# 9. Salvaging Goethe's Ideas Concerning Natural Science

> "Goethe had the same effect on the intellectual life of Germany as a powerful natural phenomenon would have had on the physical."
> "...The comparison can be made that Goethe had an effect on the spiritual atmosphere of Germany like a telluric event that increased our climatic warmth by so many degrees. If such a thing happened, a different vegetation, a different way of farming and thus a new basis for our entire existence would occur."
> "Goethe created our language and literature."

These sentences by Herman Grimm (see his "Goethe Lectures") express what the educated world is becoming more and more convinced of with every passing day. Goethe has left his mark on our epoch. That which distinguishes it from other epochs in the spiritual development of mankind is largely due to Goethe.

In this picture of the most devoted veneration of the great genius, however, we still see a dark spot that stands in disturbing disharmony with the remaining brightness of the same. It concerns Goethe's *natural scientific writings*.

However, here too - with the exception of the physical part of the theory of color, which is still considered a monstrous error today - the absolute rejection has been abandoned. Many people today believe that Goethe's view of nature is based on ideas that also dominate modern natural science. But if one compares the recognition of this direction of Goethe's spirit with that accorded him in other areas, one finds that it rests on a completely different basis. Our poetry, our aesthetic view of the world, indeed our style, have become what they are today because of Goethe. He is the creator of a completely new current of the times; his scientific direction, however, is seen only as a prophecy of a new epoch, the latter itself having been created by others.

The reason for this fact is sought in the fact that Goethe lacked the principles that made the modern view of nature a scientific conviction. Because he lacked these principles, his achievements have remained without influence on the shaping of modern science. It would be what it is today even if Goethe had never turned his attention to it. *What is the basis of recognition in other areas of intellectual life, the creation of a new era, is not conceded to Goethe in the field of science.*

Under these conditions, however, the value of Goethe's scientific activity dwindles to nothing. For it must be admitted that a scientific view has not the slightest value if it lacks the principles on which it could rest as a firm foundation. It is then nothing more than a series of arbitrary assumptions whose power to convince must remain undecided. If Goethe's scientific views lack principles, then they cannot be upheld, no matter how much foreshadowing of the future they may contain. *Science must not be based on random ideas, but on principles.*

Before making this assumption, however, one is forced to ask the question: How is Goethe's inherently unfinished scientific view possible with the harmonious interaction of all his intellectual powers, in which, after all, a precondition of his mission is seen everywhere today? This question has never actually been posed with any degree of acuteness and even less has an attempt been made to answer it. Anyone who considers it in depth will arrive at a view of Goethe's scientific outlook that is very different from the one generally held today. In this context, reference may perhaps be made to the recently published edition of Goethe's scientific writings[^1] in Spemann's "Deutsche National-Literatur", in which an attempt is made to explain Goethe from within himself and to prove his rights. Professor Dr. K. J. Schröer, in the preface to this edition, has emphasized the importance of such a change in the view of. Goethe's scientific works for the recognition and appreciation of Goethe's nature. Here I can only speak very briefly about one main point of view.

Those who demand nothing more from science than that it provide the most faithful possible photograph of reality will certainly not be able to come to terms with Goethe's scientific method. But one must bear in mind that the directly given reality contains moments that do not satisfy the demands of a reasonable coherence of things. These moments cannot be traced back to principles; they arise from the contingency contained in reality. This is also the reason why reality satisfies our minds so little, why ideal natures so often come into conflict with it. Goethe felt the unsatisfactory nature of these conflicts more than anyone else. He often speaks of the "vile" chance that destroys what develops from a being with inner necessity. Completely stripping reality of its randomness and focusing solely on its underlying rational core is his artistic mission, but it is also *his scientific mission*. "Real life often loses its luster in such a way that it sometimes has to be refreshed with the varnish of fiction" ("Dichtung und Wahrheit", II, 9th book), says Goethe, thereby hinting at his poetic mission.[^2] At the same time, however, he never goes beyond what is given to man in poetry, so that Merck could say to him: "Your endeavour, your undistractable direction is to give the real a poetic form; the others seek to realize the so-called poetic, the imaginative, and that gives nothing but stupid stuff" ("Dichtung und Wahrheit", IV, 18th book). Nothing is further from Goethe's mind than the arbitrary creation of empty fantasies that are not rooted in reality. He only seeks the core of this reality that can only be reached by the mind, its inner essence, which we must presuppose if it is to be explainable to us.

*To grasp this essence requires the productivity of the mind*. This requires even more than the observation of the randomness of individual cases. The laws belong to reality, but we cannot borrow them from it; we must *create* them by means of experience. This creative faculty of the mind was characteristic of all pioneers in the field of narrower science. The phenomena of pendulum motion and falling were only comprehensible when Galileo had *created* the laws of these phenomena. Just as Galileo founded mechanics through his laws, so Goethe founded the science of the organic. That is his true relationship to science. Goethe's organic science is just as much a reflection of the phenomena of the organic world as theoretical mechanics is a reflection of the mechanical phenomena of nature. Organic science can discover new facts ad infinitum, even expand its scientific basis; the turning point at which it rose from an unscientific to a scientific method is to be sought in Goethe.

None other than this spirit, however, also dominates the physical chapter to which Goethe's efforts were directed: *the theory of colors*. This is the only way to approach this remarkable work. The fight against Newton was only the main thing for Goethe in the beginning, was only the starting point, not the goal of his optical work. The aim was none other than to reduce the rich diversity of the world of color to a systematic whole, so that every color phenomenon becomes as comprehensible to us from this whole as any connection of spatial quantities becomes from the system of mathematics. The centuries-long, well-structured, self-supporting structure of mathematics was the ideal Goethe had in mind when constructing the Theory of Colors. If one overlooks this lofty goal and places the dispute with Newton in the foreground, one only arouses misunderstandings from the outset. For the matter then appears as if Goethe had fought against a fact found by Newton, whereas his endeavor had nothing other in mind than a self-misunderstood method of correcting a hypothetical explanation of a fact. The fact that, viewed in this way, the contradiction in question takes on a completely different meaning than that usually attributed to it has been repeatedly recognized by intellectual thinkers such as Joh. Müller and Karl Rosenkranz. Newton's assertions actually have the character of the aphoristic in themselves. They extend only to a part of the theory of color, to the colors produced by the refraction of light. They immediately modify themselves when they are inserted into the system that deals with the totality of color phenomena. What is difficult to see here is actually only that it is not assertion against assertion, but a whole against a single chapter. In a harmony, one does not merely have to mechanically assemble the whole from its parts, but the parts are also determined by the nature of the whole.

A closer look at Goethe's view of nature reveals that it has one origin with all the other branches of his work. One can say that only this view was possible in his intellectual direction, and again: his poetic mission presupposed such a view of nature as he had. *The principles of Goethe's view of nature lie where the foundations of his art lie.*

Only those who fail to recognize these connections can call Goethe's theory of nature unprincipled. However, it has the key to its understanding in Goethe's nature and carries the guarantee of its truth within itself. It must succeed in satisfying mankind's need for science not through laws found later, but through the power inherent in it. Whether this will really be the case one day and whether it will one day be granted the opportunity to exert a more fruitful influence on the development of the human spirit than has been the case to date is, of course, left to the future.

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[^1]: "Goethes naturwissenschaftliche Schriften", edited by Rudolf Steiner, with a foreword by K. J. Schröer.

[^2]: K. J.Schröer: Ausgabe von Goethes Dramen, Band I, Spemanns "Deutsche National-Literatur>.