The Contemporary Legacy of Goethean Morphology: From Anschauende Urteilskraft to Algorithmic Pattern Recognition, Generation, and Exploration

Abstract:This article offers a new interpretation of Goethean morphology that reads it not so much as an anti- or premodern methodology than as a late modern one. Indeed, based on the analysis of the specificity of the visual and computational techniques that ground Goethe's approach to natural phenomena, the paper suggests looking at Goethean morphology as an original practice of reduction. The latter does not simplify complexity, as is usually the case in modern natural sciences, but rather aims at intuiting the ways in which nature's technique generates complexity itself. Consequently, the article understands the work of Goethe qua naturalist as an innovative answer to Kant's antinomy of teleological judgment, namely as an attempt to comprehend the logic of nature from within, instead of merely trying to represent or mimic it. In this context, the article presents the Urtyp, the key feature of Goethean morphology, as a proto-algorithmic matrix capable of identifying and/or visually generating and exploring the structures of both actual and virtual morphologies. Finally, the article indicates how this very gesture paved the way to contemporary techniques of pattern recognition, generation, and exploration via natural computing, developmental algorithms, fuzzy logic, and computer graphics.