“The Experiment as Mediator of Object and Subject”
By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
This essay by Goethe was written in the spring of 1792. It is remarkable how prescient it remains over 200 years later. It would be hard to find an essay that describes so many of the key elements of a rigorous, experience-based, and phenomenological scientific methodology in such a short space. Goethe elucidates what one could simply call “good science:” The phenomena themselves should always be the focus of attention and the intent is to let the phenomena in their manifold relations come as fully as possible to expression.
Notes and Reviews
“A Shared Existence: Milkweed and Its Myriad Companions”
By Craig Holdrege
In this article we conclude Craig’s three-part sketch of the milkweed plant. The first part (In Context #22) introduced the milkweed and described its life cycle. Part 2 (In Context #23) dealt with the elaborate drama of milkweed pollination. Here Craig looks at the intimate interaction between milkweed and the many organisms that share in its life. (The complete comprehensive study of milkweed by Craig is “The Story of an Organism: Common Milkweed.”)
“An Unexpected Submicroscopic Journey”
By Stephen L. Talbott
With surprising results, Steve dives into the immense technical literature to engage epigentic issues at the level where molecular biologists pose their precise and narrow experimental questions.
