Linnaean
Society of London 161 (1949) 199-207.
[369] Hennig, J.: 'Goethe's Interest in British Meteorology', Modern Language
Quarterly 10 (1949) 321-337.
[370] Meyer-Abich, A, ed.: Biologie der Goethezeit. Klassische Abhandlungen iiber die
Grundlagen und Hauptprobleme der Biologie von Goethe und den grossen
Naturforschern seiner Zeit: Georg Forster, Alexander v. Humboldt, Lorenz
Oken, Carl Gustav Carus, Karl Ernst v. Baer and Johannes Miiller,
Hippokrates-Verlag Marquardt & Cie., Stuttgart, 1949. 302 pp.
[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.
[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.
(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.
(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.
(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.
[407] Meyer-Abich, A.: Die Vollendung der Morphologie Goethes durch Alexander von
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.
[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-
363; 580-600.
[411] Nisbet, H. B.: Goethe and the Scientific Tradition (publications of the Institute of
Germanic Studies, 14), Institute of Germanic Studies, Univ. of London,
London, 1972. xi, 83 pp.
[412] Gestalthaftes Sehen. Ergebnisse und Aufgaben der Morphologie. Zum hundert-
jiihrigen Geburtstag von Christian von Ehrenfels (ed. by F. Weinhandl),
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt, 1974. 439 pp.
[413] Riemeck, R: Beispiele Goetheanistischen Denkens. Der Mensch als geistiges
Wesen (Studienmaterial herausgegeben aus der Arbeit der Humanus-Stiftung
Basel), Die Pforte, Basel, 1974. 24 pp.
[414] Zimmermann, R c.: 'Goethes Polaritatsdenken im geistigen Kontext des 18.
Jahrhunderts', Jahrbuch der deutschen Schillergesellschaft 18 (1974) 303-
347.
[415] Biermann, K.-R: 'Gauss und Goethe. Versuch einer Interpretation ausge-
bliebener'Begegnung', Goethe 92 (1975) 195-219.
[416] Goethe im Urteil seiner Kritiker: Dokumente zur Wirkungsgeschichte Goethes in
Duetschland. Vol. I. 1773-1832. (Wirkung der Literatur. Deutsche Autoren im
Urteil ihrer Kritiker, 5.1; ed., intro. and comm. by K R Mandelkow), C. H.
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.
Deutschland. Vol. 2. 1832-1870. (Wirkung der Literatur. Deutsche Autoren im
Urteil ihrer Kritiker, 5.2; ed., intro. and commentary by K R Mandelkow), C.
H. Beck, Miinchen, 1977. lxviii, 579 pp.
[419] Heinig, K: 'Goethes Verhiiltnis zur Chemie, der Organisation der Wissenschaft
und zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte', Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Humboldt-
Universitiit zu Berlin, Gesellschafts- und sprachwissenschaftliche Reihe 26
(1977)581-584.
[420] Wittgenstein, L.: Remarks on ColouriBemerkungen iiber die Farben (ed. by G. E.
M. Anscombe; trans. by L. L. McAlister and M. Schattle), Basil Blackwell,
Oxford, 1977.63/63 pp.
Rpt. pb. Univ. of California Press, Berkeley/Los Angeles, 1978.
[421] Fischer, J.: 'Goethes spate Wiirdigung. Ein StUck Rezeptionsgeschichte', in
Arithmos-Arrythmos. Skizzen aus der Wissenschaftsgeschichte. Festschrift for
Joachim Otto Fleckstein zum 65. Geburtstag (ed. by K Figala and E. H.
Berninger), Minerva, Miinchen, 1979,pp.105-114.
Deutschland. Vol. 3. 1870-1918. (Wirkung der Literatur. Deutsche Autoren im

