Cultivating Perception, Countering Faust : The Radical Resonance of Goethean and Indigenous Science

While still widespread, the pernicious belief that modern Western science is synonymous with ‘science proper’ has been called into question in recent decades. This book offers a critique of that dominant worldview through a comparative analysis of two radical alternatives: Indigenous Science and Goethean Science.

While still widespread, the pernicious belief that modern Western science is synonymous with ‘science proper’ – the culturally engrained conviction that it constitutes an incomparably effective means of interrogating natural reality – has been called into question in recent decades. This book offers a critique of that dominant worldview through a comparative analysis of two radical alternatives: Indigenous Science and Goethean Science. On close examination, the resonance between these two approaches to nature and knowledge becomes strikingly clear. The authors present both Goethean and Indigenous Sciences as counter-Faustian, using ‘Faust’ – Goethe’s greatest literary creation – as shorthand for the hubristic supremacism, massive destructiveness, and wanton disregard for the natural world characteristic of Eurocentric science in the last four centuries.