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Theory of Colours

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1810

Goethe's 1810 book on how humans perceive colour, written as a challenge to Newton's optics and later admired by painters and philosophers.

Goethe wrote this treatise, which he considered his most important work, challenging Newton's theory of colour.

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Hand-painted colour wheel in watercolour with a ring of blue, red, orange, yellow, and green segments, each labelled with handwritten German words in ink. A plain white circle sits in the centre.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Farbenkreis (colour wheel) illustrating Zur Farbenlehre, 1809. Freies Deutsches Hochstift – Frankfurter Goethe-Museum.

About this source

What it is

Zur Farbenlehre (Theory of Colours) is a book by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, published in German in 1810 and in English in 1840. It describes phenomena such as coloured shadows and chromatic aberration, building on his earlier essays on optics.

Why it matters

Goethe considered this his most important work. Rather than analysing light the way Isaac Newton had, Goethe focused on how colour is actually experienced by the eye and mind. Though many physicists rejected his ideas, painters such as J. M. W. Turner and philosophers including Arthur Schopenhauer and Ludwig Wittgenstein took his work seriously. It reveals Goethe's belief that human perception, not just mathematics, mattered in understanding nature.

Look closer

  • Why might an artist-poet disagree with a mathematician-scientist about how colour works?
  • What does the hand-painted colour wheel, with words like

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