Unlike Newton, Goethe's concern was not so much with the analytic treatment of colour, as with the qualities of how phenomena are perceived. Goethe's book provides a catalogue of how colour is perceived in a wide variety of circumstances, and considers Isaac Newton's observations to be special cases. Turner, the Pre-Raphaelites, Hilma af Klint, and Wassily Kandinsky).Īlthough Goethe's work was rejected by some physicists, a number of philosophers and physicists have concerned themselves with it, including Thomas Johann Seebeck, Arthur Schopenhauer (see: On Vision and Colors), Hermann von Helmholtz, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Werner Heisenberg, Kurt Gödel, and Mitchell Feigenbaum.

The work originated in Goethe's occupation with painting and primarily had its influence in the arts, with painters such as ( Philipp Otto Runge, J. M. W. The book is a successor to two short essays titled 'Contributions to Optics' ( German: Beiträge zur Optik). The book contains detailed descriptions of phenomena such as coloured shadows, refraction, and chromatic aberration. It was published in German in 1810 and in English in 1840.

Theory of Colours (German: Zur Farbenlehre) is a book by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe about the poet's views on the nature of colours and how they are perceived by humans. Light spectrum, from Theory of Colours – Goethe observed that colour arises at the edges, and the spectrum occurs where these coloured edges overlap.

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