Abstract

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was well acquainted with Isaac Newton's work on refraction and his theory of light and colours. Indeed, he had painstakingly repeated those experiments in Newton's Opticks , which clearly demonstrate that light is heterogeneous. Yet Goethe never abandoned his belief that light is immutable and that colours result from the interaction of light and darkness. It is argued here that the origin of Goethe's refusal to accept Newton's theory was not psychological, as is commonly supposed, but theological. It stemmed from his pantheistic belief in the spiritual nature of light, which he believed rendered it unknowable and not open to analysis