The Rudolf Steiner Archive

14. Goethe's Meteorological Ideas

[ 1 ] Just as in geology, one is mistaken in meteorology if one looks at what Goethe actually achieved and seeks the main thing therein (see ["Versuch einer Witterungslehre", section "Selbstprüfung"] Natw. Schr., 2nd vol., pp. 397f.). His meteorological experiments are nowhere complete. Everywhere only the intention is to be seen. His thinking was always directed towards the pregnant ^{97 see the essay. Bedeutende Fördernis durch ein einziges geistreiches Wort", Natw. Schr., 2nd vol., p. 31ff.} to find the point from which a series of phenomena regulate themselves from within. All explanations that draw on random phenomena from here and there to connect a regular series of phenomena were not in keeping with his spirit. When a phenomenon struck him, he looked for everything related to it, all the facts that belonged to the same circle, so that he had a whole, a totality. Within this circle a principle had to be found which made all regularity, indeed the whole circle of related phenomena, appear as a necessity. It did not seem natural to him to explain the phenomena of this circle by drawing on relationships lying outside it. This is the key to the principle he established in meteorology. "The utter inadequacy of attributing such constant phenomena to the planets, to the moon, to an unknown ebb and flow of the atmosphere, was felt more and more every day..." ^{98 Ebenda p. 398} "But we reject all such influences; we consider the weather phenomena on earth to be neither cosmic nor planetary, but we must declare them to be purely telluric according to our premises..." ^{99 Ebenda p. 378} He wanted to trace the phenomena of the atmosphere back to their causes lying in the nature of the Earth itself. First of all, he wanted to find the point where the basic law that determines everything else is directly expressed. One such phenomenon was the barometer reading. Goethe regarded it as the primal phenomenon and sought to link everything else to it. He tried to follow the rise and fall of the barometer and believed he could perceive a regularity in it. He studied Schrön's table and found "that the imaginary rise and fall at different observation points, nearer and further away, no less at different longitudes, latitudes and altitudes, have an almost parallel course". ^{100Ebenda p. 379} Since this rise and fall appeared to him directly as a phenomenon of gravity, he believed to recognize in the changes of the barometer a direct expression of the quality of gravity itself. It is not necessary to read anything more into this Goethean explanation. Goethe rejected all hypotheses. He wanted to provide nothing more than an expression for an observable phenomenon, not an actual, factual cause in the sense of today's natural science. The other atmospheric phenomena should naturally follow on from this appearance. The poet was most interested in cloud formation. For this he had found in Howard's teaching a means of holding the constantly fluctuating formations in certain basic states and thus "fixing what lives in fluctuating appearance" with "permanent thoughts". He was only looking for a means to help the transformation of cloud forms, just as he found a means in that "spiritual ladder" to explain the transformation of the typical leaf shape on the plant. In meteorology, just as he found that spiritual ladder there, so in meteorology the different "properties" of the atmosphere at different altitudes is the thread to which he attaches the individual formations. Here, as there, it must be noted that it never occurred to Goethe to regard such a thread as a real structure. He was well aware that only the individual entity is to be regarded as real for the senses in space, and that all higher principles of explanation are only there for the eyes of the mind. Today's refutations of Goethe are therefore often a battle against windmills. People attribute to his principles a form of reality that he himself denied them, and thus believe they have overcome him. However, the form of reality that he took as a basis, the objective, concrete idea, is not known in today's theory of nature. Goethe must therefore remain alien to it from this point of view.*