Urteil ihrer Kritiker, 5.3; ed., intra. and corom. by K. R. Mandelkow), C. H.
Beck, Mlinchen, 1979. lxvi, 574 pp.
[423] Haeckel, E.: 'Aus: Die Naturanschauung von Darwin, Goethe und Lamarck
(1882)', in Mandelkow, vol. 3, pp. 95-103 (excerpt).
[424] Guidorizzi, E.: L'ltalia, Goethe e la natura. La critica letteraria italiana, Edizioni
Scientifici Italiane, Napoli, 1980. 282 pp.
[425] Mandelkow, K. R.: Goethe in Deutschland: Rezeptionsgeschichte eines Klassikers.
Vol. 11773-1918, C. H. Beck, Miinchen, 1980.352 pp.
Cf. esp. Ch. 4, 'Die Rezeption der naturwissenschaftlichen Schriften', pp. 174-
200.
[426] Hennig, J.: 'Goethe Kenntnis des naturwissenschaftlichen Schrifttums Italiens',
JFDH (1981) 189-206.
[427] Schad, W.: 'Die geschichtliche Voraussetzung der Anthroposophie in der
Neuzeit', in Zivilisation der ZukunJt: Arbeitsfelder der Anthroposophie (ed. by
H. Rieche and W. Schuchhardt), Urachhaus, Stuttgart, 1981, pp. 21-55.
[428] Abel, A.: Die ZwolJtontechnik Weberns und Goethes Methodik der Farbenlehre.
Zur Kompositionstheorie und Asthetik der neuen Wiener Schule (Beihefte zum
Archiv fur Musikwissenschaft, 19), Franz Steiner Verlag, Wiesbaden, 1982. vii,
293 pp.
[429] Brauning-Oktavio, H.: 'Goethes naturwissenschaftliche Schriften und die Freiheit
von Forschungund Lehre', JFDH (1982) 110-215.
[430] Runge, P.O.: Briefe und Schriften 1777-1810 (ed. and carom. by Peter
Betthausen), C. H. Beck, Miinchen, 1982. 329 pp.
XII. PRAXIS
What differentiates the following entries from those in the preceding

eleven sections is that Goethe is no longer the subject: rather, he has
served in some sense as an inspiration or a model for original work in
the spirit of his method: there is even some justification for viewing this
as an ongoing research program within the context of a scientific
'paradigm.' In many cases the influence is immediate and explicit even
in the title; in others, Goethe remains very much in the background.
Goethe scientific work has found an echo not only within the
sciences proper, but also in literary theory, painting, music and philos-
ophy. The scope of this section has been expanded accordingly.
A number of the nineteenth-century titles must now be considered
'classiGs' by almost any measure. Purkinje (No. 432) and Muller (Nos.
433 and 434) both dedicated works to Goethe, while Schopenhauer
(Nos. 431 and 436) and Owen (No. 435) were heavily influenced by
him. In this century, Ostwald (No. 437), Hering (No. 438) and of
course Wolf and Troll (Nos. 443 and 446) were strongly influenced as
well. M. Born's -study (No. 462), while too recent to be considered a

'classic' and only very indirectly 'inspired' by Goethe, nevertheless
deserves special note.
lt makes little sense to speak of 'introductions' in this section: one
can only indicate what strikes one as interesting, promising, or even
exemplary. Inevitably, such judgements are rather subjective, and the
reader will weigh them accordingly. Schwenk's method (No. 461) has
much in common with Goethe's, with results that are strikingly aesthetic.
Wilson and Brocklebank's work on color (many entries here and in
Section Vll) seems to me elegant and profound. And finally, of the
many fine studies by Bockemiihl and Schad (most originally published
in EdN; many reprinted in Nos. 494, 495, 499 and 500), I would
recommend above all Nos. 463 (discussed in my own essay in the
present volume) and 474.
[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-
numgedanke inmitten der Kulturkrisis der Gegenwart, Philosophisch-Anthro-

