Goethes Botanical Writings

Author : Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 282 pages
Book Rating : 4.91/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Goethe's Botanical Writings written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A reprint of the U. of Hawaii Press edition, 1952. No index has been added. Cloth edition (unseen), $42. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Author : Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 082488504X
Total Pages : 269 pages
Book Rating : 4.45/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Goethe's Botanical Writings written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2021-05-25 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much has been written about the golden youth and the Olympian old age of Johann Wolfgang Goethe, poet; less has been written, however, about Goethe the scientist, who, pursuing independent research in many fields, opposed the professional men of his day with brilliant theories of his own. The educated world, familiar with Faust, Werther, and Wilhelm Meister, is not so generally aware of the scientific achievements of the man who had a genus of plants (Goethea) and a mineral (goethite) named for him who coined and first used the word morphology; who contributed to the understanding of the physiology of color; who rediscovered and described the intermaxillary bone in man, propounded the vertebral theory of the skull, formulated a concept in botanical morphology that persists to this day; who discovered the volcanic origin of a mountain; who established the first system of weather stations; who made the first systematic classification of minerals and was among the first to use the comparative method in biology; and who came unwittingly close to achieving the greatest concept in biology—some say the greatest concept in the thinking of man—the theory of organic evolution and the descent of man. Even in those few cases where subsequent research has proved Goethe’s theories to be wrong, his supporting accumulation of facts has proved extremely valuable to science. Goethe was born at the beginning of a great scientific era. But he was a creative thinker; his was not the analytic mind that emphasized fine differences but the synthetic mind that sensed the unity behind the differences. He was also an ardent lover of nature, possessed of unlimited curiosity. Consequently, as a contemporary observed, "Whatever Goeth looked upon in nature immediately acquired the character of a living experience for him." Most of the material translated in this volume is taken from notes and essays which Goethe published from 1817 to 1824 in journal form. Occupying a central position is the most famous and lasting of his scientific writings, the essay on the metamorphosis of plants—an essay which is today considered "one of the minor classics of botany." One of the most important episodes in Goethe's life was his flight to Italy, where he was delighted by the climate and the luxuriance of the plant life. A fan palm in particular attracted his attention because its leaves seemed to exhibit a complete series of transitions from the simple lance-shaped first leaves to the most complex fan type. "At my request," Goethe wrote in his diary, "the gardener cut off an entire sequence of modifications for me, and I burdened myself with several pasteboard containers in which to carry these treasures around." From this beginning Goethe started to evolve his theory of plant metamorphosis, and he returned to Weimar convinced that he had found the secret. The literary student will find much to interest him in this translation—the poet's own account of his grief and suffering at the hands of misunderstanding friends, and his victory over a threatening neurosis. Such essays as "The History of My Botanical Studies" and "The Fate of My Manuscript" throw much light on the crucial middle period of Goethe's life. During Goethe's lifetime and after, there was a tendency to ignore his scientific accomplishments in the face of his literary works. Many felt that they were almost a crime against his poetry. A few, however, contended that in science lay the center and focal point of Goethe's mental life. Goethe, himself, toward the end of his life wrote, "For more than a half century I have been known as a poet, in my own country and undoubtedly also abroad; or at any rate I have been permitted to pass for one. But the fact that I have busily occupied myself with Nature in all her general physical and organic phenomena, constantly and passionately pursuing seriously formulated studies—this is not so generally known; still less has it been accorded any attention." "Minds like Goethe's," Thomas Carlyle said, "are the common property of all nations; and, for many reasons, all should have correct impressions of them." This translation will enable those not familiar with the German language to gain a direct impression of Goethe's mind as expressed in his botanical writings.

Author : Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780918024688
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.84/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Goethe's Botanical Writings written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 258 pages
Book Rating : 4.82/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Goethe's Botanical Writings written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262013096
Total Pages : 156 pages
Book Rating : 4.93/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Metamorphosis of Plants written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2009-09-11 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Goethe's influential text, newly illustrated with stunning color photographs. The Metamorphosis of Plants, published in 1790, was Goethe's first major attempt to describe what he called in a letter to a friend “the truth about the how of the organism.” Inspired by the diversity of flora he found on a journey to Italy, Goethe sought a unity of form in diverse structures. He came to see in the leaf the germ of a plant's metamorphosis—“the true Proteus who can hide or reveal himself in all vegetal forms”—from the root and stem leaves to the calyx and corolla, to pistil and stamens. With this short book—123 numbered paragraphs, in the manner of the great botanist Linnaeus—Goethe aimed to tell the story of botanical forms in process, to present, in effect, a motion picture of the metamorphosis of plants. This MIT Press edition of The Metamorphosis of Plants illustrates Goethe's text (in an English translation by Douglas Miller) with a series of stunning and starkly beautiful color photographs as well as numerous line drawings. It is the most completely and colorfully illustrated edition of Goethe's book ever published. It demonstrates vividly Goethe's ideas of transformation and interdependence, as well as the systematic use of imagination in scientific research—which influenced thinkers ranging from Darwin to Thoreau and has much to teach us today about our relationship with nature.

