Goethe's influential text, newly illustrated with stunning color photographs.The Metamorphosis of Plants, published in 1790, was Goethe's first major attempt to describe what he called in a letter to a friend "the truth about the how of the organism." Inspired by the diversity of flora he found on a journey to Italy, Goethe sought a unity of form in diverse structures. He came to see in the leaf the germ of a plant's metamorphosis-"the true Proteus who can hide or reveal himself in all vegetal forms"-from the root and stem leaves to the calyx and corolla, to pistil and stamens. With this short book-123 numbered paragraphs, in the manner of the great botanist Linnaeus-Goethe aimed to tell the story of botanical forms in process, to present, in effect, a motion picture of the metamorphosis of plants. This MIT Press edition of The Metamorphosis of Plants illustrates Goethe's...
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