Peter Henri Bortoft (1938 – 29 December 2012)
was a British independent researcher and teacher, lecturer and writer on physics and the
philosophy of science
Philosophy of science is a branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. The central questions of this study concern what qualifies as science, the reliability of scientific theories, and the ultim ...
. He is best known for his work ''The Wholeness of Nature'', considered a relevant and original recent interpretation of
Goethean science. His book ''Taking Appearance Seriously: The Dynamic Way of Seeing in Goethe and European Thought'' was published in 2012.
Bortoft completed his studies at the
University of Hull
The University of Hull is a public research university in Kingston upon Hull, a city in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It was founded in 1927 as University College Hull. The main university campus is located in Hull and is home to the Hull ...
, and then performed postgraduate research on the foundations of
quantum physics
Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistry, qua ...
at
Birkbeck College
Birkbeck, University of London (formally Birkbeck College, University of London), is a public university, public research university, located in Bloomsbury, London, England, and a constituent college, member institution of the federal Universit ...
, where theoretical physicist
David Bohm introduced him to the problem of
wholeness in quantum theory. Subsequently, Bortoft worked with
John G. Bennett
John Godolphin Bennett (8 June 1897 – 13 December 1974) was a British academic and author.
He is best known for his books on psychology and spirituality, particularly on the teachings of G. I. Gurdjieff. Bennett met Gurdjieff in Istanbul in ...
on Bennett's
''Systematics'' (also known as Multi-Term Systems), which was Bennett's methodology for assisting the systematic and progressive understanding of systems, complexity, and wholeness, and on efforts with Bennett and with
Kenneth W. Pledge to develop a formal language that was rigorously descriptive of scientific activity. Those efforts were published in ''Systematics: The Journal of the Institute for the Comparative Study of History, Philosophy and the Sciences'', listed below.
Bortoft taught physics and philosophy of science at