Mark Riegner

Mark Riegner has a PhD in Ecology and Evolution and taught for 35 years in the Environmental Studies Department at Prescott College, Prescott, Arizona, until his retirement in January 2023. Mark’s courses focused on animal biology — especially on birds and mammals — and on field ecology, including courses in Costa Rica, coastal Mexico, and Kenya. He was introduced to Goethean Science as a young college student at Emerson College, U.K., and he cultivated that interest in his later teaching and research. Regarding the former, for several decades he taught a popular course at Prescott College —"Form and Pattern in Nature”— where he introduced students to phenomenology, fractals and chaos theory, reading landscapes, and to Goethe’s dynamic way of understanding plants, animals, clouds, colors, etc. His own research and publications explore the morphology of mammals (inspired by Wolfgang Schad); color pattern in birds; the contemporary relevance of Goethe’s dynamic way of thinking to understanding evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo); and most recently, the morphodynamic convergence between parrots and people (see below).

Selected writings by Mark Riegner:

“Parrots and People: A Morphodynamic Convergence” (2023)

“The Phenomenology of Betweenness — Encountering Nature’s Wholeness” (2014)