Abstract

Nicholas Saul: ›Auf der Kippe stehen‹. Der Vulkanismus als Wissenschaftsmetapher von der politischen zur ökologischen Revolution: Goethe – Jensen – HohlerOne of the most prominent and effective cognitive metaphors in recent scientific history is the tipping point structure of emergent causality. Vulcanism is one prime example of how this elliptic, irreducible and unnarratable, yet explicative figure of thought can usefully be applied. Since the age of Goethe, it is argued, this figure of thought has been increasingly deployed in literature, to denote otherwise obscure causal relations initially not inthings or nature, but in the individual and collective human psyche. Three writers, all positioned representatively at the turn of a century, exemplify the trend. In Goethe the figure illuminates the irrational and destructive behaviour of the mass under the authoritative sign of natural causality. In Jensen it disclosesthe censored causality of masculine sexual dysfunction. In Hohler’s art, it enables observation of systematic dysfunction in the inner, social and natural worlds, bidding fair to serve as a universal metaphor of the Anthropocene, so that both scientific and aesthetic deployments of the metaphor become for the first time congruent.