Newton’s and Goethe’s Colour Theories — Contradictory or Complementary Approaches?

Abstract

Before we tackle our main theme, let us remember some ideas of Plato and Aristotle. Perhaps not Newton, but certainly Goethe was well aware of a historical continuity ever since antiquity. The Third Part of his Theory of Colours - in the German original “Die Farbenlehre” - is devoted to its history because, as Goethe explains in the Preface of the work, he thinks “that the history of science is science itself”, - “daß die Geschichte der Wissenschaft die Wissenschaft selbst sei.”¹