How did Goethe view life? What was his attitude toward science? What were his contributions to psychology?
Goethe is known as the initiator of the literature of stress and storm period. He analyzed the human life torned by the conflicts and the stresses. According to the Goethe, life is completely composed of the contradictory forces like, good and evil, love and hate and life and death. He suggested that the aim of life has to be holding all these forces rather opposing them. Everyone should live their life with full of passion and aspiration for their own personal growth.
Goethe contributed to the science as well. He made inventions in the field of the botany and anatomy as well. He saw science as the limited factor, as human attributes are out of the reach of the science and methods. In order to disprove the color vision theory given by Newton, he proposed his own theory called as the science of colors. Later on, his theory proved to be wrong.
Goethe methodology further contributed to the psychology. According to him, introspection is the method to study the sensory experiences objectively. He emphasized on the whole, meaningful experiences related with the psychology and he called study of these intact meaningful psychological experiences as the phenomenology. Goethe also contributed in the development of the behavior therapy.