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; however, 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.(Rudolf Steiner, The Light Course, Dec.23.1919, Stuttgart GA 320) | Lecture I - GA 320. Light Course (1977) — Rudolf Steiner Archive
Goethe's approach to vital nature
In relation to Goethe's Colour Theory — Ernst Lehrs writes, "In point of fact, the essential difference between Goethe's theory of colour and the theory which has prevailed in science (despite all modifications) since Newton's day, lies in this: While the theory of Newton and his successors was based on excluding the colour-seeing faculty of the eye, Goethe founded his theory on the eye's experience of colour."Lehrs, Ernst. Man or Matter: Introduction to a Spiritual Understanding of Nature on the Basis of Goethe's Method of Training Observation and Thought , retrieved January 10, 2014
"The renouncing of life and immediacy, which was the premise for the progress of natural science since Newton, formed the real basis for the bitter struggle which Goethe waged against the physical optics of Newton. It would be superficial to dismiss this struggle as unimportant: there is much significance in one of the most outstanding men directing all his efforts to fighting against the development of Newtonian optics." (Werner Heisenberg, during a speech celebrating Goethe's birthday)Ernst Lehrs, Man or Matter, Chapter II | https://archive.org/stream/manormatter05641gut/elmom10p#page/n23/mode/2up
Goethe undertook his 'adventure of reason', starting with the "crisis" in botany, the merely and purely mechanical classification-taxonomy of plant life. In so doing, Goethe also "wagered a sweeping theory about Nature itself."
Goethe was concerned with the narrowing specialization in science and emphasis on accumulating data in a merely mechanical manner, devoid of human values and human development. Linnaean botanic taxonomic system represented this in his day, a Systema naturae. Goethe intuited the practice of rational science promoted a narrowing and contracting interplay between humanity and nature. For Goethe, any form of science based only upon physical-material characteristics and then only selected external traits, led to epistemic impoverishment and a reduction of human knowledge.
What was needed was increased ability to derive meaning from voluminous external data by looking at it from both external-sensory angles, and from an internal angle where thinking, feeling, intuition, imagination, and inspiration could all contribute to conclusions reached by the experimenter.
Linnaean taxonomy was already coming under criticism from Comte de Buffon, who argued the mechanistic classification of the outer forms of nature (natura naturata) needed to be replaced by a study of the interrelation of natural forces and natural historical change.
For Goethe, the collection of new knowledge is inseparable from a Geschichte des Denkens und Begreifens, a history of thinking and conceptualization. Knowledge is also about association, not only about separation, as Coleridge also explained in his Essays on Method (see Romantic epistemology).
While arranging material phenomena in logical linear sequence is a valid scientific method, it had to be carried out under a correct and humanistic organizing idea (Bacon's lumen siccum), itself grounded in nature, or natural law, often boundaried by multiple, lawful pairs of polarity.
Goethe proposed experimenters seek the natural, lawful organizing ideas or archetype behind specific natural phenomena. Phase One was to immerse one's self in a living interaction with the natural phenomena to be studied, with all available senses. Goethe valued "the labor of experimentation".
This contrasted greatly with a trend in rational Natural Science to 'abandon' nature itself and formulate an abstract hypothesis; then, experiment to test whether your hypothesis can be verified. Goethe considered this an 'artificial experience' which 'tears' individual manifestations out of the meaningful context of the whole (e.g., Newton's color hypothesis).
Instead, Goethe's experimenter must adopt a more living, more humane, approach aspiring to enter into the living essence of nature, as perceived in the phenomenon studied.
For Goethe, success meant penetrating to the crucial, underlying, sensorily-invisible archetype-pattern: the Ur-phänomen. The Experimenter aspires to allow the phenomena to reveal its inherent order and lawfulness. While often invisible, this lawfulness is clearly objective, not subjective, and not invented by the experimenter (see Goethe's description of a dandelion, or Steiner's copied version).
Ernst Lehrs went further in emphasizing how all objective manifestation comes from the movement of physical-material objects as motion comes to rest (Man or Matter, 3rd ed. preferred).
Goethean Science stands apart from Cartesian-Newtonian Science in its alternative value system. Regarding quantification, Goethean Science is nonetheless rigorous as to experimental method and the matter of qualities.
The German philosopher and mystic Rudolf Steiner, who was at one point an assistant editor of the standard edition of Goethe's works, applied Goethe's methodology of a living approach to nature to the performing and fine arts. This gives Anthroposophic visual and performing arts their air of going beyond the mere outer form of things (natura naturata) to discern a more inner nature (natura naturans). Steiner hoped to relate the human sphere with all of Nature through the arts; including, the art of Goethean Science.
When composing his magnum opus, Oswald Spengler acknowledged his enormous debt to Goethe for providing him with the necessary inspiration and guidance, such that he devoted two chapters to describing and explaining Goethe's 'organic' logic - which demands life-experience (rather than the scientific experience associated with inorganic logic). The former consists of "letting the impressions of the world just work upon your senses, enabling you to absorb those impressions as a whole".
Goethe's ur-phenomena Five arts was Goethe's method of transmuting his observation of human nature into sharable form. Drawing from his novel, Elective Affinities (Wahlverwandschaften), Goethe discerned a geheime Verwandschaft (hidden relationship) of parts that explains how one form can transform into another form while being part of an underlying archetypal form (Ur-phänomen).