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Ateleological propagation in Goethe’s Metamorphosis of plants

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Abstract

It was commonly accepted in Goethe’s time that plants were equipped both to propagate themselves and to play a certain role in the natural economy as a result of God’s beneficent and providential design. Goethe’s identification of sexual propagation as the “summit of nature” in The Metamorphosis of Plants (1790) might suggest that he, too, drew strongly from this theological-metaphysical tradition that had given rise to Christian Wolff’s science of teleology. Goethe, however, portrayed nature as inherently active and propagative, itself improvising into the future by multiple means, with no extrinsically pre-ordained goal or fixed end-point. Rooted in the nature philosophy of his friend and mentor Herder, Goethe’s plants exhibit their own historically and environmentally conditioned drives and directionality in The Metamorphosis of Plants. In this paper I argue that conceiving of nature as active productivity—not merely a passive product—freed Goethe of the need to tie plants’ forms and functions to a divine system of ends, and allowed him to consider possibilities for plants, and for nature, beyond the walls of teleology.

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Notes

  1. Goethe’s 1798 poem was entitled simply “The Metamorphosis of Plants.” Italicized references to The Metamorphosis of Plants throughout this essay will refer to 1790’s An Attempt to Explain the Metamorphosis of Plants, not the 1798 poem.

  2. “[Z]u jenem Gipfel der Natur, der Fortpflanzung durch zwei Geschlechter.” Translation mine. Original translations will be drawn from Goethes Werke. Hamburger Ausgabe [HA] (Munich: C. H. Beck 1999) unless otherwise noted. For ease of reference, however, I will be citing The Metamorphosis of Plants (HA XIII: 64–101) with the abbreviation MP and by means of section number (§). This passage is from MP §6.

  3. Unless otherwise noted, translations of Goethe’s scientific works are Douglas Miller’s (Goethe 1995).

  4. In their history of the science of plant sex, Lee and Lincoln Taiz (2016) claim that Goethe embraced asexualism, the view that plants do not exhibit distinctive sexes. This paper challenges that claim, and suggests Goethe’s hesitations around plants’ sexes have more to do with his resistance to notions of a fixed natural system.

  5. Today the word “teleology” refers generally to “a mode of explanation in which the presence, occurrence, or nature of some phenomenon is explained by appeal to the goal or end to which it contributes” (Walsh 2008). Originally, however, “teleology” was a science, invented by Wolff, that empirically investigated divine goals and ends. My use of the term will more closely track its initial, technical, Wolffian meaning, since this how my historical actors would have understood it (Van den Berg 2013; Hamid 2019).

  6. “The critical scholarship of the past years has reaffirmed Goethe’s contributions to the natural sciences (Amrine) and the philosophy of nature (Tantillo), and has also kept Goethe’s work center stage in the debate on literature and science around 1800. Re-reading Goethe with a focus on procreation can advance the discussion even further” (Holland 2009, 14).

  7. Forster makes the case that Herder’s influence on Goethe was so profound that Goethe would base his character Faust on the polymath (2018, 303).

  8. Not to be confused with the experimentalist and defender of epigenesis Caspar Friedrich Wolff (1733–1794).

  9. Within Jacob’s scheme from The Logic of Life (1970), Goethe would likely figure as a contributor to the shift “from generation to reproduction” at the turn of the nineteenth century, i.e. the shift away from divine creation and towards the natural capacity of organisms to beget more of their own. As Hopwood, Flemming and Kassel have shown, however, the triumph of “reproduction” over “generation” happened less suddenly, less decisively, and was more influenced by the concept of “population” than Jacob had imagined (2018, 663; Kreager 2018). This paper benefits from the correctives offered by their collection’s long view, and aims to complement their history of reproduction with Goethe in the German context.

