Course Syllabus:

Week 1 (8/28)

Introduction. What is Science? What is Literature? What is their Interconnection?
- Course objectives. Grading, Requirements
- Reading : Barzun: “One Culture Not Two”
- Reading : Maxwell: Intro to Science of Literature? (2000)

Week 2 (9/2-4)

Goethe. An Introductory Lecture - His Life and Work as a Poet
- Reading : Seamon/Zajonc, Intro  to Goethe’s Way of Science (1998)
- Reading : Tantillo, Intro to The Will to Create (2002)

Week 3 (9/9-11)

Goethe. An Introductory Lecture - His Interest in Science
- An Overview: Alchemy - Astrology - Geology - Morphology - Botany - Color Theory - Meteorology
- The Faust legend before Goethe
- Reading : Faust I, verses 1-807
- Interviews with students
- Paper # 1 due. Topic Goethe's Life and Times             

Week 4 (9/16-18)

Faust I: The Scholar’s Tragedy
-   Reading : Faust I, Verses 807-2007
-   Essays for Review: Nature
    · The Experiment as Mediator between Object and Subject
    · Polarity (physics)
    · Relationship to Other Fields (physics of color)
    · Toward a Theory of Weather
    · The Spiral Tendency in Plants
    · excerpts from The Metamorphosis of Plants
    · excerpts from Theory of Color

Week 5 (9/23-25)

18th-Century Mathematics
-   Carl Friedrich Gauss
-   Jean le Rond d' Alembert
-   Nicolas of Cusa and Spinoza
-   "The Witch's One-Times-One" (Faust)

Week 6 (9/30-10/2)

Goethe's Concept of Nature

Week 7 (10/7-9)

Goethe's Doing of Science. Scientific Style, Some Simple Experiments
-   Paper #2 due. Topic TBA

Week 8 (10/14-16)

Faust and Theories of Creation
-   Prologue in Heaven (theory of the heavens)
-   Night I (alchemy)
-   Mephistopheles (black magic)
-   Witch's Kitchen (chaos theory)
-   The Mothers (energy and matter)

Week 9 (10/21-23)

Fall Break. Class only on 10/23

Week 10 (10/28-30)

Faust, Technology and Evolutionary Science
-   Thales and Anaxagoras (classical theory of evolution)
-   Homunculus (alchemy / genetics). Contemporary biological science. Modern developmental biology: On Growth and Form
-   Euphorion (morphology)
-   Part II, Act IV, Scene 1: "High Mountains"
-   Part II, Act V, Final Scene: "Moutain Gorges"
-   Midterm

Week 11 (11/4-6)

Faust and Creativity
-   Cloud Formation (Act 5, Final Scene)
-   Spiral Tendency
-   Faust and Color Theory  (Aam farbigen Abglanz haben wir das Leben)
-   Reclaiming the unknown ocean. Relationship to contemporary space exploration

Week 12 (11/11-13)

Elective Affinities (story line, social mores, moral dilemmas)

Week 13 (11/18-20)

Elective Affinities: Reflections of 18^th century science, Human Volition  and Chemistry

Week 14 (11/25-27)

Thanksgiving Break

Week 15 (12/2-4)

Elective Affinities and Botany                                                          Paper #3 due. Topic: Faust, Science, and Technology.

Week 16 (12/9-11)

Summing up. Goethe’s place in the history of science and in literature.
-   Goethe's Science Today
-   Literature and Science: Two cultures or one? Science, the Glorious Entertainment?

Required Texts:

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Elective Affinities. Trans. by R. J. Hollingdale. New York : Penguin, 1986.  ISBN 014 04.4242 1

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Faust, I & II. Trans. by Charles E. Passage. New York : Random House, 1980. [On CDRom for instructional use only.]

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Scientific Studies. Ed. and trans. by Douglas Miller. New York : Suhrkamp Publishers, 1988. ISBN 3-518-02969

Seamon, David and Arthur Zajonc (eds.). Goethe=s Way of Science: A Phenomenology of Nature. Albany NY : State University of New York Press, 1998. ISBN 0-7914-3682-9

Tantillo, Astrida Orle. The Will to Create: Goethe’s Philosophy of Nature. Pittsburgh : U of Pittsburgh P, 2002. ISBN 0-8229-4177-5

Recommended Texts:

Amrine, Frederick, F. J. Zucker, and H. Wheeler (eds.). Goethe and the Sciences: A Reappraisal. Dordrecht : Reidel, 1987.

Barzun, Jacques. “One Culture Not Two.” In: Science the Glorious Entertainment.

Bohm, David and F. David Peat. Science, Order, and Creativity. 2^nd Edition. London and New York : Routledge, 2000.

Brinton, Crane (ed.). The Portable Age of Reason Reader. New York : The Viking Press, 1969.  

Donat, Sebastian and Hendrik Birus. Goethe. Ein letztes Universalgenie? Göttingen: Wallstein, 1999.

Fink, Karl J. Goethe’s History of Science. Cambridge : Cambridge U P, 1991.

Maxwell, Donald R. Science or Literature? The Divergent Cultures of Discovery and Creation. New York : Peter Lang, 2000.

Noé-Rumberg, Dorothea-Michaela. Naturgesetze als Dichtungsprinzipien. Goethes verborgene Poetik im Spiegel seiner Dichtungen. Freiburg i. Br.: Rombach Verlag, 1993.

Sepper, Dennis L. Goethe contra Newton : Polemics and the Project for a New Science of Color. Cambridge : Cambridge U P, 1988.

Slade, Joseph W. and Judith Yaross Lee (eds.). Beyond the Two Cultures: Essays on Science, Technology, and Literature. Ames IOWA : Iowa State U P, 1990.

Wyder, Margrit. Goethes Naturmodell. Die Scala Naturae und ihre Transformationen. Weimar und Wien: H. Böhlau, 1998.