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“Der Versuch Als Vermittler” Versus Newton's Experimentum Crucis

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“Der Versuch Als Vermittler” Versus Newton's Experimentum Crucis The Nature of Light and Color: Goethe’s “Der Versuch als Vermittler” versus Newton’s Experimentum Crucis James A. Marcum Baylor University In the seventeenth century, Newton published his famous experimentum crucis, in which he claimed that light is heterogeneous and is composed of rays with different refrangibilities. Experiments, especially the crucial experi- ment, were important for justifying Newton’s theory of light, and eventually his theory of color. A century later, Goethe conducted a series of experiments on the nature of color, especially in contradistinction to Newton, and he de- fended his research with a methodological principle formulated in “Der Versuch als Vermittler.” Goethe’s principle included two elements: a series of experiments and resultant higher empirical evidence, which functioned as me- diator between the objective (a natural phenomenon) and the subjective (a theory or hypothesis). Although the notion of experimentum crucis became popular among scientists for reconstructing experimental research and for jus- tifying theories, especially for rhetorical purposes, Newton’s justiªcation of his theory of light and color is best reconstructed in terms of Goethe’s method- ological principle. Finally, Goethe’s principle has important consequences for the contemporary philosophical underdetermination thesis. 1. Introduction In the seventeenth century Isaac Newton conducted experiments to determine the nature of sunlight, especially as it relates to colored I thank Ernst Hamm for drawing my attention to Goethe’s “Der Versuch als Vermittler” essay and Jed Buchwald, William Cowling, Francesco Guala, Robert Iliffe, Clark Muenzer, Den- nis Sepper, Alan Shapiro, Friedrich Steinle, Friedel Weinert, and Gábor Zemplén, for their stimulating discussion and insightful comments on earlier manuscript drafts. Baylor Uni- versity supported my research through sabbatical funding. A shorter version of this paper was presented at the First Conference in Integrated History and Philosophy of Science, Centre for Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, October 11– 14, 2007, and may be found at: http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00003602/01/ Marcum-&hps_ms.doc. Perspectives on Science 2009, vol. 17, no. 4 ©2009 by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology 457 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/posc.2009.17.4.457 by guest on 27 September 2021 458 The Nature of Light and Color rays.1 These experiments were reported in a letter read, in Newton’s ab- sence, at the Royal Society in London and published in its Philosophical Transactions. According to Newton, sunlight is composed of a “Heteroge- neous mixture of differently refrangible Rays” (1671/2, p. 3079). The theory, he claimed, is established on a single experiment, an experimentum crucis, in which Newton refracted sunlight with a prism into a color spectrum— each colored ray with a speciªc refrangibility, or angle of refraction. With a second prism, he demonstrated that each refracted ray of the color spec- trum is dispersed to the same degree as with the ªrst prism. Based on the crucial experiment, Newton distinguished his theory of light, as well as his theory of color, from competing theories—e.g. the notion of light as rotating globules, as championed by René Descartes. And the notion of crucial experiment formed, at that time, an important component of Newton’s experimental philosophy (Sabra [1967] 1981; Sepper 1994). In the eighteenth century, in a critique of Newton’s theory of light and color based on the experimentum crucis, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe claimed that Newton’s theory is an artiªcial construct of the human intel- lect and, as such, is not derived from nature itself. Speciªcally, he argued that Newton’s experiments—especially the experimentum crucis—represent an artiªcial step and not a natural one, in examining nature. The result of Newton’s artiªcial method, argued Goethe, is a distorted view not only of light and color but also of nature itself. “Indeed, according to Goethe,” claims Myles Jackson, “Newton’s entire doctrine was based on an artiªcial case, the crucial experiment” (1994, p. 686). In contradistinction to New- ton, Goethe claimed that he was able to discover nature’s laws without ªrst imposing human preconception onto a natural phenomenon. To that end, Goethe devised and conducted a series of experiments in which he al- tered systematically the experimental conditions in terms of the prism’s refracting angle, the distance from the subject to the prism, and the object viewed (Ribe and Steinle 2002). The result of these experiments was evi- dence of a higher sort that mediated between the observer’s theory or hy- pothesis and the observed, and allowed the phenomenon to be understood in a holistic fashion. The Newton-Goethe historical case study has important implications for the underdetermination thesis (UDT) of contemporary philosophy of science (Hesse 1980; Klee 1997; Ladyman 2002; Laudan and Leplin 1991; and Stanford 2001).2 Brieºy, the UDT claims that evidence, whether from 1. Although “colored ray(s)” is a phrase not used by Newton, it is used herein for con- venience. 