The Perennial Alternative

The Perennial Alternative is the ripe fruit of a long, lively, in-depth exploration of Goethe’s scientific work. Anyone who has begun to realize the significance of Goethe’s scientific approach for us today will find this collection of brilliant essays richly rewarding. 

Frederick Amrine brings us up to date on the current reception of Goethe’s scientific work and how it relates to the new paradigm of emergence and to such contemporary thinkers as Thomas Nagel, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Gilles Deleuze, and Thomas Kuhn.

In a fascinating essay on the importance of Goethe’s Italian Journey for the development of his organic thinking, the author digs deep into his intimate knowledge of Goethe’s biography, shedding new light on Goethe’s relationship with Spinoza’s philosophy and with Newton’s optics.

In “The Metamorphosis of the Scientist,” he articulates a central aspect of Goethean science—namely, that scientists, like all of organic nature, evolve. Their understanding of the world evolves with them in the sense that, as Goethe put it, “Every new object, well-observed and contemplated, opens up a new organ of perception in us.”

This volume also includes insightful essays on the work of contemporary Goethean scientists Jochen Bockemühl, Michael Wilson, and Wolfgang Schad, as well as an excellent introduction to Schad’s lifework, Threefoldness in Humans and Mammals.