  10. Goethe to Frau Charlotte von Stein, June 15, 1786 (WA IV:7, 2327).

  11. “Linnaeus’s classically inspired idea that in the flower the inner structure of the plant, its real structure, becomes evident to the human eye is central to an understanding of his botanical thought in particular, but to much else besides. The medulla, the form-generating part of the plant, entered most completely into the formation of the pistil and seed and was surrounded by structures representing the different parts of the cortex. The cortex, especially in its vegetative aspect, was largely disposable from the point of view of the adult plant, and this, when joined with his views on plant sexuality, justified the emphasis on the characters of the fructification in the formation of natural genera (e.g., Linnaeus, 1751)” (Stevens and Cullen 1990, 209). See Gemmae Arborum (Löfling, 1749), Metamorphosis Plantarum (Linnaeus 1755), Prolepsis Plantarum (1760), Fundamentum Fructificationis (1762), Mundum Invisibilem (1767). He also sketched this metamorphic view in his Philosophia Botanica (1751), which Goethe is known to have read (Stevens and Cullen 1990, 181).

  12. My reading, which emphasizes Linnaeus’ rationalist and religious influences, departs from some of Linnaeus’ current historiographical characterizations that argue against the commonly held view that Linnaeus was a species essentialist. Polly Winsor and Staffan Müller-Wille argue that Linnaeus’ “essential characters” of organisms are founded, not in scholastic/rationalist thought, but in scientific and taxonomic practice. See Müller-Wille (2001, 49–54) and Winsor (2006, 2–7).

  13. Trevor Pearce notes the dissertations "Oeconomia Naturae" (1749) and "Politia Naturae" (1760), like all dissertations at the time, were dictated by Linnaeus in Swedish but then translated to Latin and defended by Linnaeus’ students (Pearce 2010, 494).

  14. A quote from Linnaeus’s dissertation “Oeconomia Naturae” (1749) defended by Isaac Biberg (Pearce 2010, 497).

  15. Charles Bonnet (1720–1793) articulated a world system in a similar way, e.g. the “Great Chain of Being” from his 1745 Insectologie. See Reill (2005, 162–165).

  16. The University of Uppsala, where Linnaeus studied and would eventually work, was one of the few strongholds of Wolffian philosophy outside of Germany. Wolffianism arrived at Uppsala University in the 1720s, grew in influence during Linnaeus’ time there as a student (Baack 2013, 3), and reigned “more or less supreme” by the time Linnaeus eventually joined its faculty of medicine in the 1740s (Lindroth 1976, 126).

  17. This exploratory component is why Wolff calls teleology theologia experimentalis (experimental theology).

  18. Cf. Derham (1745).

  19. By investigating the effects of objects in the natural world, human beings can glimpse (and confirm) the ingenuity of the God who created the myriad essences by means of which these purposes are carried out. Cf. Euler (2008).

  20. Wolff often refers to organisms as machines whose forms and most general well-ordered effects indicate the goals they were created to accomplish in the system of nature (Wolff 1740, §394; Duchesneau 2011, 11). The nested functions of organs with respect to the organism, and the functions of organisms with respect to the function of the larger system of nature, are analogous for Wolff. This is perhaps most clearly illustrated in the case of sexual procreation.

  21. A variety of this position had been held by Christian theologians for centuries. For example, Thomas Aquinas believed that God had originally created all organisms (including Adam and Eve) at sexual maturity, precisely as paradigms of their propagative purpose. See his Summa Theologica I. 94, 3 (Aquinas 2008).

  22. This resonates with, and further develops, Jessica Riskin’s historical account of an active, agential nature in The Restless Clock. I will argue that Goethe and Herder powerfully resist a view of nature as “externally imposed perfection” (Riskin 2016, 78,191).

  23. An anonymous review of an earlier draft insisted that more attention to Herder would enrich the argument. I am grateful to the reviewer for the suggestion.

  24. Amanda Jo Goldstein’s Sweet Science provides an account of Lucretius’ effect on the thought and productivity of, among others, Herder and Goethe, and argues that Lucretian themes lit a path between preformation and autotelic epigenesis in the period (2017).

