Mobile Order: Goethe’s Nature Research

Spanning 420 pages and featuring 174 illustrations, most of which are in colour, this volume offers a multifaceted insight into Goethe’s nature research. It focuses on his understanding of form, shape and transformation. »The book explores Goethe’s scientific, philosophical, aesthetic and poetic engagement with forms and changes in form, as he addressed them within the framework of his morphology and theory of metamorphosis,« explains editor Helmut Hühn. »The focus is on the mobile order of nature, which manifests itself in the dynamics of living organisms.«

The contributions explore key areas of Goethe’s research—ranging from geology and anatomy through botany, colour theory and meteorology, to his attempts to interlink different fields of knowledge. Particular attention is paid to the methods of his research, the ways in which he presented his findings, and the possibilities and limitations of his morphological thinking. Studies on selected examples of Goethe’s »object-oriented thinking« complement the overviews and, at the same time, illustrate the stages of the development of the respective theories. The volume concludes with a contribution on the multifaceted »afterlife« of Goethe’s approach to nature.

For Goethe, precise observation and comparative analysis formed the basis of scientific knowledge. The method of forming series also led him to the (re)discovery of the intermaxillary bone in humans, the absence of which had hitherto been regarded as a distinguishing feature from the animal kingdom. In his further work, Goethe developed, within the field of botany, an approach based on a spiritual contemplation of processes of change. The permanent exhibition and its companion volume alike demonstrate the significance of this methodology for Goethe’s scientific practice. In his contribution, Johannes Grave highlights the central role of drawing in Goethe’s morphology. Goethe considered the act of capturing forms through drawing to be particularly well-suited to making temporal processes of morphological change visible and comprehensible.

Both the exhibition and the companion volume make it clear that Goethe understood nature as a system of constant transformations—be it in plants, clouds, colours or rock formations. For him, insight arose from the attentive observation of these processes. »Bewegliche Ordnung« now offers a richly illustrated and academically sound introduction to this way of thinking, opening up new perspectives on many areas of Goethe’s practice. It becomes clear that, for Goethe, an understanding of nature and human self-knowledge go hand in hand:

It is a pleasant task to explore nature and oneself at the same time, to do violence neither to her nor to one’s own spirit, but to bring both into balance with one another through a gentle, reciprocal influence.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, »Proverbs in Prose«