Ecology is an eminently practical discipline, but the practical dilemmas of the
ecological movement – and arguably of the environmental crisis itself are the
consequences of our failure to comprehend the complexity and unity of nature
theoretically. The ecological crisis is first and foremost an epistemological crisis.
(Amrine, 2015, p. 45)
This is opening of a far-ranging article published in the Goethe Yearbook in 2015, in
which Frederick Amrine, professor of German at the University of Michigan and an
anthroposophist, traces the taking up of an alternative set of tropes for thinking about the
natural world, tropes which he claims originated with Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749 -1832)
in the early years of the nineteenth century.
Amrine’s purpose is to provide a re-evaluation of Goethe’s scientific work which, as
an alternative to scientific reductionism, was marginalized over the subsequent 150 years.
His specific focus is on the work of an early twentieth century advocate of the Goethean
legacy, whose writings have been taken up by philosophers Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908 1961) and Gilles Deleuze (1925- 1995) and Felix Guattari (1930-1992): the biologist and
semiotician Jakob von Uexküll (1864-1944). In particular, von Uexküll’s thinking about music
– not as mathematical purity, but as meaningful experience—has been taken up to
reconfigure our relationship with the world, ‘to be with’ a living process unfolding in time.
Furthermore, the music metaphor provides a conceptual understanding of how we can view
living phenomenon as a whole realizing itself in time rather than reducing it to its parts.
The other important concern of this paper is to show how Goethean scholarship
indicates directions where phenomenology can be extended from the humanities to the
‘lifeworld’ directly - as in how in biology does ‘being’ manifest in matter or the ‘universal’ in
the particular.
Amrine is not alone in recognising an epistemological crisis. In The Crisis of European
Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological
Philosophy (1932), Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) not only challenged dominant scientific
discourse by taking “consciousness” itself as his Archimedean fulcrum point, but offered
phenomenology—“the study of the structures of our consciousness” (Seamon, 1998, p. 2)—
as an alternative foundation for understanding our relationship with the world.
Generally, it is recognised that the great achievement of the last three centuries has
been the rise of science and its associated technologies. Husserl proposed that one way of
understanding the overarching paradigm shift of the Enlightenment is in terms of the
creation of the idea of a mental space unencumbered by anything other than ‘pure’
thinking’, as astrology gave way to astronomy, alchemy to chemistry, and so on (Moran,
2012, pp. 66-67). The focus of the Enlightenment moved towards the quantifiable, and
specifically to that which was amenable to mathematical analysis. ‘Knowing’ became all but
exclusively a question of aligning thinking, conceived of as ‘reason’ with determinant states
of physical reality into external ‘objective’ knowledge, independent of the ‘subjective’
perspective of any given mind (Husserl, 1970). The extraordinary success of physics lead to
a reductionist aspiration for all knowledge, and what C. P. Snow famously identified in the
1950s as what amounts to an all but insurmountable cultural division between the
humanities and the sciences (Snow, 2007).
Is there the possibility of a rapprochement between these divided cultures? Does the
difficulty stem from the overgeneralisation of scientific method, not sufficiently
differentiated according to its subject matter? Husserl argued that problem was deeper:
Only a radical inquiry back into subjectivity—and specifically the subjectivity which
ultimately brings about all world-validity, with its content and in all its prescientific
and scientific modes, and into the "what" and the "how" of the rational
accomplishments—can make objective truth comprehensible and arrive at the
ultimate ontic meaning of the world. (Husserl, 1970, p. 69)
In this paper, I will argue that the often-overlooked legacy of Goethe, and the
anticipation, in his work, of many of the insights and directions towards which
phenomenology, in the twentieth century, indicates the way towards a redressing of the
overgeneralisation of the scientific method, and the damage this overgeneralisation has
wrought on the world by a knowing which bridges the subject/object divide.
According to Amrine, von Uexküll, a perhaps often-overlooked pioneer of both
ecology and semiotics, “turn[ed] Darwin inside out”, by explaining that “the environment
does not select among chance variations, rather the oak participates in a counterpoint in
which oak and environment sing a duet” (Amrine, 2015, p. 50). Uexküll argues that
environment is not blind to meaning as implied by Darwin, but the Umwelt (environment)
is above all a context in which a specific meaning has been created through an
exchange of Merkmale (sensory cues guiding behavior) and Wirkmale (the
responsive behaviors themselves) (Amrine, 2015, p. 49).
