The Rudolf Steiner Archive

On Natural Science, General Natural Science I

[Introduction to the readings, Volume 11, pp. 323-328:]

The eleventh volume of scientific writings is intended to provide a picture of Goethe's ideas on natural philosophy and his views on the methods by which one can gain a satisfactory insight into the laws of nature. In order to achieve this goal, the arrangement of the individual essays and sketches had to be based on two points of view. Firstly, the contextual connection between the ideas; secondly, the methodical treatment that natural science undergoes under their influence. Goethe developed his approach through the study of organisms, but the significance of his ideas for scientific methodology only became fully clear to him when he turned his attention to the less complex phenomena of inorganic nature. It is in this field that he expressed himself most sharply on the connection between general points of view and individual observations. His remarks on this subject therefore belong just as much in this volume as the physics lectures (176-239), which best illustrate how Goethe wanted his ideas to be applied.

“Nature” (1-9). (On Goethe's authorship, cf. Schriften der Goethe-Gesellschaft VII, vol. 393 ff.) It presents Goethe's view of nature from the early 1780s (1783) in general terms, in which the seeds of the guiding principles for his later works can already be recognized. He expressed his views on this essay in relation to his development in 1828. This assessment of his way of thinking and clarification of what he was able to fulfill of the demands of that essay by scientific means follows immediately (10-12). The following “Happy Event” (13-20) describes how Goethe, under Schiller's influence, seeks to establish the theoretical prerequisites for a scientific justification of his research method. “The Experiment as Mediator between Subject and Object” (21-37) seeks to explain the method appropriate to this research method. The essay was written in 1792. 38-41 and 42-44 show how this method must yield objective laws of nature, which results from applying the views developed in 13-20 to the methodological explanations in 21-37. “Experience and Science” emerged from scientific debates with Schiller in 1798 (cf. Works IV, 13 p. 12 ff.). 45-46 also appears in the notebooks “On Morphology” before the essay: “The Influence of Modern Philosophy,” which follows here. 47-53 is an exposition of Goethe's relationship to his philosophical contemporaries, i.e., a continuation of the preceding essays, in which he independently seeks to establish a philosophical basis for his scientific endeavors. Goethe shows here that the rational and conceptual method, as illustrated in 38-44, is related to Kant's Critique of Judgment. However, Goethe had to go beyond Kant in order to provide a scientific explanation of organisms. Kant had shown that the doctrine of finality is not scientific, but he did not banish it entirely; he retained it in the sense that, although we cannot arrive at an explanation by taking final causes as our basis, we can nevertheless arrive at a fruitful consideration of the organic world. Goethe also had to dispute this and argue that, even if final causes are avoided, a scientific organics is just as possible as a mechanics. He did this in the essay “Anschauende Urtheilskraft” (54-55), which contains a further development of Kantian views. This establishes the possibility of establishing principles in the science of the organic that are similar to those in inorganic natural science, and lays the foundation for the following essays, which again deal with natural science in general, without taking into account the particularities of the organic and inorganic. 56-57 “Bedenken und Ergebenheit” (Reflection and Resignation) deals with the question of the relationship between idea and experience, which took on a new form for Goethe because he significantly expanded the scientific realm of ideas through the ideas of organicism. The following remarks refer to the subjective requirements that the observer must meet if the objective goals of natural science set by Goethe are to be achieved. The external coupling of thinking and perception, as found in Kant, was precisely the obstacle to a unified understanding of nature as a whole. Thinking and perception were therefore brought into closer relation in Goethe's mind, and Heinroth found the expression “objective thinking” for this, which Goethe discusses in his essay “Significant Progress through a Single Ingenious Word” (58-64). The “Proposal for Kindness” (65-67) calls for an examination of subjective cognitive powers and cognitive needs. The fact that compliance with this demand, as formulated by Goethe, is not a subjective-personal maxim but an objective law peculiar to nature and the cognizing mind is clarified in: “Analysis and Synthesis” (68-72); and further elaborated in the remarks on Stiedenroth's psychology (73-77) for the synthesis of the powers of the soul. The principle of the arrangement for pp. 1-77 was thus: to follow the preceding general tendencies of Goethe's natural philosophy (1-12) with the endeavors that led him to gain methodically useful ideas from physical phenomena (13-44) and then to seek a connection to contemporary philosophy for justification (45-53), thereby creating the scientific basis for his method in organic chemistry, which had been naively observed until then (54-55). The following pages contain everything Goethe needed to say if going beyond the foundations provided by the philosophy of the time in his thoughts on “perceptual judgment” was to appear philosophically and psychologically possible.

