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The Metamorphosis of Plants
This classic book on the theory of metamorphosis, written by Goethe, the famous scientist, author, and independent thinker, is one of the early works that describe the dynamic spiritual forces of nature. Introduced with a chapter from Rudolf Steiner’s Goethe the Scientist. This English translation was taken from the British Journal of Botany (1863). Revised by Anne E. Marshall and Heinz Grotzke.
69 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1790
64 people are currently reading
1260 people want to read
About the author
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
13.3k books6,937 followersA master of poetry, drama, and the novel, German writer and scientist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe spent 50 years on his two-part dramatic poem
Faust
, published in 1808 and 1832, also conducted scientific research in various fields, notably botany, and held several governmental positions.
George Eliot called him "Germany's greatest man of letters... and the last true polymath to walk the earth." Works span the fields of literature, theology, and humanism.
People laud this magnum opus as one of the peaks of world literature. Other well-known literary works include his numerous poems, the Bildungsroman Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and the epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther .
With this key figure of German literature, the movement of Weimar classicism in the late 18th and early 19th centuries coincided with Enlightenment, sentimentality (Empfindsamkeit), Sturm und Drang, and Romanticism. The author of the scientific text Theory of Colours , he influenced Darwin with his focus on plant morphology. He also long served as the privy councilor ("Geheimrat") of the duchy of Weimar.
Goethe took great interest in the literatures of England, France, Italy, classical Greece, Persia, and Arabia and originated the concept of Weltliteratur ("world literature"). Despite his major, virtually immeasurable influence on German philosophy especially on the generation of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, he expressly and decidedly refrained from practicing philosophy in the rarefied sense.
Influence spread across Europe, and for the next century, his works inspired much music, drama, poetry and philosophy. Many persons consider Goethe the most important writer in the German language and one of the most important thinkers in western culture as well. Early in his career, however, he wondered about painting, perhaps his true vocation; late in his life, he expressed the expectation that people ultimately would remember his work in optics.
George Eliot called him "Germany's greatest man of letters... and the last true polymath to walk the earth." Works span the fields of literature, theology, and humanism.
People laud this magnum opus as one of the peaks of world literature. Other well-known literary works include his numerous poems, the Bildungsroman Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and the epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther .
With this key figure of German literature, the movement of Weimar classicism in the late 18th and early 19th centuries coincided with Enlightenment, sentimentality (Empfindsamkeit), Sturm und Drang, and Romanticism. The author of the scientific text Theory of Colours , he influenced Darwin with his focus on plant morphology. He also long served as the privy councilor ("Geheimrat") of the duchy of Weimar.
Goethe took great interest in the literatures of England, France, Italy, classical Greece, Persia, and Arabia and originated the concept of Weltliteratur ("world literature"). Despite his major, virtually immeasurable influence on German philosophy especially on the generation of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, he expressly and decidedly refrained from practicing philosophy in the rarefied sense.
Influence spread across Europe, and for the next century, his works inspired much music, drama, poetry and philosophy. Many persons consider Goethe the most important writer in the German language and one of the most important thinkers in western culture as well. Early in his career, however, he wondered about painting, perhaps his true vocation; late in his life, he expressed the expectation that people ultimately would remember his work in optics.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews
September 8, 2008
Funny that when Goethe was wrong he was righter than most people are when they're right. But there you go.
October 22, 2024
No entendí nada porqué no sé de botánica pero yo por Goethe daría la vida.
February 8, 2024
No puedo decir que haya sido un libro que haya disfrutado muchísimo porque es super técnico pero me ha dado unos conocimientos preciosos sobre las partes de las plantas y como estas se desarrollan. Un metamorfosis increíble.
