Goethe is best known for his color theory, but he was also an accomplished, well-rounded scientist who studied and wrote on anatomy, geology, botany, zoology, and meteorology. This book gathers, in the words of Goethe, his key ideas on nature, science and scientific method.

It was Goethe belief that we should study nature and our world as people who are at home here, rather than as separate and alien from our own environment. He adopted a qualitative approach to science--one at odds with the quantitative methods of Newton, which were equally popular in his day. His is a...

The scientific work of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) represents a style of learning and understanding which is largely ignored today. The approach of modern science is largely detached, intellectual and analytical, and it is increasingly recognized that many of our contemporary problems stem from the resulting divorce from nature. By contrast, Goethe's way of science pursued understanding through the experience of the 'authentic wholeness' of what was observed. Working with the intuitive mode of consciousness, Goethe aimed at an encounter with the whole phenomenon in its relationship...

The history of Western metaphysics, from Plato onward, is dominated by the dualism of being and appearance. What something really is (its true being) is believed to be hidden behind the "mere appearances" through which it manifests. Twentieth-century European thinkers radically overturned this way of thinking. "Appearance" began to be taken seriously, with the observer participating in the dynamic event of perception.

In this important book, Henri Bortoft guides the reader through this dynamic way of seeing, exploring issues of how we distinguish things, how we find...