Fritz Breithaupt, Richard Raatzsch, Bettina Kremberg, eds., Goethe Wittgenstein: seeing the World's Unity in its Variety. Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang, 2003.172 pp. Goethe's influence on the philosopher Ludwig is subtle indirect. In his status as canonical classic Goethe was certainly part of Wittgenstein's education, but paradoxically his most profound influence was mediated through other thinkers. It is possible to trace, for instance, the roles of Emerson William James with regard to nature, on one hand, of Schopenhauer, Otto Weininger, Oswald Spengler with regard to morphology, on the other. Thus, the point of looking at parallels between Goethe Wittgenstein, writes Joachim Schulte, a leading authority one of the contributors to this volume, cannot really be the discovery of this or that identifiable influence Goethe may have had on Wittgenstein (56). Rather, the elucidation of parallels is important for grasping the character of each,expressions of certain types of attitude or temperament (56). In this the contributors to this volume are very successful. While this volume is sponsored by WittgensteinStudien, contributors also underline the modernity in much of Goethe's thought. The nine essays collected here grew out of a workshop hosted in Leipzig in Spring 2000, occasioned by the 250th anniversary of Goethe's birth the 50th anniversary of Wittgenstein's death.They build on the foundational work done by Schulte, especially in his Chor und Gesetz (Frankfurt, 1990), by M. W. Rowe, now collected in his Philosophy Literature (Aldershot, 2004). James C. Klagge focuses directly on the problem of influence, noting that never cites Goethe as an explicit influence. Nevertheless, he finds links, especially through their shared interest in the problem of causality as it relates to explanation. AIfred Nordmann also looks at causality explanation, exploring parallels with both Goethe Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Nordmann focuses on Wittgenstein's insistence that philosophy does not intervene in nature, but leaves things as they are. In a similar way Goethe's morphological approach claims no privileged access to truth, but is simply one intermediary case in a series of approaches. A number of the essays focus on Goethe's morphological method, especially as developed in the Metamorphosis of the Plants, finding affinities with several of Wittgenstein's philosophical strategies. Matthias Kross is interested in Wittgenstein's move from engineering to philosophy, pointing to the importance of Goethe's search for the Urphanomen. Fritz Breithaupt notes that both Goethe reject the notion of some deeper level or truth that underlies appearance, some Platonic idea or extra-linguistic reference. He sees an analogy between Goethe's Urphanomen Wittgenstein's concept of the languagegame: for both appearance is about and without end (89). Nikos Psarros finds an exception to this. Where various scholars have found echoes of Goethe in Wittgenstein's citation of Michael Faraday's The Chemical History of a Candle-water is one individual thing-it never changes, Psarros argues that uses the line to gloss the notion that linguistic facts are constructed by giving other rules of their use. Focusing especially on Wittgenstein's Remarks on Frazier's Golden Bough? …