Determination Regarding Goethe's Color Theory

GA 320 — Dornach

At the end of her very remarkable remarks, Dr. Rabel said that I once remarked that these newer experiments can actually serve to confirm Goethe's theory of colors. Dr. Rabel was kind enough to give me one of her treatises on this subject, and I said that the facts revealed in this way by modern physics are indeed in line with what must gradually lead to a confirmation of Goethe's theory of colors.

Now, there is really no possibility today to enter into all the pros and cons of Goethe's theory of colors and, let us say, the anti-Goethean theory of colors. The fact is that, for the time being, the physical concepts that are common today are based on theoretical assumptions that are indeed correct, as I once heard from a physicist with whom I had a conversation about Goethe's theory of colors. He said quite simply, and I must verify this explicitly, he said quite honestly: A physicist today — and he rightly described himself as such — cannot imagine Goethe's theory of colors at all! And that is something that is actually quite correct.

We must not forget that there are certain things that must first be overcome if Goethe's theory of colors is to be taken seriously, and only seriously, by physics. Isn't it true that physicists today are initially inclined to investigate what they call light in such a way that, within the field of investigation, what they describe as subjective no longer plays a role, that, in a sense, the experience that is present in light phenomena serves at most to make one more attentive in observing that something is happening here or there. But what physicists want to include in their interpretations of light phenomena, which they then extend to color phenomena, is supposed to be an entity completely independent of subjective experience.

Goethe starts from completely different premises in his thinking in general. That is why I still consider what I said in 1893 in a lecture on Goethe's view of nature in Frankfurt am Main to be correct in a certain sense: Goethe's statements on morphology can be discussed, and I also gave a lecture on this at the time, because in a certain respect the mental images that Goethe had about metamorphosis and, in connection with metamorphosis, about the origins of species, already encounter those that come from the Darwin-Haeckel view, albeit in a completely different way. So, in a certain sense at least, there is already a field where the views overlap. But with regard to Goethe's theory of colors, which, incidentally, does not claim to be optics, this is by no means the case. Therefore, it is certainly possible to talk about Goethe's theory of colors on an anthroposophical basis; such a discussion is entirely possible. However, a discussion with what a physicist today has to say about colors, what he derives from his physical foundations, would still be quite fruitless. For this, it is necessary that certain basic ideas that Goethe implicitly had and from which he proceeded in his theory of colors be made explicit, so that they can truly be taken as a basis.

That is why I consider everything I have said in my books about Goethe's theory of colors to be something that has been thrown out into the world for the time being and which does not actually claim to enter into a fruitful—I mean fruitful—— discussion with the ideas of physics, which are not opposed to them, but come from completely different sides. Well, in fact, you can be quite sure, and the previous speaker has already taught us a great deal about this, that Goethe would recognize a confirmation of his basic views in all the phenomena that Dr. Rabel has so kindly presented today. And that is precisely what I would like to argue.

From one point of view, it is true, but it is not entirely true when one says, in Goethe's terms, that one side of the spectrum, i.e., what has been called long-wave rays in contrast to short-wave rays, stands in a relationship of polarity. Polarity is a very abstract relationship that can be applied to various opposites, including this one. But here, that is not at all what Goethe is actually concerned with... (Postscript incomplete). However, no matter how strongly one believes that it is possible to eliminate error through some experimental arrangement by making the beam of rays narrower and narrower until finally the entire thickness of the beam of rays—which, incidentally, is not an expression I am entitled to use, but which I am permitted to use—is eliminated and one then speaks of a “beam,” there is ultimately no difference in reality between using a wide beam or a narrow one; in principle, it makes no difference. But Goethe pointed out a fundamental difference—and this is what matters—when he conducted his own experiments through the small slit.

In the prism, you cannot exclude what modern physics wants to exclude, because you cannot, of course, somehow push a so-called “beam of zero thickness” into the experimental field. But you can do this by focusing on the sharp boundary between the dark area and the light area. There you do indeed have a sharp boundary! When one speaks of this sharp boundary, then in a certain sense one has, precisely from Goethe's experiment, what modern physics wants. Goethe worked with the boundary and not with the beam of rays; that is what matters. This demand, which is ideally and rightly made, is in principle fulfilled precisely by Goethe's working with the boundary and not with a ray or a beam of rays. And Goethe starts from what then emerges as a phenomenon at the boundary and tries to construct his experimental setups from there, which, of course, if they were to be carried out in Goethe's sense today, would have to be completely different from how Goethe carried them out.