posophischer Verlag am Goetheanum, Dornach/Schweiz, 1932. 265 pp.
Rpt. expo edn. Der Goetheanumgedanke inmitten der Kulturkrisis der Gegen-
wart. Gesammelte AuJsiitze aus der Wochenschrift 'Das Goetheanum' 1921-
1925 (GA 36), Rudolf Steiner-Nachlassverwaltung, DornachiSchweiz, 1961.
379 pp.
[441] Dacque, E.: Organische Morphologie und Paliiontologie, Verlag von Gebriider
Borntrager, 1935. viii, 476 pp.
[442] Steiner, R.: Colour, Rudolf Steiner Publishing Co., London!Anthroposophic
Press, New York, 1935. 176 pp. .
Rpt. Colour. Three Lectures given in Dornach, 6th to 8th May, 1921, with Extracts
from his Notebooks (new trans. by J. Salter), Rudolf Steiner Press, London,
1970.96 pp.
Rpt. pb. 1977.
The German original was published only in 1973 [ef. No. 485].
[443] Wolf, L., and Troll, W.: Goethes morphologischer Auftrag. Versuch einer natur-
wissenschaftlichen Morphologie, Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, Leipzig,
1940.71 pp.
Rpt. 'Goethes morphologischer Auftrag', Botanisches Archiv 41 (1940) 1-71.
Rpt. 3rd rev. edn. Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tiibingen, 1950.76 pp.
[444] Troll, W.: 'Aufgaben und Wege morphologischer Forschung in der Botanik', in his
Gestalt und Urbild [ef. No. 446], pp. 91-147.
[445] Troll, W.: 'Die urbildliche Denkweise', in his Gestalt und Urbild [ef. following
entry], pp. 51-90. .
[446] Troll, W.: Gestalt und Urbild. Gesammelte Aufsiitze zu Grundfragen der
orgtmischen Morphologie (Die Gestalt, 2), Akademische Verlags-Gesellschaft,
Leipzig, 1941. vi, 182 pp.
Rpt. 2nd rev. edn. Max Niemeyer Verlag, Halle, 1942.
[447] *Steiner, R.: Der Goetheanismus, ein Menschen-Umwandlungsimpuls und
Auferstehungsgedanke. Sechs Vortriige, gehalten vom 3. bis 12. Januar 1919
in Dornach, Philosophisch-anthroposophischer Verlag am Goetheanum,
DornachiSchweiz, 1942. 137 pp.
Rpt. 2nd expo edn. (GA 183), Rudolf Steiner-Nachlassverwaltung, Dornachl
Schweiz, 1967. 262 pp.
Rpt. 3rd edn. 1982.
[448] Miiller, G.: Die Gestaltfrage in der Literaturwissenschaft und Goethes Mor-
phologie (Die Gestalt, Abhandlungen zu einer allgemeinen Morphologie, 13),
Max Niemeyer Verlag, Halle/Saale, 1944.
[449] Oppel, H.: Morphologische Literaturwissenschaft: Goethes Ansicht und Methode,
Verlag Kirchheim, Mainz, 1947. 120 pp.
*Rpt. (LibelJi, 219), Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt, 1967.
[450] Grohmann, G.: Die PJlanze. Ein Weg zum Verstiindnis ihres Wesens, 2 vols.,
Novalis-Verlag, Schaffhausen, 1948 and 1951. 207 and 217 pp.
Rpt. Verlag Freies Geistesleben, Stuttgart, Vol. 1: 5th edn., 1975; Vol. 2: 3rd edn.,
1981.
[451] Goethe in unserer Zeit. Rudolf Steiners Goetheanismus als Forschungsmethode
(ed. by G. Wachsmuth), Hybernia-Verlag, Dornach/Basel, 1949.243 pp.
[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.
[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.
[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.
[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.
[467] Schad, W.: 'Stauphiinomene am menschlichen Knochenbau', EdN 3 (1965)

