Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Cornell, J F

Titel

Faustian Phenomena: Teleology in Goethe's Interpretation of Plants and Animals

Ist Teil von

• The Journal of medicine and philosophy, 1990-10, Vol.15 (5), p.481-492

Ort / Verlag

United States: The University of Chicago Press

Erscheinungsjahr

1990

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

MEDLINE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• J.W. von Goethe was a daring and wide-ranging biologist as well as a great playwright. His work was a whole: for him, theory and theatre were both based on keen observation of life. Even ‘Faustian’ striving, the blind upward urge of life, can be found in significant details of organisms and their evolution, according to Goethe. Such observations cannot be dismissed as sheer poetry. On the contrary, his teleology provides a broad empirical background for the organismic approach in bio-medical science, while exposing inconsistencies in strict reductionist doctrines.