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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 day-light and candle-light, and their mode of seeing colours was in the main quite similar.

105.

They agreed with the rest of the world in denominating white, black, and grey in the usual manner. Both saw white untinged with any hue. One saw a somewhat brownish appearance in black, and in grey a somewhat reddish tinge. In general they appeared to have a very delicate perception of the gradations of light and dark.

106.

They appeared to see yellow, red-yellow, and yellow-red,14 like others: in the last case they said they saw the yellow passing as it were over the red as if glazed: some thickly-ground carmine, which had dried in a saucer, they called red.

107.

But now a striking difference presented itself. If the carmine was

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