A una le cambia un poco la forma de ver la naturaleza después de un libro así, por eso me ha sido difícil no darle 4 estrellas 💗
A una le cambia un poco la forma de ver la naturaleza después de un libro así, por eso me ha sido difícil no darle 4 estrellas 💗
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October 9, 2020a treatise on how a plant - in particular flowering plants - grow. key to goethe's treatise is the idea of movement; even as he segments/isolates/dissects each part of the plant, the text remains interested in the thrust of movement of the plant. peep these lines in his poem:
"Gaze on them as they grow, see how the plant
Burgeons by stages into flower and fruit,
Bursts from the seed so soon as fertile earth
Sends it to life from her sweet bosom, and
Commends the unfolding of the delicate leaf
To the sacred goad of ever-moving light!"
i'm interested in his ties to spinoza... the introduction i read argues that he was specifically fascinated by the spinozean twinning of spirit and matter. he is obsessed with twinning in the text - both in duplication in the plant and in very understandable but boring marriage metaphors for the stamen and pistils - but this spirit/matter identification is a little harder for me to see.
"Gaze on them as they grow, see how the plant
Burgeons by stages into flower and fruit,
Bursts from the seed so soon as fertile earth
Sends it to life from her sweet bosom, and
Commends the unfolding of the delicate leaf
To the sacred goad of ever-moving light!"
i'm interested in his ties to spinoza... the introduction i read argues that he was specifically fascinated by the spinozean twinning of spirit and matter. he is obsessed with twinning in the text - both in duplication in the plant and in very understandable but boring marriage metaphors for the stamen and pistils - but this spirit/matter identification is a little harder for me to see.
May 5, 2022
Presuppositionless science; science without contrary. The logical articulation of the life of the plant; plant thought's thinking of itself. If plants could think, these would be their thoughts.
May 31, 2015
Where are the pictures?
According to the publication review, there are pictures. Nothing. I feel gypped. Granted, $5 iis a fancy cup of coffee, but I purchased because there were mention of pictures.
According to the publication review, there are pictures. Nothing. I feel gypped. Granted, $5 iis a fancy cup of coffee, but I purchased because there were mention of pictures.
November 10, 2023
My reading of this was quite rushed, meaning that I could not study the accompanying images and diagrams nearly to the degree that I would normally wish, but regardless, this was a fantastic read. Having taken a fair share of biology classes in my day, the holistic Goethean method of analyzing plant life was a refreshing approach, despite the obvious issues understanding the underlying biological mechanics of the behaviors he describes. Definitely worth reading if you have even a passing interest in biology or Goethe.
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March 1, 2014Finally, a good translation -- with illustrations!
My rating : Skyful of blossoming stars.
My rating : Skyful of blossoming stars.
August 20, 2020
An accessible introduction to botany and a concise example of Goethe’s approach to science richly illustrated with colour photographs, complete with an engaging introduction which doesn’t spoil and an afterword that doesn’t overwhelm.
On the use and abuse of plants for life:
To what extent does it make sense to search for Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s archetypical ‘Urpflanze’ today? In the introduction to the new English translation of ‘The Phenomenology of Spirit’, Terry Pinkard claims that after Hegel was “introduced to Goethe’s ‘Metamorphosis of Plants’, [he] came to one of his defining insights; namely, first, that the history of philosophy could be understood as a developing set of shapes of the same thing instead of just a procession of competing philosophical systems, and, second, that this insight could be extended to all of human history itself.” Incredibly, one of the most extraordinarily sophisticated philosophical accounts of human development was inspired by this modest eighty-page scientific case study, which for the most part is only concerned with minute prose descriptions of plants. Even in the concluding 'Recapitulation', Goethe provides no dramatic reveal; instead, the reader is meant to realise that the ‘Urpflanze’, much like Hegel’s construction of ‘Geist’, “the supposed hidden essence behind appearance, was in fact not hidden at all but was actually itself working its own way out in history as it shape-shifted itself in time.” (Phenomenology of Spirit, xxvii) The Urpflanze does not exist in any empyrean realm, but, like Hegel’s historical consciousness, is fully expressed in actual life. For Goethe as for Hegel, the task of the thinker is to show us by what process such complex patterns emerge.
