Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. 
 
Carl Wilhelm Ettinger: 1790. First edition. German text. Hardcover with an acetate jacket. Octavo. Jacket has a fold on the front wrap and a smudge on the front. Other than a few slight dings on the title plate on the spine and on the edges, the boards are in nice condition. Back board slightly curved. A few light pencil markings on first endpapers. Spotting and a little smudging on the pages. Pages are wrinkled not by water damage but time. 86 pages. Good. 
 
Many still go to Goethe's writings for an insightful relationship to the natural world that precedes our own industrial paradigm. That the observation of a specimen's growth and change changes our idea of the plant - also known as Goethe's theory of archetypes - has been long acknowledged as a precursor to Darwin. With this first edition you're back in Goethe's lifetime to see his intricate observations challenging the taxonomies of Linnaeus. A book of historical, literary, philosophical, and scientific interest. In German. 

"Anyone who observes the growth of plants will notice that certain outer parts of the same plant sometimes change and merge into the shape of the adjacent parts, sometimes completely, sometimes more or less."