h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A633610

About Dr Faust. Little bit of history, little bit of literature and some inconsequential facts. But I thought it might be alright for the guide.

I like your article very much. Just a couple of points.

Faust was born probably in the small town of Knittlingen (south east Germany), around 1480. He died in 1540 or 1541 in a village nearby Staufen (Breisgau) of an unnatural cause.

As far as I know, the name of Mephistophilis occured at first in Goethes opus.

Marlowe's drama had the title 'The tragical history of Doctor Faustus'. He wrote it before 1589. The original version is lost.

It's a little bit misguiding that Goethe wrote the parts in these two years. These were the years of publication. (In fact he wrote them for the largest part of his life.) By the way, he was a lousy scientist albeit full of passion.

Please change the last paragraph -- it sounds as if Faust had been a victim of history.

I think you should put more emphasis on the fact that the writers -- especially those of later times -- didn't want to reconstruct the true biography, they used it as an inspiration for an independent piece of fiction. Only the chroniclers tried to tell the truth.

I would not agree that Goethe was a lousy scientist. He had an unusual attitude to science and found results that were dismissed because they seemed to conflict with what others found. When Newton discovered that white light could be split into different colours with a prism, Goethe put the prism right up to his eye and discovered that he couldn't distinguish the colours. Everyone else dismissed this as stupidity, but it is more likely that he had discovered what it took other scientists until the 20th century to find out, that colour is not based on the frequency of the light, but on contrast between different frequencies. Edwin Land final formulated this into the modern theory of colour vision in the 1960's or 1970's.

He surely was a very intelligent person, but his methods were inadequate. He didn't accept the way science had worked for some two thousand years. His colour theory was very romantic and esoteric, and I never saw any reference to it during my studies (that are finished now). The only achievement of some value was his discovery of the inter-jaw bone? (I don't know the English translation.) And even that is an anecdotic margical note in medicine books.

The thing with the prism sounds rather stupid to me, too. Are you sure about the link to Land? At the moment I even don't think that you couln'd distinguish the colours. But I don't know exactly how it is meant. Anyway, before this thread explodes: Goethe considered his colour theory his magnum opus, but is's poetic rather than scientific work.

I haven't studied Gothe's color theory, so this is in ignorance.... but seems to me that what he did was a simple objective observation. Which happens to be the basis of science.

First: I doubt that observation. At least Gnomons descriptions sounds very bizzare to me. Secondly, not every observation is science. It is necessary but not sufficient to be a good observer in order to be a good scientist. But the kernel of science is to find symmetries. Here Newton was the master, Goethe just a pathetic opponent. (I don't know whether there is a translation of the section in Goethe's Theory of Colours in which he slams Newton's theory. Worth reading. )

By the way, before somebody thinks that I'm biased: The "Faust" is my favourite book.

Hi, Claudius!

I like this entry a lot. A few nitpicks: 'Mephistopheles' is the usual spelling in English, not 'Mephistophilis'; the word for a dramatist should be 'playwright', not 'playwrite', and there are a few other places where you need to check the spelling and punctuation.

If you want to add the information, Goethe's version of the story was a very popular subject for 19th century composers: 'La damnation de Faust' by Berlioz (1846, a concert piece often staged as an opera) and Gounod's opera Faust (1859) are the most famous musical works based on the legend.

Azara

And don't forget Liszt's 'Faust Symphonie'. Especially the Mephistopheles movement is quite famous (though I don't like it that much).

Well, you learn something new every day - or at least, you do if you look in Peer Review. I always thought that Faust was a fictional character!

This looks pretty good to me, although the spelling does need some work here and there. I'd suggest changing the title to 'The Legend of Faust', simply because that is a better description of the Entry's content. It isn't actually about his supposed consignment to Hell!

I must agree, also, that the last paragraph needs removing or rewriting. The line 'Faustus suffered more than most after his death' is particularly unfortunate. His reputation might have suffered after his death, but it's hard to see how the man himself could have done so, unless you're religiously inclined! Also, you call him 'Faustus' there after calling him 'Faust' throughout the rest of the Entry.

Good work, though!

Scrapped the ending, changed the title, but I haven't worked on the spellings yet.
Thanks for the encouragement though

Nice one!

Very interesting considering that I only knew of him as a fictional character!

- Jimi X

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Congratulations!

for Claudius!

Azara

Congratulations!

Thanks