Download or read book Goethe s Way of Science written by David Seamon and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1998-04-02 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines Goethe's neglected but sizable body of scientific work, considers the philosophical foundations of his approach, and applies his method to the real world of nature.
Download or read book Goethe on Science written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 sensitive science that includes our interrelationship with nature. Today, his ideas have been given special attention by scientists such as Adolf Portmann and Werner Heisenberg. Science, as conceived by Goethe, is as much a path of inner development as it is a way of accumulating knowledge. It thus involves a rigorous training of our faculties for observation and thinking. From a Goethean perspective, our modern ecological crisis is a crisis of relationship to nature. In this anthology, Jeremy Naydler provides the first systematic arrangement of extracts from Goethe's major scientific works. They give us a clear picture of Goethe's fundamentally unique approach to scientific study of the natural world. These extracts are fascinating and essential reading for anyone who believes we should regain our lost spiritual connection to nature.
Download or read book Goethe and the Sciences A Reappraisal written by F.R. Amrine and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: of him in like measure within myself, that is my highest wish. This noble individual was not conscious of the fact that at that very moment the divine within him and the divine of the universe were most intimately united. So, for Goethe, the resonance with a natural rationality seems part of the genius of modern science. Einstein's 'cosmic religion', which reflects Spinoza, also echoes Goethe's remark (Ibid. , Item 575 from 1829): Man must cling to the belief that the incomprehensible is comprehensible. Else he would give up investigating. But how far will Goethe share the devotion of these cosmic rationalists to the beautiful harmonies of mathematics, so distant from any pure and 'direct observation'? Kepler, Spinoza, Einstein need not, and would not, rest with discovery of a pattern within, behind, as a source of, the phenomenal world, and they would not let even the most profound of descriptive generalities satisfy scientific curiosity. For his part, Goethe sought fundamental archetypes, as in his intuition of a Urpjlanze, basic to all plants, infinitely plastic. When such would be found, Goethe would be content, for (as he said to Eckermann, Feb. 18, 1829): . . . to seek something behind (the Urphaenomenon) is futile. Here is the limit. But as a rule men are not satisfied to behold an Urphaenomenon. They think there must be something beyond. They are like children who, having looked into a mirror, turn it around to see what is on the other side.
Download or read book The Wholeness of Nature written by Henri Bortoft and published by SteinerBooks. This book was released on 1996-10 with total page 564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In the course of every human life, moments come -- often so quietly as to be almost unrecognized -- that are so subtle and unobtrusive, they pass without one being fully aware of them. These moments are like the gentle tones of birds singing in their sleep, the faint sound of a bell ringing far away, or the gentle touch of an invisible hand. "Nevertheless, all these moments, perceived or unperceived, are manifestations of destiny in each human life, 'the evidence of things not seen.' They express the secret language of the heart and invite one to begin a journey. They involve taking important steps on a life path, which one senses instinctively will ultimately lead to the light of one's own higher self and into the world of spiritual reality, the 'land' where the real foundations of life purposes are to be found. Thus, one sets out on a path that can lead to the unfolding of the unique mystery of each individual life story. Such is the substance of the journey described in these pages." --Paul Marshall Allen Paul Allen was born into a Quaker family on June 26, 1913, in the small upstate New York village of Conquest. The life that followed was as varied outwardly as it was deeply committed inwardly to following a path of knowledge. He was a teacher, actor, writer, and publisher, each role connecting him with the world as a "Rosicrucian soul." For Paul, the most important event of destiny occurred when he encountered Rudolf Steiner's spiritual science through the actor Michael Chekhov, leading Paul to dedicate his life to Anthroposophy as a path of inner knowledge and activity in the world. In A Rosicrucian Soul, Russell Pooler takes the reader on a journey through the life of a man who profoundly affected everyone he encountered. During the early days of Anthroposophy in North America, Paul delved deeply into Rudolf Steiner's works and became the "first American-born anthroposophic lecturer," traveling across the continent and bringing the few, far-flung Anthroposophic Society members in North America a greater sense of unity and purpose. In New York City, with Bernie Garber, he began publishing the works of Rudolf Steiner and, with Carlo Pietzner, compiled A Christian Rosenkreutz Anthology. Paul Allen eventually started his own publishing company, St. George Book Service, a mail-order book business in western Massachusetts. Later, destiny took Paul and his wife, architect Joan deRis Allen, to Camphill villages in the British Isles and Norway, where they lived, as Paul produced numerous plays, the most significant of which were Rudolf Steiner's Four Mystery Dramas. Throughout this life story, as outer events unfold, the reader is guided to a sense of the inner activities of this very Rosicrucian soul and, perhaps more important, to glimpses of how each of us affects each other through our inner struggles and consequent actions.