  25. See Lord (2011, 181). Lord’s Kant and Spinozism traces the profound impact of Herder’s Spinoza on Kant, and Kant’s attempts to disabuse other thinkers, like the early Naturphilosophen, of its influence.

  26. “Herders Abhandlung ging darauf hinaus, zu zeigen, wie der Mensch als Mensch wohl aus eignen Kräften zu einer Sprache gelangen könne und müsse.” Goethe, Dichtung und Wahrheit (HA IX: 406–407).

  27. Herder invokes Bacon’s famous description of final causes as Vestal virgins: pious, yet barren (1978, 159).

  28. The equivalence of the activity of being and actualized beings captured in Spinoza’s Natura naturans and Natura naturata (respectively) helped confirm Herder and Goethe in their insistence that nature’s native dynamism (understood as natura naturans) be stressed alongside its products. Cf. Lord (2011, 14–15; 58–59); and also Richards (2002, 142).

  29. The intermaxillary bone is today more commonly known as the os incisivum or incisive bone.

  30. Goethe studied anatomy with Justus Christian Loder in Jena, and took drawing classes at the Weimar Academy of Drawing in the 1780’s (Boyle 1991, 350).

  31. Goethe’s approach does not rule out the action of God, but rather conceives of divinity and divine action in a way far more immanent within the creative activities of nature than that of the engineer deist God of Wolff and Linnaeus (see Goethe 1995, 55).

  32. “Linnaeus's Termini botanici, Fundamenta botanica, and Philosophia botanica, and Gesner's Dissertationes (a pamphlet produced under the supervision of Linnaeus) introduced Goethe to the fundamentals of botanical science” (Larson 1967, 590).

  33. See Steigerwald (2002, 2019, 258–267). I will develop these insights in the next section.

  34. Around the same time Goethe acquainted himself with Rousseau’s Letters on the elements of botany (1787), wherein Rousseau wrote: “The principle misfortune of Botany is that, from its very birth, it has been looked upon merely as a part of medicine. This was the reason why everybody was employed in finding or supposing the virtues in plants, whilst the knowledge of plants themselves was totally neglected…How indeed could [naturalists] have been much interested in the original structure of a substance of which they had no other idea but as a thing to be pounded in a mortar?”.

  35. “Ich habe unendlich viel von ihm gelernt, nur nicht Botanik.” Goethe in a letter to Zelter, Nov 7, 1816, WA IV 27:219. Translation mine. See also Larson (1967, 590–596).

  36. Boyle convincingly argues that “Goethe’s metamorphic botany can be seen as a continuation of his work on the intermaxillary bone” (1991, 593–595).

  37. Reproductive technologies or therapies, for instance, deal specifically with the conception and delivery of children.

  38. Reproduction was something of a neologism with competing definitions at the time (Lettow 2014a, b, 25).

  39. It is important to note that Goethe only uses the term “Zeugung” one time in the Metamorphosis of Plants, juxtaposing it directly with “Wachsthum” in MP §63. Here “Zeugung” seems to be synonymous with “große Fortplanzung,” which will be explained below.

  40. Goethe seldom uses musical metaphors in his botanical works. However, Goethe’s insistence on the temporal dimension of plants’ forms makes this metaphor especially apt, and guards us from understanding the shift to simultaneity in procreation as a shift to something atemporal or static.

  41. Goethe would elaborate on this in “The Purpose Set Forth” in his Morphology 1807 (1995, 64): “How many plants are propagated [fortgepflanzt] by runners! In the least variety of fruit tree the eye puts forth a twig which it in turn produces many identical eyes; propagation through seeds is carried out in the same fashion. This propagation occurs through the development of innumerable identical individuals out of the womb of the mother plant.”

