ABSTRACT
Humanistic studies emphasizing phenomenological and existentialist approaches have begun to offer deeper, more humanly focused insights into geographic questions such as the nature of space, place, home, and landscape. Various writers have argued that, as problems of energy and ecology disrupt and even threaten human existence, a decisive change in environmental attitudes is not only desirable but necessary. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's approach offers a different way of understanding nature. It teaches an alternative mode of interaction between person and environment that entails reciprocity, wonderment, and gratitude. In his earlier years Goethe was involved in the European romantic movement, which reacted against the growing forces of science and technology. Like the romantics, Goethe continued to view nature as a secret script in which the concerned person might discover an underlying unity hidden beneath a seeming material diversity.
