sense diminishes.' Our justifiable admiration for the success with
which the unending multiplicity of natural occurrences on earth and in
the stars has been reduced to so simple a scheme of laws - Heisenberg
implies - must therefore not make us forget that these attainments are
bought at the price 'of renouncing the aim of bringing the phenomena of
nature to our thinking in an immediate and living way'.

In the course of his exposition, Heisenberg also speaks of Goethe, in
whose scientific endeavours he perceives a noteworthy attempt to set
scientific understanding upon a path other than that of progressive
self-restriction.

'The renouncing of life and immediacy, which was the premise for the
progress of natural science since Newton, formed the real basis for the
bitter struggle which Goethe waged against the physical optics of
Newton. It would be superficial to dismiss this struggle as
unimportant: there is much significance in one of the most outstanding
men directing all his efforts to fighting against the development of
Newtonian optics.' There is only one thing for which Heisenberg
criticizes Goethe: 'If one should wish to reproach Goethe, it could
only be for not going far enough - that is, for having attacked the
views of Newton instead of declaring that the whole of Newtonian
Physics-Optics, Mechanics and the Law of Gravitation - were from the
devil.'

Although the full significance of Heisenberg's remarks on Goethe will
become apparent only at a later stage of our discussion, they have been
quoted here because they form part of the symptom we wish to
characterize. Only this much may be pointed out immediately, that
Goethe - if not in the scientific then indeed in the poetical part of