Download or read book Nature s Open Secret written by Rudolf Steiner and published by Steiner Books. This book was released on 2000 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of Steiner's introductions to Goethe's works re-visions the meaning of knowledge and how we attain it. Goethe had discovered how thinking could be applied to organic nature and that this experience requires not just rational concepts but a whole new way of perceiving. In an age when science and technology have been linked to great catastrophes, many are looking for new ways to interact with nature. With a fundamental declaration of the interpenetration of our consciousness and the world around us, Steiner shows how Goethe's approach points the way to a more compassionate and intimate involvement with nature.
Download or read book Goethe s Science of Living Form written by Nigel Hoffmann and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this groundbreaking book, Nigel Hoffmann shows that understanding the dynamic, living qualities of nature requires artistic capacities. He distinguishes four stages of scientific inquiry that correspond to the four classical elements of Earth, Water, Air, and Fire. Modern analytical science with its causal thinking can be characterized as an Earth mode of cognition. A dynamic approach that follows transformation over time requires a sculptural sense of form and corresponds to the element of Water. The stages of Air and Fire engage yet more vital aspects of nature through musical and poetic capacities. Combining scholarly-scientific acuity with artistic insight, Hoffmann first characterizes these four different ways of knowing. He then applies them, leading us ever more deeply into the dynamic qualities of specific plants, animals, and the landscape they live in. In doing so, he demonstrates how this four-step methodology provides a comprehensive framework for the life sciences. This beautifully illustrated book will appeal to all who are interested in gaining deeper insights into nature. "I put my hopes for the future in such practice because it plants seeds of a life-attuned thinking into the world that can help us to act in more life-engendering ways." --Craig Holdrege (in his foreword) Contents: Art and the Emergence of an Authentic Organic Science Goethe and the Phenomenological Method Toward an Authentic Method in the Life Sciences A Goethean Methodology through the Elemental Modes Earth Cognition--Physical Thinking--the Mechanical Water Cognition -- Imagination -- the Sculptural Air Cognition -- Inspiration -- the Musical Fire Cognition -- Intuition -- the Poetical Evolution as Creative Process The Landscape and its Organs The Human Being and the Evolution of Landscape The Yabby Ponds: A Goethean Study of Place
Download or read book Goethe s History of Science written by Karl J. Fink and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1991-10-25 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fink explores how Goethe's scientific activities contributed to the growing literature in the history and philosophy of science.
Download or read book Goethe Contra Newton written by Dennis L. Sepper and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-02-13 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sepper shows that the condemnation of Goethe's attacks on Newton has been based on erroneous assumptions about the history of Newton's theory.
