Sponsored by the Office for History of Science and Technology (U.C. Berkeley)
And the History of Health Sciences Program (UCSF)
Jit Singh Uberoi
Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi
-
Goethe and the Classification of the Sciences
Goethe is acclaimed as a poet but dismissed as a scientist. In his own lifetime, he had achieved complete success as a man of letters and the arts, as a statesman and a philosopher. But in the difficult science of colors, he was judged as a failure and he knew and resented it. His contributions to the science of optics (and comparative morphology) are seen as an assortment of experiments, or rather a series on non-mathematical experiences, belonging more to the psychology of vision rather than to the science of light. This paper provides a new reading of Goethe's work without dividing and separating the physics of light from the physiology of vision. Taking up Goethe's pursuit of a semiological rather than a mechanical science that would reveal the dialectical relationship and ultimate unity of man and nature, the paper examines his critics as well as his defenders Heisenberg and Pauli in physics, Schopenhauer and Wittgenstein in philosophy and Rudolf Steiner in occultism.
4:00PM
Monday, October 24
140 Barrows Hall
UC Berkeley
Office for History of Science and Technology, 543 Stephens Hall #2350
University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-2350
tel: (510) 642-4581, e-mail: diana@berkeley.edu