Uexküll felt that the nineteenth century biologist and pioneer of the science of
genetics, Gregor Mendel had been more open to a non-reductionist paradigm, more aware
that how important the interaction with the environment was: how the living organism is
instrumental in creating its environment through its behaviour, so that “the behaviour of
organisms is first and foremost an expression of meaning”(Amrine, 2015, p. 49). Uexküll
offered a musical metaphor to explain this, inviting his reader to “suppose” that “two
different scholars had been given a very illegible sheet of music”. Prior to the ascension of
materialism, he suggests, they might have disputed which of the marks were notes and
which were random inkblots. Materialism, however, “knows nothing of music”; it sees
“nothing but inkblots” (TB 204-5) “[T]o find in the properties of living matter nothing more
than the expression of a dance of atoms”, Uexküll argues, “is not only to be hard of hearing,
but to be stone-deaf” (TB 205-6)” (Amrine, 2015, p. 50). For Uexküll, Amrine explains,
“meaning proceeds biological form in the same way that melody precedes and organizes,
but it is in no way the product of, physical tones” (Amrine, 2015, p. 51).
Goethean scientist Craig Holdrege makes a similar point with his observation that
when Goethe “encountered a view that made the presence or absence of a single part into
an essential distinguishing characteristic he felt something was awry” (Holdrege, 2014, p.
12), he then undertook the research to investigate the claim. Holdrege sees a contemporary
example of this in the idea there is hardly any difference between the DNA of humans and
chimpanzees and so being human is the result of a small proportion of human DNA. He
argues that Goethe would have taken issue with this (as he does) and points to research
“that an organism dynamically orchestrates its genome and not the other way round”
(Holdrege, 2014, p. 13). This is basically the argument Uexküll made, though in an earlier
time context.
Amrine shows how Merleau-Ponty took up Uexküll’s musical metaphor in his
lectures on the Nature in the 1950s, collected in Nature: Course Notes from the College de
France. In particular, Merleau-Ponty develops a musical conception of “organic time”:
We think naturally that the past secretes the future ahead of it. But this notion of
time is refuted by the melody. At the moment the melody begins, the last note is
there, in its own manner. In a melody, a reciprocal influence between the first and
the last note takes place, and we have to say that the first note is possible only
because of the last, and vice versa. It is in this way that things happen in the
construction of a living being” (Nature, 174 in (Amrine, 2015, p. 56)
In the third course, Merleau-Ponty turns to the question of Nature and the Logos,
and although he does not mention Goethe, his thinking takes on a decidedly Goethean
flavour.
“Nature” he observes, “can be thought of both as leaf or layer of total Being – the
ontology of Nature as the way toward ontology . . What we are looking for ... is a
true explication of Being. Thus for example the nature in us must have some relation
to Nature outside us; moreover, Nature outside of us must be unveiled to us by the
Nature we are. (Merleau-Ponty, 2003, pp. 205-206)
The musician Victor Zuckerkandl (1896-1965) picked up the other end of the
metaphorical stick, seeking to “understand musical form and meaning by comparing it
systematically to a biological organism” (Amrine, 2015, p. 56) The idea is that, indeed, there
is an overall structure to music, evident in its various elements—tones, melody, rhythm—
and all this can be described and documented. The music itself, however can only be shown,
for it is a kind of being-in which only becomes fully present “in the mind of the hearer”
(Amrine, 2015, p. 57). The abiding biological metaphor is that music qua music grows from
seed and that the totality of its meaning is there in potential from the onset. “[M]usic”,
Zuckerkandl explains, is a meaning that unfolds in a dimension that is perpendicular to clock
time” (Amrine, 2015, p. 57). Here Zuckerkandl appears to be echoing Merleau-Ponty’s
musical conception of “organic time” referred to earlier.
