The Rudolf Steiner Archive

8. From Art to Science

[ 1 ] Anyone who sets out to depict the intellectual development of a thinker must explain that thinker’s particular orientation from a psychological perspective, based on the facts provided in his biography. In a portrayal of Goethe, the thinker, the task is not yet complete. Here, the question is not only one of justifying and explaining his specific scientific orientation, but also—and above all—of how this genius came to engage in scientific work in the first place. Goethe suffered greatly from the mistaken view of his contemporaries, who could not conceive that poetic creation and scientific research could be united in a single mind. The primary concern here is to answer the question: What were the motives that drove the great poet toward science? Does the transition from art to science lie purely in his subjective inclination, in personal whim? Or was Goethe’s artistic orientation such that it had to drive him inevitably toward science?

[ 2 ] If the former were the case, then his simultaneous devotion to art and science would merely signify a chance personal enthusiasm for both areas of human endeavor; we would be dealing with a poet who happens to be a thinker as well, and it could well have been that, had his life taken a slightly different course, Goethe would have pursued the same paths in poetry without even giving science a second thought. Both sides of this man would then have interested us separately as such; both might, in their own right, have contributed significantly to the progress of humanity. All of this, however, would also have been the case if the two intellectual orientations had been divided between two separate personalities. The poet Goethe would have had nothing to do with the thinker Goethe.

[ 3 ] If, however, the second case applies, then Goethe’s artistic orientation was such that it inevitably compelled, from within, to be supplemented by scientific thought. In that case, it is simply inconceivable that the two directions could have been divided between two separate personalities. Then each of the two directions interests us not only for its own sake, but also because of its relationship to the other. Then there is an objective transition from art to science, a point where the two intersect in such a way that perfection in one field demands perfection in the other. Goethe was not, then, following a personal inclination; rather, the artistic direction to which he devoted himself awakened needs within him that could only be satisfied through scientific activity.

[ 4 ] Our age believes it is doing the right thing by keeping art and science as far apart as possible. They are supposed to be two completely opposite poles in the cultural development of humanity. Science is supposed—so the thinking goes—to provide us with as objective a worldview as possible; it is supposed to show us reality as reflected in a mirror, or, in other words, to adhere strictly to the given, while renouncing all subjective arbitrariness. The objective world is the standard for its laws; science must submit to it. It is supposed to derive the standard of truth and falsehood entirely from the objects of experience.

[ 5 ] The situation is entirely different when it comes to works of art. They are governed by the self-creative power of the human mind. For science, any interference by human subjectivity would constitute a distortion of reality, a transgression of experience; art, on the other hand, flourishes in the realm of genius-level subjectivity. Its creations are products of the human imagination, not reflections of the external world. The origin of scientific laws lies outside of us, in objective reality; that of aesthetic laws lies within us, in our individuality. Therefore, the latter have not the slightest cognitive value; they produce illusions without the slightest element of reality.

[ 6 ] Anyone who views the matter in this way will never gain clarity regarding the relationship between Goethe’s poetry and Goethe’s science. As a result, however, both are misunderstood. Goethe’s significance in world history lies precisely in the fact that his art flows directly from the primordial source of being , that it contains nothing illusory or subjective, but rather appears as the herald of those laws that the poet has discerned in the depths of nature’s workings and conveyed to the world spirit. At this level, art becomes the interpreter of the world’s mysteries, just as science is in a different sense.

[ 7 ] This is how Goethe always understood art. For him, art was the one revelation of the world’s primordial law; science was the other. For him, art and science sprang from a single source. While the researcher delves into the depths of reality to articulate its driving forces in the form of thoughts, the artist seeks to embody those same driving forces in his subject matter. “I think science could be called the knowledge of the general, the abstracted knowledge; art, on the other hand, would be science put into practice; science would be reason, and art its mechanism, which is why it could also be called practical science. And so, ultimately, science would be the theorem, and art the problem.” ^{87“Sayings in Prose”; Natural History Writings, Vol. 4, Part 2, p. 535.} What science articulates as an idea (theorem), art is to imprint upon its material; this is to become its problem. “In the works of man, as in those of nature, the intentions are particularly worthy of attention,” says Goethe. ^{88Ibid., p. 378.} Everywhere he seeks not only what is given to the senses in the external world, but also the tendency through which it came to be.

