The Perennial Alternative
Episodes in the Reception of Goethe’s Scientific Work
by Frederick Amrine
Paperback
6 x 9 inches
286 pages
ISBN 978-0-932776-65-5
Price: $20.00
Book Description
The Perennial Alternative is the ripe fruit of a long, lively, in-depth exploration of Goethe’s scientific work. Anyone who has begun to realize the significance of Goethe’s scientific approach for us today will find this collection of brilliant essays richly rewarding.
Frederick Amrine brings us up to date on the current reception of Goethe’s scientific work and how it relates to the new paradigm of emergence and to such contemporary thinkers as Thomas Nagel, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Gilles Deleuze, and Thomas Kuhn.
In a fascinating essay on the importance of Goethe’s Italian Journey for the development of his organic thinking, Amrine digs deep into his intimate knowledge of Goethe’s biography. He also sheds new light on Goethe’s relationship with Spinoza’s philosophy and with Newton’s optics.
In “The Metamorphosis of the Scientist,” he articulates a central aspect of Goethean science, namely that, like all of organic nature, scientists evolve. Their understanding of the world evolves with them in the sense that, as Goethe put it, “Every new object, well observed and contemplated, opens up a new organ of perception in us.”
The collection also includes insightful essays on the work of contemporary Goethean scientists Jochen Bockemühl, Michael Wilson, and Wolfgang Schad as well as an excellent introduction to Schad’s life's work, Threefoldness in Humans and Mammals.
Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . .1
2. Goethe’s Italian Discoveries as a Natural Scientist (The Scientist in the Underworld) . . . . . . . . . . 14
3. Goethean Intuitions . . . . . . . . . . 37
4. The Metamorphosis of the Scientist . . . . . . . . . . 61
5. Methodological Issues Regarding the experimentum crucis 92
6. Goethe and Steiner as Pioneers of Emergence . . . . . . . 107
7. Seeing Ideas: Goethe’s Science and Modernist Aesthetics 133
8. The Music of the Organism: Uexküll, Zuckerkandl, Merleau-Ponty, and Deleuze as Goethean Ecologists in Search of a New Paradigm . . . . . . . . . 156
9. Readings in the Text of Nature: Three Contemporary Goetheans . . . . . . . . . 202
10. Goethean Method in the Work of Jochen Bockemühl . . . 223
11. Goethe’s Epistemology of the South . . . . . . . . . 241
12. Bibliographic Essay: On Some Important Works on Goethe’s Scientific Studies that have appeared since 1990 . . . . . . . . . . 245