Goethe and Intuitive Induction

I. Introduction

Although as a poet he stands with Homer, Dante and Shakespeare, the scientific writings of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe are still rarely discussed by philosophers.1 While his scientific ideas found some favour with contemporaries, Hegel being one of the most prominent, to many readers, both then and since, they have seemed a puzzling anomaly, out of step with the mainstream of philosophical thinking about the nature of scientific knowledge. However, Goethe's epistemology is deeply consistent with an older tradition, going back to Aristotle. In this essay, I will argue that Goethe offers a distinctive account of what, in the Aristotelian literature, is sometimes referred to as 'intuitive induction,' as an alternative to the still dominant, Humean, conception of induction.2

Modern discussions of induction have, for the most part, moved within the parameters set down by Hume. As J. R. Milton puts it:

David Hume appears as perhaps the first and certainly the greatest of all inductive sceptics, as a philosopher who bequeathed to his successors a Problem of Induction, which might be solved, or dissolved, or by-passed, but which could not legitimately or honestly be ignored.3

Hume's arguments against induction are so widely known that I will not repeat them here. Instead, I want to draw attention to two central assumptions underlying Hume's approach, assumptions which have had a widespread influence. One of the reasons Goethe's scientific writings have often been misunderstood, is precisely that he rejects these assumptions; hence, a brief consideration of them will bring the alternative, Goethean perspective into sharper relief. These assumptions are as follows: firstly, the rejection of the “ancient distinction”4 between sense and intellect,5 and the related rejection of universal concepts6; and, secondly, the acceptance of a new metaphysics,7 broadly speaking, the metaphysics of early modern natural science, which combined

1 In what follows I refer to the existing English translations of Goethe's writings. The original German sources are cited in brackets. 2 To my knowledge, Goethe never speaks of his own method as “inductive,” and his very few references to induction are critical. However, when these statements are considered together with his substantive epistemological views, it becomes clear that Goethe is critical only of the narrow, empiricist conception of induction. It seems that Goethe was not familiar with the Aristotelian conception of induction and that his objection to using the word, to characterise his own approach, stemmed from his association of induction with empiricism.

3 J. R. Milton, “Induction Before Hume,” in, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 38 1 (1987): p. 49.

4 Frank J. Leavitt, “Hume Against Spinoza and Aristotle,” Hume Studies, Volume 17 2 (1991): p. 204.5 Peter Millican, Introduction, in David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, edited by Peter Millican (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. ix. Hume makes this rejection clear in A Treatise of Human Nature (Part III, Section 1), when he writes, “It is usual with mathematicians, to pretend, that those ideas, which are their objects, are of so refined and spiritual a nature, that they fall not under the conception of the fancy, but must be comprehended by a pure and intellectual view, of which the superior faculties of the soul are alone capable. The same notion runs through most parts of philosophy, and is principally made use of to explain our abstract ideas, and to shew how we can form an idea of a triangle, for instance, which shall neither be an isosceles nor scalenum, nor be confined to any particular length and proportion of sides. It is easy to see, why philosophers are so fond of this notion of some spiritual and refined perceptions; since by that means they cover many of their absurdities, and may refuse to submit to the decisions of clear ideas, by appealing to such as are obscure and uncertain.”6 Milton (1987): pp. 69-71.7 Louis Groarke, An Aristotelian Account of Induction: Creating Something From Nothing (Montreal:

a commitment to the complete mathematisation of all natural phenomena (and the relegation to purely subjective status of any phenomena not amenable to mathematisation) with the view that the true being of observable nature lies, not in its surface appearances, but in its deeper, atomic constituents and the mathematical laws governing them. It is this combination of assumptions that leads to Hume's ultimately contradictory position that mixes skeptical arguments, which, if taken seriously, utterly undermine the possibility of scientific knowledge, with a partly covert acceptance of the scientific naturalism of his time.

It should be noted that some scholars of Hume have questioned the interpretation of Hume as a radical sceptic, whose arguments lead to the denial of any order in nature, and have focused instead on what they take to be Hume's naturalism. On this view, Hume's arguments are meant not to undermine belief in causation, but rather to undermine all non-natural, metaphysical accounts of human knowledge. My own interpretation combines both elements, since in my view Hume's scepticism is a consequence of his partly covert, dogmatic acceptance of scientific naturalism, and of the specific assumptions mentioned above.

There is a connection between, on the one hand, Hume's rejection of the distinction between sense-perception and intellect (and his identification of thinking with imagination), and, on the other hand, his partly-covert acceptance of a new metaphysics. According to Millican, the “metaphysical” thinkers against whom Hume argued, shared, despite their differences,

some important assumptions, notably a view of the world as created by divine reason, and – relatedly – as potentially 'intelligible' to human reason. Hume's special significance is as the first great philosopher to question both of these pervasive assumptions, and to build and epistemology and philosophy of science in no way dependent on either of them.8

All of this has the consequence that Hume approaches induction and causality in a way radically different from Goethe. Hume is interested, for the most part, in asking whether we can predict that a contingent empirical event will occur at a given place and time (for instance, whether the sun will rise tomorrow), or whether a given cause will have the expected effect – in his terms, whether one sensible phenomenon will be followed by another (for instance, the eating of bread being followed by nourishment).9 As he says, “All reasonings concerning matter of fact seem to be founded on the relation of Cause and Effect”10 since it is only by means of the idea that there is a necessary connection between one phenomenon (the cause) and another (the effect) that we can go beyond the evidence provided by memory and immediate sense perception. Hume's denial of intellectual insight11 also means that he tends to conflate the traditional notions of causality and necessary connection with that of “power,”12 or “force.” In other words, he tends to McGill-Queen's University Press, 2009), p. 79: “the early moderns [and Hume among them] did not shake off metaphysics; they subscribed to a new metaphysics.”8 Millican, in Hume (2007), p. ix. 9 What Groarke (2009), p. 38, says about Aristotle could equally be said of Goethe: “. . . Aristotelian induction is about causality. The main focus is not, as in modern philosophy, on predicting when (or how often) something will occur. The focus is squarely on understanding what is happening. This is where induction derives its logical force. Once we understand what exactly is happening, we can, for example, know how and when something will occur.” 10 Hume (2007), p. 109.11Millican, in Hume (2007), p. xxix. As Millican argues, Hume developed Locke's empiricism “far more consistently [than Locke himself], ruthlessly dismissing all hints of pure rational insight . . . and deploying powerful sceptical arguments to undermine even the ideal of causal intelligibility. . . . our capacity for factual reasoning, instead of being a manifestation of angelic rational perception, turns out to be different only in degree from that of the animals.”

