Thoughts on Goethe

The gentle impiricism that Goethe advocates evokes these origins within us needed for the deeper understanding of nature. Again the metaphor of seeing is omni-present. Every new object well contemplated opens up a new organ within us. The ambitions of Goethe succeeded in that his science is one wherein the full rich content of nature is retained but is now penetrated and illumined by human faculties shaped by the hand of nature itself. Nature includes not only what impresses the eye as color or form but also inner dimensions, for example; the moods of color. Goethe called these dimensions the moral aspects of experience and he believed deeply that they are also part of our experience of nature and ultimately must be included in scientific knowledge .