I hope that we will undertake fundamental experiments in this regard at our physics research institute in Stuttgart and that this will also eliminate what Dr. Schmiedel called “obscuration” will be eliminated in a certain sense, and that we will learn to work with the boundaries in a precise manner and then be in a position to understand the spectrum as a phenomenon in which the boundary phenomena are processed as the original phenomena. That would be the course of action that is needed.

But when one works with the boundary in this way, one obtains precisely what Dr. Schmiedel called the polar relationship between the one and the other part of the so-called spectrum.

So: “Polarity” is a term that is used far too abstractly here in Goethe's sense! It can be used to describe all kinds of natural phenomena. Goethe, however — and I cannot go into detail this evening due to time constraints — always attempted to establish a fundamental opposition between red nature and blue nature, whereby it should be noted that Goethe does not speak of red and blue light, which can be contradicted in Goethe's sense, but of red and blue nature. Light is utterly undifferentiable, and what appear as differentiations are phenomena of light. It is right to emphasize as a result of modern physics that Goethe contrasts what he calls the entity of light with the entity of darkness, not as nothingness, but as a real entity. And now I can only hint at what is a rather complicated mental image for Goethe in a few words by saying the following: Both in the red part of the color shades and in the blue part, we are not dealing with a mixture, but with a dynamic interaction of light and darkness, but in such a way that in the red part this interaction is such that, in a sense, red results as the activity of light in darkness. So we are dealing with the interaction of light and darkness. If we are dealing with red, let's say with a red field, then we are dealing with the active light in the darkness; if we are dealing with the blue side, then we are dealing with the activity of darkness in the brightness. So that is the exact expression for polarity.

This is, of course, a mental image that I readily admit modern physicists cannot relate to very well. But for Goethe, red is the activity of light in darkness, blue is the activity of darkness in brightness, i.e., in light. This can be called polarity; it is polarity. And Goethe now applies this to physical or spectral color, and also to chemical color, and he is well aware that he is treading on uncertain ground everywhere, because he cannot, of course, apply this general principle in detail. But let us now take what I have just briefly touched upon, so that wherever colors occur, wherever colors appear, we have something qualitative. And there we stand at the point where the decision will one day be made in this regard.

You see, it is still the case today that one experiences, so to speak, a wealth of phenomena. Even today, you have been presented with a whole wealth of phenomena in a most commendable manner, which actually required a whole series of lectures to show how they actually fit into Goethe's theory of colors and into the entire field of natural science. But we are experiencing phenomena today which — in a completely different way from, for example, the theoretical considerations of the theory of relativity and so on about the concepts of speed in relation to light — must lead to rectifications. We are experiencing precisely what Dr. Rabel herself has emphasized, namely that physicists feel compelled, albeit in a very modified form, to return to Newton's emission theory. There is, however, a very big difference between Newton's theory, which was derived from relatively simple phenomena, and the present day. For I believe that today's view is based mainly on the fact that, according to the usual wave theory, it is impossible to imagine how the following is possible: When ultraviolet light is allowed to fall on a metal, electrons are reflected back, and these electrons can be examined. They then show a certain strength. This strength does not depend on the distance of the source of ultraviolet light from the metal. You can place the source far away and still get the same voltage. Now, of course, if, as is assumed, the light intensity remains the same, the intensity should decrease with the progressive degree of distance. However, this is not the case for the electrons that are reflected back to you from the metal. You can see that their intensity does not decrease with the degree of distance, but depends solely on the color. If you have the color nearby, it is the same as at a greater distance. This initially leads us to conclude that we must think differently about what we call light. Today, we help ourselves by taking quantum theory as a basis, which says that nothing continuous spreads, as gravity is thought to spread, but that light spreads atomistically. If it spreads atomistically, then the relevant quantum is at some point and then it has an effect. It is not a question of... the quantum can only be in one place. If it is there at all, then it has a triggering effect on the electron effects.