The French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and his French co-writer psychotherapist,
Félix Guattari also look to Uexküll for an alternative perspective to scientistic accounts, also
picking up on this musical metaphor. In What is Philosophy? they write:
Every territory encompasses or cuts across the territories of other species, or
intercepts the trajectories of animals without territories, forming interspecies
junction points. It is in this sense that Uexkühl [sic] develops a melodic, polyphonic,
and contrapunctal conception of nature…There is counterpoint whenever a melody
arises as a “motif” within another melody, as in the marriage of a bumblebee and
snapdragon. But it is not just these determinate melodic compounds . . . . that
constitute nature; another aspect, an infinite symphonic plane of composition is also
required...This is because territory does not merely isolate and join but opens onto
cosmic forces that arise from within or come from without, and renders their effect
on the inhabitant perceptible. The oak’s plane of composition is what supports or
includes the force of the acorn’s development and the force of formation of
raindrops (Deleuze & Guattari, 2009, pp. 185-186)
Addressing the fundamental differences between philosophy and science, Deleuze
and Guatari turn to Goethe as the “prime example of an arch-philosopher’s attempt to
create a living event” (Amrine, 2015, p. 62).”For Deleuze,” Amrine observes,
music is a privileged cognitive metaphor because it is more than just a metaphor: he
sees life itself as immanent to music and music as immanent to life” (Amrine, 2015,
p. 58).
In a different text, “Kicking Away the Ladder”, Amrine sees this way of viewing
nature as ‘music’ as part of an alternative ‘emerging’ scientific paradigm and provides more
detail on Goethe’s contribution (Amrine, 2019, pp. 63-91). With Goethe’s own research it is
in his morphological studies of the plant—how the plant undergoes metamorphosis over
time—in which the musical metaphor is most obvious.
Before addressing this, I will provide some background of how Goethe developed his
plant studies. One of first things that impressed Goethe was the sheer scale and continuity
of change in the leaf of a plant over its life cycle. Holdrege provides this chart of leaf growth
of the wild radish:
(Holdrege, 2014, p. 16)
Goethe was also particularly interested in abnormalities and commissioned paintings of
them in plants to help his research.
(Holdrege, 2014, p. 18)
What interested Goethe here was in the picture on the left was the upper leaf taking on the
character and appearance of the petal and in the picture on the right the way the petal and
leaf are not separated and take on features of each. This and many other reinforcing
observations lead him to a Heraclitian view of change in the plant:
“If we look at all these Gestalten, especially the organic ones, we will discover that
nothing in them is permanent, nothing at rest or defined—everything is in a flux of
continual motion. This is why German frequently and fittingly makes use of the word
Bildung [formation] to describe the end product and what is in process of production
as well…. When something has acquired a form it metamorphoses immediately into a
new one.” (Goethe 1995, pp. 63-4) ( cited in (Holdrege, 2014, p. 16)
Within this process Goethe was able to distinguish different stages in which metamorphic
change takes place:
Whether the plant grows vegetatively, or flowers and bears fruit, the same organs
fulfil nature’s laws throughout, although with different functions and often under
different guises. The organ which expanded on the stem as a leaf, assuming a variety
of forms, is the same organ which contracts in the calyx, expands again in the petal,
contracts in the reproductive parts, only to expand finally as the fruit (para.115; in
Goethe 1995, p. 96, cited in (Holdrege, 2014, p. 19),
From these patient observations, in which care is taken not to replace observations
with abstractions, Goethe eventually comes to have enhanced insights into what he calls the
‘archetypal phenomena’ (Zajonc, 1998). It is the leaf, he realised, which is the true Proteus,
hiding or revealing itself in all plant forms. He eventually came to an experience of this
‘moving reality’ as the archetypal plant (Holdrege, 2014, p. 19).
Philosopher Ron Brady makes a link between the understanding Goethe’s
morphology with a musical metaphor and coming to an intuitive concept or ‘essence’ in
Husserlian language:
The music moves, but its gesture is not made by the notes. Nor does the musician
make the gesture – he only follows it. The melody itself acts as the directive power
behind the whole process, leading the musician and placing the notes: a felt power,
in response to which we make metaphors of the “drive” and “force” of a passage. As
experienced, melody is never something done, a mere effect, but something doing, a
causal activity. This fact gives melody a cognitive status . . .
Without the melody, we could have no understanding of why one thing follows
another, no law governing before and after. It acts, therefore, as if it were a
conceptual standard explaining the why and wherefore of the sounds. Yet it gains
this cognitive power only to the degree that it is directly perceived- felt- as the
directive energy. It is both experience, and idea, percept and concept or better an
intuitive concept ( 157-158) (Amrine, 2019, pp. 80-81).
Where Goethe anticipates Husserl’s phenomenological advocacy for intuitively
apprehended disclosure of qualities is in his performative thoughts. Goethe wishes others to
follow him in being able to ‘be with’ or ‘hear as a whole’ metamorphic changes that occur as
any plant goes the archetypal series of expansions and contractions that take it from the
infinite variations of seed to leaf to flower to fruit and back to seed, even as audience can be
with a troupe of dancers or eurythmists1 as they take them on a transformative journey
through a living sequence of expansions and contractions.