If in organic chemistry the exclusive use of teleology stood in the way of Goethe's way of thinking, in physics it was the dominance of mathematics. The limits of the applicability of the latter are discussed in 78-102. 103-163 contains the quintessence of Goethe's view of nature in individual aphorisms. The majority of these are printed in the posthumous works. For this already printed part (this refers to pp. 96-102), we have retained the order of the posthumous writings, because the data found in the existing manuscripts show that Goethe himself, for the most part, still did the editing with Eckermann. It does not seem possible to distinguish between Goethe's contribution and Eckermann's subsequent work. Only two (handwritten) sayings have been inserted in this edition; both can only have been omitted by mistake in the relevant places (132.6-10 and 132.16-133.2). Everything else that was not printed has been added to the already printed material as a special chapter. This exhausts what belongs to general natural science and methodology; what follows now are works on physics that were created directly on the basis of the ideas and methods presented. pp. 164-166 deal with polarity as the most general primordial phenomenon; 167-169 with the significance of the linguistic expression of primordial phenomena, regarded as a law of nature; 170-174 with the series of physical effects, arranged according to the principles of polarity and intensification (p. 11); p. 175 a general physical observation; pp. 176-239 Goethe's system of physical phenomena. The occasion for developing this in detail was provided by the lectures he gave to a circle of Weimar ladies in the winter of 1805-6. The handwritten sketches of these lectures provide a complete picture. Since Goethe did not allow the scientific demands he made to be compromised by the intention of offering an easily comprehensible presentation, and since he worked through physics in the individual form that it had to assume according to his principles for the stated purpose, the outline of these lectures serves here as an example of how he wanted his methodological points of view to be implemented in particular. The schematic representation of the theory of colors (221-239) appears here because it belongs to the system of Goethean physics. By being inserted into a whole, it has a peculiar value that would be lost by referring to it in the “Paralipomena” of the theory of colors. The physical schematizations are followed by the essay on a “Physical-Chemical-Mechanical Problem” (240-243). The works on the internal (objective) connection between scientific ideas are followed by those on their temporal (historical) relationship. These include: “Influence of the Origin of Scientific Discoveries” (244-245), “Meteors of the Literary Sky” (246-254), “Invention and Discovery” (255-258), and 259-262. In the latter chapter, a number of already printed (261.6-262.8) and unprinted (259.1-261.5) sayings were combined, which follow on from the previous essay in the same way as: “Further remarks on mathematics and mathematicians” (96-102) follow on from: “Mathematics and its Misuse” (78-95). 263-264: “Natural Philosophy” and 265-266: “One and All” belong to the scientific writings, the former because of its content and title, the latter because it was included by Goethe himself in the morphological notebooks (II, 1). They form the conclusion of the essays on “General Natural Science” because they contain thoughts that go beyond the boundaries of natural observation in the narrower sense and lead from this to Goethe's general worldview. The study on Spinoza printed on pp. 313-319 serves the same purpose. Due to its purely epistemological content, it cannot be considered an integral part of the scientific essays, but rather a kind of appendix to them. Attached to the works on natural philosophy is the psychophysical essay (269-284), which is based on Purkinje's writing “Das Sehen in subjectiver Hinsicht” (269-284), and the “Tonlehre” (287-294), which belongs to the same field. The volume concludes with a handwritten overview of Goethe's “naturwissenschaftlichen Entwicklungsgang” (295-302), followed by biographical details on p. 303. This is followed by sketches on “Dogmatismus und Skepticismus” (Dogmatism and Skepticism), on “Induction,” and the outline: “In Matters of Physics versus Physics,” which divides the material relevant to physics into the mathematical and chemical fields. These are purely didactic points of view; therefore, they cannot be integrated into the ongoing development of ideas.

The editor of the volume is Rudolf Steiner, redactor Bernhard Suphan.

[Selected texts in the readings:]

[pp. 329-331] This fragment [Nature] first appeared (only in manuscript form) in the 32nd issue of the Tiefurt Journal. The manuscript is among the original manuscripts of this journal compiled by C. A. H. Burkhardt (cf. Schriften der GoetheGesellschaft VII, pp. 358 and 386) in the Grand Ducal Saxon House Archive, and is in Seidel's hand. The essay was first printed in [the final edition] C' and was included in all subsequent editions. Regarding Goethe's authorship, cf. the introduction on p. 323 [here p. 71 f.]. According to an entry in his diary, the essay was communicated to Goethe on May 23, 1828, by Chancellor von Müller from the correspondence of Duchess Anna Amalia. ("Mr. C. von Müller brought a remarkable essay on natural philosophy from the correspondence of Duchess Amalia. Question: whether it was written by me.") Goethe had lost sight of the essay since its publication in the Tiefurter Journal (1783) and had completely forgotten it by 1828 when he was asked whether it belonged to his writings and should be included in his final works. A sheet found in the Goethe Archive among the papers on natural science contains the following notes by Chancellor von Müller:

May 25, 1828. The above essay, undoubtedly by Goethe, probably intended for the Tiefurter Journal, marked with the number 3 by Einsiedeln, and thus written around the early 1880s, but before the Metamorphosis of Plants, as G. himself suggested to me, was communicated to me by him on May 24, 1828. Since he will have it printed, I had no qualms about copying it down for the time being.