[ 8 ] To understand these scientifically and give them artistic form—that is his mission. In its own formations, nature “runs into a dead end, as it were, with its specifications”; one must go back to what would have become of it had the tendency been allowed to unfold unhindered, just as the mathematician never has this or that triangle in mind, but always that law underlying every possible triangle. It is not what nature has created, but according to what principle it has created it—that is what matters. Then this principle must be shaped in a way that is in accordance with its own nature, not as it has occurred in the individual formation of nature, which depends on a thousand contingencies. The artist must “develop the noble from the common, and the beautiful from the formless.”

[ 9 ] Goethe and Schiller grasp art in its full depth. Beauty is “a manifestation of secret laws of nature that, were it not for this manifestation, would have remained hidden from us forever.” A glance at the poet’s *Italian Journey* is enough to recognize that this is not merely a phrase, but a deeply held conviction. When he says, “The great works of art, as the highest works of nature, have been brought forth by human beings according to true and natural laws. Everything arbitrary and contrived falls away; there is necessity, there is God,” it becomes clear that, for him, nature and art share the same origin. Regarding the art of the Greeks, he says the following in this vein: “I suspect that they proceeded according to the laws by which nature itself proceeds and which I am seeking to uncover.” And on Shakespeare: “Shakespeare joins the World Spirit; he permeates the world just as the World Spirit does; nothing is hidden from either of them; but while it is the World Spirit’s business to keep secrets before—and often after—the deed, the poet’s purpose is to blurt out the secret.”

[ 10 ] Here, too, we should recall the remark about the “joyful epoch of life” that the poet attributed to Kant’s *Critique of Judgment*—a remark he actually owed solely to the fact that, in this work, he “saw the products of art and nature treated as one and the same, and that aesthetic and teleological judgment mutually illuminated one another.” “I was delighted,” says the poet, “that poetry and comparative natural history were so closely related, in that both submit to the same faculty of judgment.” In the essay “Significant Encouragement Through a Single Witty Word” [Natw. Schr., Vol. 2, p. 31ff.], Goethe, with precisely the same intention, contrasts his concrete thinking with his concrete poetry .

[ 11 ] To Goethe, art thus appears just as objective as science. Only their forms differ. Both appear as the outflow of a essence, as necessary stages of a development. Any view that assigns art or beauty an isolated position outside the overall picture of human development is repugnant to him. Thus he says: “In aesthetics, it is not right to speak of ‘the idea of the beautiful’; by doing so, one isolates the beautiful, which cannot be conceived of in isolation” ^{89“Sprüche in Prosa,” Natw. Schr., Vol. 4, Part 2, p. 379.} or: “Style rests on the deepest foundations of knowledge, on the essence of things, insofar as we are permitted to recognize it in visible and tangible forms.” ^{90“Simple Imitation of Nature, Manicr, Style,” in: Writings on Art 1788–1800.} Art, then, is based on knowledge. The latter has the task of recreating in thought the order according to which the world is structured; art has the task of developing, in particular detail, the idea of this order of the whole world. Everything that the artist can grasp of the world’s laws, he incorporates into his work. This thus appears as a world in miniature. Herein lies the reason why Goethe’s artistic movement must be complemented by science. It is, in and of itself, a form of cognition. Goethe did not want either science or art; he wanted the idea. And he articulates or depicts this idea according to the aspect in which it presents itself to him at that moment. Goethe sought to align himself with the World Spirit and to reveal its workings to us; he did so through the medium of art or science, as the need arose. Goethe was not driven by a one-sided pursuit of art or science, but by a restless urge to perceive “all active forces and seeds.”

[ 12 ] Yet Goethe is not a philosophical poet, for his poems do not take the detour through thought to reach their sensory form; rather, they flow directly from the source of all becoming, just as his research is not imbued with poetic imagination but is based directly on the perception of ideas. Although Goethe is not a philosophical poet, his fundamental orientation appears philosophical to the philosophical observer.

[ 13 ] This gives the question of whether Goethe’s scientific works have philosophical value or not an entirely new dimension. The task is to infer the principles from the available evidence. What must we assume in order for Goethe’s scientific formulations to appear to us as a consequence of these assumptions? We must articulate what Goethe left unsaid, yet which alone makes his views comprehensible.