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At this point in our discussion it is necessary to introduce another leading concept of Goethean nature-observation, which was for him - as it will be for us - of particular significance for carrying over the Goethean method of research from the organic into the inorganic realm of nature. This is the concept of the ur-phenomenon (Urphänomen). In this latter realm, nature no longer brings forth related phenomena in the ordering proper to them; hence we are obliged to acquire the capacity of penetrating to this ordering by means of our own realistically trained observation and thought.
From among the various utterances of Goethe regarding his general conception of the ur-phenomenon, we here select a passage from that part of the historical section of his Theory of Colour where he discusses the method of investigation introduced into science by Bacon. He says:
'In the range of phenomena all had equal value in Bacon's eyes. For although he himself always points out that one should collect the particulars only to select from them and to arrange them, in order finally to attain to Universals, yet too much privilege is granted to the single facts; and before it becomes possible to attain to simplification and conclusion by means of induction (the very way he recommends), life vanishes and forces get exhausted. He who cannot realize that one instance is often worth a thousand, bearing all within itself; he who proves unable to comprehend and esteem what we called ur-phenomena, will never be in a position to advance anything, either to his own or to others' joy and profit.'
What Goethe says here calls for the following comparison. We can say that nature seen through Bacon's eyes appears as if painted on a two-dimensional surface, so that all its facts are seen alongside each other at exactly the same distance from the observer. Goethe, on the other hand, ascribed to the human spirit the power of seeing the phenomenal world in all its three-dimensional multiplicity; that is, of seeing it in perspective and distinguishing between foreground and background.4 Things in the foreground he called ur-phenomena. Here the idea creatively determining the relevant field of facts comes to its purest expression. The sole task of the investigator of nature, he considered, was to seek for the ur-phenomena and to bring all other phenomena into relation with them; and in the fulfilment of this task he saw the means of fully satisfying the human mind's need to theorize. He expressed this in the words, 'Every fact is itself already theory'. In Goethe's meteorological studies we have a lucid example of how he sought and found the relevant ur-phenomenon. It is the breathing-process of the earth as shown by the variations of barometric pressure.
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Once again we find Thomas Reid, along his line of intuitively guided observation, coming quite close to Goethe where he deals with the question of the apprehension of natural law by the human mind. He, too, was an opponent of the method of 'explaining' phenomena by means of abstract theories spun out of sheer thinking, and more than once in his writings he inveighs against it in his downright, humorous way.5
His conviction that human thinking ought to remain within the realm of directly experienced observation is shown in the following words: 'In the solution of natural phenomena, all the length that the human faculties can carry us is only this, that from particular phenomena, we may, by induction, trace out general phenomena, of which all the particular ones are necessary consequences.'6 As an example of this he takes gravity, leading the reader from one phenomenon to the next without ever abandoning them, and concluding the journey by saying: 'The most general phenomena we can reach are what we call laws of nature. So that the laws of nature are nothing else but the most general facts relating to the operations of nature, which include a great many particular facts under them.'
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It was while on his way with the Grand Duke of Weimar to visit a newly erected meteorological observatory that Goethe, in the course of informing his companion of his own meteorological ideas, first heard of Howard's writings about the formation of clouds. The Duke had read a report of them in a German scientific periodical, and it seemed to him that Howard's cloud system corresponded with what he now heard of Goethe's thoughts about the force relationships working in the different atmospheric levels. He had made no mistake. Goethe, who immediately obtained Howard's essay, recognized at first glance in Howard's cloud scale the law of atmospheric changes which he himself had discovered. He found here, what he had always missed in the customary practice of merely tabulating the results of scientific measurements. And so he took hold of the Howard system with delight, for it 'provided him with a thread which had hitherto been lacking'.