Goethean science concerns the natural philosophy (German Naturphilosophie "philosophy of nature") of German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Although primarily known as a literary figure, Goethe did research in morphology, anatomy, and optics. He also developed a phenomenological approach to natural history, an alternative to Enlightenment natural science, which is still debated today among scholars. His works in natural history include his 1790 Metamorphosis of Plants and his 1810 book Theory of Colors. His work in colour, and his polemics against the Newtonian Optics had a mixed reception from the natural history establishment of the time — under half spoke against Goethe, while a third of natural scientists had favourable reviews of Goethe's colour theory.
Background The rationalist scientific method, which had worked well with inert nature (Bacon's natura naturata), was less successful in seeking to understand vital nature (natura naturans). At the same time, the rational-empirical model based on the predominance of mentative thinking (German: sinnen) via the intellect (German: Sinn), started by Descartes and advanced most notably in France, was leading to confusion and doubt rather than clarity. Especially in subjective topics, equally rational arguments could be made for widely divergent propositions or conceptions. The more empirical approach favored in Britain (Hume) had led to viewing reality as sense-based, including the mind; how, what we perceive is only a mental representation of what is real, and what is real we can never really know, according to Immanuel Kant's theory of appearance (Schein) and the thing-in-itself (Ding-an-sich). As one observer summarizes, there were two 'games' being played in philosophy at the time – one rational and one empirical, both of which led to total skepticism and an epistemological crisis.
The Kantian problem Immanuel Kant in Prussia undertook a major rescue operation to preserve the validity of knowledge derived via reason (science), as well as of knowledge going beyond the rational mind, that is of human liberty and of life beyond simply an expression of 'the chance whirlings of unproductive particles' (Coleridge). Kant's writings had an immediate and major impact on Western philosophy and triggered a philosophical movement known as German idealism (Fichte, Hegel, Schelling), which sought to overcome and transcend the chasm Kant had formalized between the sense-based and the super-sensible worlds, in his attempt to 'save the appearances' (Owen Barfield), that is, to preserve the validity of scientific or rational knowledge as well as that of faith. Kant's solution was an epistemological dualism: we cannot know the thing-in-itself (Das Ding an Sich) beyond our mental representation of it. While there is a power (productive imagination – produktive Einbildungskraft) that produces a unity ("transcendental unity of apperception"), we cannot know or experience it in itself; we can only see its manifestations and create representations about it in our mind. The realm beyond the senses also could not be known via reason, but only via faith. To seek to know the realm beyond the senses amounts to what Kant termed an 'adventure of reason'.
Goethe's Scientific Approach
Classification, Causation, and Laws of Nature The science editor for the Kurschner edition of Goethe's works, Rudolf Steiner, describes three ways in which Goethe's approach to Science differs from analytic modern science in The Light Course: I) Classification: First scientists divide and classify the beings and phenomena of Nature. From individual creatures and phenomena, they form concepts of species, kind and genus. This summing of external sensory impressions of many individual wolves and hyenas into kinds and species is already taken unconsciously for granted. No one reflects they should Examine how these general ideas are epistemologically related to the single data.
Although we humans cut nature up in different ways, and we have different courses in different departments, such compartmentalization is really artificial. (Richard Feynman) II) Causation: The second thing modern scientists do, is that by means of experiment, they try to arrive at what are called the 'causes' of phenomena. The forces of electricity, of magnetism, of heat or warmth. In trying to go back to the Causes of Phenomena — Science always goes from what is Known into the Unknown [in a Kantian Critical sense]. Is it really justified when we perceive a phenomenon of light or colour, to say that what we subjectively describe as the quality of colour is the effect on us of an objective process taking place as a wave-movement? To distinguish between the 'subjective' event and the 'objective' — the latter being the wave-movement, or the interaction thereof with processes in ponderable matter.
Everything we call real is made of things we cannot call real. (Niels Bohr) III) Laws of Nature: A third way scientists get at the configuration of Nature is by Summing up phenomena into 'Laws of Nature'. Kepler's Law of elliptical orbits, or Netwon's Law of Gravitation — where every body attracts every other body proportionally to their mass and inversely to the square of the distance between their centres. In these three ways "scientific research" tries to get near to Nature. Now I will emphasize at the very outset that the Goethean outlook upon Nature strives for the very opposite in all three respects.
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