Goethe’s Polarity of Light and Darkness

Abstract

Rarely does research in the history and philosophy of science lead to new empirical results, but that is exactly what has happened in one of the essays of this special issue: Rang and Grebe-Ellis have developed new experimental techniques to perform measurements Goethe proposed 217 years ago. These measurements fit neatly with Goethe's idea of polarity-his complementary spectrum is not only an optical, but also a thermodynamical counterpart of Newton's spectrum. I use the new measurements, firstly, to argue against the asymmetries between light and darkness posited by Lyre and Schreiber; and, secondly, to explicate the alternative theory (the heterogeneity of darkness) that Goethe had introduced to urge scientific pluralism. In my replies to exegetical criticism by Bo ¨hler, Hampe and Zemple ´n, I show that the main goal of Goethe's Farbenlehre was indeed to expose symmetries between light and darkness. Furthermore, I argue that it is worthwhile to focus on the experiments, arguments and hypotheses of the Farbenlehre, and not merely on rhetorical, narrative or stylistical aspects, as Bo ¨hler and Hampe would have it. Goethe's criticism of Newton is often dismissed, but it is in fact surprisingly relevant today.

Colour, Wavelength and Turbidity in the Light of Goethe’s Colour Studies

“…However, Müller assures us that "Goethe did not have anything against the attempt to describe the world with the help of idealized, even abstract, theories," basing himself on Goethe's comment in Farbenlehre (Didactic) §159. Yet, Müller states the exact opposite earlier (Müller 2016a(Müller , 2018) "Goethe dreaded philosophical as much as scientific abstraction (see e.g. Goethe 1988, §716, §719- §721, §752)."…”

“…Recently, controversy has arisen with respect to the spectra produced by Newton and Goethe, as to whether or not Goethe's inverse spectrum is as valid as Newton's for the theory of colour (Lampert and Hampe 2018). Particularly with respect to Müller's work (Müller 2015), some major themes under discussion have included: the interchangeability of light and dark in the experiments of Newton emphasized by Goethe in order to develop symmetric experiments (Müller 2015); the reality of darkness as a causative factor and the question of "heterogeneity of darkness" (Schreiber 2018); the relevance of polarity and enhancement as two factors studied in Goethe's study of colour (Müller 2016a;Rang and Müller 2009); and Zemplén's (2018) and Quine's underdetermination thesis applied to Goethe's and Newton's theories. In his paper (Müller 2018), Müller responded to the questions raised in the Special Issue of the Journal for General Philosophy of Science (Vol. 49(4)), and both his response as well as the earlier questions will form the basis for the current paper.…”