ABSTRACT
There is no obvious connection between the concerns of the patriarchal fantasy and the problems of scientific knowledge, but one way in which the problem of 'unity' raised by the two-episode structure of the work might be approached would be to explore whether any connection exists between the underlying fantasies of the Gretchen scenes and the traditional matter of the scholar's tragedy. The philosophical problems implied by a hiatus between perceived nature and theorizing observer did nothing to inhibit Goethe's curiosity about the world, but for the duration of his friendship with the rigorously analytical Schiller they did cause him to reflect more deeply about the practice of science. Goethe understood his 'Urphanomen' as a limit of permissible 'knowing-seeing' beyond which there is only the grey theoretical realm of abstraction and symbol where words stand as ghostly surrogates for the perceived and the real.
