Acquaintance with Color: Prolegomena to a Study of Goethe’s Zur Farbenlehre

Auch in Wissenschaften kann man eigentlich nichts wissen, es will immer getan sein.

—LA 1.9:268

[In the sciences, too, there is actually nothing to know. It must always be done.]

What type of object is the text Goethe entitled Zur Farbenlehre?¹ Superficial appearances notwithstanding, the question does not already contain its own answer: it is uninformative simply to respond that Zur Farbenlehre is a text. Nor can an answer merely consist in an explanation of what the text is about. For in order to make authoritative statements about the text’s purport, presuppositions have to be in place concerning its form. To give an example, the text calls itself at numerous junctures scientific, and how we understand this sort of discursive self-attribution is impacted by the form of the text at hand.² Of course, a fuller articulation of the form of Zur Farbenlehre will unfold according to a great number of further distinctions, but it is clear that even the initial reading of a textual object entails certain framing assumptions and judgments about what sort of thing one is being confronted with. In the case of Goethe’s text, our familiarity with the term Lehre can encourage the belief that we are dealing with the exposition of a collection, even a systematic elaboration, of abstract propositions. But that is, importantly, not what Goethe’s text entails.

Indeed, a cursory glance at the text reveals that its procedure cannot be described as straightforwardly explanatory or justificatory. That is to say, Goethe’s text does not just tell us what it is like for material objects to appear, nor is it in the business of justifying a stance concerning their reality. Perhaps most surprising, given our expectations of early modern science, Zur Farbenlehre never offers a physical definition of color or light in terms of either corpuscles or waves. Instead, it presents protocols for a seemingly countless number of experiments the reader is meant to conduct simultaneously with reading; it devotes a sizable section to aesthetic questions; and essentially half its pages develop a history of inquiry into color from archaic times to Goethe’s own day. It stands beyond doubt that the design and ambition of the text markedly differ from that of (1) a philosophical reflection on the reality of color such as was canonically introduced by John Locke in his 1690 Essay concerning Human Understanding;³ (2) a descriptive report and analysis of optical phenomena and their theoretical origins as typically had their home in physics (Naturlehre) textbooks;⁴ (3) an inventory and statement of conclusions regarding physiological experiments on the eye akin to those performed by Goethe’s brilliant younger colleague Johann Wilhelm Ritter;⁵ or (4) a medical manual for the lay population.⁶ Most importantly, Zur Farbenlehre diverges radically from the template of axiomatic theorems, proofs, and conclusions that Newton had, in the spirit of Euclid’s Elements, employed in his 1704 publication Opticks.

In fact, Newton’s entire procedure of “proof by experiments” is anathema to Zur Farbenlehre.⁷ Goethe goes so far as to devote a short section of his text to denouncing Newton’s claim that experimental data can provide conclusive evidence of any theoretical proposition. However systematically one arrays experiments and experiences, Goethe argues, “Folgerungen … zieht jeder für sich daraus; beweisen läßt sich nichts dadurch, besonders keine Ibiliäten und Keiten” (LA 1.5:12; Everyone … draws their own conclusions; nothing can be proven thereby, especially no -ilities and -nesses).⁸ His intention, in this dismissal, is not to impugn all use of experiment in the scientific enterprise. After all, Zur Farbenlehre is shot through with scripted sequences of action that the reader should reenact. Strident detractors and emphatic advocates of diverse disciplinary ilk have often failed to recognize that Goethe does not abjure all experiment, nor does he champion a merely immediate and intuitive grasp of phenomena. His real challenge to Newton concerns the identification of experiment as a ground for proof. Our task is, then, to look into the compositional role played in Zur...