  42. In “The Purpose Set Forth,” Goethe (1995, 65) extends these two forms of propagation to organisms generally: “The above axiom considering the coexistence of multiple identical and similar entities leads to two further cardinal principles of the organism: propagation by bud [Gemmation] and propagation by seed [Prolifikation]. In fact, these principles are simply two ways of expressing the same axiom.”

  43. As such, this approach is indebted to Holland’s encouragement to re-read Goethe with a focus on procreation, echoing her conclusion that, for Goethe, metamorphosis simply “is a prolonged process of procreation” (2009, 14). Holland also examines a set of botanical aphorisms written prior to the Metamorphosis of Plants and lucidly demonstrates that Goethe had already articulated the divisions between procreation, growth, and sexual division as “constructs” that the naturalist uses to organize their perceptions of the phenomenon (2009, 30–31).

  44. For a contemporary articulation of Goethe’s insight, see Riegner (2013).

  45. Engelstein suggests the poet Goethe’s selection of “the leaf” from this series was a playful, witty one, since it can also refer to a sheet of paper (2020, 11).

  46. Goethe’s training in aesthetic appraisal and production in Italy trained him to better imagine and perceive the gestures, movements, or life captured in static statuary, drawings, and paintings (Jardine 2000; Steigerwald 2002, 2019). Goethe believed that, when well-executed, artworks (like the works of nature) evoke the entire dynamic reality they represent, albeit in a way limited by their medium. See Goethe’s “Observations on the Laocoon” (1980 [1798], 78–88) and “The Extent to Which ‘Beauty Is Perfection in Combination with Freedom’ May Be Applied to Living Organisms.” (1995 [1794], 22–23).

  47. Herder, in his Ideen Volume I, makes a similar claim: “The drive of the whole [plant] is modified [with the different parts], but still remains one and the same as the whole; for propagation [Fortpflanzung] is just the efflorescence of growth [Effloreszenz des Wachstums]; both drives are inseparable according to the nature of the creature” (1965 [1784], 75).

  48. For an alternative reading, see Engelstein (2020, 7–8).

  49. This belief is not unique to Goethe in this period. Herder expresses a similar understanding of vital power, and Blumenbach articulates sexual procreation as one more manifestation (alongside nutrition and regeneration) of the same Bildungstrieb (Look 2006, 358).

  50. Forvan Goethe, what the naturalist intuits using this method of perception is the “Urpflanze,” the primal archetype of the plant. The Urpflanze is a medial concept, for Goethe, both “perceptual and conceptual” (Steigerwald 2019, 394). Unlike Linnaeus’s typical organism (a sexually mature adult), the Goethean archetypal organism is the regular dynamic lifespan of that organism. Brady (1987) clarifies that, for Goethe, an archetype (like an organism itself) is a time-form—an entity that must change to be what it is—like a poem or a melody. While the Urpflanze is never mentioned explicitly in the Metamorphosis of Plants, insofar as the text’s goal is to explicate the “hidden relationship among the various external parts of the plant” in an ascending series of expansions and contractions that span the typical lifespan of an annual plant (MP §4), arguably The Metamorphosis of Plants is itself a portrait of the Urpflanze. Like a melody can be grasped and appreciated as a whole after its notes are played in sequence (Brady 1977), the Urpflanze can be grasped after reading The Metamorphosis of Plants. See also Trop (2013).

  51. Cf. Goldstein (2017, 42–43).

  52. Herder, like Goethe, argued that organic forms’ historical “essences” were also changeable and were profoundly influenced by the environment (Lord 2011, 67).

  53. Speaking of Goethe’s later works on the spiral tendency in plants, Bernard Kuhn echoes this sentiment: “Teleologically driven, Goethe’s spiral thought nonetheless insists on the impossibility of ever fully reaching an end-state or telos.” From Zemplén (2017, 161).

  54. See the section entitled “Creative Propagation” below. Additionally, both Herder and Goethe seem to have considered an organism’s “essential type” (Haupttypus or Urtypus, respectively) to be historically conditioned and changeable (Lord 2011, 63).

