the wholeness of nature - bortoft, henri

Renewal in ScienceThe Renewal in Science series offers books that seek to enliven and deepen our understanding of nature and science.. Thinking Beyond Darwin:The Idea of the Type as a Ke

Renewal in Science

The Renewal in Science series offers books that seek to enliven and deepen our understanding of nature and science Genetics and the Manipulation of Life: The Forgotten Factor of Context

by Craig Holdrege

The Marriage of Sense and Thought: Imaginative Participation in Science

by Stephen Edelglass, Georg Maier, Hans

Gebert & John Davy

Thinking Beyond Darwin:

The Idea of the Type as a Key to Vertebrate

Evolution

by Ernst-Michael Kranich

The Wholeness of Nature:

Goethe's Way toward a Science of Conscious Participation in Nature

by Henri Bortoft

Copyright © 1996 by Henri BortoftPublished in the United States by Lindisfarne

—Knowledge—Science 3 Nature inliterature 4 Nature (Aesthetics) 5 Science inliterature I Title II Series.

PT2213.B67 1996

831'.6—dc20

96-9358CIP

An earlier version of part I of this work,

“Authentic and Counterfeit Wholes,” was first

published in Systematics, vol 9, no 2 (1971),

and a thoroughly reworked version was

subsequently published in Dwelling Place and

Environment (edited by Seamon and

Mugerauer) by Martinus Nijhof, 1985.Part II of this work, “Goethe's ScientificConsciousness,” first appeared as Institute for

Cultural Research Monograph no 22,published by The Institute for CulturalResearch, 1986 They are printed here by

Cover art: Sketch by Goethe, Weinreben

(Grapevine), probably August, 1828.Reproduced by courtesy of Goethe—und—Schiller Archiv, Weimar, Germany Photograph

by Sigrid Geske

Cover design: Barbara Richey

Typography & interior design: Watersign

ResourcesAll rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced in anyform without the written permission of thepublisher, except for brief quotations embodied

in critical reviews and articles

To the memory of

DAVID BOHM

who introduced me to the problem of

wholeness

THE WHOLE AND THE PARTS

ENCOUNTERING THE WHOLE: THE ACTIVE

II Goethe's Scientific Consciousness

1 Introduction

2 Making the Phenomenon Visible

NEWTON'S EXPERIMENTS

THE PRIMAL PHENOMENON OF COLOR

GOETHE'S SCIENTIFIC CONSCIOUSNESS

Knowing the World

Unity without Unification

Modes of Consciousness

The Depth of the Phenomenon

3 Goethe's Organic Vision

THE UNITY OF THE PLANT

The One and the Many

THE UNITY OF ANIMAL ORGANIZATION

The Necessary Connection

4 The Scientist's Knowledge

III Understanding Goethe's Way of Science

Copernicus and the Moving Earth

Galileo and the Moving Earth

The Idea of Inertial Motion

THE ORGANIZING IDEA OF MODERN

SCIENCE

The Quantitative Way of Seeing

The Metaphysical Separation

4 Understanding the Science of Color

NEWTON AND THE MATHEMATICAL

PHYSICS OF COLOR

THE PHYSICS OF GOETHEAN STYLE

5 The Goethean One

MODES OF UNITY

SEEING THE DYNAMICAL UNITY OF THE

PLANT

The Unity of the Plant Kingdom

The Unity of the Organism

B IBLIOGRAPHY

A BOUT THE A UTHOR

Why would anyone in the 1990s write a book

on Goethe's way of science? Perhaps because

of a scholarly interest—wanting to find out thetruth about Goethe's scientific ideas, to discoverwhat he had in mind No doubt this would be avalid reason, but it is not mine To begin with Idon't speak German, so writing a scholarlybook on Goethe would be, for me, equivalent totrying to climb a mountain without first havinglearned to walk But what other reason couldthere be for writing about the scientific work ofsomeone who died in 1832, especially when hisideas were rejected by the scientificestablishment as the work of a muddleddilettante? The widespread judgment ofGoethe's science seems to be just that: Great

poet and dramatist he might have been, but hedidn't know what he was talking about when itcame to science But times have changed sinceGoethe's day Modern science had barely begunthen, whereas now it has matured and we havehad a chance to see its implications andconsequences more clearly Equally important,

we now understand science better—therevolution in the history and philosophy ofscience is responsible for that

My interest in Goethe arose as a result ofworking as a postgraduate research studentunder David Bohm on the problem of wholeness

in the quantum theory, back in the 1960s Tothose of us who had the privilege to participate

in his daily discussions, Bohm communicated asense of the way that wholeness is very differentfrom how we have become accustomed tothinking of it in modern science When I first

came across Goethe's scientific ideas, Iimmediately recognized in them the same kind ofunderstanding of wholeness that I hadencountered with Bohm But from the beginning

I saw Goethe's way of science in practicalterms, as something that was “do-able”—eventhough my own interest was, and is, largelyphilosophical Because I had been taughtexercises in seeing and visualization by J.G.Bennett in the 1960s, I was able to recognize

what Goethe was doing instead of being limited

to only what he was saying So, thanks to this, Iwas not restricted to an intellectual approach.Working with Goethe's practical indicationsbrought me to an understanding of Goethe's way

of science which was not only more lively than,but also somewhat different from, what I couldread in standard academic accounts Forexample, by practicing Goethe's method of

seeing and visualizing with plants, I came toexperience the way that this turned the one andthe many inside out I later found that, using thesame means, I could share this perception withstudents, and that we could begin to understandthe whole and the part, the one and the many,the universal and the particular, in a radicallynew way I would not have experienced thistransformation in the mode of cognition formyself if I had done no more than read Goetheintellectually What can only seem abstract tothe intellectual mind becomes living experiencewhen Goethe's practice of seeing and visualizing

is followed Doing this gives us a sense of adifferent kind of dimension in nature It is noexaggeration to say that it turns our habitual way

of thinking inside out, and I have tried to writethis book in a way that will give readers a taste

of this for themselves

Over the past few decades, we have becomeincreasingly aware of the importance of thecultural context within which modern science hasdeveloped The new field of history andphilosophy of science has shown us what isreferred to now as the historicity of scientificknowledge, the way that cultural-historicalfactors enter into the very form which scientificknowledge takes We have, for the most part,given up thinking of science as an autonomousactivity which stands outside of history, orindeed outside of any human social context,pursuing its own absolute, contextless way ofacquiring pure knowledge In fact, now we havebegun to recognize that this view of science itselffirst arose within a particular cultural-historicalcontext, and that it is an expression of a style ofthinking which has its own validity but does nothave access to “ultimate reality.” We can now

recognize, for example, that the fact that modernphysics is true—which it certainly is—does notmean that it is fundamental Hence it cannot be afoundation upon which everything else, humanbeings included, depends Recognizing that thefoundations of science are cultural-historicaldoes not affect the truth of science, but it doesput a different perspective on the fundamentalistclaims made on behalf of science by some of itsself-appointed missionaries today Looked at inthe light of the new discoveries in the history andphilosophy of science, such claims to have foundthe ultimate basis of reality look like no morethan quaint relics from a bygone age.

It is astonishing to realize just how modernGoethe was in this respect Almost two hundredyears ago, he discovered the historicity ofscience for himself, expressing it succinctly when

he said, “We might venture the statement that

the history of science is science itself.” He came

to this understanding as a result of his strugglewith the science which had fundamentalistpretensions in his own day, i.e., the science ofNewton This understanding makes Goethe ourcontemporary We realize now that nature canmanifest in more than one way, without needing

to argue that one way is more fundamental thananother So there is the possibility that therecould be a different science of nature, notcontradictory but complementary to mainstreamscience Both can be true, not because truth isrelative, but because they reveal nature indifferent ways Thus, whereas mainstreamscience enables us to discover the causal order

in nature, Goethe's way of science enables us todiscover the wholeness I suggest that thisscience of the wholeness of nature is a visionmuch needed today in view of the limitations in

the perspective of mainstream science whichhave now become so evident.

The three essays which appear here werewritten at different times and under differentcircumstances “Authentic and CounterfeitWholes” first appeared as “Counterfeit andAuthentic Wholes: Finding a Means for Dwelling

in Nature” in Dwelling, Place and Environment (1986), a collection of essays on

the phenomenological approach to the humanenvironment, edited by David Seamon andRobert Mugeraur It is based on an earlierwork, and I am very grateful to David Seamonfor encouraging me to rewrite it in this form Iwould like to thank the publisher, MartinusNijhoff, for permission to reproduce it here

“Goethe's Scientific Consciousness” is a muchextended version of a paper given at aconference held by the British Society for

Phenomenology in 1979 It was published in

1986 in the Institute for Cultural ResearchMonograph Series, and I am grateful to theCouncil of the Institute for Cultural Research forpermission to republish it here

“Understanding Goethe's Way of Science”was written specifically for this volume.Christopher Bamford at Lindisfarne Press asked

me if I had any “further thoughts” which might

be added as a postscript to an Americanpublication of “Goethe's ScientificConsciousness.” I didn't realize that I had until Istarted to write, and I am as surprised as he is atthe result I am very grateful to him for his initialsuggestion, and for his help and encouragement

in getting the book into its final form I wouldalso like to thank Rob Baker and Albert Berry

of Water-sign Resources for editing the bookinto a style suitable for an American readership,

and for improving its general readability I amvery grateful to John Barnes, the series editor,for including this book in the Renewal in Scienceseries, for his many helpful suggestions, and fororganizing an extensive lecture tour to coincidewith publication.

Finally, but by no means least, I would like tothank Jackie Bortoft, my wife, for her continuedhelp and support As well as word-processing

my handwriting, and bringing my attention tounnecessary repetitions, she has helped me onmany occasions to find how to articulate moreclearly something that has been eluding me.Naturally any confusions which remain are myown responsibility

What is wholeness? To answer this question, it

is helpful to present a specific setting Imaginesomeone not yet recognizing it, asking, “What isroundness?” We might try to answer by giving anumber of instances, such as “The moon isround,” “The plate is round,” “The coin isround,” and so on Of course “round” is none ofthese things, but by adducing a number of suchinstances we may hope to provoke therecognition of roundness This happens whenperception of the specific instances isreorganized, so that they now become likemirrors in which roundness is seen reflected Inspite of what many people might think, thisprocess does not involve empiricalgeneralization—i.e., abstracting what is common

from a number of cases The belief thatconcepts are derived directly from sensoryexperiences is like believing that conjurors really

do produce rabbits out of hats Just as theconjuror puts the rabbit into the hat beforehand,

so the attempt to deduce the concept byabstraction in the empiricist manner presupposesthe very concept it pretends to produce

I attempt the same procedure in this essaywith the aim of understanding wholeness Iadduce a number of examples of wholeness,with the aim of learning more about wholenessitself by seeing its reflection in these particularcases I distinguish authentic wholeness fromcounterfeit forms in terms of the relationshipbetween whole and part The result leads to anunderstanding of how the whole can beencountered through the parts Finally, I arguethat the way of science developed by the poet

and student of nature Johann Wolfgang vonGoethe (1749—1832) exemplifies the principle

of authentic wholeness Goethe's mode ofunderstanding sees the part in light of the whole,fostering a way of science which dwells innature

kind of photography Hologram is the name

given to the special kind of photographic plateproduced with the highly coherent light of a laser

—i.e., light which holds together and does notdisperse, similar to a pure tone compared withnoise Whereas the ordinary photographic platerecords and reproduces a flat image of anilluminated object, the hologram does not record

an image of the object photographed butprovides an optical reconstruction of the originalobject When the hologram plate itself isilluminated with the coherent light from the laser

with which it was produced, the optical effect isexactly as if the original object were beingobserved What is seen is to all opticalappearances the object itself in full three-dimensional form, being displaced in apparentposition when seen from different perspectives(the parallax effect) in the same way as theoriginal object.

A hologram has several remarkableproperties in addition to those related to thethree-dimensional nature of the opticalreconstruction which it permits The particularproperty which is of direct concern inunderstanding wholeness is the pervasiveness ofthe whole optical object throughout the plate.1 Ifthe hologram plate is broken into fragments andone fragment is illuminated, it is found that thesame three-dimensional optical reconstruction ofthe original object is produced There is nothing

missing; the only difference is that thereconstruction is less well defined The entireoriginal object can be optically reconstructedfrom any fragment of the original hologram, but

as the fragments get smaller and smaller theresolution deteriorates until the reconstructionbecomes so blotchy and ill-defined as tobecome unrecognizable This property of thehologram is in striking contrast to the ordinaryimage-recording photographic plate If this type

of plate is broken and a fragment illuminated, theimage reproduced will be that recorded on theparticular fragment and no more With orthodoxphotography the image fragments with the plate;with holography the image remains undividedwhen the plate is fragmented

What can be seen straightaway aboutwholeness in this example of the hologram is theway in which the whole is present in the parts

The entire picture is wholly present in each part

of the plate, so that it would not be true in thiscase to say that the whole is made up of parts.This point will be explored in detail shortly, butthe advantage of beginning with the hologram isthat it is such an immediately concrete instance

of wholeness

A second example of wholeness involves theordinary experience of looking up at the sky atnight and seeing the vast number of stars Wesee this nighttime world by means of the light

“carrying” the stars to us, which means that thisvast expanse of sky must all be present in thelight which passes through the small hole of thepupil into the eye Furthermore, other observers

in different locations can see the same expanse

of night sky Hence we can say that the starsseen in the heavens are all present in the lightwhich is at any eye-point The totality is

contained in each small region of space, andwhen we use optical instruments like atelescope, we simply reclaim more of that light.2