15-27.
[468] Schwenk, T.: Chaos. The Creation of Flowing Forms in Water and Air
(trans. by O. Whicher and J. Wrigley; pref. by J. Y. Cousteau), Rudolf Steiner
Press, London, 1965. 144 pp.
Rpt. Schocken, New York, 1978.
[469] *Wilson, M.: 'Colour is where you see it', Die Farbe. International Congress Report,
Luzern, 1965, pp. 991-100l.
[470] Bockemiihl, J.: 'Bildebewegungen im Laubblattbereich hoherer Pflanzen', EdN 4
(1966) 7-23.
Rpt. GNw2,pp.17-35.
[471] Bunsow, R.: 'Die Bedeutung des BIuhimpulses fUr die Metamorphose der
Pflanze', EdN 5 (1966) 1-10.
Rpt. GNw 2, pp. 97-114.
[472] Schad, W.: 'Biologisches Denken', EdN 5 (1966) 10-19.
Rpt. in Goetheanistische Naturwissenschaft. 1 [cf. No. 494], pp. 9-25.
[473] Bockemuhl, J.: 'Das Ganze im Teil', EdN 6 (1967) 1-8.
[474] Schad, W.: 'Zur Biologie der Gestalt der mitteleuropaischen buchenverwandten
Baume (Fagales)', EdN 7 (1967) 11-24.
Rpt. GNw2,pp.153-176.
[475] Gobel, T.: 'Das Fruchtblatt in der PfIanzenmetamorphose', EdN 8 (1968)
44-54.
[476] Gobel, T.: 'Laubblatt und Keimblatt in der Pflanzenmetamorphose', EdN 9
(1968) 27-44.
[477] Muller," G.: Morphologische Poetik. Gesammelte AUfsiitze (ed. H. Egner and E.
Muller), Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt, 1968.590 pp.
[478] Bockemuhl, J.: 'Staubblatt und Fruchtblatt', EdN 13 (1970) 12-24.
Rpt. 'Staubblatt und Fruchtblatt. Beitrage zum Verstiindnis der Bildebewegung im
Blutenbereich', GNw 2, pp. 115-129.
[479] Gobel, T.: 'Die Metamorphose der Blute', Die Drei 41 (1971) 126-138.
Rpt. GNw 2, pp. 82-96.
[480] Schad, W.: Siiugetier und Mensch: Zur Gestaltbiologie vom Gesichtspunkt der
Dreigliederung (Menschenkunde und Erziehung, 26), Verlag Freies Geis-
tesleben, Stuttgart, 1971.296 pp.
[481] Bockemuhl, J.: 'Charakterisierung von Qualitaten in der Pfianzenentwicklung',
EdN 17 (1972) 1-15.
[482] Bockemuhl, J.: 'Der Jahreslauf als Ganzheit in der Natur. Ein Weg zu seinem
schrittweisen Begreifen, entwickelt an Versuchsarbeiten mit Senecio vulgaris
(gemeines Greiskraut)" EdN 16 (1972) 17-33.
[483] *Wilson, M. H.: 'Colour in Therapy', Journal of the Colour Group of Great
Britain 16 (1972) 243f.
[484] Bockemuhl, J.: 'Vom Lesen im Buch der Natur am Beispiel des KIatschmohns
(papaver rhoeas L.)', EdN 18 (1973) 1-13.
[485] Steiner, R.: Das Wesen der Farben. Drei Vortriige, gehalten in Dornach am 6., 7.
und 8. Mai 1921 sowie neun Vortriige als Ergiinzungen aus dem Vortragswerk
der Jahre 1914 bis 1924. (ed. by H. Raske and H. Wiesberger), Rudolf Steiner-
Verlag, DornachiSchweiz, 1973.246 pp.
Rpt. 1976.
[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.
[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
Ann Arbor MI 48109-1275
INDEX OF NAMES
Aach,H. 102 Bruno, G. 208,216

