Goethe Contra Newton


Book Description

Sepper shows that the condemnation of Goethe's attacks on Newton has been based on erroneous assumptions about the history of Newton's theory.







The Incomplete Child


Book Description

With the passage of Public Law 94-142 in 1975, the learning disability construct gained national legitimacy. Feeding that political achievement, behind the very idea of a learning disability, was the development of a science that blended neurology, psychology, and education. This book tracks the historical creation of the science of learning disabilities, beginning with the clinical research with brain-injured World War I soldiers conducted by German physician Kurt Goldstein. It traces the growth of the two primary research traditions, the psycholinguistic theory of Samuel Kirk and the movement education of Newell Kephart, exploring how specific scientific orientations, theories, and practices led to the birth of the learning disability in the United States.




Goethe's History of Science


Book Description

Fink explores how Goethe's scientific activities contributed to the growing literature in the history and philosophy of science.




Goethe's Modernisms


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Goethe and the Sciences: A Reappraisal


Book Description

of him in like measure within myself, that is my highest wish. This noble individual was not conscious of the fact that at that very moment the divine within him and the divine of the universe were most intimately united. So, for Goethe, the resonance with a natural rationality seems part of the genius of modern science. Einstein's 'cosmic religion', which reflects Spinoza, also echoes Goethe's remark (Ibid. , Item 575 from 1829): Man must cling to the belief that the incomprehensible is comprehensible. Else he would give up investigating. But how far will Goethe share the devotion of these cosmic rationalists to the beautiful harmonies of mathematics, so distant from any pure and 'direct observation'? Kepler, Spinoza, Einstein need not, and would not, rest with discovery of a pattern within, behind, as a source of, the phenomenal world, and they would not let even the most profound of descriptive generalities satisfy scientific curiosity. For his part, Goethe sought fundamental archetypes, as in his intuition of a Urpjlanze, basic to all plants, infinitely plastic. When such would be found, Goethe would be content, for (as he said to Eckermann, Feb. 18, 1829): . . . to seek something behind (the Urphaenomenon) is futile. Here is the limit. But as a rule men are not satisfied to behold an Urphaenomenon. They think there must be something beyond. They are like children who, having looked into a mirror, turn it around to see what is on the other side.




Goethe's Way of Science


Book Description

Examines Goethe's neglected but sizable body of scientific work, considers the philosophical foundations of his approach, and applies his method to the real world of nature.




American Metempsychosis


Book Description

American Metempsychosis explores the ancient concept of metempsychosis as a precursor to the idea of history. In the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman, metempsychosis serves as a form of American self-knowing - the effort to reshape identity through a self's heightened awareness of its own cognitive succession.




Goethe and the English-speaking World


Book Description

New studies of both Goethe's relationship to the English-speaking world and its perception of Goethe and his works.Goethe's relations with the English-speaking world have been the subject of scholarly investigation ever since his lifetime. This volume brings together eighteen articles that provide new points of view, a broad range of approaches, and new and original findings on this relationship. These range from the discussion of applications of recent critical approaches such as chaos theory and Edward Said's Orientalism to Goethean texts, through other more empirical contributions that bring to light new material, some of it deriving from archives in Weimar relating to Goethe's contact with English culture. Other essays involve the reassessment of questions of influence, from both sides: inthe case of Cooper and Goethe some standard assumptions are revised, while in the case of Goethe and Edith Wharton and Goethe and George Eliot, new comparative ground is broken. Close readings of portions of well-known texts suchas Faust and Wilhelm Meister challenge standard assumptions. The analysis of selected recent translations of Goethe's poetry raises perennial questions of cultural transfer, while the survey of the role played by some of Goethe's texts in one corner of the English-speaking world, Dublin, is long overdue. Nicholas Boyle is Reader in German Literary and Intellectual History, Head of the Department of German in the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Magdalene College. John Guthrie is College Lecturer in German and Director of Studies in Modern Languages at New Hall, Cambridge.exts suchas Faust and Wilhelm Meister challenge standard assumptions. The analysis of selected recent translations of Goethe's poetry raises perennial questions of cultural transfer, while the survey of the role played by some of Goethe's texts in one corner of the English-speaking world, Dublin, is long overdue. Nicholas Boyle is Reader in German Literary and Intellectual History, Head of the Department of German in the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Magdalene College. John Guthrie is College Lecturer in German and Director of Studies in Modern Languages at New Hall, Cambridge.exts suchas Faust and Wilhelm Meister challenge standard assumptions. The analysis of selected recent translations of Goethe's poetry raises perennial questions of cultural transfer, while the survey of the role played by some of Goethe's texts in one corner of the English-speaking world, Dublin, is long overdue. Nicholas Boyle is Reader in German Literary and Intellectual History, Head of the Department of German in the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Magdalene College. John Guthrie is College Lecturer in German and Director of Studies in Modern Languages at New Hall, Cambridge.exts suchas Faust and Wilhelm Meister challenge standard assumptions. The analysis of selected recent translations of Goethe's poetry raises perennial questions of cultural transfer, while the survey of the role played by some of Goethe's texts in one corner of the English-speaking world, Dublin, is long overdue. Nicholas Boyle is Reader in German Literary and Intellectual History, Head of the Department of German in the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Magdalene College. John Guthrie is College Lecturer in German and Director of Studies in Modern Languages at New Hall, Cambridge.versity of Cambridge and Fellow of Magdalene College. John Guthrie is College Lecturer in German and Director of Studies in Modern Languages at New Hall, Cambridge.




Instruments and the Imagination


Book Description

Thomas Hankins and Robert Silverman investigate an array of instruments from the seventeenth through the nineteenth century that seem at first to be marginal to science--magnetic clocks that were said to operate by the movements of sunflower seeds, magic lanterns, ocular harpsichords (machines that played different colored lights in harmonious mixtures), Aeolian harps (a form of wind chime), and other instruments of "natural magic" designed to produce wondrous effects. By looking at these and the first recording instruments, the stereoscope, and speaking machines, the authors show that "scientific instruments" first made their appearance as devices used to evoke wonder in the beholder, as in works of magic and the theater. The authors also demonstrate that these instruments, even though they were often "tricks," were seen by their inventors as more than trickery. In the view of Athanasius Kircher, for instance, the sunflower clock was not merely a hoax, but an effort to demonstrate, however fraudulently, his truly held belief that the ability of a flower to follow the sun was due to the same cosmic magnetic influence as that which moved the planets and caused the rotation of the earth. The marvels revealed in this work raise and answer questions about the connections between natural science and natural magic, the meaning of demonstration, the role of language and the senses in science, and the connections among art, music, literature, and natural science. Originally published in 1995. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.