Goethean method in the work of Jochen Bockemühl
pp. 301-318
Abstrakt
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.
Publication details
Published in:
Amrine Frederick, Zucker Francis J., Wheeler Harvey (1987) Goethe and the sciences: a reappraisal. Dordrecht, Springer.
Seiten: 301-318
DOI: 10.1007/978-94-009-3761-1_15
Referenz:
Amrine Frederick (1987) „Goethean method in the work of Jochen Bockemühl“, In: F. Amrine, F. J. Zucker & H. Wheeler (eds.), Goethe and the sciences, Dordrecht, Springer, 301–318.