In 1810, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe took issue with Newton and the scientific establishment. Not that Newton was not a brilliant man, but he was influenced by methods which tried too hard to define and did not stop to glance out of the corner of the eye, for this is how people are sometimes prone to do things.

Newton saw darkness as simply an absence of light, but Goethe had seen it sideways and had noticed that darkness and light work together, and only then does colour appear on the margins between the two. What is more, we have to stand back a little to see them and, in doing so, should simply observe. Anything else will be too much and the image will fade, as anyone who has enjoyed the works of Turner or Kandinsky will know.