Goethe’s way of science as second-person epistemics
to know a person as a friend, one must be friends with that person
As a man is, so he sees.
—William Blake
I have recently been contemplating the principle behind Blake’s statement in connection with theoria and Goethean science (both of which were primary subjects of my doctoral work). The concept of theoria entails an experienced relation and correlation between subject and object, or percipient and perception. That with which we can establish no relation must remain imperceptible to us. Moreover, the perceptual affordances available to me will be different than those afforded to a stone, or a flower, or an angel, or even to me at different stages in my life, or times of day, or moods and attitudes in the same time of day. Knowledge is a relationship between beings: to know a person as a friend, one must be friends with that person. In other words, to know a friend, I must also be a friend: real knowledge is not something extrinsic, and every fact, as a condition to be perceived, has its correlative transcendental condition in the being of the perceiver.
If knowledge seems extrinsic, it is the result of inadequate interpretation of experience; an inadequate hermeneutic of the percept. In the perception that knowledge is extrinsic, I learn something about my cognitive posture and not something about the world towards which I am assuming that posture. Kant was correct to think that I could never learn something directly about the object in this state. Indeed, the apparent extrinsicality of an object is a reflection of my own state—my own mode of perceiving—as imaged in the object. Hence, knowledge is never merely a question of knowledge. Instead, it is also a question of being. Parker Palmer encapsulated this connection very concisely in 1993 when he observed that “every way of knowing becomes a way of living, every epistemology becomes an ethic.” I cannot see a friend and not be a friend. “As a man is, so he sees.”
Goethean science is often construed as a “holistic” or “intuitive” method and set in contradistinction to the “analytic,” “quantitative,” or “abstract” method that characterizes the majority of conventional scientific disciplines. Another way to understand the difference between the conventional scientific method and the Goethean method is in terms of “relationality.” I will try to explain what I mean in light of the above.
Think about the grammatic persons, as indicated by the pronouns I, you, and he/she/it. These pronouns are employed to designate first, second, and third person relations, respectively. Conventional science’s emphasis on models, measurements, and quantification takes place within the context of what may be described as a “third-person epistemology.” In other words, phenomena are regarded as “hes” or “shes” and mostly “its.” In Goethean science, by contrast, the emphasis on observation, experience, and quality transpires within a more fundamental matrix, which could be described at “second-person epistemology.”
In other words, phenomena are regarded as “yous”—that is, beings with how I sustain a relationship. Hence, “scientific research” takes its departure from fundamentally different relational postures according to whether it is being conducted in the Baconian-Galilean-Newtonian mode or the Goethean one. The relational posture can be seen as a paradigmatic difference. This is important because observations disclose evidence and significance only in light of the specific paradigm or theory in which those observations are made. This is, of course, a refrain of this site.
There is no way to see the sunset as evidence for the Earth’s orbit from within the geocentric paradigm of the solar system. Returning to a point raised above: it is impossible to get at the kind of knowledge that the Goethean approach confers through third-person epistemology. This should give us pause and invite a reflection of the relative completeness of the scientific ontology relative to all being.
postscript:
Above, it was stated that the concept of theoria entails a correlation between subject and object, or percipient and perception. But by what power is this correlation sustained, as a condition for our ability to grasp it, and, by extension, any phenomenon at all? In The Republic, Plato describes “the Idea of the Good” as that which imparts [508e] “truth to the objects of knowledge and the power of knowing to the knower”
He continues:
you must say is the idea of Ἀγαθόν, and you must conceive it as being the cause of knowledge, and the cause of truth in so far as they become known…
But as for knowledge and truth, even as in our illustration [509a] it is right to deem light and vision as being sun like, but never to think that they are the sun, so here, it is right to consider these two (knowledge and truth) as being like Ἀγαθόν but to think that either of them is Ἀγαθόν, is not right.”
As light and vision are energies of the sun but not the sun itself, and as knowledge and truth are energies of the Good without being the Good itself, so the Good is an energy of God. Hence, it is God who is, in principle, accountable for the correlation of subject and object. Hence, to understand the architectonics of theoria is already theosis, but that is perhaps a theme to take up on a separate occasion.
Interesting, God is in principle accountable for the correlation of subject and object …I think I have quoted correctly yes? Everyone go back to read it I lose my comments going with this and don’t mean to be contrary just trying to understand…, I guess in principle is a sort of qualifier for that statement because we cannot truly know all that God is “ accountable” for, in fact that is sort of a strange word to use because really we have been given the gift of being “ accountable “ also yes? So maybe I am just quibbling here sorry but perhaps the all encompassing truth of the correlation of subject and object only God is aware of as He is the Creator of “ it” yet each of us individually have our own and are “ accountable “ for our own relationship/ correlation of subject and object which is valid and true to us whether we are the subject or the object because all real living beings derive their life from God it can not be simply a two way relationship or correlation between two, God must be part or present or in it in someway for it to be real and living and not deception…. Is that what you mean by saying it is in a sense theosis because to truly see and experience something it has to be done with God and Love?
Cheers Max - very interesting and brilliantly written. I've been on this same line of thinking recently.
I've been calling what you refer to as a paradigm (which i think is a better term) as a 'philosophical climate' - and using weather as an analogy to better my understanding of where I think we are.
I then imagine this weather (if we aren't vigilant) shapes our lens (way of seeing and relating to the world) - and there is also another issue, where we become over-identified with this fashioned lens, and we become like a clam stuck to a rock. It's at this point where we would dogmatically see everything as extrinsic. (at this point we are unwitting slaves of seen and unseen influences).
"There is no way to see the sunset as evidence for the Earth’s orbit from within the geocentric paradigm of the solar system." 👍🏻