12Ibid, p. xlii, “Hume consistently treats 'power' and 'necessary connexion' as equivalent.”

objectify ideal relations into quasi-physical relations, inaccessible to the human senses.13 This is particularly evident in the following passage:

The scenes of the universe are continually shifting, and one object follows another in an uninterrupted succession; but the power or force, which actuates the whole machine, is entirely concealed from us, and never discovers itself in any of the sensible qualities of body.14

For my purposes, it is important to note the way in which Hume's position misrepresents the available epistemological options. Firstly, Hume implies that we are faced with an either/or: either we believe that all causal claims about “matters of fact” are based solely on sense experience, or we must believe that contingent empirical phenomena can be derived (in other words predicted), purely a priori. Hume often identifies the latter option with the traditional accounts he criticises. For Hume, the latter is not an option because, according to him, we can always conceive (in other words, imagine) any empirical event we like, without contradiction, while the former cannot ground causal claims without vicious circularity. Hume suggests that if the latter option were possible, then a man with no previous experience of e.g. fire, should be able to predict that his hand will be burnt if he places it in the fire. Since Hume's empiricist principles lead him to deny any form of intellectual insight (all thinking is a species of imagination), and since sense perception gives us no insight into the hidden “ultimate springs and principles” of nature, he is led to propose his alternative definition of causality, according to which the necessity pertaining to causal connections is, in fact, nothing but the psychological compulsion, born of habit, to expect a to follow b if we have often observed this in the past. In contrast, Goethe, like Aristotle, respects the difference between sense perception and intellection, recognises the role of an intuitive intellect in knowledge, and rejects the dualistic idea that knowledge aims at accurately representing an “external” world hidden behind a screen of representations. Instead, for Goethe, knowledge involves the discernment of the ideal or intelligible principles of sensible phenomena by a combination of painstaking observation, experimental variation, and finally, a form of insight that fuses sense perception and intuitive thinking, and whose “object” is the so-called Urphänomen, the ultimate goal of Goethe's inorganic science. Goethe is interested in discerning essential features of phenomena, not in predicting contingent empirical events, either on the basis of pure sense experience, or on the basis of purely a priori reasoning. Finally, he rejects the idea that the only necessity is so-called analytic a priori necessity, and aims, instead for an a posteriori necessity.

It is important to note, in view of Hume's opposition to metaphysics, that Goethe does not attempt to ground his phenomenological science of nature on metaphysics, at least not if metaphysics is interpreted as Hume seems, in part, to have interpreted it, namely, as a speculative discipline attempting to explain experience by appeal to super-sensible entities inaccessible to experience. Goethe's appeal to an intuitive intellect, and to an intelligibility and necessity immanent in nature and accessible to the intellect, is not a speculative move, postulating something inaccessible to experience (“intellect,” “intelligible structure” etc.) in order to explain a given, the meaningful structure of phenomena. Rather, Goethe's appeal is an experiential one. He clearly takes the intellectual perception of intelligibility in sensible phenomena to be an undeniable experiential (though not purely sensible) given. To the criticism that, in so doing, he unjustifiably transgresses the bounds of possible experience, Goethe would presumably reply that the denial of the intellect's capacity to intuit the intelligible structure of nature, is a piece of dogmatism, which is untrue to experience, and derives from the acceptance of a faulty metaphysics, of the sort describe above.

In order to clarify the nature of Goethe's phenomenological science of nature, it will be useful

13 Hume (2007) often talks about “those powers and principles” (p. 113) which nature “conceals” from us.14 Ibid, p. 136.

briefly to categorise his overall philosophical orientation, insofar as it is possible to determine this, since Goethe never wrote a systematic philosophical account of his views. Probably the least inaccurate description of Goethe's overall philosophical orientation, would be to describe him as an objective idealist. He is an “idealist,” insofar as he believes that the ground of reality is ideal, rather than merely physical, and insofar as he thinks that the goal of knowledge is the intuitive perception of an ideal structure immanent in the phenomena of immediate experience, and not, as in the dualism he opposes, the explanation of the phenomena of immediate experience, by appeal to postulated physical entities or processes “behind the scenes.” He is an “objective” idealist, because he does not psychologise either sensible qualities or intelligible ideas, by reducing them to the contents of the individual, empirical mind.

Goethe is certainly not a subjective idealist. His denial of the representationalist dualism characteristic of much modern philosophy is based not on denying the existence of the world, but on affirming that the ideal structure which knowledge reveals is part of the world, and that it is itself the causal structure of the world, and not merely the representation of some underlying realm of physical causes. This begs the question: did Goethe believe in the independent existence of a material substrate. Although I am not aware of any place where Goethe directly addresses this issue, the overwhelming tendency of his epistemology would certainly incline one to a roughly Aristotelian answer: Although Goethe always stresses the importance of perception, and would probably say that, for human beings at least, there is always some sensible remainder which escapes the transparency of understanding, he would certainly deny the existence of matter conceived of as a determinate entity utterly independent of mind and the idea. Matter in this, genuinely “materialist” sense, must be, from a Goethean perspective, a fiction, created for certain methodological purposes by abstracting from the always informed matter of actual experience.

With regard to the apparent opposition between realism and idealism, the Goethean response would be roughly as follows: A realism based on the notion of a reality-substrate utterly independent of mind (not only the human mind, but mind in general) must in principle, degenerate into scepticism or dogmatism (the two are connected since scepticism arises by accepting the impossible epistemological requirements of such realism, while denying that they can be fulfilled). Goethe simply refuses to accept the Cartesian dualism of mind and matter. To put it only apparently paradoxically, Goethe is a realist in the genuinely idealist sense, because he does not subjectify sensory qualities (colours etc., are really part of nature) or ideas (the intelligible structure that science reveals may manifest in the human mind, but it is nevertheless the real structure of nature). Goethe can do this because he recognises, as both Aristotle and Goethe's own Romantic and idealist contemporaries did, that one can see knowledge as part of nature, without opting for a reductive materialism. Human knowledge and creativity are, for Goethe, the highest realisation of nature itself. Thus reality is, for Goethe, a relational notion: reality emerges at the intersection between mind and nature, and is not reducible either to subject or object. As Goethe memorably puts it: “Where object and subject touch, there is life.”15

My discussion will be divided into two sections. In the first section, I will give a general account of Goethe's epistemology, and argue that it involves a conception of intuitive induction much like Aristotle's, namely, a method which, starting from sensible examples, leads to the intuitive grasp of necessary structures discernible within, and explanatory of, the phenomena of nature. In the second section, I will consider the question of the specific type of necessity characterising the Goethean archetypal phenomenon. I will argue that the archetypal phenomenon represents an example of a posteriori necessity, and thus contradicts the still widely accepted view that a posteriori truths are contingent. The necessity of the Goethean archetypal phenomena is a posteriori because it is discoverable only through experience. As such, the Goethean archetypal phenomenon is characterised by a form of necessity not recognised by Hume.

15Goethe, in Goethe on Science, p. 123 (FA X (37): 521).

2. Goethe and the Archetypal Phenomenon

In this section I will discuss some of the main elements of Goethe's theory of scientific knowledge, particularly as this relates to induction. My discussion will show how Goethe implicitly rejects the above-mentioned Humean assumptions: Firstly, in contrast to Hume's representationalism, which is parasitic on the idea of a quasi-sensible, but nevertheless unobservable, nature behind the scenes, Goethe's science is thoroughly phenomenological, beginning and ending with phenomena given to experience. Secondly, Goethe, unlike Hume, respects the ancient distinction between sense perception and intellection, and recognises the contribution that an intuitive form of thinking plays in the acquisition of scientific knowledge. It is this recognition that allows Goethe to develop a thoroughly phenomenological scientific method without degenerating into the chaotic phenomenalism which is the consequence, at least on one tradition of interpretation, of Hume's inductive skepticism.

Although Goethe repeatedly stressed the crucial role of the (unaided) human senses in the scientific study of nature, he was never an empiricist in the narrow, Humean, sense and never made the mistake of restricting human knowledge to the contents of sense perception. Goethe's epistemology was always, as Schiller dubbed it, a “rational empiricism.”

