Lecture I

One fact may throw considerable light on what is seeking to come into our Science by way of Goetheanism, and on what now obtains in Science. It is remarkable: few men have ever had so clear an understanding of the relation of the phenomena of Nature to mathematical thinking as Goethe had. Goethe himself not having been much of a mathematician, this is disputed no doubt. Some people think he had no clear idea of the relation of natural phenomena to those mathematical formulations which have grown ever more beloved in Science, so much so that in our time they are felt to be the one and only firm foundation. Increasingly in modern time, the mathematical way of studying the phenomena of Nature—I do not say directly, the mathematical study of Nature; it would not be right to put it in these words, but the study of natural phenomena in terms of mathematical formulae—has grown to be the determining factor in the way we think even of Nature herself.