Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s engagement with plants was a life-long pursuit, as he lays out in the essay Der Verfasser teilt die Geschichte seiner botanischen Studien mit (1817/1831). Written, as he explains in closing, to push back against the notion that his theory of
morphology came to him in one brilliant flash of inspiration or unusual sagacity, the essay emphasizes his “folgerechtes Bemühen” (24:752), i.e. the persistent efforts of the author and gradual development of his theory of plant morphology over time. The narrative centers
on themes that are paradigmatic for Goethe’s natural scientific thinking as well as for the construction of knowledge around 1800, namely that 1) ideas such as morphology are to be understood in the context of the “Geschichte” or history/story of their coming into being,
2) are intimately bound up with their means and media of representation, and 3) arise as a sort of collaboration and unfinished process involving an active subject and dynamic object over time. In a strikingly modern conception of science, Goethe believed “die Geschichte der Wissenschaft
[ist] die Wissenschaft selbst” (23:16), emphasizing that every idea develops and continues to exist in relation to a natural-scientific and cultural archive. It was also Goethe’s conviction that knowledge cannot be transmitted in a finished state, but must be continually formed
anew. The narrative documenting his time-bound pursuit of knowledge about plants can thus be understood as a way to share this process with readers in multiple senses of the word “mitteilen,” by encouraging them to become more receptive to vegetal life by vicariously following
his development and relating it to their own experience.
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