Skip to main content

Goethe on color

Image result for Goethe

"Color itself is a degree of darkness."

German polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said that, and much else, in his publication Theory of Colors.

Brain pickings recently ran an appreciation of this Treatise, calling it "an absorbing account of the philosophy and artistic experience of color."

It was also part of the romantic rebellion against classicism -- Goethe was taking on boring clockworks-loving old Newton.

Here's a link to the Amazon page which will allow you to look inside Goethe's text if you're so inclined.

https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262070375/braipick-20

Labels:

Comments

  1. HenrySeptember 8, 2016 at 2:41 AM

    In GOETHE: A VERY SHORT INTRODUCTION, Ritchie Robertson writes that Goethe's "obsessive, sometimes scurrilous, campaign against Newton was inevitably unsuccessful. Although Goethe made some valid methodological criticisms of Newton for confusing fact and fiction, e.g. talking of rays as real entities rather than as theoretical constructs, these criticisms missed the main point. Newton's account of the spectrum remains substantially valid. Goethe's essay is a quixotic rearguard action against the mathematization of science. ... [But] whatever its scientific flaws, its reflections on colour harmony would be valuable for painters." Robertson cites Turner and Kandinsky in particular.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Story About Coleridge

This is a quote from a memoir by Dorothy Wordsworth, reflecting on a trip she took with two famous poets, her brother, William Wordsworth, and their similarly gifted companion, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.   We sat upon a bench, placed for the sake of one of these views, whence we looked down upon the waterfall, and over the open country ... A lady and gentleman, more expeditious tourists than ourselves, came to the spot; they left us at the seat, and we found them again at another station above the Falls. Coleridge, who is always good-natured enough to enter into conversation with anybody whom he meets in his way, began to talk with the gentleman, who observed that it was a majestic waterfall. Coleridge was delighted with the accuracy of the epithet, particularly as he had been settling in his own mind the precise meaning of the words grand, majestic, sublime, etc., and had discussed the subject with William at some length the day before. “Yes, sir,” says Coleridge, “it is a majesti
7 comments
Read more

Five Lessons from the Allegory of the Cave

  Please correct me if there are others. But it seems to be there are five lessons the reader is meant to draw from the story about the cave.   First, Plato  is working to devalue what we would call empiricism. He is saying that keeping track of the shadows on the cave wall, trying to make sense of what you see there, will NOT get you to wisdom. Second, Plato is contending that reality comes in levels. The shadows on the wall are illusions. The solid objects being passed around behind my back are more real than their shadows are. BUT … the world outside the the cave is more real than that — and the sun by which that world is illuminated is the top of the hierarchy. So there isn’t a binary choice of real/unreal. There are levels. Third, he equates realness with knowability.  I  only have opinions about the shadows. Could I turn around, I could have at least the glimmerings of knowledge. Could I get outside the cave, I would really Know. Fourth, the parable assigns a task to philosophers
Post a Comment
Read more

Searle: The Chinese Room

John Searle has become the object of accusations of improper conduct. These accusations even have some people in the world of academic philosophy saying that instructors in that world should try to avoid teaching Searle's views. That is an odd contention, and has given rise to heated exchanges in certain corners of the blogosphere.  At Leiter Reports, I encountered a comment from someone describing himself as "grad student drop out." GSDO said: " This is a side question (and not at all an attempt to answer the question BL posed): How important is John Searle's work? Are people still working on speech act theory or is that just another dead end in the history of 20th century philosophy? My impression is that his reputation is somewhat inflated from all of his speaking engagements and NYRoB reviews. The Chinese room argument is a classic, but is there much more to his work than that?" I took it upon myself to answer that on LR. But here I'll tak
13 comments
Read more