The term “rational empiricism” arose in the context of the correspondence between Goethe and Schiller in 1798. This discussion seems to have been precipitated by a letter from Goethe, dated January 10, 1798, in which he sent to Schiller a copy of his essay “The Experiment as Mediator between Object and Subject.”16 I will return to the content of this essay shortly. On January 15, 1798, Goethe sent Schiller a copy of another, shorter essay – “Empirical Observation and Science.”17 This gives a condensed account of his scientific method leading up to the perception of the Urphänomen, or archetypal phenomenon. Goethe begins this latter essay as follows:

Phenomena, which others of us may call facts, are certain and definite by nature, but often fluctuating in appearance. The scientific researcher strives to grasp and keep the definite aspect of what he beholds; in each individual case he is careful to note not only how the phenomena appear, but also how they should appear.18

If we approach Goethe with representationalist preconceptions (of the sort that underly Hume's reasoning), we are apt to be puzzled. Goethe is simultaneously saying that phenomena are often “fluctuating in appearance” and that they are “certain and definite by nature.” What is puzzling, from a representationalist perspective, is that he is speaking about phenomena, in other words entities that are, by definition, cognitively accessible. If “phenomenon” is understood as a synonym for “mere appearance” then what Goethe says doesn’t make sense. It would make sense if he said something like, “The reality behind appearances is certain and definite by nature, while the appearances are often fluctuating in character.” He does not say this however. Knowledge, for him, is not the attempt to grasp, by means of representations, a radically transcendent reality behind appearances. Rather, knowledge is the always finite participation of the knower in reality by means of phenomena made intelligible in act of knowledge.

That Goethe is not talking about a reductive empiricism is made clear by what follows. In the next sentence Goethe writes,

There are many empirical fractions which must be discarded if we are to arrive at a pure, constant phenomenon . . . . However, the instant I allow myself this, I already establish a type of ideal. But there is

16 Goethe, “The Experiment as Mediator between Object and Subject,” in Scientific Studies, edited and translated by Douglas Miller (New York: Suhrkamp, 1988), pp. 11-17 (HA XIII: 10-20). 17 Goethe, “Empirical Observation and Science,” in Scientific Studies, pp. 24-25 (HA XIII: 23-25).18 Ibid., p. 24 (HA XIII: 23-24).

a great difference between someone like the theorist who turns whole numbers into fractions for the sake of a theory, and someone who sacrifices an empirical fraction for the idea of the pure phenomenon.19

Goethe is attempting, here, to explain how he understands the relationship between observation and theory. Goethe distinguishes his own epistemology from empiricism by noting that the scientist cannot stop at an indiscriminate description of particular sense-perceptions. In order to keep his view on what is essential to a particular phenomenon, the scientist will often need to ignore or “discard” certain inessential features of the phenomenon, which, to sense-perception, are given as part of the phenomenon. In other words, as Goethe also says, the scientific researcher must note not only how the phenomena appear, but how they should appear. As the scientist's insight into the nature of the phenomenon increases, new aspects of the phenomenon given by sense-perception are judged with reference to an ideal. This appeal to a normative ideal might seem to go beyond experience, and involve the scientist in an un-empirical speculation. Goethe would disagree. In this passage, the theorist who “turns whole numbers into fractions for the sake of a theory,” seems to stand for someone who attempts to explain the phenomena by means of their non-phenomenal atomic constituents. In contrast, although the second theorist may discard particular sensible elements in order to stay true to the pure phenomenon (which unites the sensible and the ideal), he nevertheless does so with reference to an intelligibility given in experience, and made more explicit during the investigation.

Just as it will always be necessary to bridge the gaps between the sensibly given “parts” making up the whole by means of an insight into the whole going beyond sense perception, so sometimes a view of the whole will allow one to integrate, or set aside, an incongruous part without sacrificing the essence. A good example, which Goethe would have endorsed, is given in Groarke (2009)20: the odd, three-legged dog in no way threatens the truth of the statement that all dogs have four legs, since this is a statement of essence, and not a statement about the contingent attributes of this or that dog.

For Goethe, the pure phenomenon is not something perceived with the eyes alone.21 One “sees” the pure phenomenon only by means of a perception illuminated by thinking. Goethe continues as follows:

For the observer never sees the pure phenomenon with his own eyes, rather, much depends on his mood, the state of his senses, the light, air, weather, the physical object, how it is handled, and a thousand other circumstances. Hence it is like trying to drink the sea dry if we try to stay with the individual aspect of the phenomenon, observe it, measure it, weigh it, and describe it.22

One cannot rely solely on the observation of particular instances, in the contingency of their appearance. To attempt to capture the pure phenomenon by a mere description and enumeration of the individual phenomena is an impossible task. The infinite variety of the fluctuating appearances needs to be sorted by thinking. However, this is not a matter of constructing theories about unobservable entities behind the scenes. Here, Goethe’s affirmation of the human power of intuitive judgment (anschauende Urteilskraft) is crucial.

Goethe aims to reach a state where the human mind “can come closest to things in their general state, draw them near, and, so to speak, form an amalgam with them just as it usually does in

19 Ibid., p. 24 (HA XIII: 24).20 Groarke (2009), p. 141. 21 Goethe, in Goethe on Science: an Anthology of Goethe’s Scientific Writings, edited by Jeremy Naydler (Edinburgh: Floris Books, 1996), p. 115 (FA XXIV: 432): “. . . there is a difference between seeing and seeing; . . . the eyes of the spirit have to work in perpetual living connection with those of the body, for one otherwise risks seeing and yet seeing past a thing.”22 Goethe, “Empirical Observation and Science,” in Scientific Studies, p. 24 (HA XIII: 24).

common empiricism, but now in a rational way.”23 This process of achieving cognitive identity with the pure phenomenon is composed of the following stages:

1. The empirical phenomenon, which everyone finds in nature, and which is then raised through experiments to the level of 2. the scientific phenomenon by producing it under circumstances and conditions different from those in which it was first observed, and in a sequence which is more or less successful.24

3. The pure phenomenon now stands before us as a result of all our observations and experiments. It can never be isolated, but it appears in a continuous sequence of events. To depict it, the human mind gives definition to the empirically variable, excludes the accidental, sets aside the impure, untangles the complicated, and even discovers the unknown.25

We begin with the phenomena of everyday experience. While these phenomena are fluctuating for us, by nature they are definite. We proceed to refine these initial phenomena by means of experiment. Although it is not possible here to attempt any detailed discussion of Goethe’s actual experimental method, some general points can be made.

