Goethe’s Way of Science as a Phenomenology of Nature
David Seamon
Kansas State University
In this article, I argue that Goethe’s way of science, understood as a
phenomenology of nature, might be one valuable means for fostering this
openness toward the living presence of the natural world, including its
animals but also its plants, its terrestrial forms, its ecological regions, its
formations of earth, sky and water, its sensual presence as expressed, for
example, through light, darkness, and color.
...In arguing that Goethe’ way of science o?ers one means to foster a
deeper openness toward nature, I want to highlight three interrelated top-
ics:
• First, considering the particular method by which Goethe explored the
natural world and indicating its value phenomenologically;
• Second, arguing, after physicist Henri Bortoft (1996), that the results of
Goethe’s approach help one to understand the thing as it is understand-
able both in itself and also as it has a necessary relationship to other
things of which it is a part;
• Third, suggesting that Goethe’s way of science may o?er a powerful
vehicle for engendering a stronger environmental ethic grounded in
both perception and thought but also activating feeling.
...In his article mentioned earlier, naturalist Charles Bergman empha-
sizes that we must “care as much for the worlds of being as we do for the
worlds of meaning….” (2002, 146). Goethe’s way of science is one means
to engender such caring—a method of encountering qualities by which the
natural world remains alive, dynamic, undivided—itself. In short, a science
of the wholeness of nature (Bortoft 1996). Said di?erently, a phenomenol-
ogy of the natural world.
(как всегда... увы. ничего существенного)