G. expresses himself very gracefully on this subject. He called it a comparative that points to a superlative, which he has not yet produced. The author is better off than a philistine. He is further along, but it still lacks perfection.

May 30, 1828. After a conversation (May 30, 1828), G. does not profess his full conviction; and it also seemed to me that although these are his thoughts, they were not written down by him himself but per traducem. The manuscript is by Seidel, the subsequent pension officer, and since he was privy to Goethe's ideas and had a tendency toward such thoughts, it is likely (as I gather from the conclusion, which suggests a subordinate role) that those thoughts were written down by him collectively as coming from Goethe's mouth. Serenissimus, who shared this essay from the estate of Duchess Amalie with Goethe these days, is said to be of a similar opinion, namely that the essay originates from Seidel's hand and conception.

[Description of the manuscript for the following text by Goethe: WA II 11,5-9; LA111,3-5; GA 1b, 5-9.

The square brackets in this reproduction of Chancellor von Müller's notes are by Rudolf Steiner.]

[p. 335] Nature. (pp. 5-9.) First appeared in the 32nd issue of the Tiefurt Journal in 1783. On the authorship, see pp. 329ff. [here pp. 78 f.]. [The manuscript] 7 is in Seidel's hand with Goethe's corrections. The retention of the outdated punctuation in our text is justified by the stylistic character of the essay. It is punctuated more with regard to speech and hearing than to the logic of the train of thought. In 4, the punctuation is even sparser. Our text essentially follows [the final edition] C, without particularly noting the numerous cases where C differs from H in punctuation. Only the most important ones are listed.

[Preliminary remark on the readings of the following text by Goethe: WA I111,5-9; LA111,3-5; GA 1b, 5-9]

[p. 352] After Galvanism, there is a passage in [the manuscript] H' that we omit because it was only relevant to the oral lecture, not to Goethe's physical ideas. For external reasons (due to the unavailability of the apparatus at the right time, etc.), the lectures could not be held in the systematic sequence assumed by Goethe. We have restored the latter, since the important thing here is to give an idea of Goethe's physical ideas and not to record the random form in which he expressed them. For this reason, everything that was intended in the oral lecture to motivate the deviation from the systematic sequence has been omitted.

[Explanation of Goethe's text: Schematic Physical Lectures: WA II 11,199; LAT 11,83]

[p. 360] Invention and Discovery. History of Science. (pp. 259-262). We have compiled this chapter from scattered handwritten sayings relating to the significance of scientific discoveries and inventions and to the history of the development of science. Of those previously included under “Sayings in Prose,” only those aphorisms relating to the same subject are included here.

[Preliminary remark on the readings of the following text by Goethe: WA 11 11, 259-262; not in LA; GA le, in “Prose Sayings”]

[p. 362] Theory of sound. (pp. 287-294). The following on the theory of sound was first printed in “Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe und Zelter” (Correspondence between Goethe and Zelter), vol. 4, between pp. 220 and 221, in the form of a table. This table is available in manuscript form in the Goethe Archive and in another copy in the Goethe National Museum. We have dissolved the table form, which has nothing to do with the content of the matter, into continuous text and indicated the superordination, subordination, and coordination of the chapters by numbers and letters. The following illustrates how Goethe had the matter presented in tabular form:

[Preliminary remark on the following text by Goethe: WA II 11, 287-294, 363; LA I 11, 134-138; GA 1e, 596-600]

[p. 377] Paralipomena II. As the most important evidence for the essay “Einwirkung der neuern Philosophie” (p. 4753), we present the contents of a notebook bearing the inscription on the cover in Kräuter's hand: “Eigene Philosophische Vorarbeiten und Kantische Philosophie. circa 1790” (Own philosophical preliminary work and Kantian philosophy. circa 1790). This inscription does not correspond to the content, because the notebook, which is written entirely in Goethe's own hand, contains only excerpts from Kant's works. These excerpts were written in March 1791, as can be seen from the poem “To Carl August” in the same notebook, which refers to these studies. See below, p. 381.

[Preliminary remark on the following texts by Goethe: WA II 11, 377-381; LA II 1a, 72-77 (M7)]