Through these meticulous examinations of plants, which, while never sentimental, are undertaken with a kind of highly contagious affection, Goethe will detect a universal mechanism in their development. Just as Hegel’s philosophy is anti-foundational, and does not require a crude metaphysical teleology of set historical periods, so Goethe’s understanding of plants will move the science of his time beyond Carl Linnaeus’s theory of anticipation. To simplify brutally, Linnaeus believed that, despite taxonomic family relations, different forms of life derived from different ancestors, and that certain growth patterns were, in modern parlance, pre-programmed. After observing the way a tree which normally took six years to reach the adult reproductive stage could blossom and fructify within the space of a year if placed in a smaller pot, Linnaeus concluded that plants could ‘choose’ to accelerate their growth in special circumstances. Building on Linnaeus's theory, Goethe posited that plant-life evolved according to the degree of refinement a leaf could obtain in its present environment: and nothing else besides. His ‘foliar theory’, the theory that all plant life derives from variations of ‘leaf’ which are in a determinate relation with the immediate qualities of soil, light, space and air, foreshadows the findings of Charles Darwin by some sixty years. For Goethe, there are no metaphysical differences in kind: everything does its best with its genetic inheritance according to circumstance. Transplant the evolution of leaf for cell and epigenetic DNA and we have modern biology.
Such extrapolations from the history of ideas do not do justice to this edition of Goethe’s work. ‘The Metamorphosis of Plants’ seems perfect for scientists who want to be reminded of the intellectual significance, and sheer pleasure, that derives from the empirical understanding of nature, something which can be easily obscured in the hyper-specialization and neutrality which characterizes contemporary research. ‘The Metamorphosis of Plants’ is living proof that the great breakthroughs in science cannot be falsified any more than the arguments of Plato can be refuted. Goethe inspires those of us with humanities backgrounds to get our hands dirty. There’s something very moving about a poet of such imaginative power spending years closely observing humble plants and recording what he saw in simple crystal-clear prose. It is evidence of great restraint. And perhaps an even greater reverence. While, on the surface, Goethe’s spiritual meditations on plant-life might seem unlikely to reveal anything new about the natural world today, where everything has been seen up close with powerful microscopes and recorded with the implacable neutrality of a camera, perhaps such pessimism is misplaced. What is ‘seeing’ today but the casting of numerical nets over phenomena and then intuiting the cause of differentiation?
Readers of Deleuze and Guattari will find Goethe's contrast between a vertical plant-life fructificaton cycle and the vegetative horizontal growth process through nodes, or 'eyes,' a conceptual precursor for their split between aborescent structures driven by reproductive pleasure and the rhizomatic alliances fueled on desire. In their late 'What is Philosophy?' Goethe is explicitly cited as Deleuze and Guattari's model for a modern thinker insofar as he is able to translate his scientific findings into philosophical concepts. The superior empiricism of Goethe’s ‘genetic method’ translates scientific observation into the faculty of ‘Understanding’; so-called because, for Goethe, true observation seems to involve a near psychotic process of identification with the object of study, and a faculty of ‘Reason’ which is not only logical, but poetic: it is the means by which we generate causal mechanisms which allow us to understand and appreciate the natural world. Read this work then observe a humble houseplant. You will need no further proof that, contrary to certain religious beliefs and the posturing of nihilistic strains of contemporary philosophy, an enriched understanding of how things work cannot help but inspire joy.
On the use and abuse of plants for life:
To what extent does it make sense to search for Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s archetypical ‘Urpflanze’ today? In the introduction to the new English translation of ‘The Phenomenology of Spirit’, Terry Pinkard claims that after Hegel was “introduced to Goethe’s ‘Metamorphosis of Plants’, [he] came to one of his defining insights; namely, first, that the history of philosophy could be understood as a developing set of shapes of the same thing instead of just a procession of competing philosophical systems, and, second, that this insight could be extended to all of human history itself.” Incredibly, one of the most extraordinarily sophisticated philosophical accounts of human development was inspired by this modest eighty-page scientific case study, which for the most part is only concerned with minute prose descriptions of plants. Even in the concluding 'Recapitulation', Goethe provides no dramatic reveal; instead, the reader is meant to realise that the ‘Urpflanze’, much like Hegel’s construction of ‘Geist’, “the supposed hidden essence behind appearance, was in fact not hidden at all but was actually itself working its own way out in history as it shape-shifted itself in time.” (Phenomenology of Spirit, xxvii) The Urpflanze does not exist in any empyrean realm, but, like Hegel’s historical consciousness, is fully expressed in actual life. For Goethe as for Hegel, the task of the thinker is to show us by what process such complex patterns emerge.