If we set off in imagination to find what it would

be like to be light, we come to a condition inwhich here is everywhere and everywhere ishere The night sky is a “space” which is onewhole, enfolded in an infinite number of pointsand yet including all within itself

Matter also turns out to behave in anunexpectedly holistic way at both themacroscopic and the microscopic level Wetend to think of the large-scale universe ofmatter as being made up of separate andindependent masses interacting with one anotherthrough the force of gravity The viewpointwhich emerges from modern physics is verydifferent from this traditional conception It isnow believed that mass is not an intrinsic

property of a body, but it is in fact a reflection ofthe whole of the rest of the universe in thatbody Einstein imagined, following Ernst Mach,that a single particle of matter would have nomass if it were not for all the rest of the matter inthe universe.3 Instead of trying to understand theuniverse by extrapolating from the localenvironment here and now to the universe as awhole, it may be useful to reverse therelationship and understand the localenvironment as being the result of the rest of theuniverse.4

Similarly, at the microscopic level, we tend tothink of the world as being made up of separate,independent subatomic particles interacting withone another through fields of force But the viewwhich emerges from physics today is verydifferent Particle physicists, as they are called,

have found that subatomic particles cannot beconsidered to be made up of ultimate, simplebuilding blocks which are separate and outside

of each other Increasingly, it becomes clear thatanalysis in this traditional way is inappropriate atthe microscopic level Thus, in the “bootstrap”philosophy of Geoffrey Chew, the properties ofany one particle are determined by all the otherparticles, so that every particle is a reflection ofall the others This structure whereby a particlecontains all other particles, and is also contained

in each of them, is expressed succinctly by thephrase “every particle consists of all otherparticles.”5

Just as there are no independently separatemasses on the large scale, then, there are also

no independent elementary particles on the smallscale At both levels, the whole is reflected inthe parts, which in turn contribute to the whole

The whole, therefore, cannot simply be the sum

of the parts—i.e., the totality—because thereare no parts which are independent of thewhole For the same reason, we cannotperceive the whole by “standing back to get anoverview.” On the contrary, because the whole

is in some way reflected in the parts, it is to beencountered by going further into the partsinstead of by standing back from them

THE HERMENEUTIC CIRCLE

A third instance of wholeness is externallysomewhat different from the previous two It isconcerned with what happens when we read awritten text If reading is to be meaningful, it isnot just a matter of repeating the words verbally

as they come up in sequence on the page.Successful reading is not just a matter of sayingthe words It is an act of interpretation, but notinterpretation in the subjective sense Trueinterpretation is actively receptive, not assertive

in the sense of dominating what is read Trueinterpretation does not force the text into themold of the reader's personality, or into therequirements of his previous knowledge Itconveys the meaning of the text—“conveys” inthe sense of “passes through” or “goesbetween.” This is why readers sometimes can

convey to others more of the meaning of a textthan they may understand themselves.

Authentic interpretation, and hence successfulreading, imparts real meaning, but the questionbecomes, what or where is this meaning? Weoften say, “I see,” when we wish to indicate that

we have grasped something If we try to look atwhat we imagine is in our grasp, however, wefind ourselves empty-handed It does not takemuch experimentation here to realize thatmeaning cannot be grasped like an object

The meaning of a text must have something to

do with the whole text What we come to here

is the fundamental distinction between wholeand totality The meaning is the whole of thetext, but this whole is not the same as the totality

of the text That there is a difference betweenthe whole and the totality is clearlydemonstrated by the evident fact that we do not

need the totality of the text in order tounderstand its meaning We do not have thetotality of the text when we read it, but only onebit after another But we do not have to store upwhat is read until it is all collected together,whereupon we suddenly see the meaning all atonce in an instant On the contrary, the meaning

of the text is discerned and disclosed withprogressive immanence throughout the reading

be compared to the whole picture which can bereconstructed from the hologram plate This isthe sense in which the meaning of the text is thewhole The whole is not the totality, but the

whole emerges most fully and completelythrough the totality Thus, we can say thatmeaning is hologrammatical The whole ispresent throughout all of the text, so that it ispresent in any part of the text It is the presence

of the whole in any part of the text whichconstitutes the meaning of that part of the text.Indeed, we can sometimes find that it is just theunderstanding of a single passage whichsuddenly illuminates for us the whole meaning ofthe text

What we come to here is the idea of thehermeneutic circle, which was first recognized

by Friedrich Ast in the eighteenth century andsubsequently developed by Schleiermacher inhis program for general hermeneutic s as the art

of understanding.6 At the level of discourse, thiscircle says that to read an author we have tounderstand him first, and yet we have to read