Agassi, J. 373 Buchholtz, W. H. 342
Alton, E. J. d' 14,26,138 Buttner, Hofrat 362,365
Ampere, A. M. 226 Buffon, G. 5-8,11-12,19,24,374
Anaxagoras 368 Burtt, E. A. 200
Arber, A. 134, 136, 268-9, 271, 290, Buttel, C. D. von 235
405-6,417,429,435
Aristotle 8,54-5,89, 171,213,221-2, Caesar, J. 83
224,234,236,242,258,261,288-9, Camerarius, R. J. 141
290,356-8,380-81 Camper, P. 22
Ayer, A. J. 328 Candolle, A. P. de 135-6,274
Candolle, C. de 136
Bacon, F. 49, 51, 54, 70, 78-9, 96, 184, Carnap, R. 216-17
202,230,232,358-9 Carus,K.G.14-15,427-8
Baer, K.E. von 274 Cassirer, E. 237,268-9,274,293,295-
Bartholinus, E. 33 6,298,408-9,417,428
Bello,F. 39 Charcot, J. M. 91,99
Bellow, S. 416 Chladni, E. 30, 34
Belyi, A. 408 Coleridge, S. T. 29,30,38,40,42
Benn, G. 343,409 Comte, A. 384
Bergmann, C. 25 Copernicus, N. 116,192,221,347
Berkeley, G. 61 Cuvier, L. C. von 15,274,347,348
Bertalanffy, L. von 410-11
Blumenbach, J. F. 11,17-20,22,24,374 Danaus, King 101
Bockemiihl, J. 281, 301-5, 308, 310, Darwin, C. 4,15,17-18,26-7;63,65,
312, 314, 317-8, 380, 386, 433, 78,124,135,257,260-61,265,270,
435-7 273,293,296-7,343,375,378
B6hme, J. 29-30,42 Davy,H. 30
Bohr, N. 354-5,364,384,387 Descartes, R. 6, 67, 126, 128, 158-9,
Bonnet, C. 6, 8 162,197,221-4,226,303,317,341,
Boring, E. G. 198 356,369
Born, M. 419,433,435 Democritus 215
Bossel, H. 344 Derrida, J. 98
Boyle,R. 79 Dewey, J. 70,78
Brabant, R. H. 42 Diderot, D. 56
Brentano, F. 238 Dilthey, W. 67-8,80-81
Breuer,J. 91-3,99 DuBois-Reymond, M. E. 91, 198-99,
Brewster, D. 58,59-60,419 343,427-8
Briicke, E. 91-2,98 Duhem, P. 224,226-8,233,243,375
439
440 INDEX OF NAMES
Eastlake, C. 102-8, 110, 171, 405- Helmholtz, H. von 36-9,45-8,57-78,

7 80-81, 86-7, 91-2, 94-6, 98-9,
Eckermann, J. P. 41, 195,204,235,243, 175, 180, 198-9,215,220,224-5,
399 301,373-4,376,407-8,414,427
Eckhart, Meister 42 Henschel, A. W. 142
Edwards, L. 384-5 Heraclitus 123,365
Egloffstein, J. von 35 Herder, J. G. 10-12,14,143,207,267,
Einstein, A. 354-5 343
Eissler, K. 85 Hering, E. 36, 38-9, 42, 374, 432-3,
Euclid 179,226 435
Hobbes, T. 60,70,77,81
Faraday, M. 76 Holbach, Baron d' 5
Feuchtersleben, E. 427 Hooke, R. 32,40,42
Feyerabend, P. 86,191,375,383 Howard, L. 118
Fichte, J. G. 66-7,79 Humboldt, A. von 25
Fliess, W. 91,93-4,99 Humboldt brothers [A. and W. von] 17,
Fontenelle, B. de 220, 222 343,374
Forster, G. 19 Hume, D. 208,216,286-7,337,377
Fourier, J. B. J. 224,227,231,326 Husser!, E. 62, 192,217,336
Frauenstadt 80 Huygens, C. 32-3,42
Fresnel, A. 31, 40, 227 Huxley, T. H. 274-8,283,427-8
Freud, S. xi, 83-6, 91-4, 97-99
Jacobi, F. H. 41,87,240
Gadamer, H.-G. 238-9,410 Jean Paul 39-40,42
Galilei, Galileo xii, 116, 197, 199, 213, Jensen, W. 84
221-2,352-4,356-9,385 Judd, D. 102,422
Galvani, L. 373
Gerard de Nerval 101 Kant,1. 11,19-22,24,26-7,53,66-7,
Gibson, J. J. 90 74-5,81,85-6,89, 90,95, 120-21,
Goodman, N. 321-2 165-6, 171, 185, 195, 209-10, 214,
Goebel, K. 304 234-6, 283-4, 286-7, 289, 317,
Goodwin, B. 384 343,347,359,361,365-8,374
Gouy,L.-G. 190 Kaufmann, W. 416
Grassmann, H. G. 180 Kelvin, Lord [William Thomson] 227
Grew, N. 135,269 Kepler,J. 116
Griesinger, 227 Kielmeyer, K. F. 17
Kirchoff, G. R. 65,74,377
Habermas, J. 98 Klopstock, F. G. 343
Haldane, R. B. 408 Knebel, K. L. von 10
Haller, A. von 5,6,8,18-19,27,374 KOireuter,J.G. 141
Haeckel, E. 17,26,432 Krafft 84
Hanson, N. R. 86,228,232-3,375 Kuhn, T. 86,375
Hegel, G. W. F. 30-32,66,68,81, 126,
207,216,343,427 Ladd-Franklin, C. 39
Heisenberg, W. 154, 345-7, 374, 407, Lakatos, 1. 154
413-4,419-20,422 Lamarck, C. de 14-15
Heitler, W. 217,414,419,421 Land, E. H. 36,39,42,86,374
INDEX OF NAMES 441
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
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Goethe and The Sciences: A Reappraisal