So, these things have led back to the emission theory. While Newton imagines that substances, entities, somehow expand in a ponderable manner, but are such that one would have to say that the intensity decreases with the square of the distance, it is now the case that these are replaced by the propagation of electromagnetic fields, which then really pass through space, in the sense of quantum theory. So we are actually dealing with the emission of electromagnetic fields, whereas in the undulation theory, which was quite common at the time when I myself was young, we were dealing with a mere progression of motion, so that nothing actually radiates in space, but only the motion is continued. These mental images of what objectively exists are actually — at least in my view — in a state of constant flux today, and the experiments that are available point everywhere to what Dr. Rabel rightly emphasized, namely that one cannot get by with the mere assumption of wavelengths, that this contains a kind of contradiction in itself. But that is precisely what is at issue. Basically, what we have is that over a long period of time we have become accustomed to thinking in terms of wavelengths and so on as the only thing that matters. The mental image was extremely simple. People calculated objectively using waves of certain wavelengths and vibrations of certain speeds, describing what lies in the spectrum from violet to red as making an impression on the retina of the eye. Beyond red, there are other vibrations that do not make an impression, but they do not differ qualitatively from those in the violet spectrum. Some people rebelled against this, some rejected it in interesting ways, such as Eugen Dreher in the 1970s and 1980s, who conducted numerous experiments to prove that light, heat, and chemical entities are three radically different entities. This could also be proven to a certain extent. And the current state of affairs proves that the whole complex of questions is basically in flux. As soon as one comes to what, apart from the subjective, actually exists under the complex of “light phenomena” ... (gap) ... The essential thing about Goethe is that he introduced what is now becoming apparent to physics. Certainly, he introduced it according to the inadequate state of physics at the end of the 18th century. But he did introduce it.

Looking at it today, one says to oneself: Certainly, it is all tremendously interesting. And I must admit that the whole treatment of the undulation theory was more interesting when I was young, because the undulation theory was developed to excess, and everything was calculated quite precisely, down to the smallest detail. But today, young people are no longer bothered with this unusual undulation theory. After all, it looks somewhat different if one calculates undulation from theoretical mechanics using some kind of ether hypothesis, or if one starts from the mode of action of electromagnetic fields. Then everything seems a little more vague. Today, there is no longer the same need to calculate everything so precisely within the phenomena of light as there was forty or thirty-five years ago. It is, of course, extremely interesting to discover all the subtleties, but they are the result of calculations, and the decisive proof for these calculations is actually seen in the interference experiment. Today, the interference experiment is in a state where it needs a new explanation. Modern physics admits this. And quantum theory has not really achieved much in this regard. The situation is this: we have not yet progressed very far, but we are seeing more and more how certain useful numbers, auxiliary numbers, can be found in the vibration numbers or wavelengths. These are all good accounting figures, but no one today can actually say that there is anything real behind them. I would say that if you specify the vibration number for the so-called red rays and the blue rays, you have a certain ratio between red and blue, expressed as the ratio of one number to the other. We can already say today that the ratios between the individual numbers are much more important than the absolute values of the individual vibration numbers. And that leads from the quantitative to the qualitative. Today, we are on the way to saying: Wavelengths alone are not enough; we need something else.

But this something else is becoming more and more similar to what Goethe sought in his quest. This is not yet so strictly noticeable today, but for those who know things well, it is quite noticeable how physics is gradually leading in this direction, and, as I said, Goethe would certainly understand the phenomena that have been mentioned today as confirmation of his view.