Download or read book Goethe and the Development of Science 1750 1900 written by G.A. Wells and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 1979-05-31 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Romantic Conception of Life written by Robert J. Richards and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-04-06 with total page 609 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "All art should become science and all science art; poetry and philosophy should be made one." Friedrich Schlegel's words perfectly capture the project of the German Romantics, who believed that the aesthetic approaches of art and literature could reveal patterns and meaning in nature that couldn't be uncovered through rationalistic philosophy and science alone. In this wide-ranging work, Robert J. Richards shows how the Romantic conception of the world influenced (and was influenced by) both the lives of the people who held it and the development of nineteenth-century science. Integrating Romantic literature, science, and philosophy with an intimate knowledge of the individuals involved—from Goethe and the brothers Schlegel to Humboldt and Friedrich and Caroline Schelling—Richards demonstrates how their tempestuous lives shaped their ideas as profoundly as their intellectual and cultural heritage. He focuses especially on how Romantic concepts of the self, as well as aesthetic and moral considerations—all tempered by personal relationships—altered scientific representations of nature. Although historians have long considered Romanticism at best a minor tributary to scientific thought, Richards moves it to the center of the main currents of nineteenth-century biology, culminating in the conception of nature that underlies Darwin's evolutionary theory. Uniting the personal and poetic aspects of philosophy and science in a way that the German Romantics themselves would have honored, The Romantic Conception of Life alters how we look at Romanticism and nineteenth-century biology.
Download or read book The Will to Create written by Astrida Orle Tantillo and published by University of Pittsburgh Pre. This book was released on 2011-11-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Better known as a poet and dramatist, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) was also a learned philosopher and natural scientist. Astrida Orle Tantillo offers the first comprehensive analysis of his natural philosophy, which she contends is rooted in creativity. Tantillo analyzes Goethe's main scientific texts, including his work on physics, botany, comparative anatomy, and metereology. She critically examines his attempts to challenge the basic tenets of Newtonian and Cartesian science and to found a new natural philosophy. In individual chapters devoted to different key principles, she reveals how this natural philosophy--which questions rationalism, the quantitative approach to scientific inquiry, strict gender categories, and the possibility of scientific objectivity--illuminates Goethe's standing as both a precursor and critic of modernity. Tantillo does not presuppose prior knowledge of Goethe or science, and carefully avoids an overreliance on specialized jargon. This makes The Will to Create accessible to a wide audience, including philosophers, historians of science, and literary theorists, as well as general readers.
Download or read book Emerson and Science written by Peter Obuchowski and published by SteinerBooks. This book was released on 2005-05 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ralph Waldo Emerson maintained a lifelong interest in science. His journals, from the earliest to the last, document this interest--an interest reflected in his lectures, essays, letters, and poems. Emerging from Emerson's statements on science is a coherent attitude that can be defined as his scientific thinking. The purpose of Emerson and Science is to analyze this thinking and to indicate the relationship it bears to his total thought. An analysis of Emerson's scientific thinking reveals that science, especially Goethean science, affords the means to explore and present what the book elaborates as Emerson's monistic worldview. The pervasive influence of Goethe's science on the epistemological bases underlying that view is presented at length. In addition to illuminating Emerson's epistemological position, the context of science divulges how Emerson's interest in science kept him from the extremes of Swedenborg's mysticism and from falling prey--unlike many of his contemporaries--to the pseudo-sciences of the day, including phrenology, mesmerism, palmistry, astrology, and so forth. Emerson's interest in science also played an important role in his rejection of conventional religion and helped qualify his idealism, making him sympathetic to the claims of materialism. His focus on science kept him from accepting either of the main streams of the scientific thought of his age and led him to what the book defines as Emerson's "scientific mysticism," or "spiritual science." Peter Obuchowski, a professor emeritus of English language and literature, shows how the context of Emerson's approach to science provides a new focus for considering a number of the key issues that have become the hallmarks of Emersonian criticism--issues such as Emerson's optimism in relation both to his spiritually oriented worldview and to his faith in scientific progress, as well as his attitude to evil and his so-called philosophical naïveté.
Download or read book Goethe s Scientific Consciousness written by Henri Bortoft and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 99 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Taking Appearance Seriously written by Henri Bortoft and published by Floris Books. This book was released on 2012-10-25 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of western metaphysi from Plato onwards 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 foundation. With Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer came a major step towards taking appearance seriously, exploring a way of seeing that draws attention back 'upstream', from what is experienced into the act of experiencing. Understood in this way, perception is a dynamic event, a 'phenomenon', in which the observer participates. Henri Bortoft guides us through this dynamic way of seeing in various areas of experience -- in distinguishing things, the finding of meaning, and the relationship between thought and words. He also explores similarities with Goethe's reflections on the coming-into-being of the living plant. Here, in another reversal of classical thinking, we find that even in their 'diversity of appeareances', living things are not separate but in relation. Diversity is the dynamic unity of life itself. Expanding the scope of his previous book, The Wholeness of Nature, the author shows how Goethean insights combine with the dynamic way of seeing in continental philosophy to offer us an actively experienced 'life of meaning'. This book will be of interest to anyone who wants to understand the contribution and wider implications of modern European thought in the world today.
