Abstract:ArgumentThis essay seeks to identify the cultural significance of Goethe's scientific writings. He reformulates, in the light of his own concrete experience, “crucial turning-points” (Hauptmomente) in the history of science – key ideas, the historical understanding of which is vital to present understanding – thus situating his own scientific work at the bi-polar center of the Western scientific tradition, conceived as the dramatic interplay over centuries of two opposing modes of thought. For in his experimen… Show more
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