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Goethe as Holistic Scientist
Intensifcation (Steigerung): Goethe’s term for the way all of nature seems to be striving or
overcoming itself through increasing complexity.
Compensation: This recognises that nature creates within limits; forms can develop and
change, but they are always sacrifcing something to develop something else; for example,
adaptability is sacrifced for specialisation.
Generativity: This is the principle Goethe recognises to explain the way an organism’s parts
can work together or even compete, in some sense, to grow. For example, a plant can
produce more of itself vegetatively or sexually and these two impulses are both working
generatively and express an inner vitality in the plant. Goethe considers that an abundance
of generativity suggests a radical freedom at work, as opposed to a hierarchy where certain
parts direct development.
These principles operate for Goethe in the way that a theory or hypothesis operates, although they
are, he maintains, found in nature, not created by scientists for their convenience nor to constrain or
shape what we are seeing. If we approach nature as a machine, we will fnd machine-like aspects,
not because nature is like a machine but because that is the lens we look through. These principles
are for Goethe a means to capture something of nature for the human mind to grasp, but they are,
like nature itself, ever malleable and undergoing change. One way to understand these principles
is as guides for reasonable ways of adding the non-physical meaning aspects of a phenomenon,
through contemplation of the phenomenon in the light of these principles.
ALL IN FLUX: TIME AND A SENSE OF MOBILITY
An aspect of Goethe’s science that seems unusual for the time he was writing was his appreciation
of nature as continuously in fux. The project of biology in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was to catalogue and order nature. Nature was understood as created by God, and the human
task was to know what was there and to order its objects into static tables. Taxonomy: Putting things
in the right boxes was the order of the day. Goethe, as we see from the principles above, is more
interested in nature as a whole and how it generates itself. Indeed, his frst published scientifc discovery in 1786 of the intermaxillary bone in humans upsets one of the most fundamental divisions:
that between humans and other animals. This bone in humans is fused with the maxillary bone,
whereas in other animals (even apes) it is freer. Goethe can see this fusing, as opposed to seeing
one discrete bone, because his scientifc question is not ‘which box does it ft into?’ but rather, how
does dynamic nature shape bones? He was seeing the hard material of bones more fuidly without
preconceptions driven by a theory that must separate humans. This fuidity was so new as a concept
that Goethe needs to introduce a new term for it, and in 1796, he used the term ‘morphology’ for the
study of the transformation of organisms (Jensen, 2019).
Morphology also suggests the need for a kind of lively apprehending, not only to see the whole
form, but to understand it as a whole. The organic, for Goethe, has no fxed form (von Goethe, 1995:
64). Thus, the organism seen in everyday consciousness is not the organism as a living thing; to see
this, we need to bring to it the sense of fux that it is engaging in.
With plants, the picture is even clearer. Unlike his contemporaries, Goethe does not stick to
studying plants as dry preserved specimens in herbarium samples. As he discovers, particularly on
his extensive and life-transforming trip to Italy (von Goethe, 1989), the way a plant grows refects
aspects of its environment such that there can be no stable sample of a plant – its size and development are shaped by where it grows. In The Metamorphosis of Plants, Goethe sets out his insight
that the plant develops by transforming its material through time by shaping and reshaping itself.
It does not unfold to a strictly determined plan, but it does express a vitality and a drive to develop
and reach a point of fruition, when circumstances allow. His cryptic statement ‘all is leaf’ means
that the plant substance, which might now be expressed as leaf, undergoes a transformation (akin
to reproduction) to become the other plant parts: sepal, petal, carpal, stamen, etc. Nature’s creative
Goethe as Holistic Scientist
Intensifcation (Steigerung): Goethe’s term for the way all of nature seems to be striving or
overcoming itself through increasing complexity.
Compensation: This recognises that nature creates within limits; forms can develop and
change, but they are always sacrifcing something to develop something else; for example,
adaptability is sacrifced for specialisation.
Generativity: This is the principle Goethe recognises to explain the way an organism’s parts
can work together or even compete, in some sense, to grow. For example, a plant can
produce more of itself vegetatively or sexually and these two impulses are both working
generatively and express an inner vitality in the plant. Goethe considers that an abundance
of generativity suggests a radical freedom at work, as opposed to a hierarchy where certain
parts direct development.
These principles operate for Goethe in the way that a theory or hypothesis operates, although they
are, he maintains, found in nature, not created by scientists for their convenience nor to constrain or
shape what we are seeing. If we approach nature as a machine, we will fnd machine-like aspects,
not because nature is like a machine but because that is the lens we look through. These principles
are for Goethe a means to capture something of nature for the human mind to grasp, but they are,
like nature itself, ever malleable and undergoing change. One way to understand these principles
is as guides for reasonable ways of adding the non-physical meaning aspects of a phenomenon,
through contemplation of the phenomenon in the light of these principles.
ALL IN FLUX: TIME AND A SENSE OF MOBILITY
An aspect of Goethe’s science that seems unusual for the time he was writing was his appreciation
of nature as continuously in fux. The project of biology in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was to catalogue and order nature. Nature was understood as created by God, and the human
task was to know what was there and to order its objects into static tables. Taxonomy: Putting things
in the right boxes was the order of the day. Goethe, as we see from the principles above, is more
interested in nature as a whole and how it generates itself. Indeed, his frst published scientifc discovery in 1786 of the intermaxillary bone in humans upsets one of the most fundamental divisions:
that between humans and other animals. This bone in humans is fused with the maxillary bone,
whereas in other animals (even apes) it is freer. Goethe can see this fusing, as opposed to seeing
one discrete bone, because his scientifc question is not ‘which box does it ft into?’ but rather, how
does dynamic nature shape bones? He was seeing the hard material of bones more fuidly without
preconceptions driven by a theory that must separate humans. This fuidity was so new as a concept
that Goethe needs to introduce a new term for it, and in 1796, he used the term ‘morphology’ for the
study of the transformation of organisms (Jensen, 2019).
Morphology also suggests the need for a kind of lively apprehending, not only to see the whole
form, but to understand it as a whole. The organic, for Goethe, has no fxed form (von Goethe, 1995:
64). Thus, the organism seen in everyday consciousness is not the organism as a living thing; to see
this, we need to bring to it the sense of fux that it is engaging in.
With plants, the picture is even clearer. Unlike his contemporaries, Goethe does not stick to
studying plants as dry preserved specimens in herbarium samples. As he discovers, particularly on
his extensive and life-transforming trip to Italy (von Goethe, 1989), the way a plant grows refects
aspects of its environment such that there can be no stable sample of a plant – its size and development are shaped by where it grows. In The Metamorphosis of Plants, Goethe sets out his insight
that the plant develops by transforming its material through time by shaping and reshaping itself.
It does not unfold to a strictly determined plan, but it does express a vitality and a drive to develop
and reach a point of fruition, when circumstances allow. His cryptic statement ‘all is leaf’ means
that the plant substance, which might now be expressed as leaf, undergoes a transformation (akin
to reproduction) to become the other plant parts: sepal, petal, carpal, stamen, etc. Nature’s creative