In “The Experiment as Mediator between Object and Subject,” Goethe begins by speaking of the need for the scientist to transcend the “natural way of seeing and judging things”26 that characterises our everyday experience. Normally we judge things as pleasing or displeasing, in relation to ourselves. The scientist needs to transcend this natural subjectivity and begin to see “nature’s objects in their own right and in relation to one another . . . . as a neutral, seemingly godlike being he must seek out and examine what is, not what pleases.”27

At first glance this may seem to be nothing more than an expression of the truism that science seeks objectivity. However, the kind of objectivity Goethe aims for is quite different from the objectivity sought by those who hold to the idol of the transcendent thing-in-itself. This Goethean “objectivity” is sought not by moving away from the phenomena, or attempting to find some impossible view from nowhere, but by going deeper into them; it is gained by allowing the object itself to speak. The student of nature needs to develop “the calm exercise” of his “powers of attention,” to observe each phenomenon with “the same quiet gaze” in order to “find the measure for what he learns, the data of judgment, not in himself but in the sphere of what he observes.”28 By patiently and meticulously observing a given phenomenon over a long period of time we gain a clear initial “concept of the object, its parts, and its relationships.”29 This initial grasp is refined by means of

23 Ibid., p. 25 (HA XIII: 24).24 As we will see later, Goethe is not stating that, in order to fulfil this stage of the cognitive process, one must conduct experiments in the stricter sense. Repeated, painstaking observation and imaginative variation, in which sense perceptions are gradually integrated into a more and more clearly perceived intelligible context, are, for Goethe, the essential elements of “experimentation.” Also, the insight, which is the goal of experimentation, is not caused by the repetition, variation etc. The latter are merely means to an insight which may, in rare or in simple cases, be achieved without them. 25 Ibid., p. 25 (HA XIII: 24).26 Goethe, “The Experiment as Mediator Between Object and Subject,” in Scientific Studies, p. 11 (HA XIII: 10).27 Ibid., p. 11 (HA XIII: 10). 28 Ibid., p. 11 (HA XIII: 10).29 Ibid., p. 11 (HA XIII: 10).

experiment. Goethe defines his notion of experiment as follows: “When we intentionally reproduce empirical evidence found by earlier researchers, contemporaries, or ourselves, when we re-create natural or artificial phenomena, we speak of this as an experiment.”30

For Goethe, it is not the purpose of experiment to prove a theory or hypothesis.31 As R. H. Stephenson puts it, “The whole point of Goethe’s experimentation is Darstellung (‘representation of an object, brought into relation with others in such a way that its significance is revealed’). . .”32 Experiment assists the sorting of sense experience, of the initially unclear multiplicity of the phenomena being studied, to their essential elements. Any one experiment taken in isolation gives us only a limited view of the whole, i.e. of the type of phenomenon being studied.33 The individual experiments, and the individual insights they afford us concerning a small sphere of phenomena, or concerning a single phenomenon, need to be linked into a whole series of “contiguous experiments.”34

We should not let the terminology of “experiment” mislead us into imagining that Goethe is speaking solely of a situation where a phenomenon is artificially created in controlled conditions. The essential thing is the repetition of experiences pertaining to the phenomena in a given field in as comprehensive a manner as possible and according to an order appropriate to the phenomena. The comprehensive series of experiments, with each growing by minute gradations from the preceding, is understood by Goethe as a single experience:

Studied thoroughly and understood as a whole, these experiments could even be thought of as representing a single experiment, a single piece of empirical evidence explored in its most manifold variations. Such a piece of empirical evidence, composed of many others, is clearly of a higher sort. It shows the general formula, so to speak, that overarches an array of individual arithmetic sums. In my view, it is the task of the scientific researcher to work toward empirical evidence of this higher sort.35

Dennis L. Sepper36 distinguishes two important features of Goethe’s method. Firstly, there is this “systematic experimental variation, by which one gains a progressively more comprehensive acquaintance with the full range of phenomena possible in limited circumstances.”37 This

30 Ibid., p. 13 (HA XIII: 14).31 Ibid., p. 14 (HA XIII: 5): “. . . I would venture to say that we cannot prove anything by one experiment or even several experiments together, that nothing is more dangerous than the desire to prove some thesis directly through experiments, that the greatest errors have arisen just where the dangers and shortcomings in this method have been overlooked.” Cf. H. B. Nisbet, Goethe and the Scientific Tradition, (London: Institute of Gemanic Studies, 1972), p. 23: “. . . in the opinion of Newton – despite his famous hypothesis non fingo – the experiment is conducted in order to test a hypothesis, whereas Goethe . . . believes that experiments should not be designed to prove some preexistent hypothesis or theory, but rather to enlarge our knowledge of nature.” Cf. Herbert Hensel, “Goethe, Science and Sensory Experience,” in Goethe’s Way of Science: a Phenomenology of Nature, edited by David Seamon and Arthur Zajonc (New York: State University of New York Press, 1998), p. 75: “Instead of verifying or falsifying a hypothesis conceived ideally, outside of experience, the important thing is to order the experiments in such a way that, in progressing through the series of experiments, the underlying idea becomes immediately intuitive.”32 R. H. Stephenson, Goethe’s Conception of Knowledge and Science (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1995), p. 11.33 Goethe, “The Experiment as Mediator Between Object and Subject,” in Scientific Studies, pp. 14-15 (HA XIII: 16-17): “Every piece of empirical evidence, every experiment, must be viewed as isolated. . . . Nothing happens in living nature which does not bear some relation to the whole. The empirical evidence may seem quite isolated, we may view our experiments as mere isolated facts, but this is not to say that they are, in fact, isolated. The question is: how can we find the connection between these phenomena, these events?” 34 Ibid., p. 16 (HA XIII: 17).35 Ibid., p. 16 (HA XIII: 17).36 Dennis L. Sepper, “Goethe and the Poetics of Science,” Janus Head 8 1 (2005), pp. 207-227. 37 Ibid., p. 217.

experimental manifolding involves the gathering together of as full a range as possible of phenomena of a certain type.

This gathering together is not a form of enumerative induction. The purpose of this method is to bring the phenomena under consideration as much as possible into a form that allows the ideal principles governing them to become visible. One is not aiming for the impossible goal of actual sensible comprehensiveness, but rather moving towards the idea, whose unity cannot, as such, be present in the spatio-temporally distinct sensible phenomena, but which the latter can nevertheless approximate more and more adequately, up until the moment when one grasps the underlying principles involved.

The continuity between individual sensible phenomena will never be fully seamless. The move from the complex experiment or experience, to the seamless unity of the idea, always involves a leap of insight.38 Nevertheless, this method has its purpose. Goethe himself makes this very clear when he writes,

Two needs arise in us when we observe nature: to gain complete knowledge of the phenomena themselves, and then to make them our own by reflection upon them. Completeness is a product of order, order demands method, and method makes it easier to perceive the concept [italics added]. When we are able to survey an object in every detail, grasp it correctly, and reproduce it in our mind’s eye, we can say that we have an intuitive perception of it in the truest and highest sense. . . . And thus the particular always leads us to the general, the general to the particular.39

The point is not to amass evidence, but to foster the discernment of the underlying principle, the idea of the phenomena. While the variation of experiments and their arrangement in a continuous series serve to provide a kind of empirical approximation to the unity of the idea, and to foster its discernment, the attempt to reduce the phenomena to its most simple elements has another purpose. Sepper writes:

Goethe’s way of science thus aims at an original experience, original in the sense not so much of being unprecedented as of taking or referring things back to their origins and placing them in fundamental relations to other things in the relevant field of interest. Several years later Goethe began using the term Urphänomen for the unity of what is experienced as single despite the manifold perspectives under which it appears (Ur- as a prefix in German refers to something original or foundational).40

If one can speak of Goethe’s method involving a kind of “induction,” it is very different sense from the mechanical, enumerative induction familiar today. As Hjalmar Hegge says:

Goethe is altogether closer . . . to the Aristotelian tradition in science than to the Galilean-Newtonian. His view of induction recalls Aristotle’s ‘intuitive induction,’ though Goethe has also applied his view extensively in practical research, and at the same time formulated it more precisely than did Aristotle on

38 Goethe, in Nisbet (1972), p. 42 (JA I 6:75): “Experiments are mediators between nature and concept, between nature and the idea, and between the concept and the idea.” The distinction between “concept” and “idea” here is, broadly, the distinction between generalisations, products of the discursive, analytical understanding (Verstand), and what one might call concrete universals, discerned by the intuitive reason (Vernunft). 39 Goethe, “Polarity,” in Scientific Studies, p.155 (WA II: 11). Cf. Sepper (2005), pp. 217-218: “By means of the manifold variations of experiments one seeks an overall experience that will be unitary in two ways: in that the experiments performed are progressively evolved from one another by a series of small modifications, and in that one has seen how the small modifications affect and vary the outcome while still remaining basically the same type of experimental phenomenon (for example, refraction of light through an aperture.)”40 Ibid., pp. 215-217.

just this point.41

Thus, in a sense, whether we speak of Goethe’s method as inductive depends on whether we use the word in its modern sense, or in its Aristotelian sense, where the latter presupposes intuitive thinking as the source of the insight necessary to grasp the principle operative in the phenomena.

One of the clearest presentations of this aspect of Goethe’s thought is that of Rudolf Steiner.42 On the Goethean view, according to Steiner, science is

. . . a matter . . . of connecting sense perceptible facts. These connections, however, are precisely what manifest themselves so unclearly, so untransparently, in experience. One fact a confronts us, but at the same time numerous other ones do also. As we let our gaze sweep over the manifoldness presented here, we are totally in the dark as to which of the other facts have a closer relationship to this fact a and which have a more remote relationship. Some facts may be present without which the event cannot occur at all, and others are present that only modify it; without these the event could indeed occur, but would then, under different circumstance, assume a different form. 43

We can see here many of the elements from Goethe’s “Empirical Observation and Science.” In order to grasp the pure phenomenon, the phenomenon “certain and definite by nature,” we must strip away the inessential phenomena surrounding it. This may be done either physically, by simplifying the conditions under which the phenomenon occurs, or in imagination. A very good example of the latter, is the example of the lunar eclipse, which Aristotle discusses in the Posterior Analytics. In trying to understand a lunar eclipse from our usual perspective, on the earth, we are, to begin with, faced with many other phenomena which are not directly relevant, and which obscure the nature of the phenomenon in question. However, if, as Aristotle suggests, we imagine ourselves standing on the moon, we will be able to see directly (at least in imagination), the earth blocking the light of the sun from reaching the moon, and from this can arise the universal. Usually, we need to alter the order of the phenomena or the perspective from which we view them. This is the task of experiment as Goethe describes it. Ultimately, says Steiner, “We have to create conditions such that a process will appear to us with transparent clarity as the necessary result of these conditions.”44

Steiner continues as follows:

Such a phenomenon, now, in which the character of the process follows directly and in a transparently clear way out of the nature of the pertinent factors, is called an archetypal phenomenon (Urphänomen) or a basic fact (Grundtatsache). This archetypal phenomenon is identical with objective natural law. For in it is expressed not only that a process has occurred under certain conditions but also that it had to occur. Given the nature of what was under consideration there, one realises that the process had to occur.45

41 Hjalmar Hegge, “Theory of Science in the Light of Goethe’s Science of Nature,” in Goethe and the Sciences: A Reappraisal, edited by Frederick Amrine, Francis J. Zucker and Harvey Wheeler (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1987) p. 213. Cf. Goethe, Letter to Zelter 5/10/1828, in Goethe’s Letters to Zelter, translated by A. D. Coleridge (London: George Bell and Sons, 1892), p. 334 (HA XII: 440): “When one considers the problems of Aristotle, one is astonished at his gift of observation, and at all that the Greeks had an eye for; only they err in being over-hasty, for they go directly from the phenomenon to the explanation . . . .” 42 Cf. Roger Smook, “Rudolf Steiner on the Presuppositions of Goethean Science,” Idealistic Studies 22 1 (1992), pp. 68-81. Although Steiner is sometimes overlooked in the literature, I agree with Smook, who writes: “I believe there is no philosopher who has entered more thoroughly into the spirit of the Goethean scientific enterprise, or tried harder to spell out its presuppositions, than Rudolf Steiner.” Steiner’s basic works on Goethe are: Rudolf Steiner, The Science of Knowing: Outline of an Epistemology Implicit in the Goethean World View, translated by William Lindeman (New York: Mercury Press, 1988a); Rudolf Steiner, Goethean Science, translated by William Lindeman (New York: Mercury Press, 1988b); Rudolf Steiner, Goethe’s World View, translated by William Lindeman (New York:Mercury Press, 1985). 43 Steiner (1988b), pp. 75-76. 44 Ibid., p. 76. 45 Steiner (1988a), p. 80.

Interestingly, one of the examples Steiner gives to illustrate the idea of the archetypal phenomenon is Aristotle's example of the lunar eclipse: “When one object is standing between a source of light and another object, it will cast a shadow upon this other object.”46

We can see from Steiner’s formulation how radically the Goethean perspective brings into question the assumptions of a Humean empiricism.We have here a science of nature that stays strictly with the phenomena and involves no hypothetical explanatory entities, but which nevertheless aims at necessary truths, which, however, are not merely analytic a priori truths. Steiner continues:

We see that we can remain completely within the phenomena and still arrive at what is necessary. The inductive method adhered to so much today can never do this. Basically, it proceeds in the following way. It sees a phenomenon that occurs in a particular way under the given conditions. A second time it sees the same phenomenon come about under similar conditions. From this it infers that a general law exists according to which this event must come about, and it expresses this law as such. Such a method remains totally outside the phenomena . . . . Its laws are the generalisations of individual facts. It must always wait for confirmation of the rule by the individual facts. Our method knows that its laws are simply facts that have been wrested from the confusion of chance happening and made into necessary facts [italics added].We know that if the factors a and b are there, a particular effect necessarily takes place. We do not go outside the phenomenal world. The content of science, as we think of it, is nothing more than objective happening. Only the form according to which the facts are placed together is changed.47

Steiner makes a number of important points here. It may seem that Goethe’s method is akin to the inductive method as Steiner describes it. Have I not said that Goethe’s method involves observing a number of instances of a given phenomenon, in order to determine the conditions under which the phenomenon necessarily occurs? Is this not a case of seeing that the same phenomenon has occurred on a number of occasions and from this inferring “that a general law exists according to which this event must come about”? Not at all; the crucial difference lies in the role that intuitive understanding plays in the Goethean method. The modern inductive method proceeds solely by observing that a certain phenomenon repeatedly occurs in a certain way. From a sufficiently large number of such observations it derives a general law, a law which is a generalisation made on the basis of these particular observations, e.g. all swans are white.

