GOETHE, THE HOLISTIC SCIENTIST: A QUEST FOR PRIMAL STRUCTURE AND FORM IN NATURE
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) was a German writer (he, for one, wrote Faust), the leader of the German Romantic movement, a philosopher, and foremost, he was a scientist. As a scientist, Goethe carried on extensive research, especially in plant biology and in optics writing On the Theory Colours in 1810. Goethe looked at things in a different manner; he always attempted to see the individual phenomenon as part of an organic, developing whole – he was a holistic thinker.
It is very difficult to overstate the influence of Goethe on the 19th century. In many respects, he was the originator of – or at least the first to express – many ideas that would later become familiar. Goethe produced volumes of poetry, essays, criticism, and scientific work, including a theory of optics and early work on evolution and linguistics. He was fascinated by minerals and early mineralogy. The mineral goethite [FeO(OH)] is named for him.
Goethe’s Theory of Colours has continued to fascinate physicists for almost two centuries since its publication in 1810. Hermann von Helmholtz, Werner Heisenberg, Walter Heitler, and Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker are among those who have written substantial essays on Goethe. More recently, chaos theorist Mitchell Feigenbaum consulted Goethe’s work and was surprised to find that “Goethe had actually performed an extraordinary set of experiments in his investigation of colours.” Not only that, Feigenbaum persuaded himself that “Goethe had been right about colour!” Goethe’s theory of colours countered the theory of Isaac Newton.
His non-fiction writings, most of which are philosophic and aphoristic in nature, spurred on the development of many philosophers, such as GWF Hegel, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ernst Cassirer, Carl Jung, and others, and of various literary movements, such as romanticism. The mystical philosopher Rudolf Steiner named two buildings after Goethe.
Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945) was a German-Jewish philosopher. His major work, Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (4 volumes, 1923–1929) is considered a benchmark for a philosophy of culture. Man, says Cassirer later in his more popular Essay on Man (1944), is a ‘symbolic animal’. Whereas animals perceive their world by instincts, man has created his own universe of symbolic meaning that structures and shapes his perception of reality – and only thus, for instance, can conceive of utopias and therefore progress in the form of human consociation. In this, Cassirer owes much to Goethe’s morphology and Immanuel Kant’s transcendental idealism, which claimed that the actual world could not be known, but that the human view on reality is shaped by our means of perceiving it.
Goethe sought and found the Urmensch, or archetypal (primal) man, in the forms of Greek and Roman antiquity, and in Italian landscapes, he found the extension of this idea to plants (Ur-pflanze) as well. In his literary work, these pursuits led to the creation of characters that are individual manifestations of a clearly discernible type, and themes that are universal, but treated in a highly differentiated way. This is very similar to Plato’s Forms.
This is also reminiscence of Gregory Bateson’s ‘pattern that connects’ (Mind and Nature, 1988). A pattern that connects is of the same kind of principle as Goethe’s Urorganismus; it is a kind of ‘pattern for creation’, or a ‘loom of creation’.
Faust, a Fragment (1790), is a step in the direction of the cultural symbol that the character (Faust), and the play, would eventually become, rather than an attempt to weld into unity the episodes of the original version, the Urfaust. The two characters from his novels and dramas became symbols of modern man’s (and his own) search for wisdom, and happiness (through the mystery of living, loving, and thinking) often shaken by love, and sorrow, or losing themselves on the way.
Goethe’s quest started as a legitimate mission to be free to investigate the ‘secrets of nature’, and to discover its ‘laws’ – even if these discoveries and secrets do not accord with the Bible’s (or even science’s) concept of the world.
His work in botany, Metamorphose der Pflanzen (‘Metamorphosis of Plants’, 1790) is a model for presenting his main thesis, that all the parts of the plant are modifications of a type-leaf, or of archetypal plant (Ur-pflanze).
His discovery in biology (in 1784), of the premaxilla in the human species, caused Charles Darwin to hail Goethe as a forerunner.
His idea of ‘the metamorphosis of archetypal (or primal) organism’ (Urorganismus) was an interesting alternative for the idea of evolution. While evolution assumed as primary, external influences, Metamorphosis assumed as primary, the internal capacity of the primal organism (Urorganismus) to take manifold forms, which are (at particular time) best suited to existing conditions. The ‘spirit’ (or possibly the soul) of the primal plant follows an archetypal blueprint, a pattern – a primal form.
Morphology, as Goethe understood it, was the systematic study of formation and transformation (like mathematical fractals) – the morphology of natural phenomena (rocks, clouds, colours, plants, animals), or the cultural phenomena (human society, history).
Modern fractal mathematics also show us that the shape of a leaf’s pores echoes the shape of the leaf, and also the shape of the branch, and even the shape of the tree.
Fractals in mathematics are any of a class of complex geometric shapes that commonly have ‘fractional dimension’, a concept first introduced by the German mathematician Felix Hausdorff (1868-1942) in 1918.
