The Contemporary Legacy of Goethean Morphology : From Anschauende Urteilskraft to Algorithmic Pattern Recognition, Generation and Exploration

The paper aims to produce the first-ever approach of the Goethean Morphology (GM) that reads it
as the forerunner of contemporary techniques of pattern recognition, generation and exploration via natural computing and
computer graphics, based on the analysis of the specific visualization techniques that ground
Goethe’s morphological method. I propose to read GM as an original practice of reduction,
departing from the phenomenological realm to intuit nature’s self-generating processes. In this
context, the main remit of reduction is not to simplify complexity, as is usually the case in modern
natural sciences, but rather to let visually emerge the autonomous processes that superintend the
generation of complexity itself. In this sense, I understand Goethe’s main gesture as an attempt to
comprehend the logic of nature from within, instead of merely trying to represent or mimic it. My
project intend to explore the visual devices that ground the construction of Goethe’s Urtype, the
key-feature to its morphological method. I understand the Urtype as a matrix capable of generating the structures of actual and virtual entities