In this classic example the generalisation is based solely on the fact that a certain number of swans have been seen to be white. There is no suggestion of understanding why the swans are white.48 The force of the inductive generalisation derives solely from the large number of observations and a presumption about the regularity of nature. Of course the crux of the problem is determining what amounts to a sufficiently large number of such observations. Strictly speaking no finite number of observations will be sufficient. No amount of appearances will ever justify an inference to a reality hidden behind appearances, which, from a Humean perspective, includes the reality transcending present sense perception and memory. Similarly, the assumption about the regularity of nature is, as Hume himself recognised, itself open to the objection that since its

46 Steiner (1988a), p.81.47 Steiner (1988a), p. 80. Cf. also p. 83: “rational empiricism . . . takes nothing other than objective processes as content for science; these objective processes, however, are held together by a web of concepts (laws) that our spirit discovers in them. Sense-perceptible processes in a connection with each other that can be grasped only by thinking – this is rational empiricism.”48 It should be emphasised that for Goethe such a 'why' question would not be answered by means of some single hidden cause external to the organism (even a purely physical cause would be “external” to the organism in the sense that it would not explain the feature as part of a living thing). The answer, instead, would most likely relate the whiteness both to its relation to the wholeness of the organism and the organism's relation to its lifeworld.

ultimate warrant can, on an empiricist view, only be empirical, i.e. inductive, it is itself based on the uncertain foundations of the observed regularity of nature.

In preparing for the perception of the Urphänomen the researcher may, initially, have nothing to go on but recurring patterns.49 But this is less a matter of inferring inductively, and more a matter of seeing patterns. The Urphänomen is not derived, or inferred from empirical observations, nor is it a generalisation from them. It is seen in and through them. The point here is not to deny that discursive reasoning may contribute to the investigation, but only to emphasise the irreducible element of understanding, which can never be replaced by any mechanical deduction or inference, on the basis of some psychological compulsion, causal mechanism, or logical formalism. It is because Goethe’s method is based on the intuitive seeing of the idea in the phenomena, that he avoids the insoluble problems that plague the modern notion of induction. It is because of this seeing that we do not

. . . fail to recognise in a single doubtful case a truth which has stood the test in many other instances, but may instead pay due respect to the law even when it seeks to elude us in the phenomenal world.50

In other words, unlike an inductive generalisation in the modern sense that is refuted by even a single counter instance, the Goethean method can integrate the doubtful case because it is seen in the context of an understanding of the nature of the phenomenon in question. The relationship between particular observations and the idea seen in the phenomena is expressed by Goethe when he writes: “To grasp that the sky is blue everywhere, one does not have to travel around the world.”51

Hjalmar Hegge has said that, in his Theory of Colour, Goethe was aiming at “an axiomatizing of the domain of colour qualities. . . . a deductive system for the phenomena of light and colour, but without quantification of the phenomena.”52 Unlike the mainstream physical theories of colour which deal with a mathematised or quantified representation of the phenomena, Goethe never quantifies the phenomena. Secondly, he avoids incorporating the colour qualities “within a causal schema in which the causes lie outside the domain of the colour qualities themselves.”53 This is because, for Goethe, an explanation of colours in terms of underlying causes of a different kind gives no truly scientific understanding of them. The goal of a science of nature is the understanding of given phenomena in the necessity of their appearance and inter-connections within their own determinate sphere. For Goethe, the ultimate goal of science is not the grasp of separate, underlying, causes.54 As Goethe says, “here it is not a question of causes, but of the conditions under which the phenomena appear; their consistent sequence, their eternal return under thousands of circumstances. . .”55 Thirdly, Goethe rejects the subjectivisation of sensory qualities based on the ontological interpretation of the distinction between primary and secondary qualities. What does Hegge mean by an “axiomatisation of the domain of color qualities”? Hegge notes

49 Goethe, “Excerpt from ‘Toward a Theory of Weather’ 1825,” in Scientific Studies, p. 148 (HA XIII: 311): In dealing with a phenomenon and attempting to grasp its inner law, “. . . we think it right to start with its clearest aspect, i.e., the aspect most frequently repeated under similar conditions, the one which points to a constant regularity.” 50 Goethe, in Nisbet (1972), p.15 (LA I: 10).51 Goethe, in Stephenson (1983), p. 188 (FA XIII: 47).52 Hegge (1987), p. 202.53 Ibid., p. 196. 54 Cf. Walter Heitler, “Translators Note,” in Goethe's Way of Science: A Phenomenology of Nature, p. 68. The translator notes that the German word for “cause” (Ursache) is a compound of “Sache” meaning “matter, affair” and the prefix “Ur-” which has the sense of “primal,” or “archetypal.” Thus the etymology of the word “cause” in German contains the idea of a “primal fact.”55 Goethe, “Empirical Observation and Science,” in Scientific Studies, p. 25 (HA XIII: 25).

that Goethe sought to emulate the method of the mathematician in a certain regard. This may seem strange in view of Goethe's total avoidance of mathematics in his colour science. However, what attracted Goethe to mathematics was not the quantitative content, but the logical form, and the rigour, precision, and certainty attaching to the steps involved in a mathematical proof. Hegge writes that Goethe’s aim is to

. . . arrive at a comparatively small number of simple, well-defined elements, corresponding to the axioms of geometry, that is, expressions which are not further reducible to others, but express basic concepts in the system from which the other elements are derived. Goethe calls these ‘Urphänomene,’ or primal phenomena and he describes them and their use as follows: “These [primal phenomena] can be formulated in short, pregnant sentences, compared and – as they are developed – arranged and brought into such a relationship with one another that they, just like mathematical statements, regarded individually or in their interrelationships, remain firm.56

Goethe’s Theory of Colour is

. . . based upon statements (referring to ‘primal phenomena’) which are alleged to be both true and primary, and also upon the assumption that the connections between the various elements are necessary.57

Goethe aims to integrate the phenomena into an order based on a few self-explanatory, basic, and necessarily true phenomena, or necessary facts, and through this to enable the demonstration (in the sense of the making visible) of the necessary connections between the phenomena of that particular science. However, in contrast to the Humean idea that any claims about nature not derived from sense experience must involve deduction a priori, Goethe saw the deductive stage as dealing facts whose necessity is a posteriori.

Goethe expresses the movement from the particular to the universal and from the universal to the particular as follows:

In general, events we become aware of, through experience, are simply those we can categorise empirically after some observation. These empirical categories may be further subsumed under scientific categories leading to even higher levels. In the process we become familiar with certain requisite conditions for what is manifesting itself. From this point everything gradually falls into place under higher principles and laws revealed not to our reason through words and hypotheses, but to our intuitive perception through phenomena. We call these phenomena archetypal phenomena because nothing higher manifests itself in the world; such phenomena, on the other hand, make it possible for us to descend, just as we ascend, by going step by step from the archetypal phenomena to the most mundane occurrence in our daily experience.58

In view of the fact that the final objects of Aristotelian intuitive induction are often thought of in linguistic terms – as, for instance, definitions, or universal statements of the form “All men are mortal” – it is important to clarify that, for Goethe, the ultimate elements of science are always phenomena themselves, and not their representations in language. The primary archetypal phenomenon in the Theory of Colour is “light or darkness seen through a turbid medium.” Goethe gives two clear examples of this: Firstly, light seen through a moderately turbid medium appears as yellow, and progressively darkens to red as the turbidity of the medium increases, a phenomenon observed in the setting of the sun; secondly, darkness seen through an illuminated medium appears blue, a phenomenon observable, for example, in the fact that the darkness of space, seen through the illuminated atmosphere, appears as blue. Although Goethe does state what could be taken as a very loose and poetic “definition” of colour – “Colours are the deeds and sufferings of light, what it does and what it endures” – the goal of his scientific method is not simply the formulation of the 56 Ibid., p. 202. 57 Ibid., p. 205.58 Goethe, “Theory of Colour,” in Scientific Studies, pp. 194-195 (FA XXIII/1: 80-81).

universal principle that all colours arise from the interaction of light and darkness as mediated by a turbid medium. As Goethe puts it, in the introduction to the Theory of Colour:

In reality, any attempt to express the inner nature of a thing is fruitless. What we perceive are effects, and a complete record of these effects ought to encompass this inner nature. We labour in vain to describe a person’s character, but when we draw together their actions, their deeds, a picture of their character will emerge.59

This is not the expression of any sort of scepticism about our ability to understand the inner nature of things. Rather, it is an expression of Goethe's insistence that the inner nature of a phenomenon is not different from the phenomenon; and hence that we should never think that we can explain a phenomenon by replacing it with some linguistic or mathematical representation. In the case of the Theory of Colour, the “deductive” stage involves showing that all of the particular phenomena of colour can be derived from the archetypal phenomenon by complicating the initial conditions in various ways. This derivation then amounts to something like a portrait of the domain of colours, which does not merely reduce the nature of colour to an abstract definition, but rather presents the full range of the phenomena of the domain of colour as contained within the archetypal phenomenon.

Goethe's approach to the study of colour is clearly very different from the now dominant mainstream of physical science. Whatever one might think about his particular claims – and many advocates suggest that his distinctive methodology and philosophy of science are more important than his particular results – it is crucial to keep in mind that Goethe's goals are fundamentally different from those of mainstream modern science. Ultimately, Goethe is not interested in the kind of grasp of “efficient” causes that allows one to predict either the necessary or the probable occurrence of some contingent natural event; a grasp, consequently, which gives us an increasing technological control over nature. The ultimate goal of his science is neither prediction, nor control, but rather a contemplative insight into the simple, intelligible essence of a certain domain of phenomena, and the tracing of its particular realisations, in this or that specific context.

The archetypal phenomenon, described in the Theory of Colour, is not a separate, objectified “cause,” which in some physical sense brings it about that particular colours arise when they arise. As Goethe writes in a letter, “The Urphänomen is not to be regarded as a basic theorem leading to a variety of consequences, but rather as a basic manifestation enveloping the specifications of form for the beholder.”60 In a sense, the archetypal phenomenon, and its particular realisations in the full range of possible colours, are one and the same. There are no particular colours, which are not somehow realisations of this relation of polarity between light and darkness. Similarly, there is no archetypal phenomenon that is radically distinct from its realisations.

As Henri Bortoft has emphasised, it is perhaps better to think of the archetypal phenomenon as a way of seeing rather than a thing seen; a way of seeing which gathers together the scattered phenomena of colour into a wholeness. If one were to criticise Goethe for failing to really explain colour, he would presumably answer that genuine phenomena are, in the end, fundamental, and irreducible to anything other than themselves. There may well be a relationship between the colour red, considered as a distinct qualitative reality which arises in specific relations between the world and the perceiver, and other, non-qualitative aspects of reality. However, Goethe would argue that it is absurd to claim that the one is reducible to the other. For Goethe, the Theory of Colour strives to portray what one might call the “concrete universal” of colour, which includes both all of the particular realisations of the archetypal phenomenon, and the wholeness which envelops them. There is, in his view, no more basic “explanation” of colour, if one wants to remain with colour itself, rather than discussing other non-qualitative aspects of reality; there are no more basic

59 Ibid., p.158 (FA XXIII/1: 12). 60 Goethe, Letter to von Buttel 3 May 1827, in Goethe on Science, p. 106.

“explanatory entities.” This radically different conception of “explanation” will inevitably seem strange to those committed to the idea that explanation must be in terms of external causes. Goethe's judgement on the latter approach is telling: some people “are not satisfied to behold an Archetypal Phenomenon. They think there must be something beyond. They are like children who, having looked into a mirror, turn it around to see what is on the other side.61

3.Necessary Facts? As Hegge notes, Goethe’s approach goes against the grain of certain widespread philosophical assumptions which derive, in part from the empiricist tradition, and in part from the Kantian. It is generally assumed that

. . . the a posteriori element in cognition is contingent and that only the a priori is apodeictic, necessary. Or in other words, inasmuch as there are apodeictic elements in cognition, these it [the prevailing view] takes to be a priori, whether understood as forms of our understanding, as “conditions of the very possibility of experience” in Kant’s sense, or in a more empiricist vein as ‘conventions.’62

In this concluding section, I will briefly consider the nature of the a posteriori necessity sought by Goethe, and suggest how it relates to the Humean critique of induction. Although he makes no mention of Goethe, an article by Charles F. Kielkopf63 provides a very clear and interesting way of approaching Goethe's conception of an a posteriori necessity. Kielkopf begins by stating:

The notion that in a valid argument the connection between grounds and consequent must be analytic renders insoluble some of the major problems of philosophy and prevents the development of a nondeductive logic.64

One obvious consequence of this is the problem of induction.65 He suggests that the problem of induction requires, for its solution, the discovery of a form of nonanalytic, or synthetic, necessity. We can go a long way towards resolving the problem of induction if we can discover some “synthetic necessary truths;” or, in other words, necessary truths, derived from experience, which do not involve merely the explication of truths already contained in the definition of a given thing. It should be noted that I differ from Kielkopf on one point: he refers to the truths he discusses as “synthetic a priori.” I think this is an unfortunate formulation, since it suggests that these truths are discovered by merely thinking about concepts in separation from experience, which is clearly not the case in the examples he gives. Kielkopf then presents an example to illustrate his point:

Consider the configuration of letters . . . RVER . . . .Call this configuration A. . . . It is empirically true that there is an E in A. But we can read off more than empirical truths from this configuration; we can read off that there must be an E in A. We do not read off that the figure had to be written on the line above, nor do we read off that the figure had to be named A. But given the configuration was written down and called A, we can see that it does contain an E and we read off that it must contain an E. If there were no E in A, A would not be the configuration that it is. We have recognised A as an RVER; it is inconceivable that a configuration is RVER without an E. . . . Consequently, we determine that “containing an E” denotes an essential feature of A.66

61 Goethe, Conversations with Eckermann 18/2/1829, in Goethe on Science (1996), p. 108 (FA XII (39): 311). 62 Hegge (1987), p. 210.63 Charles F. Kielkopf, “Deduction and Intuitive Induction,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 26, No. 3 (March, 1966), pp. 379-390.64 Ibid., p. 379.65 Ibid., p. 379: “Since it is never inconsistent to assert that A's are correlated with B's while denying that A's cause B's, and since it is never inconsistent to assert that some S are P while denying that all S are P, we have the problems of induction.”66 Ibid., pp. 380-381.

From this particular insight into one of the essential properties of RVER, we can derive the general necessary truth that all RVER's necessarily contain an E. Now, someone may respond that we are dealing here only with the necessity of analyticity. The statement “RVER contains an E” is only a logical consequence of the definition of “RVER.” This, Kielkopf argues, is wrong. There is no way of forming a definition of “RVER” without first recognising the non-analytic necessity that pertains to the form of “RVER” itself. For in attempting to give a definition we could never justifiably restrict all of the elements that would have to be added to cover all of the essential features of “RVER”: that it contains to R's, that it contains two letters between the two R's, and so on. Any such definition is simply the making explicit of a prior recognition of the essence of “RVER” itself.