2. UDT has also been at the center of the realism-antirealism debate, especially in terms of John Worrall’s notion of structural realism (Kukla 1998; Ladyman 1998; Leplin 1997; Niiniluoto 1999; Psillos 1999; and Worrall 1989). Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/posc.2009.17.4.457 by guest on 27 September 2021 Perspectives on Science 459 the laboratory or the ªeld, is incapable of supporting conclusively a partic- ular theory with respect to its rivals. The reason is that there are always a number of possible competing theories that can account for the evidence equally well. In other words, the various rival theories are empirically equivalent. The case study reconstructed herein corroborates the UDT in that evidence, especially obtained from an experimentum crucis, is incapable of supporting conclusively one theory over its rivals. However, it also chal- lenges the UDT in that the evidence obtained from a well structured ex- perimental series is more likely to support a theory with respect to its competitors, than evidence from a limited or unstructured set of experi- ments or especially from a single even though crucial experiment. The current case study demonstrates that evidence from an experimental series generally provides the necessary and sufªcient warrant for justifying a par- ticular theory choice, until of course additional evidence is eventually ob- tained that may lead to either modiªcation or replacement of the theory. In this paper, I examine the difference between Newton’s and Goethe’s approaches to investigating the nature of light and color. First, I discuss brieºy Newton’s famous experimentum crucis, in which he claimed that light is heterogeneous and is composed of rays with different refrangibilities, as well as his experimental philosophy. I then reconstruct Goethe’s experi- ments on the nature of color and discuss his methodological principle for- mulated in the well known essay “Der Versuch als Vermittler,” especially in contradistinction to Newton’s methodology. Goethe’s principle is ex- pounded in terms of series of experiments and resultant higher empirical evidence, as mediator between the objective (i.e. a natural phenomenon) and the subjective (i.e. theory or hypothesis). I then reconstruct the exper- iments Newton reported in the 1671/2 Philosophical Transactions letter to justify his theory of light and color in terms of Goethe’s methodological principle rather than in terms of a crucial experiment, even though New- ton was—or at least his followers were—not necessarily interested in a ho- listic picture of nature or in the relationship of the subjective to the objec- tive.3 Finally, I conclude the paper with a discussion of the consequences of Goethe’s methodological principle for the contemporary UDT. 2. Newton’s experimentum crucis In a published letter to the Royal Society of London, dated 19 February 1671/2, Newton reported an experimentum crucis (Fig. 1) in which he took a board (Bd) with a small hole (x) and placed it behind a prism (A), which received sunlight (S) from a small hole in the window shutter of a dark- 3. Neil Ribe (1985) argues that the conºict between Goethe and Newton is more than simply competing theories of color but also includes methodological issues. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/posc.2009.17.4.457 by guest on 27 September 2021 460 The Nature of Light and Color Figure 1. Newton’s experimentum crucis (reproduced from Newton 1672). See text for details. ened room. Another board (DE) with a small hole (y) was placed 12 feet from the ªrst board, so that a portion of the incident light would pass through the hole of the second board. A second prism (F) was then placed behind the hole of the second board, which further dispersed the light onto a nearby wall (GH). By slowly rotating the ªrst prism about its axis, Newton was able to make different sections of the initial image pass through the hole in the second board and then observe where it fell on the wall. What Newton observed in the experimentum crucis was that the part of the initial image—an oblong image composed of a spectrum of individual colors—which is refracted greatest (i.e. the color blue) by the ªrst prism is also refracted the greatest by the second prism, compared to that part of the initial image refracted the least (i.e. the color red). From these results, Newton concluded that “Light consists of Rays differently refrangible” (1671/2, p. 3079). He went on in the second part of the letter to outline his “doctrine of colours,” based on his theory of light, in which the various spectral colors exhibited different “degrees of Refrangibility” (Newton 1671/2, p.
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