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nydus/Goethe's Theory of ColoursPublic

This volume presents an English translation of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s treatise on the nature and perception of color. The work includes a collection of systematic observations and experiments alongside the author’s theoretical challenges to Newtonian optics.

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Table of Contents

GOETHE'S

by the infusion of gall-nuts, appears black.

XXXVII.
FIRST EXCITATION OF COLOUR.

501.

In the division of physical colours, where semi-transparent mediums were considered, we saw colours antecedently to white and black. In the present case we assume a white and black already produced and fixed; and the question is, how colour can be excited in them?

502.

Here, too, we can say, white that becomes darkened or dimmed inclines to yellow; black, as it becomes lighter, inclines to blue.—Note U.

503.

Yellow appears on the active (plus) side, immediately in the light, the bright, the white. All white surfaces easily assume a yellow tinge; paper, linen, wool, silk, wax: transparent fluids again, which have a tendency to combustion, easily become yellow; in other words they easily pass into a very

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