Fractals are distinct from the simple figures of classical or Euclidean geometry – the square, the circle, the sphere, and so forth. They are capable of describing many irregularly shaped objects or spatially non-uniform phenomena in nature such as coastlines and mountain ranges. The term fractal, derived from the Latin word fractus (‘fragmented’, or ‘broken’), was coined by the Polish-born mathematician Benoit B Mandelbrot (1924- ).
In colloquial usage, it denotes a shape that is recursively constructed or self-similar, that is, a shape that appears similar at all scales of magnification and is therefore often referred to as ‘infinitely complex’. Mathematicians avoid giving the strict definition and prefer to call a fractal a geometric object that usually:
- Has fine structure at each scale and it cannot be easily described in traditional Euclidean geometry language.
- Is self-similar (at least approximately or stochastically so).
- Has Hausdorff dimension greater than its topological dimension.
- Has a simple and recursive definition.
- Has natural appearance.
A fractal must have all, or most, of the above features. It should be noted that not all ‘self-similar objects’ are fractals – e.g., the real line (a straight Euclidean line) is formally self-similar and has natural appearance but fails to have other fractal characteristics.
During these studies, it became more and more clear to Goethe that what appears in the endless multiplicity of single plant individuals is, after all, only one basic form; and this basic form itself became more-and-more manifest. He recognised, furthermore, that this basic form possesses the capacity for endless modifications, whereby manifoldness is created out of unity.
On the 9th of July 1786, he wrote to Frau von Stein, “It is a becoming aware of the form with which nature, so to speak, always plays, and in playing brings forth manifold life.” What he now needed primarily to do was to develop into a plastic image in its details this enduring, constant element, this primal form with which, so to speak, nature plays.
For this there was needed an opportunity to distinguish the truly constant, enduring element in the plant [form, the soul or blueprint – the software] from the changing, unstable element [substance, the physical body or hardware]. For observations of this kind, Goethe had to investigate a more extended region. He had to observe the same plant species under varied conditions and influences, for only thus does the changeable element become obvious. It is less easily observed in connection with various plant species. All of this was afforded by the fortunate journey into Italy.
Originally science considered this concept of primal patterns as a metaphysical concept (of nature), while later science, inspired by the New Age paradigms – from 1960 onwards – considered this as a way to overcome the Newtonian and Cartesian paradigm [strictly hardware, mechanical orientated views] in life sciences, and humanities.
D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson (1860-1948), a Scottish zoologist and classical scholar, known for his influential work On Growth and Form (1917), must be mentioned in passing here because of the similarity of his views with that of Goethe. In On Growth and Form, Thompson interpreted and analysed the growth and structure of organisms in mathematical and physical terms. This approach was a departure from contemporary zoology, which analysed organic form in terms of comparative anatomy, evolutionary theory, and phylogenetics.
Thompson developed a theory of curvilinear transformation of shape in which the evolution of one species into another is viewed as a process of major transformations involving the whole organism, rather than successive minor changes in the body parts.
The central thesis of On Growth and Form is that biologists of his day overemphasised the role of evolution, and underemphasised the roles of physics and mechanics, as determinants of the form and structure of living organisms.
Thompson pointed out example after example of correlations between biological forms and mechanical phenomena. He showed the similarity in the forms of jellyfish and the forms of drops of liquid falling into viscous fluid, and between the internal supporting structures in the hollow bones of birds and well-known engineering truss designs. His observations of phylotaxis (numerical relationships between spiral structures in plants) and the Fibonacci sequence has become a textbook staple.
On Growth and Form never quite fits into the mainstream of biological thought. It does not really present any single central discovery, nor, in many cases, does it attempt to establish a causal relationship between the forms emerging from physics with the comparable forms seen in biology. It is a work in the ‘descriptive’ tradition; Thompson did not articulate his insights in the form of experimental hypotheses that can be tested. Thompson was aware of this, saying that “This book of mine has little need of preface, for indeed it is ‘all preface’ from beginning to end”.
Goethe, like Thompson, resisted the ‘exorcism’ of physics, and Enlightenment that banished ‘spirit’ and the ‘ghosts’ [the souls] from nature and history. Today, the continuing interest for Goethe’s science is not primarily related to his discoveries, but to his method (insight into his methods).
Few have been (as he was) aware of the mental processes involved in the study of natural phenomena (later, quantum physics had to admit to this), and no one understood that the way of coping with this involvement (of the observer in the phenomena to be observed) is to let ‘knowledge of self’ develop with ‘knowledge of world’. Erich F Schumacher (1911-1977), author of A Guide for the Perplexed (1977), would have agreed with Goethe in this aspect of understanding.
Goethe did not propose his mythology as a substitute for the quantitative sciences, and he was not opposed to analysis (his favourite principle was that analysis and synthesis must alternate – as breathing in, and breathing out).
His objection to physics was its arrogance and its tendency to claim monopoly of understanding. His aim was a humanising supplement – to understand nature in all its qualitative manifestations, as well. Therefore, he passionately pleaded for a concert of all the sciences, a cooperation of all types of method and mind.