Author : Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Publisher : Gingko Library
ISBN 13 : 1909942413
Total Pages : 452 pages
Book Rating : 4.17/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book West-Eastern Divan written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and published by Gingko Library. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1814, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe read the poems of the great fourteenth-century Persian poet Hafiz in a newly published translation by Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall. For Goethe, the book was a revelation. He felt a deep connection with Hafiz and Persian poetic traditions, and was immediately inspired to create his own West-Eastern Divan as a lyrical conversation between the poetry and history of his native Germany and that of Persia. The resulting collection engages with the idea of the other and unearths lyrical connections between cultures. The West-Eastern Divan is one of the world’s great works of literature, an inspired masterpiece, and a poetic linking of European and Persian traditions. This new bilingual edition expertly presents the wit, intelligence, humor, and technical mastery of the poetry in Goethe’s Divan. In order to preserve the work’s original power, Eric Ormsby has created this translation in clear contemporary prose rather than in rhymed verse, which tends to obscure the works sharpness. This edition is also accompanied by explanatory notes of the verse in German and in English and a translation of Goethe’s own commentary, the “Notes and Essays for a Better Understanding of the West-Eastern Divan.” This edition not only bring this classic collection to English-language readers, but also, at a time of renewed Western unease about the other, to open up the rich cultural world of Islam.

Author : Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 148 pages
Book Rating : 4.34/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Goethe on Science written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Goethe is best known for his color theory, but he was also an accomplished, well-rounded scientist who studied and wrote on anatomy, geology, botany, zoology, and meteorology. This book gathers, in the words of Goethe, his key ideas on nature, science and scientific method. It was Goethe belief that we should study nature and our world as people who are at home here, rather than as separate and alien from our own environment. He adopted a qualitative approach to science--one at odds with the quantitative methods of Newton, which were equally popular in his day. His is a sensitive science that includes our interrelationship with nature. Today, his ideas have been given special attention by scientists such as Adolf Portmann and Werner Heisenberg. Science, as conceived by Goethe, is as much a path of inner development as it is a way of accumulating knowledge. It thus involves a rigorous training of our faculties for observation and thinking. From a Goethean perspective, our modern ecological crisis is a crisis of relationship to nature. In this anthology, Jeremy Naydler provides the first systematic arrangement of extracts from Goethe's major scientific works. They give us a clear picture of Goethe's fundamentally unique approach to scientific study of the natural world. These extracts are fascinating and essential reading for anyone who believes we should regain our lost spiritual connection to nature.

Author : Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Publisher : Everyman's Library
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 1256 pages
Book Rating : 4.14/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Selected Works of Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and published by Everyman's Library. This book was released on 2000-05-30 with total page 1256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contains a brief biography of Goethe, a collection of some of his best-known works, and a sampling of his personal correspondence. Includes his four major works, together with a selection of his finest letters and poems. The Sorrows of Young Werther is a story of self-destructive love that made its author a celebrity overnight at the age of twenty-five. Its exploration of the conflicts between ideas and feelings, between circumstance and desire, continues in his controversial novel probing the institution of marriage, Elective Affinities. The cosmic drama of Faust goes far beyond the realism of the novels in a poetic exploration of good and evil, while Italian Journey, written in the author's old age, recalls his youth in Italy and the effect of Mediterranean culture on a young northerner. Translators include W. H. Auden, Louise Bogan, David Constantine, Barker Fairley, and Elizabeth Mayer.

Author : Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691187177
Total Pages : 281 pages
Book Rating : 4.74/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Goethe, Volume 3 written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Translated by Ellen von Nardroff and Ernest H. von Nardroff The reflections on art and literature that Goethe produced throughout his life are the premise and corollary of his work as poet, novelist, and man of science. This volume contains such important essays as "On Gothic Architecture," "On the Laocoon Group," and "Shakespeare: A Tribute." Several works in this collection appear for the first time unabridged and in fresh translations.

Author : Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Publisher : Penguin UK
ISBN 13 : 0141939184
Total Pages : 237 pages
Book Rating : 4.86/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Maxims and Reflections written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2005-12-01 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout his long, hectic and astonishingly varied life, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) would jot down his passing thoughts on theatre programmes, visiting cards, draft manuscripts and even bills ... Goethe was probably the last true ‘Renaissance Man’. Although employed as a Privy Councillor at the Duke of Weimar’s court, where he helped oversee major mining, road-building and irrigation projects, he also painted, directed plays, carried out research in anatomy, botany and optics – and still found time to produce masterpieces in every literary genre. His fourteen hundred Maxims and Reflections reveal some of his deepest thought on art, ethics, literature and natural science, but also his immediate reactions to books, chance encounters or his administrative work. Although variable in quality, the vast majority have a freshness and immediacy which vividly conjure up Goethe the man. They make an ideal introduction to one of the greatest of European writers.