I allow the objects I desire to comprehend, to act tranquilly upon me; I then observe the impression I have received from them — Goethe (1749-1832)
Goethe shows us the way which science has missed. He noticed details, just as a scientist — or a natural philosopher — must; yet, not the details of matter, but of qualia. He gives in to the simplest of objects and receives from them revelations on par with Archimedes and Einstein. True intelligence senses the space between the matter — the qualia around which the matter forms itself.
It is this attitude which allows Goethe to see a flower, not as an organism growing from seed to seed, but as a process of becoming. Life is more than the passing on of genes, it is the potential of an individual blossoming toward the infinite, into the ideal, around God. We are, each of us slaves to the forces of nature; but we are, too, every moment, at that delicate moment, within an infinite regression, a moment when our consciousness turns the balance. We hold on or we let go. We are an act of will operating at nano-scale. We are elemental. We are ever becoming.