Download or read book German Romanticism and Science written by Jocelyn Holland and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-04-30 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Situated at the intersection of literature and science, Holland's study draws upon a diverse corpus of literary and scientific texts which testify to a cultural fascination with procreation around 1800. Through readings which range from Goethe’s writing on metamorphosis to Novalis’s aphorisms and novels and Ritter’s Fragments from the Estate of a Young Physicist, Holland proposes that each author contributes to a scientifically-informed poetics of procreation. Rather than subscribing to a single biological theory (such as epigenesis or preformation), these authors take their inspiration from a wide inventory of procreative motifs and imagery.
Download or read book Goethean Science written by Rudolf Steiner and published by Chadwick Library Edition. This book was released on 2018-03-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written in 1883 (CW 1) Goethean Science features Rudolf Steiner's introductions to Goethe's works, re-visioning the meaning of knowledge and how we attain it. Goethe had discovered how thinking could be applied to organic nature and that this experience requires not just rational concepts but a whole new way of perceiving. At the youthful age of twenty-one, Steiner was chosen to edit Goethe's scientific writings for the principle Goethe edition of his time. Goethe's literary genius was universally acknowledged; it was Steiner's task to understand and comment on Goethe's scientific achievements. Steiner recognized the significance of Goethe's work with nature and his epistemology, and here began Steiner's own training in epistemology and spiritual science. In an age when science and technology have been linked to great catastrophes, many are looking for new ways to interact with nature. With a fundamental declaration of the interpenetration of our consciousness and the world around us, Steiner shows how Goethe's approach points the way to a more compassionate and intimate involvement with nature. The Chadwick Library Edition is an endeavor to republish--mostly in new or thoroughly revised English translations--several written works of Rudolf Steiner. The edition is named for the late horticulturist Alan Chadwick, whose life and work has served as inspiration to the small group from which the idea originated. Our extensive experience with special bindings led to the selection--for this "trade edition" of 750 books--of a leather spine binding, cloth sides, and a light slipcase. For the hand-numbered edition (100 books), the binding is full leather with a hand-gilt top of the pages in a fine, stiff, cloth-covered slipcase. The leather is blue calfskin, and the title stamping on the spines is in genuine gold leaf. All of this will be carried out by hand at one of the finest binders, Ruggero Rigoldi.Goetean Science is a translation from German of «J. W. Goethe: Naturwissenschaftlich Schriften, Mit Einleitung, Fußnoten und Erläuterungen im Text Herausgegeben von Rudolf Steinter, Band 1-5 (a-e)» (GA 1).
Download or read book Schopenhauer s Broken World View written by P.F. Lauxtermann and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-04-17 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Schopenhauer's philosophy, at first sight so beautifully rounded, upon analysis reveals itself as the secret arena of two conflicting world-views. The present analysis considers the conflict by confronting Schopenhauer as a `disciple-of-sorts of Kant' with Schopenhauer as `Goethe's one-time collaborator on the theory of colour'. Here the two meet over profound issues which the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century has ineluctably put before us: what is the right level at which to apprehend nature; what is the proper foundation for a consistent ethics; how (if at all) to arrive at a unified conception of a world broken by modern science? In this deeply-delving, lucidly written, humane and erudite study, the history of philosophical currents is blended with history of science, with history of ideas generally, and (to elucidate relevant portions of Schopenhauer's biography and intellectual and social environment) with German history too. The analysis, while benefiting from the scholarly literature, is grounded primarily in original research among the collected works of Schopenhauer, Kant and Goethe, considered in all their philosophical, scientific, and literary variety.
