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He was also an accomplished scientist who contributed to our understanding of color: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Wolfgang_von_Goethe#Scientific_work ht

He was also an accomplished scientist who contributed to our understanding of color: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Wolfgang_von_Goethe#Scientific_work https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Wolfgang_von_Goethe#Sci...

zwieback 7y ago
In his time as today scientific consensus is that Goethe's work on color was that of a poet and not of a scientist. My sense is that Goethe wanted to be a kind of DaVinci, trying his hand at everything from poetry, fiction, drama to painting and dabbling in science. Personally, I think his fiction is pretty great but as an optics guy I'd rather he stayed away from that field.
- Tomte 7y ago
  > as an optics guy I'd rather he stayed away from that field. What harm did he do?
  - jansan 7y ago
    His color theory is quite flawed. Keep away from it if you don't want to waste your time. He was a much better poet than scientist.
    - keiferski 7y ago
      It isn't flawed per se, it's simply focused more on human perception than a scientific analysis of light itself. Goethe's book provides a catalogue of how colour is perceived in a wide variety of circumstances, and considers Isaac Newton's observations to be special cases.[3] Unlike Newton, Goethe's concern was not so much with the analytic treatment of colour, as with the qualities of how phenomena are perceived. Philosophers have come to understand the distinction between the optical spectrum, as observed by Newton, and the phenomenon of human colour perception as presented by Goethe. ... his aesthetic approach did not lend itself to the demands of analytic and mathematical analysis used ubiquitously in modern Science. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Colours https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Colours Wittgenstein also wrote an interesting book about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remarks_on_Colour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remarks_on_Colour

zwieback 7y ago

In his time as today scientific consensus is that Goethe's work on color was that of a poet and not of a scientist. My sense is that Goethe wanted to be a kind of DaVinci, trying his hand at everything from poetry, fiction, drama to painting and dabbling in science. Personally, I think his fiction is pretty great but as an optics guy I'd rather he stayed away from that field.

Tomte 7y ago
> as an optics guy I'd rather he stayed away from that field. What harm did he do?
- jansan 7y ago
  His color theory is quite flawed. Keep away from it if you don't want to waste your time. He was a much better poet than scientist.
  - keiferski 7y ago
    It isn't flawed per se, it's simply focused more on human perception than a scientific analysis of light itself. Goethe's book provides a catalogue of how colour is perceived in a wide variety of circumstances, and considers Isaac Newton's observations to be special cases.[3] Unlike Newton, Goethe's concern was not so much with the analytic treatment of colour, as with the qualities of how phenomena are perceived. Philosophers have come to understand the distinction between the optical spectrum, as observed by Newton, and the phenomenon of human colour perception as presented by Goethe. ... his aesthetic approach did not lend itself to the demands of analytic and mathematical analysis used ubiquitously in modern Science. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Colours https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Colours Wittgenstein also wrote an interesting book about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remarks_on_Colour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remarks_on_Colour