Goethe on space

A full understanding of Goethe's work in physics is only possible if one considers Goethe's concept of space. For this reason we shall describe it here. If we wish to understand this concept, we need to have grasped from our preceding elaborations the following points:

- Objects singly confronting us in our experience have an inner reference to each other. In reality, they are bound together uniformly by the world. Just one common principle lives in them.

- When our mind approaches objects and tries to mentally embrace what is separated, the conceptual unity thus produced is not external to the objects, but taken from the inner essence of nature itself. Human understanding in not a process taking place outside objects arising from purely subjective arbitrariness: instead, the law of nature arising in our mind, the happening in our soul, is the heartbeat of the universe itself.

For our present purpose, we shall examine the most external reference our mind establishes between the objects of experience. Let us take the simplest case in which our experiencing calls for mental activity. Two simple elements of the world of appearances are given by way of example. In order not to complicate our examination, let us take something quite simple, for example two shining points. We shall leave aside completely the possibility that in each of these shining points we already have something unbelievably complicated posing a task for our mind. We shall also leave aside the quality of the tangible elements of the world of the senses before us. We shall only consider the circumstance that we have before us two elements separated from each other, ie appearing separate to our senses: that is all we taking as given. We shall further take for granted that the existence of one of these factors does not exclude the existence of the other. One organ of perception can perceive both of them.

We would have a problem different from the present one if we were to assume that the existence of one of these elements is dependent upon the existence of the other in any way whatsoever. If the existence of B is such that it excludes the existence of A, yet, according to its essence, is dependent on it, then A and B have to have a relationship in time. Because the dependence of B on A - keeping mind that the existence of B excludes the existence of A - is conditioned on A preceding B. But this should be discussed separately.

For our present purpose we shall not assume such a relationship. We are taking for granted that those things we are concerned with do not exclude each other's existence, but instead are entities existing with each other. If we disregard every reference demanded by inner nature, only this remains that a reference as such exists of the special qualities, that I can transit from one to the other. There can be no doubt fro anyone what kind of relationship it may be that I create between things without considering their composition, their essence. Whoever asks what kind of transition from one to the other can be found, with the thing itself of no consideration, must certainly give the answer, space. Every other relationship has to be based on the qualitative composition of what appears separately in the world. Only space considers nothing other that things are separated. When I am thinking: A is above B is below, I don't concern myself at all with what A and B are. I connect no other thought myself at all with what A and B are. I connect no other thought with them than that they are separate factors of the world that I grasp with my senses.

When looking at experience our mind wants to overcome separateness, it wants to demonstrate that the force of the whole can be seen in the individual members. Concerning spatial views, it does not wish to overcome anything other than individualisation as such. Our mind wants to establish the utmost general relationship. That A and B individually are not a world by themselves but share togetherness is clear through spatial observation. That is the idea of next to each other. If each thing were a being alone, there would be no concept of next to each other.

Now we shall examine what further follows from establishing an external reference between two individual entities. I can visualise two elements only one way in such a reference. I visualise A next to B. I can now do the same with two other elements of the world of the senses, C and D. Thereby I have established a concrete reference between A and B and another between C and D. Now I will completely set aside the elements A, B, C, and D, and only refer the two concrete references to each other. It is clear that as two special entities, I can refer these to each other as much as A and B themselves. What I am referring to here are concrete references: I may call them a and b. If I now go a step further, I can refer a again to b. But, now I have already lost all that is individual When looking at a, I no longer find an individual A and B referring to one another, and the same with b. In both of them I find nothing other than that there has been a reference as such. This determination, however, is the same for a and b. What enabled me to still distinguish a and b was that they referred to A, B, C, and D. If I exclude this remnant of the individual and only refer a and b to each other, ie the circumstance that there has been a reference altogether (not that something specific has been referred), than I have again arrived very generally at the spatial relationship from which I started. Further I cannot go. I have reached what I have set out for earlier: space itself is standing before my soul.

Herein lies the secret of the three dimensions. In the first dimension I refer to each other two concrete elements appearing in the world of the senses; in the second dimension I refer these spatial references themselves to each other. I have established a reference between references. I have brushed off the concrete things, the concrete references have remained. Now I spatially refer these to each other. That is, I disregard that they are concrete references: then, however, I have to find in the second reference exactly what I find in the first. I am establishing references where there is no difference. Now the possibility of relating is ended because the difference is ended.

What I previously took as the viewpoint for my observations, namely the totally external reference, I now reach again as idea based on sense perception; from the observation of space, after executing my operation three times, I have arrived at space, ie my starting point.

Therefore, space can only have three dimensions. What we have done here with the idea of space is actually only a special case of the method we employ all the time when we begin to observe things. By observing tangible objects from a general viewpoint, we gain concepts of individual things. We then examine these concepts from the same viewpoints so that we have only the concepts of the concepts before us. If we connect those, they melt into a uniformity of an idea which may be placed under no further viewpoint than its own. Let us take a specific example. I am getting to know two people: A and B. I look at them from the viewpoint of friendship. In which case I shall gain a very specific concept, a, of the two people's friendship. Now I look at two other people, C and D, from the same viewpoint. I come to another concept, b, of this friendship. I can go further and refer these two concepts of friendship to each other. What I am left with, if I disregard the concrete fact that I have gained, is the concept of friendship as such. This, however, I can also gain in reality by viewing the persons E and F from the same viewpoint, and also G and H. In this, as in innumerable other cases, I can reach the concept of friendship as such. All these concepts, however, are essentially identical to each other, and if I look at them from the same viewpoint, it becomes apparent that I have found a whole. I have returned again to what I started with.

Space is thus a view of things, a way in which our mind gathers things into a unit. The three dimensions in this connection behave in the following manner. The first dimension establishes the relations between two sensory perceptions. This is a concrete thought. The second dimension relates two concrete thoughts to each other and thereby moves onto the area of abstraction. The third dimension, finally, only establishes the uniformity of the idea between the abstractions. Therefore, it is totally incorrect to consider the three dimensions of space as completely equal. Whichever is the first depends, of course, on the elements perceived. But then the other dimensions have a very specific and different meaning from the first. Kant assumed, quite in error, that space is a totality instead of an entity, conceptually determinable within itself.

Heretofore, we have spoken of space as a relationship, a reference. But is there only this relationship of next to each other? Or is an absolute determination of location existent for each thing? This, of course, has not even been touched upon in our preceding elaborations. But let us examine if such a condition of location, a very specific "there" exists. What I am referring to in reality when speaking of such a 'there"? Nothing other than an object of which the immediate neighbour is the object in question. "There" means neighbouring an object referred to by me. With that, however, the absolute indication of location has been led back to a spatial relationship. The examination mentioned thereby becomes pointless.

Finally, let us raise the question: According to the preceding examination, what is space? Nothing other than a necessity, inherent in the things themselves, to overcome in a most external way their being individual without considering their essence, and to unite them in an external uniformity. Space, therefore, is a way of grasping the world as uniformity. Space is an idea: not as Kant thought, something one sees.

[Translated by Eva Lauterbach from Rudolf Steiner's guide to Goethe's scientific works]