Examines Goethe's neglected but sizable body of scientific work, considers the philosophical foundations of his approach, and applies his method to the real world of nature.

Goethe’s Path to Creativity provides a comprehensive psycho-biography of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a giant of modern German and European literary, political, and scientific history. The book brings this influential work by Rainer Matthias Holm-Hadulla to the English language for the first time in a newly elaborated edition. Goethe’s path to creativity was difficult and beset by a multitude of crises, beginning with his birth, which was so difficult that he was initially not thought to have survived it, and ending with an infatuation that left him, at the age of 74, toying with the same kind of suicidal thoughts he had entertained as a 20-year-old. Throughout his long life, he suffered bitter disappointments and was subject to severe mood swings. Despite being a gifted child, a widely recognized poet, and an influential scientist and politician, he spent his entire life loving and suffering; nonetheless, he had the exceptional ability to endure emotional pain and to transform his sufferings creatively. The way in which he mined his passions for creative impulses continues to inspire modern readers. Readers can apply the lessons they have learned from his life and use Goethe’s strategies for their own creative art of living. Goethe’s Path to Creativity: A Psycho-Biography of the Eminent Politician, Scientist and Poet will be of great interest to all engaged in the fields of creativity, literature, psychoanalysis, psychology, psychotherapy, and personal growth.

New articles on topics spanning the Age of Goethe, with a special section of fresh views of Goethe's Faust.

of him in like measure within myself, that is my highest wish. This noble individual was not conscious of the fact that at that very moment the divine within him and the divine of the universe were most intimately united. So, for Goethe, the resonance with a natural rationality seems part of the genius of modern science. Einstein's 'cosmic religion', which reflects Spinoza, also echoes Goethe's remark (Ibid. , Item 575 from 1829): Man must cling to the belief that the incomprehensible is comprehensible. Else he would give up investigating. But how far will Goethe share the devotion of these cosmic rationalists to the beautiful harmonies of mathematics, so distant from any pure and 'direct observation'? Kepler, Spinoza, Einstein need not, and would not, rest with discovery of a pattern within, behind, as a source of, the phenomenal world, and they would not let even the most profound of descriptive generalities satisfy scientific curiosity. For his part, Goethe sought fundamental archetypes, as in his intuition of a Urpjlanze, basic to all plants, infinitely plastic. When such would be found, Goethe would be content, for (as he said to Eckermann, Feb. 18, 1829): . . . to seek something behind (the Urphaenomenon) is futile. Here is the limit. But as a rule men are not satisfied to behold an Urphaenomenon. 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.

Better known as a poet and dramatist, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) was also a learned philosopher and natural scientist. Astrida Orle Tantillo offers the first comprehensive analysis of his natural philosophy, which she contends is rooted in creativity.Tantillo analyzes GoetheÆs main scientific texts, including his work on physics, botany, comparative anatomy, and metereology. She critically examines his attempts to challenge the basic tenets of Newtonian and Cartesian science and to found a new natural philosophy. In individual chapters devoted to different key principles, she reveals how this natural philosophy—which questions rationalism, the quantitative approach to scientific inquiry, strict gender categories, and the possibility of scientific objectivity—illuminates GoetheÆs standing as both a precursor and critic of modernity.Tantillo does not presuppose prior knowledge of Goethe or science, and carefully avoids an overreliance on specialized jargon. This makes The Will to Create accessible to a wide audience, including philosophers, historians of science, and literary theorists, as well as general readers.

Ralph Waldo Emerson maintained a lifelong interest in science. His journals, from the earliest to the last, document this interest--an interest reflected in his lectures, essays, letters, and poems. Emerging from Emerson's statements on science is a coherent attitude that can be defined as his scientific thinking. The purpose of Emerson and Science is to analyze this thinking and to indicate the relationship it bears to his total thought. An analysis of Emerson's scientific thinking reveals that science, especially Goethean science, affords the means to explore and present what the book elaborates as Emerson's monistic worldview. The pervasive influence of Goethe's science on the epistemological bases underlying that view is presented at length. In addition to illuminating Emerson's epistemological position, the context of science divulges how Emerson's interest in science kept him from the extremes of Swedenborg's mysticism and from falling prey--unlike many of his contemporaries--to the pseudo-sciences of the day, including phrenology, mesmerism, palmistry, astrology, and so forth. Emerson's interest in science also played an important role in his rejection of conventional religion and helped qualify his idealism, making him sympathetic to the claims of materialism. His focus on science kept him from accepting either of the main streams of the scientific thought of his age and led him to what the book defines as Emerson's "scientific mysticism," or "spiritual science." Peter Obuchowski, a professor emeritus of English language and literature, shows how the context of Emerson's approach to science provides a new focus for considering a number of the key issues that have become the hallmarks of Emersonian criticism--issues such as Emerson's optimism in relation both to his spiritually oriented worldview and to his faith in scientific progress, as well as his attitude to evil and his so-called philosophical naïveté.

Tracing a developing fascination with rhythm's significance, its patterns, and its measures, across philosophy, psychology, science, and the whole range of arts, Rhythmical Subjects shows how and why attention to rhythm came to serve as connective tissue between fields of inquiry at a time when modern disciplines were still in the process of formation or consolidation. The concentration on 'rhythm' and its cognates largely arose, Laura Marcus demonstrates, from the desire to reclaim or retain human and natural measures in the face of the coming of the machine and the speed of technological innovation. Rhythmical Subjects uncovers the disparate routes by which rhythm acquired its newfound ability to link ancient and modern forms of intellectual inquiry, and to fathom and re-invigorate temporal articulations of modern subjective life. Among the numerous intellectual and artistic developments set in a new light by this brilliantly wide-ranging book are: the long line of philosophical and theoretical writing on rhythm, from Nietzsche to Bergson and their twentieth-century interlocutors; psychological explorations of rhythm as the fundamental law of life, from Herbert Spencer and Ralph Waldo Emerson to Elsie Fogarty; more experimental engagements with psychology's rhythms, from Wilhelm Wundt, Théodule Ribot, and Karl Groos to the aesthetic writings of Vernon Lee; the history of prosody; pioneering applications of rhythm studies to social and sexual reform, by Havelock Ellis, Marie Stopes, D. H. Lawrence, and Mary Austin (among others); Lebensreform movements and the contribution of Rudolf Steiner and Emile Jaques-Dalcroze; and numerous endeavours in artistic and critical innovation, from the small modernist magazines of Bloomsbury and Paris to art salons and dance studios across Britain, Continental Europe, and America.

C.P. Snow's notion of a possible ""third nation"" in which the literary and the scientific culture interact has been explored in new ways by theorists on both sides of the divide. This text presents their theories.

An introduction to Goethe's natural scientific writings, this book provides an alternative approach to "a science of living nature," one that goes beyond simple numbers and measurements. Goethe's development of morphological thought is a disciplined methodology that provides such an alternative. Through such observation, we can being to see the essence of living nature. Rudolf Steiner derived his theory of knowledge from Goethe's practice of natural science - and hence our understanding of biodynamic agriculture is tied to Goethe's approach. This book contains five writings by Goethe, as well as two by Rudolf Steiner.