Rudolph Steiner (1861-1925), Jan Smuts, Eugene N Marais, and Ludwig von Bertalanffy later overtook some of these ideas of Goethe’s. Steiner’s ideal was the reunion of science, religion, and art in a new, human sacramental culture. With some variance, this ideal was also overtaken by the New Age movement after 1960.
After the 1970’s, a new set of paradigms (in real Goethean spirit) was developed by the new generation in physics and biology (e.g. Fritjof Capra).
Field Marshall Jan Christiaan Smuts (1870-1950) wrote in his book Holism and Evolution (1926) that “In its analytical pursuit of the parts, science has missed the whole, and thus tended to reduce the world to dead aggregations rather than to the real living wholes which make up nature”.
Smuts (in Holism and Evolution, 1987:1) was of the opinion that “The acceptance of Evolution as a fact, the origin of life-structures from the inorganic, must mean a complete revolution in our idea of matter. If matter holds the promise and potency of life and mind it is no longer the old matter of the physical materialists.
“We have accepted Evolution, but have failed to make the fundamental readjustment in our views which that acceptance involves. The old mechanical viewpoints persist, and Natural Selection itself has come to be looked upon as a mere mechanical factor.
“But this is wrong: Sexual Selection is admittedly a physical factor, and even Natural Selection has merely the appearance of a mechanical process, because it is viewed as a statistical average, from which the real character of struggle among the living has been eliminated.”
Goethe’s idea of the planet as a living organism and of the ‘world soul’ (Weltseele, first proposed by Friedrich Schelling), which permeates and gives teleology to the dynamics and metamorphosis of the overall matter, was developed into various hypothesis and paradigms.
The idea that life on planet earth is not just a layer, or crust, over the lifeless ground, but makes a dynamic living whole with the planet (as a global organism), was included into the Gaia hypothesis (James Lovelock), and the Global Brain hypothesis (Peter Russell). In contrast to this Global Brain hypothesis, we can consider the Global Mind hypothesis, developed by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955).
This corresponds with James Lovelock’s model in Gaia: A New Look at Life on earth (1989: x). Lovelock writes, “… the hypothesis, the model, in which the earth’s living matter, air, oceans, and land surface form a complex system which can be seen as a single organism and which has the capacity to keep our planet a fit place for life.”
Goethean ideas related to metamorphosis were incorporated into ‘implicate order’ (David Bohm), ‘formative causality’, and ‘morphogenetic fields’ (Rupert Sheldrake).
Both Bohm and Sheldrake were pursuing the same goal as Goethe – to exchange the mechanistic model of explanation, with holistic, organic, and teleological explanations, in the spirit of Bertalanffy’s General Systems Theory, and to broaden the explanation basis by adding ‘paradigms’ to ‘natural laws’.
Goethe was neither a conventional Christian, nor a pagan (as some critics imagine). He, nevertheless, understood other religions as different metamorphoses of an Ur-religion, or archetypal religion – giving in this field (as in plant morphology), expression of the same idea. This idea supported religious tolerance, and was later articulated as a principle, that all religions have the same essence, and therefore no matter which God they address, should be considered as serving the same purpose – to bring harmony and not strife to humankind.
Goethe rebuked opinions that as poet he was a polytheist, as scientist a pantheist, and that as a moral being he accepted a personal God. This means, that for him – as for some German philosophers of his time – ethics had sufficient support from reason, from the human heart, and empathy.
Thus, one could consider morality not as obedience to a command (of a God, capable to punish the sinner), but as an expression of the essential part of human nature – a behaviour in full accordance with the human nature. The past proved to them that, in doing evil, men were not stopped by fear (from God), but – perhaps – if they developed their reason, and empathy (hearts), this could stop the evil in history.
Psychoanalysis later laid claim to the premise that human nature is basically evil, and can be tamed only through suppression, socialisation, and fear from punishment. (Robert M Pirsig, Lila: An Inquiry into Morals, 1992)
The French Protestant missionary, Maurice Leenhardt (1878-1954) coined the term cosmomorphism to indicate the state of perfect symbiosis with the surrounding environment, which characterised the culture of the Melanesians of New Caledonia. For these people, an isolated individual is totally indeterminate, indistinct, and featureless until he can find his position within the natural and social world in which he is inserted.
All these have been reactions against excessive individualism with its attendant alienation and fragmentation, and exhibit a commonsense appreciation of human beings’ interdependency with one another and with the environment.
Where atomism was apparently legitimised by the sweeping successes of classical physics, holism found no such foundation in the hard sciences. It remained a change of emphasis rather than a new philosophical position.
There were attempts to found it on the idea of organism in biology – the emergence of biological form and the cooperative relation between biological and ecological systems – but these, too, were ultimately reducible to simpler parts, their properties, and the relation between them.
However, many people still have an innate feeling that the universe is a holistic entity as opposed to an aggregate of independent, simpler parts. And so, Goethe lives on.