Still, “RVER” is an arbitrary combination of letters, whereas, presumably, natural phenomena are not arbitrary in this way. So, how far can this example take us in understanding Goethe's views of induction? One useful feature of this example, is that it allows us to distinguish Goethe's position from any kind of reductive determinism. The emphasis on discerning the essential, and thus necessary, features of a phenomenon, might seem to suggest that, for Goethe, every natural phenomenon is, at a deeper level, necessary, in the sense of being absolutely determined. However, this is not the case. Although it is very difficult to determine precisely what Goethe's views are on the origin of the world, and on the nature of human freedom, there is, I think, no conflict between the necessity of certain natural phenomena (as he conceives this), and the reality of human, or even divine, freedom.

Consider the following example: I draw a triangle on a piece of paper. I can now discern certain essential features of the shape before me. However, the concept of the triangle is not like a hidden efficient cause, forcing me to draw the triangle. We are dealing here with different levels of explanation. The absolute necessity that characterises the relationship between the triangle and its essential features – such as having three sides – does not equally apply to the event of my drawing the triangle. The concept constrains what I draw, in so far as I must draw a shape fulfilling certain criteria if I want to draw a triangle; however, it does not determine that I draw it now. This latter fact will, ultimately, only be explicable in terms of my rational intention to, for example, illustrate a point, teach someone geometry etc.

If we now turn to consider the relationship between necessity and contingency in nature as a whole, we might say the following: In a sense, it doesn't matter, for the purposes of Goethean science, whether nature is the contingent result of free, divine creativity, or has always existed, or arose by chance from a purely physical “cause.” Goethe is, at least in his inorganic science, for the most part simply uninterested in causation of this more “efficient” sort.67

To use Kielkopf's formulation, Hume's arguments are typically aimed at inferences concerning whether or not an “RVER” will be written at a certain place and time, in other words, whether or not a contingent event will or will not occur. He thinks that we can clearly conceive of any empirical event as either happening or not happening.

Approaches like Kielkopf's and Goethe's, have quite a different goal. From the Goethean perspective, it makes no difference whether we are dealing with the properties of geometrical figures, arbitrary patterns of letters, or phenomena of colour. In all cases, the goal is not to predict whether particular phenomena will occur at a certain time and place, but rather to discern the essential properties of the phenomena, and in this way to lead them back to their most basic principles, which Goethe calls the Urphänomene, in each phenomenal domain.

67 I do not mean to imply here that, if the world is created, this act of creation should be conceived of in crudely “efficient” terms. I have expressed myself in intentionally simplified terms to make a point.

Such an approach can, of course, lead to prediction. One can state, with full certainty, that if “RVER” is written on a piece of paper tomorrow, it will, necessarily, contain an R. However, prediction is secondary to understanding. Prediction here pertains, so to speak, to the essence, rather than the existence, of the phenomenon in question. There is no attempt to predict that some essence will, necessarily, be instantiated at some point in space and time, but only that if it is instantiated, the particular RVER, or triangle etc., will, necessarily, have certain features.

Thus, although Goethe never uses this terminology, his method involves a form of intuitive induction which may, finally, be characterised as follows: Intuitive induction is not, primarily, a form of argument. Rather, it involves sorting and synthesising experience, then discerning, in this plurality, more basic, exemplary phenomena (by reorganising the originally given phenomena, or stripping away extraneous elements) which are characterised by a radiant self-evidence. Such phenomena, achieve a union between the sensible and the intelligible, and reveal in their particular, exemplary being, the essence of all the phenomena of that type.

Hume opposes such a notion of intellectual insight by arguing that if the discernment of necessary connections were a work of reason, any such discernment should be as perfect upon perception of only one instance, as it would be after the perception of many. But of course this is precisely what thinkers like Goethe, and, incidentally Aristotle, say does happen. The difference is, that Goethe, like Aristotle, recognises that since the intuitive intellect is a faculty that can be trained, there are differences in the degree of “wit” possessed by different people.68 While someone whose wit is either naturally quick, or has been made so by training, can discern the principle in one example, the slower student may need many. Contrary to Hume's arguments, this happens even in the case of mathematical examples. As any teacher of mathematics will confirm, it takes some students a long time, and many examples to “get” what other students understand from the first. In support of his sharp distinction between relations of ideas and matters of fact, Hume states the following:

Propositions of this kind [pertaining to relations between ideas, J.Z.] are discoverable by the mere operation of thought, without dependence on what is any where existent in the universe. Though there never were a circle or triangle in nature, the truths, demonstrated by Euclid, would for ever retain their certainty and evidence.69

This is, on the face of it, a strange admission for an empiricist to make. In what sense could there be truths about, e.g. triangles, if triangles did not, in some form, exist, at the very least in the imagination?70 Surely, if we are talking about triangles, we are speaking about a definite phenomenon, either a physically present image of a triangle, an image present in the imagination, or else the universal concept (although in view of his rejection of universal ideas, Hume cannot consistently appeal to this). In fact, the only way we can make sense of this statement is to subscribe to the dualistic metaphysics mentioned earlier. In other words, we need to make a sharp distinction between a putative physical world, existing forever hidden behind a screen of representations, and a subjective, inner realm of consciousness, which is somehow not part of “the universe.”

68Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, 1.34.89b10-21. 69 Hume (2007), p. 108.70 Cf. Eckart Förster The 25 Years of Philosophy: A Systematic Reconstruction, translated by Brady Bowman (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012), p. 263: “As the example of mathematics shows, it cannot hold in principle that merely because something is found in the subject it cannot also be true in nature – even if we as yet have no insight into the ground of the agreement. The crucial point in our context, however, is that every mathematical construction, though carried out within the subject, is wholly free of any kind of subjectivity. It makes no reference whatsoever to the subject that carries it out. It stands beyond subject and object, we might say: beyond the subject because the construction is in no way affected by it; and beyond the object because the construction is valid not only for the individual object thus constituted, but for all objects of the same kind.”

Although Hume could hardly have denied that triangles are sensibly present in the world (whether as drawn on blackboards, or on paper, or imagined), the way he expresses himself suggests a dualistic separation of the sensible and the ideal. As an empiricist he must see the origins of all ideas, including those of geometric figures, in sense impressions. However, here, he also wants to argue that geometrical truths are purely a priori. This incongruity is explainable, ultimately, with reference to Hume's denial of the role of intellectual insight in empirical knowledge. If Hume had realised that knowledge involves the working together of sense perception, discursive thinking, and intellectual intuition (but an intuition directed at the immanent intelligibility of the sensible world), then he would have realised that any phenomenon, including a triangle, is simultaneously sensible (or imaginal) and ideal. He did not realise this, or at least did not believe it, and so was forced to defend a dualism which opposes a chaotic sensible world, concerning which no necessary knowledge is possible, and a purely a priori realm, which buys its necessity at the cost of being completely separated from the world of experience.

Goethe does not go down this path, and hence, turns out to be far more empirical than Hume. He is uninterested in speculating about hidden causes different from the ideas which give intelligible structure to the phenomena of sensible nature. In view of the various, seemingly insoluble, problems deriving from the Humean approach, it would seem that an alternative approach like Goethe's merits a closer consideration by philosophers than it has received up till now.

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