  55. Monographs: Huneman (2007), Lord (2011), Mensch (2013), Van den Berg (2014), Ginsborg (2015), Zammito (2018), Steigerwald (2019). Papers: Walsh (2006), Steigerwald (2013), Zammito (2006a, b, 2012).

  56. Zammito (2006a), Lord (2011), Van den Berg (2013), Gambarotto (2018)

  57. It is true that the categories lend themselves to the construction of an all-perfect “ideal of reason,” similar to the traditional definition of God as the ens realissimum, but they do not guarantee that ideal’s existence independent of the human categories themselves (Guyer 2006, 146–147).

  58. “I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge, in order to make room for faith.” Kant (1998 [1787], Preface to the Second Edition, Bxxx).

  59. Organisms are natural purposes precisely because they are perceived as wholes—systems—in their own right. That is, an organized being’s own coherence can be easily distinguished from any other system it may (or may not) itself be a part of. To use Linnaeus’ language, the claim here seems to be that organisms are clearly not perceived as merely parts of the system of nature—the economy of nature (oeconomia naturalis)—since they exhibit their own systematicity—an animal economy (oeconomia animalis). However, to determine why a particular herbivore, for instance, has the peculiar inner purposiveness or animal economy it does (why its vital activities produce certain teeth and digestive systems suited for eating particular foliage, etc.), Kant recognizes one must regard the herbivore as itself a part of another, more comprehensive, purposive system of nature (Kant 1987, 314 [§82]).

  60. Nisbet (1970, 55), Lord (2011, 65–66), and Sandford (2018) point to Kant’s theory of the different human races as a perfect example of Kant’s “teleological method” in practice, since Kant sees racial difference as the unfolding of a divinely pre-established, systematic plan for humanity.

  61. “Only this much is certain: If at any rate we are to judge by what our own nature grants us to see (subject to the conditions and bounds of our reason), then we are absolutely unable [to account] for the possibility of those natural purposes except by regarding them as based on an intelligent being” (Kant 1987, 283 [§75]).

  62. In Experimenting at the Boundaries of Life (2019), Steigerwald emphasizes how investigations of organic vitality in Germany around 1800 doubly-resisted simple systematization. Not only did newly-discovered phenomena of organic vitality exhibit constant metamorphosis, transgressing their own stable assemblages via (de)generation, but thinkers and experimentalists transgressed and transformed the boundary conditions of experiments, disciplines, concepts, and systems by means of their experimental and philosophical encounters with organic vitality. The perhaps imprecise, amphibious nature of concepts like “natural purpose” in Kant’s work, therefore, should be appreciated as the products of a remarkable, creative reckoning with the mercurial “boundaries of life” (Steigerwald 2019, 391–398).

  63. For a deeper examination of Kant’s subordination of the mechanical and physical-teleological orders to the moral-teleological order, and the unity of these orders in the regulative idea of God as their creator, see Goy (2020).

  64. In many ways this paper is a development of Tantillo’s provocative exploration of the theme of Goethe’s rejection of teleology (in order to embrace Steigerung) in The Will to Create (2002, 95–103).

  65. In a text from 1817, Goethe wrote: “the Critique of Judgment fell into my hands, and with this book a wonderful period arrived in my life…The antipathy I felt toward ultimate causes was now put in order and justified” (Goethe 1995, 29 [WA XI: 50–51]).

  66. For example, Kant notes that reason is prone to tautologous “raving” when it considers teleological explanations alone (1987, 295–6 [§78]). See below for examples from Goethe’s works.

  67. “Xenien” in the Musen-Almanac (1797, 202).

  68. Goethe was most familiar with Spinoza’s Ethics, and tried to abide by its exhortations to overcome problematic modes of thought and action, including those that could be described anachronistically as “teleological.”

