Contributions to optics

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Color circle, watercolor pen drawing by Goethe, 1809

Contributions to optics is a scientific work by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , published in 1791 and 1792 by the publishing house of the industrial comptoir Weimar.

In 1822, Goethe regretted having called these his first attempts at walking against Newton's contributions to optics (instead of contributions to the theory of colors ), because nobody was able to understand nor wanted to make contributions to optics without mathematics or even to doubt the main tenets of them may fight.

On the history of science background

When the work was published, Newton's work on optical problems was a recognized state of knowledge. These go back to the work of Optick from 1704. Goethe's first title Contributions to Optics makes direct reference to this. The title, used 20 years later in On Theory of Colors, already expresses his differences to Newton's views on color-theoretical issues ( chromatics ).

content

In the phenomenological part of his investigation of optical phenomena, Goethe describes experiments in the decomposition of light with prisms .

In striving for a transparent experimental arrangement , Goethe at first only looks at black and white panels, because the colored edges and radiations [ refraction and diffraction spectra] of the same are most evident on them . He recapitulates 24 results of the illustrated experiments.

1) Black, white and uniform pure surfaces show no colors through the prism.
2) Colors show up on all edges.
[...]
23) The sun, moon, stars and the opening of the shutter only appeared in color through the prism because they can be seen as small, light bodies on a dark ground. [...]

Ascending from the simple to the more complicated, Goethe now looks at black and white surfaces with straight edges as well as gray and colored ones with curved and circular edges.

The apparatus , cardboard panels and a large prism that is required for these experiments , which is filled with pure water during experiments , are described - also illustrated.

In the final chapter, Remembrance , Goethe summarizes his prismatic experiences, which he is allowed to call subjective, as the phenomena occur in the eye of the observer .

testimony

“… Which he [Goethe] illustrated in the first volume of his contributions to optics in a more extensive manner and with 24 small illuminated copper tablets that are given out for it. He demonstrated the main sentences on a black board, where he had drawn the figures beforehand, so full of light that a child could have grasped it. Goethe is just as great as an astute demonstrator at the blackboard as he is as a poet, theater and opera director, natural scientist and writer. "

- From the meeting of the Weimar Scholars' Association on November 4, 1791

literature

Text output

  • Rupprecht Matthaei u. a. (Ed.): Goethe - The writings on natural science . Hermann Böhlaus Nachf., Weimar 1951–2014, Complete edition with explanations, published on behalf of the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina . First section, third volume: Contributions to optics and the beginnings of color theory , 1961, pp. 6-53.
  • Johann Wolfgang Goethe: Color theory. With introductions and comments by Rudolf Steiner. Edited by Gerhard Ott and Heinrich O. Proskauer. Volume 2: Preliminary work and additions to the theory of colors. 5th edition. Free Spiritual Life Publishing House, Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-7725-0702-6 , pp. 14–74.

Secondary literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Goethe, On natural science in general. First volume. Fourth issue (1822). Printed in Rupprecht Matthaei u. a. (Ed.): Goethe - The writings on natural science . Hermann Böhlaus Nachf., Weimar 1951–2014, Complete edition with explanations, published on behalf of the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina . First section, Volume 8, 1962, p. 205.
  2. ↑ Ott / Proskauer color theory, vol. 2. p. 64
  3. ↑ Ott / Proskauer color theory, vol. 2. pp. 48f.