By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Metamorphosis of Plants, released in 1790, was once Goethe's first significant try and describe what he referred to as in a letter to a chum "the fact concerning the how of the organism." encouraged through the variety of vegetation he discovered on a trip to Italy, Goethe sought a team spirit of shape in assorted buildings. He got here to work out within the leaf the germ of a plant's metamorphosis--"the real Proteus who can cover or demonstrate himself in all vegetal varieties" -- from the foundation and stem leaves to the calyx and corolla, to pistil and stamens. With this brief e-book -- 123 numbered paragraphs, within the demeanour of the good botanist Linnaeus -- Goethe aimed to inform the tale of botanical types in procedure, to offer, in impact, a movie of the metamorphosis of vegetation. This MIT Press variation of The Metamorphosis of crops illustrates Goethe's textual content (in an English translation by means of Douglas Miller) with a sequence of gorgeous and starkly appealing colour pictures in addition to quite a few line drawings. it's the so much thoroughly and colorfully illustrated version of Goethe's ebook ever released. It demonstrates vividly Goethe's principles of transformation and interdependence, as good because the systematic use of mind's eye in medical learn -- which encouraged thinkers starting from Darwin to Thoreau and has a lot to coach us this day approximately our dating with nature.
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42 Within the calyx of a carnation, for example, there is often a second calyx: one part is quite green, with a tendency to form a single-leaf, incised calyx; another part is jagged, with tips and edges transformed into the delicate, expanded, colored, true beginnings of petals. Here we can again recognize the relationship between corolla and calyx. 43 The relationship between the corolla and the stem leaves is also shown in more than one way, for in several plants the stem leaves show some color long before the plant approaches flowering; others take on full coloration when flowering is near (image 16).
9 (Morphologische Hefte), edited by Dorothea Kuhn (Weimar: Böhlaus, 1954); and Goethe, Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen, edited by Dorothea Kuhn (Weinheim: Acta Humaniora, 1984). Goethe’s original line drawings xxx Introduction can be found in Corpus der Goethezeichnungen, Vol. 5B, edited by Dorothea Kuhn, Otfried Wagenbreth, and Karl Schneider-Carius (Leipzig: Seemann, 1967). Supplemental drawings, many of which are included in the present edition, are integrated into the text of Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen contained in Goethes Morphologische Schriften, edited by Wilhelm Troll (Jena: Diederichs, 1926, 1932).
1. xxix Introduction 13. Goethe, Maxims and Reflections, in Scientific Studies, 307. 14. Goethe, “History of the Printed Brochure,” in Goethe’s Botanical Writings, 171–172. 15. Richards, Romantic Conception of Life, 407. 16. Henry D. Thoreau, Walden, ed. by Jeffrey S. Cramer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 295–297. 17. Goethe, “Other Friendly Overtures,” in Goethe’s Botanical Writings, 185. 18. For authoritative discussions of Goethe’s science in relation to mainstream science, see Goethe and the Sciences: A Reappraisal, ed.