Taking Appearance Seriously

Readers will have seen that Henri Bortoft died at the end of last year. In this his last book following his earlier The Wholeness of Nature - Goethe's Way of Science he revisits some earlier themes and gives a very clear exposition of the importance of the phenomenological approach that overcomes the longstanding dualism of being and appearance formalised by Plato. Although it is a technical work with 50 pages of footnotes, Henri writes clearly and patiently, illustrating his arguments with charts and diagrams as he goes along. The five chapters introduce a dynamic way of thinking, Goethe and modern science and the dynamic unity of nature, the philosophy of unfinished meaning and catching saying in the act.

The dynamic way of thinking goes beyond general systems theory, which Henri regards as another form of reductionism. His approach to wholeness was influenced by his study with David Bohm and his philosophy of the implicate order unfolding into the explicate. The principal modern influence, however, is phenomenology, which one also finds in the work of Iain McGilchrist quoted in this book. Phenomenology reflects a right-hemisphere perception where the focus is on the immediate experiencing of what is experienced rather than on what is experienced (represented as separate from oneself); also realising that distinction implies relation. All this involves going upstream to understand how something comes into being, not becoming fixated on the what of the 'final' product or perception and proceeding by abstraction. It is about 'what appears in its appearing', appearance rather than appearance. As Heidegger explains, being is appearing, seeing is appearing; they are not separate.

The next two chapters look at the place of Goethe in the history and development of science. The emergence of mathematical theory-based science makes it both rational and empirical while at the same time shifting attention away from appearance and the phenomenon. Both Neo-Platonism and Atomism relegate the 'unreliable' senses to a secondary position, as does Locke's distinction between primary and secondary qualities. Henri brings in a new interpretation of Descartes by explaining how his dualism reflected his desire to place mathematical physics on a basis consistent with the Church's (Platonic) distinction between the immortal soul and the mortal body. He was also concerned to repudiate Renaissance animism by evacuating mind from nature. However, our immediate experience is that consciousness includes the world within it. Goethe returned to the senses by putting sensory experience and the phenomenon rather than mathematics in the forefront and bringing in intuition and imagination.

Goethe's understanding of the metamorphosis (coming-into-being) of plants as the modification of a single organ is an important concept to grasp that relates to the upstream dynamic way of understanding phenomena, 'striving out of the whole into the parts', a differentiation within unity, a becoming other without becoming another, which is the activity of natura naturans or generative nature. This is what he calls multiplicity in unity rather than the abstract left hemisphere unity in multiplicity. As he puts it: 'the universal and the particular coincide: the particular is the universal, appearing under different conditions.'

The next chapter on unfinished meaning applies some of the same principles to the interpretation of perception, literature and art. The subject-object distinction is deeply embedded in our structures of thought, deriving as it does from the propositional form of Greek mathematics transformed into logic by Aristotle. It is easy to fall into the dichotomy of separating an objective meaning in the author's mind from a subjective understanding in the reader's mind. This assumes a finished meaning that the author is trying to convey. There is a parallel between the notion that appearing necessarily entails seeing and the idea that understanding 'is not a response to a meaning which is there already; it is the appearance of meaning. So we can say that the appearing of meaning is the happening of understanding', or, as Gadamer put it: 'the meaning of any work of art is actualised only when it is understood.' Understanding is necessarily participatory and each work creates a tradition of its own interpretation. Thus meaning comes into being differently according to different situations, and the work of art is always in the state of becoming. Hence, just as in the self-differentiation of the plant, 'the differences in meaning are self-differences in the meaning of the work itself… that constitute its dynamic unity.' This is a very different way of thinking and takes some time to get used to.

Another fascinating section discusses the importance of geometry and philosophy and Plato's attempt to differentiate between the mathematical and the empirical. Mathematics can be derived and deduced in its own terms without reference to the sensory world. However, this methodological distinction in mathematics was transformed into what Henri calls and unwarranted ontological bifurcation. The final chapter recaps the argument for taking appearance seriously and transcending this fundamental dualism. At the same time, organic hermeneutics overcomes the dichotomy of a single objective meaning versus the relativistic plurality of meanings. We are not subjects in front of an object, but rather participants in an event of appearance/coming-into-being, an experience of immediate presence rather than re-presented separation, an emphasis on process rather than structure and abstraction. This seminal volume should be compulsory reading for philosophy of science students and indeed lecturers. They might find it hard to climb out of their philosophical ruts, but this lucid book, if closely studied, will enable them to do so and enter into a flow of being and living.