Goethe's Colors: Revolutionary Optics and the Anthropocene
Abstract:For Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832), a study of colors expresses the morphological and metamorphic processes of the active natural world, energized by the sunlight, that grow, live, and crystallize into ever new forms. Rather than focusing on static objects, Goethe saw the natural—and social—world as an expression of ongoing processes. Colors are, above all, actively developing components of a world in fux, not fxed entities. Newton, he wrote, was wrong in that he studied light as if it were an isolated feature and not an interactive part of the world. Newton's breakdown of white light into the spectrum of colors is accurate, of course; what Goethe recognized, in contrast, is the more complex and muddied realm of perception and relations between and among things and observers, studied in quantum mechanics and the new materialisms. In other words, these felds and Goethe postulate that our physical world and human existence are part of manifold engagements between energy, matter, living things, and mental perception. We are never truly "outside" of the system that we study, though most of empirical science assumes that we are or could be or at least should strive to be when undertaking objective studies. With this vision, Goethe offers what I call a proto-"ecological theory of colors" at the beginning of the newly defned geological era of the Anthropocene when human activities have left traces on environmental systems across the entire Earth.
Heights of Reflection: Mountains in the German Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Twenty-First Century
Introduction: The Meaning of Mountains: Geology, History, Culture - Caroline Schaumann and Sean Ireton Prelude: Classical Mountain Landscapes and the Language of Ascent - Dan Hooley Terra Incognita? Mountains in Medieval and Early Modern German Literature - Albrecht Classen From Meadows to Mountaintops: Albrecht von Haller's"Die Alpen" - Caroline Schaumann Geo-Poetics: The Alpine Sublime in Art and Literature, 1779-1860 - Anthony Ozturk Time and Narrative in the Mountain Sublime around 1800 - Sean Franzel Faust's Mountains: An Ecocritical Reading of Goethe's Tragedy and Science - Heather I. Sullivan Spectacular Scenery and Slippery Descents: Narrating the Mountains of Tropical Polynesia - Sabine Wilke Fascinating Voids: Alexander von Humboldt and the Myth of Chimborazo - Oliver Lubrich From Eros to Thanatos: Hiking and Spelunking in Ludwig Tieck's Der Runenberg - Peter Arnds Geology, Mountaineering, and Self-Formation in Adalbert Stifter's Der Nachsommer - Sean Ireton "An Apparition from Another World" -- The Mountains of the Moon and Kilimanjaro from the Perspective of Nineteenth-Century Germany - Christof Hamman Leaving the Summit Behind: Tracking Biographical and Philosophical Pathways in Richard Strauss's Eine Alpensinfonie - Peter Hoeyng Elevation and Insight: Thomas Mann's Der Zauberberg - Johannes Turk "The Essence of the Alpine World Is Struggle": Strategies of Gesundung in Arnold Fanck's Early Mountain Films - Wilfried Wilms PhD "Mountain of Destiny": The Filmic Legacy of Nanga Parbat - Harald Hoebusch Spatial Orientation and Embodied Transcendence in Werner Herzog's Mountain Climbing Films - Roger F. Cook W. G. Sebald's Magic Mountains - Scott Denham Conflicting Ascents: Inscriptions, Cartographies, andDisappearance in Christoph Ransmayr's Der fliegende Berg - Olaf Berwald Works Cited Notes on the Contributors Index
The will to create : Goethe's philosophy of nature
"Finally, we have a readable work in English comparable to Margrit Wyder's Goethes Naturmodell, Dorothea-Michaela Noe-Rumberg's Naturgesetze als Dichtungsprinzipien, and Gunter Schnitzler and Gottfried Schramm's Ein Unteilbares Ganzes which encompasses all aspects of Goethe's philosophy of nature...Tantillo takes the reader on a fascinating and illuminating journey of discovery through Goethe's life as a scientist and poet...I highly recommend this exciting and incisive study." - John A. McCarthy, Vanderbilt University 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.