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| Goethean science | 4/4 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goethean_science | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T09:35:20.813797+00:00 | kb-cron |
== Goethe and the idea of evolution == In the 1790s, Goethe rediscovered the premaxilla in humans, known as the incisive bone. He cited this as morphological evidence of humanity's connection to other mammalian species. Goethe writes in Story of My Botanical Studies (1831):
The ever-changing display of plant forms, which I have followed for so many years, awakens increasingly within me the notion: The plant forms which surround us were not all created at some given point in time and then locked into the given form, they have been given… a felicitous mobility and plasticity allowing them to grow and adapt themselves to many different conditions in many different places. Andrew Dickson White also writes with respect to evolutionary thought, in A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896):
About the end of the eighteenth century fruitful suggestions and even clear presentations of this or that part of a large evolutionary doctrine came thick and fast, and from the most divergent quarters. Especially remarkable were those from Erasmus Darwin in England, Maupertuis in France, Oken in Switzerland, and Herder, and, most brilliantly of all, from Goethe in Germany.
== Reception == Arthur Schopenhauer expanded on Goethe's research in optics using a different methodology in his On Vision and Colors. Rudolf Steiner presents Goethe's approach to science as phenomenological in the Kürschner edition of Goethe's writings. Steiner elaborated on this in the books Goethean Science (1883) and Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conception (1886). in which he emphasizes the need of the perceiving organ of intuition in order to grasp Goethe's biological archetype (i.e. The Typus). Steiner's branch of Goethean Science was extended by Oskar Schmiedel and Wilhelm Pelikan, who did research using Steiner's interpretations. Ludwig Wittgenstein's discussions of Goethe's Theory of Colors were published as Bemerkungen über die Farben (Remarks on Color).
Goethe's vision of holistic science inspired biologist and paranormal researcher Rupert Sheldrake.He went to an Anglican boarding school and then took biology at Cambridge, studying "life" by killing animals and then grinding them up to extract their DNA. This was troubling. Rescue came when a friend turned him on to Goethe. This old German's 18th century vision of "holistic science" appealed to the young Brit very much. Sheldrake used Goethe to investigate how the lilies of the field actually become lilies of the field. Sheldrake is famous for the term "morphogenetic field" actually a quote from one of Steiner's students, Poppelbaum. American philosopher Walter Kaufmann argued that Freud's psychoanalysis was a "poetic science" in Goethe's sense. In 1998, David Seamon and Arthur Zajonc wrote Goethe's way of science: a phenomenology of nature. Also in 1998, Henri Bortoft wrote The Wholeness of Nature: Goethe's Science of Conscious Participation in Nature in which he discusses the relevance and importance of Goethe's approach to modern scientific thought. Biologist Brian Goodwin (1931-2009) in his book How the Leopard Changed Its Spots : The Evolution of Complexity claimed that organisms as dynamic systems are the primary agents of creative evolutionary adaptation, in the book Goodwin stated: "The ideas I am developing in this book are very much in the Goethean spirit."
== See also == Romanticism in science Oswald Spengler Goetheanism
== References ==
== External links == Goethe and the Molecular Aesthetic, Maura C. Flannery St. John's University Archived 2010-06-27 at the Wayback Machine Goethe at the Centre for Philosophy Goethe's Sensuous Imagination The Nature Institute Goethe's Theory of Colours Seeing Nature Whole — A Goethean Approach Archived 2016-03-09 at the Wayback Machine Goethe, Nature, and Phenomenology Doing Goethean Science Archived 2012-05-04 at the Wayback Machine Exploring Goethean Science Archived 2016-03-09 at the Wayback Machine Goethean Science Archived 2016-03-09 at the Wayback Machine Goethean Science, an online book by Rudolf Steiner