Goethean method in the work of Jochen Bockemühl

Frederick Amrine

pp. 301-318

in: Frederick Amrine, Francis J. Zucker, Harvey Wheeler (eds), Goethe and the sciences, Berlin, Springer, 1987

Abstract

All this talk, this theorizing about Goethean science — however profound — is of course very un-Goethean. After all, Goethe himself said that his work had to be done to be understood. There is a real pitfall here, and not every commentator on Goethe's science has managed to avoid it. Take Helmholtz, for example: having analyzed The Metamorphosis of Plants, he reduced the entire text to the single proposition "the parts of the flower are the lateral appendages of the axis," and then proceeded to dismiss the manifest because the language in which it was expressed was tautologous. But Goethe was not trying to make a propositional statement about the plant: he was trying to teach us how to see it. Thus I propose an intermezzo in which we practice a little Goethean morphology together, and I hope that this entr"acte performed by a non-botanist will prove, if not instructive, at least entertaining.

Cited authors

Bockemühl Jochen

Goethe Johann Wolfgang