# Ettinger in Gotha publishes Versuch die Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu erklären

Date: 1790

## The fact

In 1790 [Goethe](/people/johann-wolfgang-von-goethe) published his essay on the metamorphosis of plants, arguing a leaf-based morphology. Later genetics did not make it a complete theory; it remains a founding morphological text.

## Context

A public scientific essay is a knowledge-access path even when later botany revises it. It is not the Farbenlehre row.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

Official archive/museum/agency pages and an independent publisher independently describe this instrument.

Official or archival record: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (https://iep.utm.edu/goethe/; Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

## Significance

Morphology in print is a teaching instrument. Do not upgrade it to a genome.

Morphology in print is a teaching instrument. Do not upgrade it to a genome.

## What is established and what is not

Established as a dated public record of this instrument.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.
Later competitions, monuments, translations, UNESCO listings, and museums are not converted into extra lifetime acts. The attached driver is edu-[digital-learning-access](/drivers/edu-digital-learning-access). The welfare reading used in this dossier is improving. That reading is an impact-path choice, not a property stored on the Fact itself. Confidence is stated on the impact path. A later English edition is not a recovered autograph. If a number is not in the two records named above, it is not supplied here. Later competitions, monuments, translations, UNESCO listings, and museums are not converted into extra lifetime acts. The welfare reading used in this dossier is improving. That reading is an impact-path choice, not a property stored on the Fact itself. Confidence is stated on the impact path. A later English edition is not a recovered autograph. If a number is not in the two records named above, it is not supplied here.

## People

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: https://factrail.ai/people/johann-wolfgang-von-goethe

## Drivers

- Digital Learning Access: https://factrail.ai/drivers/edu-digital-learning-access

## Sources

- https://iep.utm.edu/goethe/
- https://www.dnb.de/

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/go-metamorphose-pflanzen-1790