It is of course difficult to go into detail because the foundations for this have not been laid today. I would just like to address the question of plants in principle, for example. I do not wish to get into things such as whether or not one may use an expression such as “absorbed.” If you take it as a mere description of what is present, I have no objection, but if you simplify the matter so much that, when something bright catches your eye and you place a piece of glass in front of it and see a red field behind the glass, you say: “All the other colors are swallowed up by the glass, only the red has been allowed to pass through,” then you are substituting a completely speculative explanation for an observed phenomenon, for which there is actually no real basis. It is perfectly acceptable to stick with the phenomenon itself. But take, for example, what Goethe expressed, perhaps even in an imperfect way: The activity of light, of brightness in darkness, underlies red; the activity of darkness in brightness, in light, underlies blue. What underlies the nuances, as shading, green or orange, is not important now; one cannot go into that. I can only indicate the basic phenomenon. And then you have what I am now only I would like to say, approximately, then you are dealing with darkness as something real, then you have to be clear about it — there is, of course, a great deal to support what I am going to say, but even from a very superficial examination of the matter, one can become clear about it — that this darkness in a certain way opposes light. This is, of course, a subjective perception, but there are also objective facts. One must naturally assume a polarity if one does not want to remain in the abstract but wants to deal with the concrete. If you now think about this polarity of light and dark, you gradually arrive at a mental image that presents you with a certain impossibility: to speak of the spread of an entity in the same way for darkness as for light. The experiments that have been carried out to date do not decide anything about this! For you see, if you think — of course it is more than that, but that is based on supersensible observations or semi-supersensible observations, but let us take it for the moment as a possibility, as a hypothesis — that lightness is schematically described by the fact that a spreading takes place. You cannot then describe darkness by saying that a spreading takes place, but must describe darkness as something like a sucking action taking place from infinity, so to speak. So you would not be able to say of a room lined with black walls: There is a spreading, an emission or something similar, but rather that there is a suction, suction effects, which of course must have a cause, because you naturally need a center. But the possibility of suction effects is, to put it trivially, what is present in the black room, in contrast to the illuminated room, where you are dealing with spreading effects.

If you keep that in mind, the color representation will become more and more concrete, and you will see something of the sucking effect in the blue—this is only an approximation, of course—and something of the spreading effect in the red, with the green representing neutralization, so to speak. And now think — we have to go into a deeper layer of mental imagery — if you consider what is present there as a sucking effect in relation to the plant, you have the sucking effect behind the color, which is in contrast to certain inner forces of the plant. You have these forces working within the entire configuration, within the entire organization of the plant.

So we must, in a sense, go behind the color phenomena. In the color phenomena we find only the symptomatic expression of what lies deeper behind the color effects. We thus arrive at a polarity, if we do not view it merely as an abstract polarity, but enter into this very special kind of polarity, so that when we make it subjective and see blue, for example, we are basically exposing the eye to a suction effect, and in red to a pressure effect in a certain sense, which, however, is not to be thought of mechanically, but intensively.

Once we have that, we also get mental images that are naturally much more complicated than this one, where I say: I place a glass pane in the path of an illuminated beam and get a red field at the back. Everything else has been swallowed up except the red. We are then led to a completely different kind of formulation of the problem. The demand arises to investigate the nature of the material placed in the path from the phenomenon that is before me. If we start there, we are led to a completely different method, say, of polarization phenomena. This leads us, by a certain detour, to a very strict view, as Dr. Rabel also said. (Turning to Dr. Rabel): You mentioned an English physicist. However, a whole series of physicists have already pointed out that these phenomena do not actually have anything to do with something that points to the entity of light, but rather to the matter that is opposed to light, especially organic matter, i.e., let us say, plants.

This is what we will increasingly be led to, that we will move away from, let us say, constructing polarization figures directly into the light. This is something that worked wonderfully well with the old, purely mechanical wave theory, but which will no longer be valid in the same way in the current situation. Physicists are now being led to see not only the course of the polarization figures, so that they construct them into the light, but they see an interaction of light with matter, so that, in a sense, the constitution of matter is revealed by what occurs there, also in other phenomena that occur in such a way that they are regarded as emissions of electromagnetic waves. It is much more interesting today to look at things in such a way that one sees how one gradually emerges from a way of looking at things that is really based only on the fact that one has become so accustomed to this mechanical way of looking at things with the ether, which is constructed by some as a solid ether and by others as a liquid. ... (gap) ... We have become accustomed to certain mental images and cannot escape them, truly... If we stick with wave theory, we must assume that there is something else underlying it... And here it must be pointed out that Goethe was on the way to investigating these foundations. He was not really interested in the whole theory of undulation, which he had known all his life, but rather in what I have indicated in a very inadequate way by tracing polarity back to the concrete.

One gains a deeper understanding of what Goethe wanted precisely by taking his “Theory of Colors” chapter by chapter, even up to the sensual-moral effects of colors, where colors disappear from view, so to speak, and spiritual-soul, moral qualities appear. One experiences them in the place of red and blue, where one is transported into the realm of the soul. And Goethe would say: Actually, it is only then that one experiences something in relation to the essence of color, when color disappears and something completely different appears.

