Writing in BOMB Daily, Catherine Despont has a beautiful review of Janina Wellmann’s The Form of Becoming. Click here to read the full essay. Click here to learn more about the book. An excerpt appears below:

“At the core of Wellmann’s analysis is not a description of beauty per se, but an observation about the limits of description when confronted with living systems, and the role of the observer’s own creativity in defining methods of approach. Wellmann’s meticulous survey through the landscape of thought between the years 1760–1830 explores a period when the central figures of the time, such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, did not see such harsh distinctions between their poetic, philosophical, and scientific projects.”