Through these meticulous examinations of plants, which, while never sentimental, are undertaken with a kind of highly contagious affection, Goethe will detect a universal mechanism in their development. Just as Hegel’s philosophy is anti-foundational, and does not require a crude metaphysical teleology of set historical periods, so Goethe’s understanding of plants will move the science of his time beyond Carl Linnaeus’s theory of anticipation. To simplify brutally, Linnaeus believed that, despite taxonomic family relations, different forms of life derived from different ancestors, and that certain growth patterns were, in modern parlance, pre-programmed. After observing the way a tree which normally took six years to reach the adult reproductive stage could blossom and fructify within the space of a year if placed in a smaller pot, Linnaeus concluded that plants could ‘choose’ to accelerate their growth in special circumstances. Building on Linnaeus's theory, Goethe posited that plant-life evolved according to the degree of refinement a leaf could obtain in its present environment: and nothing else besides. His ‘foliar theory’, the theory that all plant life derives from variations of ‘leaf’ which are in a determinate relation with the immediate qualities of soil, light, space and air, foreshadows the findings of Charles Darwin by some sixty years. For Goethe, there are no metaphysical differences in kind: everything does its best with its genetic inheritance according to circumstance. Transplant the evolution of leaf for cell and epigenetic DNA and we have modern biology.
Such extrapolations from the history of ideas do not do justice to this edition of Goethe’s work. ‘The Metamorphosis of Plants’ seems perfect for scientists who want to be reminded of the intellectual significance, and sheer pleasure, that derives from the empirical understanding of nature, something which can be easily obscured in the hyper-specialization and neutrality which characterizes contemporary research. ‘The Metamorphosis of Plants’ is living proof that the great breakthroughs in science cannot be falsified any more than the arguments of Plato can be refuted. Goethe inspires those of us with humanities backgrounds to get our hands dirty. There’s something very moving about a poet of such imaginative power spending years closely observing humble plants and recording what he saw in simple crystal-clear prose. It is evidence of great restraint. And perhaps an even greater reverence. While, on the surface, Goethe’s spiritual meditations on plant-life might seem unlikely to reveal anything new about the natural world today, where everything has been seen up close with powerful microscopes and recorded with the implacable neutrality of a camera, perhaps such pessimism is misplaced. What is ‘seeing’ today but the casting of numerical nets over phenomena and then intuiting the cause of differentiation?
Readers of Deleuze and Guattari will find Goethe's contrast between a vertical plant-life fructificaton cycle and the vegetative horizontal growth process through nodes, or 'eyes,' a conceptual precursor for their split between aborescent structures driven by reproductive pleasure and the rhizomatic alliances fueled on desire. In their late 'What is Philosophy?' Goethe is explicitly cited as Deleuze and Guattari's model for a modern thinker insofar as he is able to translate his scientific findings into philosophical concepts. The superior empiricism of Goethe’s ‘genetic method’ translates scientific observation into the faculty of ‘Understanding’; so-called because, for Goethe, true observation seems to involve a near psychotic process of identification with the object of study, and a faculty of ‘Reason’ which is not only logical, but poetic: it is the means by which we generate causal mechanisms which allow us to understand and appreciate the natural world. Read this work then observe a humble houseplant. You will need no further proof that, contrary to certain religious beliefs and the posturing of nihilistic strains of contemporary philosophy, an enriched understanding of how things work cannot help but inspire joy.
February 14, 2019
Leaves are leaves and flowers are leaves.
Guy Davenport nodded thisaway when he titled his long poem, whose early lines bare a daggerhipped Goddessguy moments earlier plushly couched, herhis hair tossed with fishscales at the black breaking of waves.
A seed must needs lead to a seed.
Stem is but the extension of fruit and flower.
Fruit and flower are but the contraction of stem.
O! just how many sepals a calyx make!
Guy Davenport nodded thisaway when he titled his long poem, whose early lines bare a daggerhipped Goddessguy moments earlier plushly couched, herhis hair tossed with fishscales at the black breaking of waves.
A seed must needs lead to a seed.
Stem is but the extension of fruit and flower.
Fruit and flower are but the contraction of stem.