This was not, for Goethe, an abstract idea, but a ‘truth’ experience, as a conversation
with friend and fellow poet and playwright Friedrich von Schiller, (1759-1805) shows. When
Goethe shared his understanding of the archetypal plant through a sketch, Schiller replied
“That is not an experience, but an idea.” Goethe responded, “Then I can be very glad that I
have ideas without knowing it, and even see them with my eyes.” Physicist, Walter Heitler,
with good reason interprets this as illustrating Goethe’s enormous imaginative power and
suggests the ‘eyes’ referred to are not bodily ones and that ‘idea’ here is being referred to is
done in a Platonic sense (Heitler, 1998, p. 62).
1
Eurythmy is an art of movement developed by Rudolf Steiner.
The popularity of musical metaphor by philosophers Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze and
Guattari and Brady is in no small part due to its usefulness in being able to imagine the
wholeness or totality of the lived experience of an organic process unfolding in time.
There is however another important aspect of Goethe’s research, as indicated in the
introduction, how Goethe anticipates Husserl’s “generic science aiming to
uncover the manner in which meanings originate”(Moran, 2012, p. 298) through disclose of
the intuitive concept or essence. For as Henri Bortoft argues,
[t]here is another crucial aspect to Husserl and Goethe approaching the organising
idea in cognitive perception. With Husserl and Goethe, the idea apprehended, as in
the archetypal plant, is not a generalization, but an experience of unity in diversity,
an intuitive concept (Bortoft, 2007, pp. 123-137).
What is Goethe’s understanding of this intuitive concept? Henri Bortoft describes
Goethe’s insight not as the type of ‘universal’ generalized from a number of particular
instances, but rather arising in the intuitive mind and involving a reversal of perception:
Instead of a movement of mental abstraction from the particular to the general,
there is a perception of the universal shining in the particular . . . In other words the
particular becomes symbolic of the universal . . . Goethe’s description of the primal
phenomenon as “an instance worth a thousand, bearing all in itself” has to be
understood in terms of this relationship between the universal and the particular
(Bortoft, 2007, p. 79)/
In this respect, physicist and Goethe scholar Walter Heitler notes that the universal is
no longer an individual phenomenon:
It is, as Goethe calls it, the idea of a whole group of phenomena, or in the parlance of
modern science, the point of convergence of a certain class of phenomena. Just as
the point of convergence of a mathematical series is not identical with any one of its
members, so this phenomenon at the outward boundary of physics is something that
has no concrete existence. It is, as was said, the idea of a phenomena, which Goethe
terms the archetypal phenomenon ( Urphanomen) and describes thus:
ideal, as that perceivable;
real, as that perceived;
symbolic, because it comprehends all instances; identical with all instances (Heitler,
1998, pp. 59-60)
How do we compare the archetypal plant with modern molecular biology? Heitler
takes up this question. According to contemporary thought, the hereditary factors and the
morphology of an organism are understood to be determined by the chemical structure of
the DNA. Heitler suggests that it would be a mistake identify the archetypal plant with the
DNA, he considers that: “The molecules can only be a material substrate for just this idealike
formative principle or archetypal plant”, using terms similar to Uexküll’s, making clear the
future research needed in these areas:
If we draw an analogy, the structure of the DNA molecule is to the archetypal plant
as the ink-smeared type in the printer’s press is to the poem that it will print. In no
way at all do we understand what the relationship between the chemical structure
and the formative principle actually is….or how the plant goes about changing the
formative principle into form (Heitler, 1998, pp. 63-64).
In conclusion: yesterday I made a case for conceiving alternative relationships to
nature from the mastery model advocated by the pioneers of modern science, Rene
Descartes and Francis Bacon, proposing the insights of phenomenology as a real alternative.
Today, I have fleshed this out, suggesting that an understanding of music affords a
conception of how to be with the dynamic nature of change in the natural world, and that,
with his research into the archetypal plant, Goethe pioneered a phenomenological science
of the ‘life world’ showing how an apprehension of the ‘universal’ can illuminate the
particular as in the archetypal plant. So, if we accept Frederick Amrine’s argument that
environmental crisis is “the consequence of our failure to comprehend the complexity and
unity of nature theoretically”, we can move beyond that failure by exploring the emerging
paradigm offered by Goethean-influenced phenomenology and consider nature musically.
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