Why read Theory of Colours?

Book cover of Theory of Colours

Book description

By closely following Goethe's explanations of the color phenomena, the reader may become so divorced from the wavelength theory—Goethe never even mentions it—that he may begin to think about color theory relatively unhampered by prejudice, ancient or modern.

By the time Goethe's Theory of Colours appeared in 1810, the wavelength…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Theory of Colours as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Carolyn L. Kane

Author

In 1810, after decades of color rationalizations in early modern science, romantic poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) attempted to return color to its pre-Socratic, Homeric lifeworld.

His Zür Farbenlehre (Theory of Colors) glorified color for all of its inconsistencies and mysteries, making subjective perception—in marked contrast to Newton’s 1704 color theory—the most central and sacred to human experience, in service of achieving the “highest aesthetic ends.” For Goethe, color arose “in the spectrum” between black and white, a phenomenological observation dating back to Aristotelean antiquity.

Over two centuries later, this is still a fantastic guidebook for anyone interested in…

From Carolyn's list on how and why things are chosen as beautiful.