  69. From Goethe’s 1817 text “Judgment through Intuitive Perception.” Adler (2009, 9) argues that Herder, too, saw in Kant and Wolff a propensity to illegitimately (and violently) tear concepts from the fabric of reality (L. abstrahere, “to rip out of”).

  70. Holland (2014, 84–86) argues that Goethe’s articulation of the relationship between Fortpflanzung and Zeugung (procreation) is one of whole to part, and contends that Fortpflanzung can be considered the “virtual” counterpart to the “empirical,” temporal instantiations of Zeugung. But I would argue that Goethe does not artificially insinuate Fortpflanzung or continuity between the concrete Gestalten of Zeugung. Rather, the human observer extracts Gestalten from the continuum, and “holds them fast.” In this respect, the Gestalt (and thus Zeugung, the act of procreation) is the virtual, or idealized/artificial, component: Fortpflanzung is the more fundamental reality, the real whole from which the parts are ‘held fast.’

  71. Goethe’s writings on experimental practice and scientific methods were immensely influenced by the historical and philosophical research he did for his Theory of Colour, published in 1810. Many of these writings, however, were never published as part of Goethe’s Morphology notebooks. See H.J. Becker (1999, 129).

  72. Goethe wrote that he preferred the German word Bildung (formation) to Gestalt (form) in the context of morphology for precisely this reason (1995 [1807], 63–64).

  73. “Ultimately we will see the whole world of animals as a great element in which one species is created, or at least sustained, by and through another. We will no longer think of connections [Verhältnisse] and relationships [Beziehungen] in terms of purpose [Bestimmungen] and intention [Zwecke]. This is the only road to progress in understanding how nature expresses itself from all quarters and in all directions as it goes about its work of creation.” Goethe (1995 [1790–1794], 56).

  74. While Lenoir (1982) and Reill (2005) argue that epistemologically modest teleological themes would shape the inchoate life sciences, a consensus has been building around the prevalence of morphological and physiological themes. See Nyhart (1995), Richards (2002), Huneman (2006), Zammito (2012, 2018), Gambarotto (2014, 2018), Steigerwald (2019).

  75. Framing her comprehensive study of Goethe’s scientific works, The Will to Create, as a study of Goethe’s “philosophy of nature,” Tantillo (2002) never explicitly calls it Naturphilosophie. Goethe and Herder’s philosophies of nature did precede Schelling’s Naturphilosophie, but they also profoundly influenced it (Förster 2012; Nassar 2010) and were contemporaneous with it. In my mind, this warrants Lord’s designation of Herder’s work as Naturphilosophie (2011, 55), and extending the category to include Goethe’s works as well.

  76. Goethe (1960, 576–577), with translation by Dollenmayer in Safranski (2017). This section of Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre was a late addition to the second edition, added in roughly 1829. (Goethe dies in 1832.) “In a conversation of May 15, 1831, Goethe explained that the collections of aphorisms did not exactly fit into the novel, but that through this device…he could use this ‘vehicle’ to ‘distribute a lot of significant thoughts in a fitting manner to the world.’ Thus, the aphorisms were included merely because of technical problems and not for artistic reasons” (Bahr 1998, 11).

  77. “Wir denken uns also das abgeschlossene Thier als eine kleine Welt, die um ihrer selbst willen und durch sich selbst da ist. So ist auch jedes Geschöpf Zweck seiner selbst…” (Goethe, WA VIII: 17). Translation and emphasis mine.

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Susanne Lettow for her invaluable advice and support, and to the following people for their assistance at various stages of this paper’s development: Hakob Barseghyan, Andrea Gambarotto, Auguste Nahas, Joan Steigerwald, Denis Walsh, the paper’s two anonymous reviewers, and the participants of the 2018 Freie Universität workshop “Conceiving Reproduction: The Impact of German Naturphilosophie.”

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Rupik, G. Ateleological propagation in Goethe’s Metamorphosis of plants . HPLS 43, 32 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-021-00387-6

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