Theory of Colours is a book by Johann Wolfgang
von Goethe about the poet's views on the nature
of colours and how these are perceived by
humans. Published in 1810, it contains detailed
descriptions of phenomena such as coloured
shadows, refraction, and chromatic aberration.
The work originated in Goethe's occupation
with painting and mainly exerted an influence
onto the arts.
Although Goethe's work was rejected by physicists,
a number of philosophers and physicists have
concerned themselves with it, including Thomas
Johann Seebeck, Arthur Schopenhauer, Hermann
von Helmholtz, Rudolf Steiner, Ludwig Wittgenstein,
Werner Heisenberg, Kurt Gödel, and Mitchell
Feigenbaum.
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. 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—a subject analyzed
at length by Wittgenstein in his exegesis
of Goethe in Remarks on Colour.
Historical background
At Goethe's time, it was generally acknowledged
that, as Isaac Newton had shown in his Opticks
in 1704, colourless light is split up into
its component colours when directed through
a prism.
Along with the rest of the world I was convinced
that all the colours are contained in the
light; no one had ever told me anything different,
and I had never found the least cause to doubt
it, because I had no further interest in the
subject.
But how I was astonished, as I looked at a
white wall through the prism, that it stayed
white! That only where it came upon some darkened
area, it showed some colour, then at last,
around the window sill all the colours shone...
It didn't take long before I knew here was
something significant about colour to be brought
forth, and I spoke as through an instinct
out loud, that the Newtonian teachings were
false.
Goethe's starting point was the supposed discovery
of how Newton erred in the prismatic experiment,
and by 1793 Goethe had formulated his arguments
against Newton in the essay "Über Newtons
Hypothese der diversen Refrangibilität".
Yet, by 1794, Goethe had begun to increasingly
note the importance of the physiological aspect
of colours.
As Goethe notes in the historical section,
Louis Bertrand Castel had already published
a criticism of Newton's spectral description
of prismatic colour in 1740 in which he observed
that the sequence of colours split by a prism
depended on the distance from the prism — and
that Newton was looking at a special case.
"Whereas Newton observed the colour spectrum
cast on a wall at a fixed distance away from
the prism, Goethe observed the cast spectrum
on a white card which was progressively moved
away from the prism... As the card was moved
away, the projected image elongated, gradually
assuming an elliptical shape, and the coloured
images became larger, finally merging at the
centre to produce green. Moving the card farther
led to the increase in the size of the image,
until finally the spectrum described by Newton
in the Opticks was produced... The image cast
by the refracted beam was not fixed, but rather
developed with increasing distance from the
prism. Consequently, Goethe saw the particular
distance chosen by Newton to prove the second
proposition of the Opticks as capriciously
imposed."
The theory we set up against this begins with
colourless light, and avails itself of outward
conditions, to produce coloured phenomena;
but it concedes worth and dignity to these
conditions. It does not arrogate to itself
developing colours from the light, but rather
seeks to prove by numberless cases that colour
is produced by light as well as by what stands
against it.
In the preface to the Theory of Colours, Goethe
explained that he tried to apply the principle
of polarity, in the work – a proposition
that belonged to his earliest convictions
and was constitutive of his entire study of
nature.
Goethe's theory
Goethe's theory of the origin of the spectrum
isn't a theory of its origin that has proved
unsatisfactory; it is really not a theory
at all. Nothing can be predicted by means
of it. It is, rather, a vague schematic outline,
of the sort we find in James's psychology.
There is no experimentum crucis for Goethe's
theory of colour.
It is hard to present Goethe's "theory", since
he refrains from setting up any actual theory;
he says, "its intention is to portray rather
than explain". Instead of setting up models
and explanations, Goethe collected specimens—he
was responsible for the meteorological collections
of Jena University. By the time of his death,
he had amassed over 17,800 minerals in his
personal collection—the largest in all of
Europe. He took the same approach to colour—instead
of narrowing and isolating things to a single
'experimentum crucius', he sought to gain
as much breadth for his understanding as possible
by developing a wide range of interrogations
through which he would reveal the essential
character of colour—without having to resort
to explanations and theories about perceived
phenomena such as 'wavelengths' or 'particles'.
"The crux of his color theory is its experiential
source: rather than impose theoretical statements,
Goethe sought to allow light and color to
be displayed in an ordered series of experiments
that readers could experience for themselves.".
According to Goethe, "Newton's error.. was
trusting math over the sensations of his eye.".
To stay true to the perception without resort
to explanation was the essence of Goethe's
method. What he provided was really not so
much a theory, as a rational description of
colour. For Goethe, "the highest is to understand
that all fact is really theory. The blue of
the sky reveals to us the basic law of color.
Search nothing beyond the phenomena, they
themselves are the theory."
[Goethe] delivered in full measure what was
promised by the title of his excellent work:
Data for a Theory of Color. They are important,
complete, and significant data, rich material
for a future theory of color. He has not,
however, undertaken to furnish the theory
itself; hence, as he himself remarks and admits
on page xxxix of the introduction, he has
not furnished us with a real explanation of
the essential nature of color, but really
postulates it as a phenomenon, and merely
tells us how it originates, not what it is.
The physiological colors ... he represents
as a phenomenon, complete and existing by
itself, without even attempting to show their
relation to the physical colors, his principal
theme. ... it is really a systematic presentation
of facts, but it stops short at this.
Goethe outlines his method in the essay, The
experiment as mediator between subject and
object. It underscores his experiential standpoint.
"The human being himself, to the extent that
he makes sound use of his senses, is the most
exact physical apparatus that can exist."
Light and darkness
Unlike his contemporaries, Goethe didn't see
darkness as an absence of light, but rather
as polar to and interacting with light; colour
resulted from this interaction of light and
shadow. For Goethe, light is "the simplest
most undivided most homogenous being that
we know. Confronting it is the darkness".
...they maintained that shade is a part of
light. It sounds absurd when I express it;
but so it is: for they said that colours,
which are shadow and the result of shade,
are light itself.
Based on his experiments with turbid media,
Goethe characterized colour as arising from
the dynamic interplay of darkness and light.
Rudolf Steiner, the science editor for the
Kurschner edition of Goethe's works, gave
the following analogy:
Modern natural science sees darkness as a
complete nothingness. According to this view,
the light which streams into a dark space
has no resistance from the darkness to overcome.
Goethe pictures to himself that light and
darkness relate to each other like the north
and south pole of a magnet. The darkness can
weaken the light in its working power. Conversely,
the light can limit the energy of the darkness.
In both cases color arises.
Goethe expresses this more succinctly:
Yellow is a light which has been dampened
by darkness; Blue is a darkness weakened by
light.
Experiments with turbid media
The action of turbid media was to Goethe the
ultimate fact—the Urphänomen—of the world
of colours.
Goethe's studies of colour began with experiments
which examined the effects of turbid media,
such as air, dust, and moisture on the perception
of light and dark. The poet observed that
light seen through a turbid medium appears
yellow, and darkness seen through an illuminated
medium appears blue.
The highest degree of light, such as that
of the sun... is for the most part colourless.
This light, however, seen through a medium
but very slightly thickened, appears to us
yellow. If the density of such a medium be
increased, or if its volume become greater,
we shall see the light gradually assume a
yellow-red hue, which at last deepens to a
ruby colour. If on the other hand darkness
is seen through a semi-transparent medium,
which is itself illumined by a light striking
on it, a blue colour appears: this becomes
lighter and paler as the density of the medium
is increased, but on the contrary appears
darker and deeper the more transparent the
medium becomes: in the least degree of dimness
short of absolute transparence, always supposing
a perfectly colourless medium, this deep blue
approaches the most beautiful violet.
He then proceeds with numerous experiments,
systematically observing the effects of rarefied
mediums such as dust, air, and moisture on
the perception of colour.
Boundary conditions
When viewed through a prism, the orientation
of a light–dark boundary with respect to
the prism's axis is significant. With white
above a dark boundary, we observe the light
extending a blue-violet edge into the dark
area; whereas dark above a light boundary
results in a red-yellow edge extending into
the light area.
Goethe was intrigued by this difference. He
felt that this arising of colour at light–dark
boundaries was fundamental to the creation
of the spectrum.
Varying the experimental conditions by using
different shades of grey shows that the intensity
of coloured edges increases with boundary
contrast.
Light and dark spectra
Since the colour phenomenon relies on the
adjacency of light and dark, there are two
ways to produce a spectrum: with a light beam
in a dark room, and with a dark beam in a
light room.
Goethe recorded the sequence of colours projected
at various distances from a prism for both
cases. In both cases, he found that the yellow
and blue edges remain closest to the side
which is light, and red and violet edges remain
closest to the side which is dark. At a certain
distance, these edges overlap—and we obtain
Newton's spectrum. When these edges overlap
in a light spectrum, green results; when they
overlap in a dark spectrum, magenta results.
With a light spectrum, we find yellow-red
colours along the top edge, and blue-violet
colours along the bottom edge. The spectrum
with green in the middle arises only where
the blue-violet edges overlap the yellow-red
edges.
With a dark spectrum, we find violet-blue
along the top edge, and red-yellow along the
bottom edge — and where these edges overlap,
we find magenta.
Goethe's colour wheel
When the eye sees a colour it is immediately
excited and it is its nature, spontaneously
and of necessity, at once to produce another,
which with the original colour, comprehends
the whole chromatic scale.
Goethe anticipated Ewald Hering's Opponent
process theory by proposing a symmetric colour
wheel. He writes, "The chromatic circle...
[is] arranged in a general way according to
the natural order... for the colours diametrically
opposed to each other in this diagram are
those which reciprocally evoke each other
in the eye. Thus, yellow demands violet; orange
[demands] blue; purple [demands] green; and
vice versa: thus... all intermediate gradations
reciprocally evoke each other; the simpler
colour demanding the compound, and vice versa.
In the same way that light and dark spectra
yielded green from the mixture of blue and
yellow — Goethe completed has colour wheel
by recognising the importance of non-spectral
colours — "For Newton, only spectral colors
could count as fundamental. By contrast, Goethe's
more empirical approach led him to recognize
the essential role of magenta in a complete
color circle, a role that it still has in
all modern color systems."
Complementary colours and colours psychology
Goethe also included aesthetic qualities in
his colour wheel, under the title of "allegorical,
symbolic, mystic use of colour", establishing
a kind of color psychology. He associated
red with the "beautiful", orange with the
"noble", yellow to the "good", green to the
"useful", blue to the "common", and violet
to the "unnecessary". These six qualities
were assigned to four categories of human
cognition, the rational to the beautiful and
the noble, the intellectual to the good and
the useful, the sensual to the useful and
the common and, closing the circle, imagination
to both the unnecessary and the beautiful.
Notes on translation
Magenta appeared as a colour term only in
mid-19th century, after Goethe. Hence, references
to Goethe's recognition of magenta are fraught
with interpretation. If one observes the colours
coming out of a prism — an English person
may be more inclined to describe as Magenta
— what in German is called Purpur — so
one may not lose the intention of the author.
However, literal translation is more difficult.
Goethe's work uses two composite words for
mixed hues along with corresponding usual
colour terms such as "orange" and "violet".
It is not clear how Goethe's Rot, Purpur,
and Schön are related between themselves
and to the red tip of the visible spectrum.
The text about interference from the "physical"
chapter does not consider Rot and Purpur synonymous.
Also, Purpur is certainly distinct from Blaurot,
because Purpur is named as a colour which
lies somewhere between Blaurot and Gelbrot,
although possibly not adjacent to the latter.
This article uses the English translations
from the above table.
Newton and Goethe
"The essential difference between Goethe’s
theory of colour and the theory which has
prevailed in science since Newton’s day,
lies in this: While the theory of Newton and
his successors was based on excluding the
colour-seeing faculty of the eye, Goethe founded
his theory on the eye’s experience of colour."
"The renouncing of life and immediacy, which
was the premise for the progress of natural
science since Newton, formed the real basis
for the bitter struggle which Goethe waged
against the physical optics of Newton. It
would be superficial to dismiss this struggle
as unimportant: there is much significance
in one of the most outstanding men directing
all his efforts to fighting against the development
of Newtonian optics."
Due to their different approaches to a common
subject, many misunderstandings have arisen
between Newton's mathematical understanding
of optics, and Goethe's experiential approach.
Because Newton understands white light to
be composed of individual colours, and Goethe
sees colour arising from the interaction of
light and dark, they come to different conclusions
on the question: is the optical spectrum a
primary or a compound phenomenon?
For Newton, the prism is immaterial to the
existence of colour, as all the colours already
exist in white light, and the prism merely
fans them out according to their refrangibility.
Goethe sought to show that, as a turbid medium,
the prism was an integral factor in the arising
of colour.
Whereas Newton narrowed the beam of light
in order to isolate the phenomenon, Goethe
observed that with a wider aperture, there
was no spectrum. He saw only reddish-yellow
edges and blue-cyan edges with white between
them, and the spectrum arose only where these
edges came close enough to overlap. For him,
the spectrum could be explained by the simpler
phenomena of colour arising from the interaction
of light and dark edges.
Newton explains the appearance of white with
colored edges by saying that due to the differing
overall amount of refraction, the rays mix
together to create a full white towards the
centre, whereas the edges do not benefit from
this full mixture and appear with greater
red or blue components. For Newton's account
of his experiments, see his Opticks.
Table of differences
Goethe's reification of darkness is rejected
by modern physics. Both Newton and Huygens
defined darkness as an absence of light. Young
and Fresnel combined Newton's particle theory
with Huygen's wave theory to show that colour
is the visible manifestation of light's wavelength.
Physicists today attribute both a corpuscular
and undulatory character to light — comprising
the Wave–particle duality.
History and influence
The first edition of the Farbenlehre was printed
at the Cotta’schen Verlagsbuchhandlung on
May 16, 1810, with 250 copies on grey paper
and 500 copies on white paper. It contained
three sections: i) a didactic section in
which Goethe presents his own observations,
ii) a polemic section in which he makes
his case against Newton, and iii) a historical
section.
From its publication, the book was controversial
for its stance against Newton. So much so,
that when Charles Eastlake translated the
text into English in 1840, he omitted the
content of Goethe's polemic against Newton.
Significantly, only the 'Didactic' colour
observations appear in Eastlake's translation.
In his preface, Eastlake explains that he
deleted the historical and entoptic parts
of the book because they 'lacked scientific
interest', and censored Goethe's polemic because
the 'violence of his objections' against Newton
would prevent readers from fairly judging
Goethe's color observations.
Influence on the arts
Goethe was initially induced to occupy himself
with the study of colour by the questions
of hue in painting. "During his first journey
to Italy, he noticed that artists were able
to enunciate rules for virtually all the elements
of painting and drawing except color and coloring.
In the years 1786—88, Goethe began investigating
whether one could ascertain rules to govern
the artistic use of color."
This aim came to some fulfillment when several
pictorial artists, above all Philipp Otto
Runge, took an interest in his colour studies.
After being translated into English by Charles
Eastlake in 1840, the theory became widely
adopted by the art world – especially among
the Pre-Raphaelites. J. M. W. Turner studied
it comprehensively and referenced it in the
titles of several paintings. Wassily Kandinsky
considered it "one of the most important works."
Influence on Latin American flags
During a party in Weimar in the winter of
1785, Goethe had a late-night conversation
on his theory of primary colours with the
South American revolutionary Francisco de
Miranda. This conversation inspired Miranda,
as he later recounted, in his designing the
yellow, blue and red flag of Gran Colombia,
from which the present national flags of Colombia,
Venezuela and Ecuador are derived..
Influence on philosophers
In the nineteenth century Goethe's Theory
was taken up by Schopenhauer in On Vision
and Colors, who developed it into a kind of
arithmetical physiology of the action of the
retina, much in keeping with his own representative
realism.
In the twentieth century the theory was transmitted
to philosophy via Wittgenstein, who devoted
a series of remarks to the subject at the
end of his life. These remarks are collected
as Remarks on Colour,.
Someone who agrees with Goethe finds that
Goethe correctly recognized the nature of
colour. And here ‘nature’ does not mean
a sum of experiences with respect to colours,
but it is to be found in the concept of colour.
Wittgenstein was interested in the fact that
some propositions about colour are apparently
neither empirical nor exactly a priori, but
something in between: phenomenology, according
to Goethe. However, he took the line that
'There is no such thing as phenomenology,
though there are phenomenological problems.'
He was content to regard Goethe's observations
as a kind of logic or geometry. Wittgenstein
took his examples from the Runge letter included
in the "Farbenlehre", e.g. "White is the lightest
colour", "There cannot be a transparent white",
"There cannot be a reddish green", and so
on. The logical status of these propositions
in Wittgenstein's investigation, including
their relation to physics, was discussed in
Jonathan Westphal's Colour: a Philosophical
Introduction.
Reception by scientists
As early as 1853, in Hermann von Helmholtz's
lecture on Goethe's scientific works—he
says of Goethe's work that he depicts the
perceived phenomena—"circumstantially, rigorously
true to nature, and vividly, puts them in
an order that is pleasant to survey, and proves
himself here, as everywhere in the realm of
the factual, to be the great master of exposition".
Helmholtz ultimately rejects Goethe's theory
as the work of a poet, but expresses his perplexity
at how they can be in such agreement about
the facts of the matter, but in violent contradiction
about their meaning—'And I for one do not
know how anyone, regardless of what his views
about colours are, can deny that the theory
in itself is fully consequent, that its assumptions,
once granted, explain the facts treated completely
and indeed simply'.
Although the accuracy of Goethe's observations
does not admit a great deal of criticism,
his theory's failure to demonstrate significant
predictive validity eventually rendered it
scientifically irrelevant. Thomas Johann Seebeck
was the only prominent scientist among Goethe's
contemporaries who acknowledged the theory,
but later saw it critically.
Goethe's colour theory has in many ways borne
fruit in art, physiology and aesthetics. But
victory, and hence influence on the research
of the following century, has been Newton's.
"One hole Goethe did find in Newton's armour,
through which he incessantly worried the Englishman
with his lance. Newton had committed himself
to the doctrine that refraction without colour
was impossible. He therefore thought that
the object-glasses of telescopes must for
ever remain imperfect, achromatism and refraction
being incompatible. This inference was proved
by Dollond to be wrong... Here, as elsewhere,
Goethe proves himself master of the experimental
conditions. It is the power of interpretation
that he lacks."
Much controversy stems from two different
ways of investigating light and colour. Goethe
was not interested in Newton's analytic treatment
of colour—but he presented an excellent
rational description of the phenomenon of
human colour perception. It is as such a collection
of colour observations that we must view this
book.
Most of Goethe's explanations of color have
been thoroughly demolished, but no criticism
has been leveled at his reports of the facts
to be observed; nor should any be. This book
can lead the reader through a demonstration
course not only in subjectively produced colors,
but also in physical phenomena detectable
qualitatively by observation of color. A reader
who attempts to follow the logic of Goethe's
explanations and who attempts to compare them
with the currently accepted views might, even
with the advantage of 1970 sophistication,
become convinced that Goethe's theory, or
at least a part of it, has been dismissed
too quickly.
Mitchell Feigenbaum came to believe that "Goethe
had been right about colour!"
As Feigenbaum understood them, Goethe's ideas
had true science in them. They were hard and
empirical. Over and over again, Goethe emphasized
the repeatability of his experiments. It was
the perception of colour, to Goethe, that
was universal and objective. What scientific
evidence was there for a definable real-world
quality of redness independent of our perception?
Current status
Goethe started out by accepting Newton's physical
theory. He soon abandoned it... finding modification
to be more in keeping with his own insights.
One beneficial consequence of this was that
he developed an awareness of the importance
of the physiological aspect of colour perception,
and was therefore able to demonstrate that
Newton's theory of light and colours is too
simplistic; that there is more to colour than
variable refrangibility.
As a catalogue of observations, Goethe's experiments
probe the complexities of human colour perception.
Whereas Newton sought to develop a mathematical
model for the behaviour of light, Goethe focused
on exploring how colour is perceived in a
wide array of conditions. Developments in
understanding how the brain interprets colours,
such as colour constancy and Edwin H. Land's
retinex theory bear striking similarities
to Goethe's theory.
A modern treatment of the book is given by
Dennis L. Sepper in the book, Goethe contra
Newton: Polemics and the Project for a New
Science of Color.
Quotations
See also
Theory of painting
Checker shadow illusion
Color theory
Notes and references
Bibliography
Goethe, Theory of Colours, trans. Charles
Lock Eastlake, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1982.
ISBN 0-262-57021-1
Bockemuhl, M., Turner. Koln: Taschen, 1991.
ISBN 3-8228-6325-4.
Duck, Michael, “Newton and Goethe on colour:
Physical and physiological considerations”,
Annals of Science 45(5), September 1988. pp. 507–519.
Gleick, James, Chaos, London: William Heinemann,
1988. pp. 165–7
Lehrer, Jonah, Goethe and Color, Science Blogs:
The Frontal Cortex, 7 Dec. 2006.
Lehrs, Ernst, Man or Matter, Chapter XIV [5]
M.W. Rowe, Goethe and Wittgenstein, Philosophy,
Vol. 66, No. 257, pp. 283–303, Cambridge
University Press JSTOR
Ribe, Neil and Friedrich Steinle, “Exploratory
Experimentation: Goethe, Land, and Color Theory”,
Physics Today 55(7), July 2002.
Proskauer, The Rediscovery of Color, Dornach:
Steiner Books, 1986.
Schopenhauer, On Vision and Colors, Providence:
Berg, 1994. ISBN 0-85496-988-8
Sepper, Dennis L., Goethe contra Newton: Polemics
and the Project for a New Science of Color,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
ISBN 0-521-53132-2
Steiner, Rudolf, First Scientific Lecture-Course,
Third Lecture, Stuttgart, 25 December 1919.
GA320.
Steiner, Rudolf, “Goethe's World View”,
Chapter III The Phenomena of the World of
Colors, 1897.
Westphal, Jonathan, "Colour: a Philosophical
Introduction", Aristotelian Society Series,
Vol. 7, Oxford, Blackwell, 1991.
Wittgenstein, Remarks on Colour, Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1978. ISBN
0-520-03727-8
External links
Theory of Colours
Theory of Colours
Theory of Colours
Physics Today – Exploratory Experimentation:
Goethe, Land, and Colour Theory, 2002
Goethe's Prismatic Experiments; Fotos by Sakae
Tajima
Light, Darkness and Colour, a film by Henrik
Boëtius
Connections That Have a Quality of Necessity:
Goethe's Way Of Science As a Phenomenology
of Nature
Colour Mixing and Goethe's Triangle
Texts on Wikisource:
John Tyndall, “Goethe's Farbenlehre-(Theory
of Colors) I,” in Popular Science Monthly,
Vol. 17, June 1880.
John Tyndall, “Goethe's Farbenlehre-(Theory
of Colors) II,” in Popular Science Monthly,
Vol. 17, July 1880.
BBC Radio 4 Podcast, In Our Time Science - Goethe
and the Science of the Enlightenment, or this
link [6]
Critical review of Goethe's Theory of Colours
A list of links relating to Goethe's investigation
of colour
Essay discussing color psychology and Goethe's
theory
Google Scholar: Works citing "Theory of Colours"
