Goethe on Science: An Anthology of Goethe's Scientific Writings , and: Nature's Open Secret: Introductions to Goethe's Scientific Writings (review)

Abstract

398 Book Reviews vielen Anmerkungen das Lesen zur Anstrengung werden lassen. Das ist insofern schade, als es dazu verleitet, die Lektüre auf die einzelnen Abschnitte zu beschr änken, die den Leser im Augenblick interessieren, wobei das allgemeine Bild verloren geht—was sowieso typisch für das "Register-Lesen" wird. Das täte Richters Arbeit sehr Unrecht. Sie ist viel mehr als die Summe der Einzelheiten. Sie ist ein wichtiger Vorstoß, den wir weiter verfolgen müssen. Wir sollten uns trauen, nicht nur Zelter von Goethe (und Mendelssohn) her zu sehen, sondern einmal Goethe von Zelter und seinem Berlin her. Dazu gehört noch allerhand Arbeit an diesem vernachlässigten Text. Texas A&M University (em.) WulfKoepke Jeremy Naydler, Goethe on Science: An Anthology of Goethe's Scientific Writings. Edinburgh: Floris Books, 2000 [1996]. 141 pp. Rudolf Steiner, Nature's Open Secret: Introductions to Goethe's Scientific Writings. Trans. John Barnes and Mado Spiegler. Hudson, NY: Lindisfame Books, 2000. 305 pp. Naydler's "Anthology" is a collection of translations by various authors with a focus on statements by Goethe on epistemology, which is also the topic of Rudolf Steiner's "Introductions" to Goethe's science now in a new translation by Barnes and Spiegler. Basically Naydler's anthology is a narrow version of the volume of Goethe's science done by Douglas Miller for the Suhrkamp edition of Goethe in English. ' The content of the anthology is not about the various fields in which Goethe did science, rather it is on views Goethe held about science as a human activity. These statements conform to Steiner's concept of anthroposophy (1924), a point of view that has been modernized in the writings of Henri Bortoft, who wrote the "Preface" for Naydler's "Anthology" and was given space at the end of it for a one-page abstract of his book on Goethe's "way of science. "2 Barnes then further defines this approach as a "participatory science" in an essay appended to the translation of Steiner's book. All four commentators, Steiner, Bortoft , Naydler, and Barnes, see in Goethe's way of doing science the resolution of a dualism and tension in mankind's attempt over the past four hundred years to dominate and control nature. What is anthroposophy and how was this view of life drawn from the writings of Goethe? In the "Editor's Preface" to the Steiner volume, Barnes outlines Rudolf Steiner's biography (1861-1925) with special emphasis on his struggle to distinguish "the seen" from the "not seen" (vii). This crisis led him from the transcendental philosophy of Fichte to the phenomenology of Goethe, where he selectively pursued his quest for the integration of mind and body. At this time he was editing the scientific writings of Goethe for the Weimar edition (1887-1919), which became the standard source for the interpretation of Goethe's science until the Leopoldina edition (1957-) began to replace it with more positivistic editorial principles. From this editorial work on Goethe from the turn of the century, Steiner developed "his view of the threefold nature of the human being" as a complex interrelationship of the body, soul, and spirit (ix). Goethe Yearbook 399 In the "Preface" to Naydler's collection of translations, Bortoft examines Steiner's spiritualist interpretation of Goethe's science as a historical problem that arose from the view of "mathematics as the key to nature," a view that "has shaped the very form which our scientific understanding takes today" (9). He goes on to explain that Goethe had thoroughly researched the history of science and had discovered that "science is intrinsically historical," quoting from Goethe that "we might venture the statement that the history of science is science itself' (10), an idea that Goethe actually learned from Schiller. Bortoft points out that Goethe had anticipated the position of Thomas Kuhn and others who think that "modem science is a culturally based activity" and that this discovery of "the ineducible historical dimension of science as a cultural enterprise can liberate us from the dogmatism of science" (10). With this "Preface" one wonders why none of Naydler's ten chapter rubrics include the extensive statements by Goethe on the history of science...