O! just how many sepals a calyx make!
May 4, 2022
If plants make sense, this is what they make.
August 16, 2023
Si sabes porqué lo estoy leyendo, sabes 😘
June 17, 2024
Forget the dialectic—give me expansion and contraction.
June 10, 2017
And now I have a new wish list filled with botany and botanists...
August 31, 2021
The introduction is insightful. The editor frames what it was that Goethe was doing and the introduces the key concepts and ideas that guide the work. Polarization, refinement of fluids, homology of plant structures - these ideas belong not just to plant physiology, but are empirically observable details that give us insight into the greater physical and metaphysical unity of nature. This edition contains many new photographs, as well as older drawings, that helpfully illustrate somewhat Goethe's quasi-technical writing. Poems have also been inserted to break up the rhythm of the text. The book's presentation gives off coffee-table pretensions, but why not? You will never think about plants in the same way again. Even the smallest weed contains within it the dogged drive to transform itself.
January 9, 2011
Magnificent, stunning, so wonderful to see the scientist side of Goethe, which was news to me until I was given this book as a gift by my son! I think an exciting read for everyone: the philosopher, scientist, artist, writer, and anyone else on earth!
March 4, 2016
I did my Senior Essay at St. John's College on this book. I love it so much. I still get new things out of it. Absolutely beautiful edition, really gorgeous, with the vast majority of the plants Goethe refers to shown in high-quality photographs. I HIGHLY recommend this edition.
October 4, 2025
honestly, I found Goethe's ideas easier to understand in Bortoft's 'The Wholeness of Nature: Goethe's Way of Science,' but this little book is interesting as a more direct record or insight into some of what Goethe was doing. Basically, here, a lot of in depth observations…
The photographs in this book are great, helping to bring the text alive. And comparing parts of plants between different plants, growing locations/conditions, stages of development, locations on the plant - and considering Goethe's theories about how each part of a plant is a dynamic reflection of the underlying wholeness of 'plant,' otherwise invisible, except for patient and careful observation, is fascinating…
The photographs in this book are great, helping to bring the text alive. And comparing parts of plants between different plants, growing locations/conditions, stages of development, locations on the plant - and considering Goethe's theories about how each part of a plant is a dynamic reflection of the underlying wholeness of 'plant,' otherwise invisible, except for patient and careful observation, is fascinating…
July 8, 2023
El contenido es magnífico, y científicamente interesante desde luego. Al parecer ya se van reconociendo las aportaciones de Goethe a las ciencias naturales, quien plantea una visión de la naturaleza algo distinta a la que se ha impuesto hoy, y yo diría que más inteligente (pero esto es meterse en camisa de once varas). Quiero destacar el buen gusto que tiene como editor el muy raro Jacobo Siruela, «noblesse oblige».
May 2, 2022
2.5 ⭐ historically it is an interesting nugget, and Goethe's insatiable curiosity comes through, though I found the book – which seemed intended for a public audience even at it's time of writing –rather dense with unexplained plant jargon. Perhaps taking 230 years to make this criticism is pointless, but I think it's not a great book pedagogically.
March 19, 2019
Cute, but what do I do with this knowledge?
December 22, 2019
Really fascinating (if brief) book. Goethe is a very lucid thinker, and it was interesting to see him push the notion of one part of a plant transforming into another as a function of growth.
August 5, 2020
Wonderful book from one of my favorite authors of all time. Read and learn about his concepts on plants :) also a precursor for Spenglers, The Decline Of The West.
May 22, 2021
achei que seria mais poetica ou filosoficamente interessante.
como ensaio científico, há vários melhores.
como ensaio científico, há vários melhores.
October 12, 2023
Extraordinarios dibujos explicativos y un bello poema que describe el proceso de desarrollo de estos seres vivos
January 2, 2024
This is simply a beautiful book - from the purposeful photography and the tremendous translation, one experiences the fruit of Goethe's Leaf in the imagination.
February 18, 2024
Maravilloso y simple tratado sobre la vida de las plantas, donde el autor une ciencia y poesía y la edición preciosas fotografías.
January 24, 2025
Enjoyable for what it is.
May 2, 2025
Quickly read for early modern science
Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews