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Light Darkness and Colours

Using Goethe’s Theory of Colours (Zur Farbenlehre) as point of departure, Light Darkness and Colours takes us on a fascinating journey through the universe of colours. In 1704, Sir Isaac Newton published *Light and Refraction*, his study of the interactions between sunlight and prisms. Newton was, as a good scientist, intent on achieving objectivity, which meant studying sunlight in isolation. He thought colours were contained solely in light, and found the spectrum he was looking for. When he reproduced this experiment, Goethe found another, hidden set of colours missed by Newton. Goethe found the hidden colours in the boundaries between light and darkness. He felt, as an artist, that one could not talk about light without including darkness. Calling it ‘the light-darkness polarity’, Goethe made this new scientific discovery using artistic methods in conjunction with science.

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  1. Hello, Neat post. There

  2. Excellent…learned some things I didn’t know about color theory.

  3. Pleasant film; a taste of how Goethe and Newton studied light from differing perspectives, to different ends.

  4. What is misleading and what is outdated then?

  5. this film is misleading if anything. its just a presentation of an outdated idea of Optics. there are no phenomenon shown that can’t be explained by a real understanding of optics. this is a good example of why one should fact check documentaries like this.

  6. fantastic blend of science and art . Great watch …creepy music 

  7. love the scheme of his house; importance of part to whole relativity; and the thought of images of memories can be good; images of memories sometimes sad 🙁 …  nice film 

  8. black and white are all I see, in my infancy, red and yellow then came to be. let me see.