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GOETHE AND THE SCIENCES: A REAPPRAISAL

BOSTON STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

EDITED BY ROBERT S. COHEN AND MARX W. WARTOFSKY

with an Annotated Bibliography by Frederick Amrine

D. REIDEL PUBLISHING COMPANY

Goethe and the sciences.

(Boston studies in the philosophy of science; v. 97)

Published by D. Reidel Publishing Company,

Sold and distributed in the U.S.A. and Canada

In all other countries, sold and distributed

All Rights Reserved

EDITORIAL PREFACE vii

ABBREVIA TIONS xvii

PART I. GOETHE IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE

DOROTHEA KUHN / Goethe's Relationship to the Theories of

PART II. EXPANDING THE LIMITS OF TRADITIONAL

CARL FRIEDRICH VON WEIzsAcKER / Goethe and

GERNOT BOHME / Is Goethe's Theory of Color Science? 147

PART III. CONTEMPORARY RELEVANCE:

RONALD H. BRADY / Form and Cause in Goethe's Mor-

FREDERICK AMRINE and FRANCIS J. ZUCKER / Post-

FREDERICK AMRINE / Goethe and the Sciences: An Anno-

INDEX OF NAMES 439

Goethe's writings on the natural sciences comprise thirteen volumes of

Later he wrote (recorded in the posthumous item 812 of Maxims and

F. Amrine, F. J. Zucker, and H. Wheeler (eds.), Goethe and the Sciences:

As to method in the sciences, Goethe was the serious historian, as we

And later, in the historical part of the treatise:

What then shall we make of theories, and of theory-making? How up-to-

Our temptation is already evident: to quote from Goethe's writings

October 1986 ROBERT S. COHEN

In his scientific work, Goethe simultaneously stands within modern

morphology, fields in which he considered this transposition of

consigned to the wastebin of rejected paradigms? These are the

part of Goethe's method, his 'enhanced empiricism,' in taxonomy

HA J. W. von Goethe, Werke. Hamburger Ausgabe in 14 Banden

GOETHE IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE

GOETHE'S RELATIONSHIP TO THE THEORIES OF

Buffon's famous representation of nature which began to appear in

hidden invisibly in the egg or sperm created in the beginning by God.

structure of the nature-machine fit together and functioned. Given this

succession of similar phenomena in nature was as illuminating to him as

The above-mentioned criteria for the view of nature of Goethe's time

him away from the idea of species as being predetermined in germs. He

God even if he spoke of active nature. On the other hand, knowledge of

He avoided these difficulties by dismissing them. Upon his return

THE ETERNAL LAWS OF FORM:

In 1802 Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus announced the birth of a new

THE PROBLEM CONTEXT OF GOETHE'S BIOLOGICAL

Goethe summarized the essence of his approach to biology in a few

Aile Glieder bilden sich aus nach ew'gen Gesetzen,

The major difference between the conception of biological science

These difficult and intricate problems relating to biocausality

Clearly, Kant went on to argue, biological organisms qualify as

transformed into a basic organic matter by a process incapable of

laws in terms of which the forces constitutive of the organic realm

The fundamental plans referred to by Kant in this passage were the

metamorphosis of plants in which the continuous transformation of an

appear quite differently in different animals, either part or all of it being

The Conditions of Existence

I have spoken up to now of Goethe's concern with internal laws of

just one side of a more comprehensive science which Goethe called

Such variables as the role of the climate, temperature, moisture, and