Is Goethe’s Theory of Color Science?

Abstract

The ambivalence of scientific-technological progress has led in our century to a widespread criticism of science, especially of modern natural science.¹ Moreover, the conclusions derived from this criticism have been manifold. They range from a radical rejection of science, as seen in the anti-science movement, to the demand for a science maximally comprehensive to society. Such criticism normally assumes that science simply is as it is, and that decisions are made about its benefit or harm to man only after it is put to use. Questions about a ‘different’ science are rarely raised, and remain tangential to a conceptual exposition. Thus, it comes as no surprise when the term ‘scientific’ is defined in the context of science as it presently exists. Whether or not sciences other than modern science are possible at all can scarcely be determined theoretically, but rather, perhaps, can be determined through the study of attempts at knowledge which in another era could lay claim to the status of science, such as the science of Plato (Böhme, 1976), or which, at least as a stumbling block within the history of modern science, proved themselves to be a possible candidate for an alternative science, as is the case with Goethe’s theory of colors. Only on the basis of such studies will the demands for an ‘alternative science’ attain some degree of substantiation.

Translated by Joseph Gray from ‘Ist Goethes Farbenlehre Wissenschaft?’, Studia Leibnitiana 9 (1977), 27–54; rpt. in the author’s Alternativen der Wissenschaft, Suhrkamp, Frankfürt an Main, 1980, pp. 123–153. The English translation is reprinted from Contemporary German Philosophy, ed. by D. E. Christensen, vol. 4, Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1985, pp. 262–286, with the kind permission of Pennsylvania State University Press.