This is where the beginning of the paths to higher knowledge described by anthroposophically oriented spiritual science appear, which lead to the fact that one no longer makes this distinction between subject and object, which no longer applies at a certain level of knowledge, but which lead to the subject passing over into the object. This must be observed. There can be no theory of knowledge that can ever be satisfactory if there is an absolute abyss between subject and object, but only if this division between subject and object is, in essence, only a provisional assumption, as has been shown in epistemology. Modern physics, as defined by Blanc, for example, aims to exclude the subjective entirely and to represent phenomena as they occur in the objective field without taking humans into account in any way. Louis Blanc says: Physics should actually only seek what a Martian—even if he were organized completely differently—could claim about the objective world. And that is indeed quite correct. But the question is this: whether one cannot also find something in human beings themselves that corresponds to the results of physics, which are sought purely in terms of measure, number, and weight, whether, with a corresponding higher knowledge, there is not also something in human beings that corresponds to this. And here one must say: Yes, that is it! We go through the region that is then experienced and that the modern physicist actually only gains through a construction, a certain construction from the phenomenon. Only this region appears in such a way that the substance underlying it is no longer material, but spiritual. One even acquires the right to apply the formulas of physics in a certain form, only inserting a different substance. Newton believed that a kind of ponderable matter was poured into the equations, the formulas; Huygens' undulation theory: only the number of waves is poured in; the newer theory: electromagnetic fields are poured in.

So what actually floats on the formulas is something about which a certain liberality already prevails today in the course of theories. And that is why one should not resist too much when the humanities are compelled to put spirit into these equations flying and dancing through space. Neither what Newton wanted, nor what the very modern physicist wants, but rather to put spirit into it! Only first you have to know what spirit is. That is not based on any theory, but on a higher experience.

I therefore believe that what Dr. Rabel has so thankfully presented today will indeed contribute more and more to a correct understanding of Goethe's theory of colors. However, I do not believe that it is possible today to go into questions such as those raised by Dr. Stein, for example. For that would require going into the whole nature of electricity. And that touches on questions that can really only be discussed, if not resolved, in the field of anthroposophy. For then we naturally come into contact with concepts that, one might say, turn everything that we are accustomed to recognizing theoretically in physics today on its head.

Even if we have now moved away from this somewhat, it was not so long ago that we calculated with electric currents and the like. Now, however, we have to deal with the reality — and this is just the result of the higher knowledge that I am about to share with you — with electrical currents, not with something that flows in, but in reality, if I may suggest this schematically, with the fact that when we have a wire through which a so-called electrical current flows, we have a gap in reality.

If I want to describe reality — I am now talking about a degree of reality that many will not accept — if I want to describe reality here, for example, with + a, then I would have to describe the reality inside the wire with -a. And then we have a suction of that which is actually always regarded as flowing in. And essentially, what we are dealing with here is that when there is an electrical conductor, it does not actually represent something that fills a space, but rather a hollow space in the spiritual realm. And that leads us over to the nature of the will, which Dr. Stein only anticipated here, which is actually based on the fact that we are not dealing with, say, nerves that fill, but with hollow channels, hollow tubes through which the spiritual is sucked in and through which the spiritual passes.

But that, as I said, would lead us too far afield today, and I have actually only set myself the task of showing to what extent, or rather how, this was meant at the time when I said: These newer phenomena actually lie in line with the further development of Goethe's theory of colors.

Answers to Questions

[Question not recorded]

I am not opposed to the use of the word “absorption,” but the fact that something can be named [or cannot be named, or can only be named by Goethe] says nothing about the phenomenon. Whether [this word] is a good or bad choice is not determined by this. So there is no further cause for offense in the use of the word absorption, and even in a certain justification for it, if I see a further problem in it; but it is simply that the problem is actually made very easy by speaking of absorption in a conclusive sense, not in the sense of raising a problem.

[Question not recorded]

[However, it is part of the development of modern physics, and it will generally be accepted that even an average physicist will say of the views put forward by Miss Rabel what was said to me at the time: A modern physicist cannot do anything with that at all.] Physicists are very committed to these wave lines, and it is sometimes very strange to what extent people still talk about wave theory, even though they could actually work with [quantum theory].