“Occasionally books appear that dispel the mists surrounding a mode of perception whose time has come but whose form is still in shadow. Henri Bortoft’s volume on Goethe’s method of holistic, participative science is such an achievement. By locating Goethe’s insights and methods within a conceptual framework that reveals their distinctness from, but compatibility with, analytic science, Bortoft shows how the contemporary impulse for a participatory science of wholeness can be realized. What’s more, the book is beautifully written.”
- Brian Goodwin, author of How the Leopard Changed its Spots

This stimulating, highly readable book is probably the most articulate presentation of Goethe’s scientific method in the English language. With penetrating clarity, Bortoft shows how analytic and phenomenological sciences are complementary ways of knowing.

Approaching the dynamic relationship of the whole to its parts through diverse examples, Bortoft leads us to a concrete experience of wholeness as an organizational principle. Deftly and incisively, he demonstrates the inability of the abstract intellect to grasp this experience, which is accessible only to an intuitive mode of consciousness which perceives the whole as it reveals itself in every part. In Goethe’s study of color, for example, each color is seen as a direct expression of a dynamic generative principle through which the whole circle of colors arise in meaningful order. In Newton’s theory, on the other hand, the sequence of colors in the spectrum is arbitrary, corresponding only to an angle of refraction and the resulting speed of hypothetical particles. Turning toward the organic realm, Bortoft shows how, in Wolfgang Schad’s Goethean view of mammals, each facet of an animal’s physiology reveals an essential quality of the animal as a whole and how each species brings a specific aspect of the greater mammalian “type” to expression. Thus mammals are no longer seen as arbitrary results of accidental mutation and natural selection but as meaningful expressions of a dynamic potential, which reveals itself in the multiplicity of mammalian forms.

The book contains three essays: “Goethe’s Scientific Consciousness,” Bortoft’s brilliant seminal essay; “Authentic and Counterfeit Wholes,” dealing primarily with the relationship between wholes and their parts; and “Understanding Goethe’s Way of Science,” a further deeply insightful elaboration of the role of the organizing idea in perception, cognition, and science.

Contents

Preface

1. Authentic and Counterfeit Wholes
Introduction
Two Examples of Wholeness: Holograms and the Universe of Light and Matter
The Hermeneutic Circle
The Whole and the Parts
Encountering the Whole: the Active Absence
Wholeness in Science
Goethe’s Way of Science
The Ur-Phenomenon
Conclusion

2. Goethe’s Scientific Consciousness
Introduction
Making the Phenomenon Visible
Newton’s Experiments
The Primal Phenomenon of Color
Goethe’s Scientific Consciousness
Knowing the World
Unity without Unification
Modes of Consciousness
The Depth of the Phenomenon
Goethe’s Organic Vision
The Unity of the Plant
The One and the Many
The Unity of Animal Organization
The Necessary Connection
The Scientist’s Knowledge

3. Understanding Goethe’s Way of Science
Introduction
The Organizing Idea in Cognitive Perception
The Organizing Idea in Scientific Knowledge
The Organizing Idea in Observational Discoveries
The Organizing Idea in Theories of Science
Copernicus and the Moving Earth
Galileo and the Moving Earth
The Idea of Inertial Motion
The Organizing Idea of Modern Science
The Quantitative Way of Seeing
The Metaphysical Separation
Understanding the Science of Color
Newton and the Mathematical Physics of Color
The Physics of Goethean Style
The Goethean One
Modes of Unity
Seeing the Dynamical Unity of the Plant
The Unity of the Plant Kingdom
The Unity of the Organism
Seeing Comprehensively
The Twofold
The Possibility of a New Science of NatureNotes

Bibliography
About the Author
Other books in this Series