Between light and eye: Goethe's science of color and the polar phenomenology of nature

Abstract

In his interviews with Eckermann in the 1820s, Goethe referred to his Theory of Colors as his greatest and ultimate achievement. Its reception following publication in 1810 and subsequent reviews throughout the history of physical science did not reflect this self-assessment. Even Hermann von Helmholtz, who in part modeled his scientific work after Goethe's, initially thought that Goethe's poetic genius prevented him from understanding physical science. Why did Goethe champion his Farbenlehre so ardently even years after it was dismissed by almost everyone else? In answering this question, this essay will attempt to add to the existing scholarship by considering Goethe's Theory of Colors in the context of his natural philosophy, and generalizing the variety of objectifications of the concepts invoked by his color theory and their relationships to Goethe's epistemology and Newton's mechanics. In this fashion, I attempt to show that the reason for Goethe's self-assessment of his Theory of Colors is less enigmatic than appears from its examination solely as a work of physics. Rather, Zur Farbenlehre was the clearest expression of Goethe's most universal archetype-- polarity of opposites-- which bridged Goethe's conflicts with Kant's and Spinoza's epistemologies, and in an over-reaching way served as a cosmology underlying Goethe's art and his science.