LIKE VIRTUALLY NO OTHER FIGURE, Johann Wilhelm Ritter (1776–1810) epitomizes the relationship between Romanticism and the sciences. He is considered the prototype of the Romantic natural scientist who was in revolt against the omnipotent Newtonian system of physics. In turn, Romantic natural sciences, which were substantially indebted to Schelling's Naturphilosophie (though not in an uncritical way) and thus adopted the organism as the principle metaphor for nature, were subjected to constant and harsh criticism throughout the nineteenth century by the traditional, mechanical natural sciences.

When scientists concern themselves with Ritter, the mistrust that tends to characterize their attitudes towards Romantic Science in general becomes all the more acute, thanks to his tendency to gesture beyond empirical grounds towards speculation. In her eminent volume from the close of the nineteenth century, Die Romantik: Ausbreitung, Blütezeit und Verfall (The Spread, Blossoming, and Decline of Romanticism, 1899–1902), Ricarda Huch attempted to give a psychological explanation for this underestimation of Ritter's scientific genius, attributing it to his own inability to make the most of his discoveries. Nevertheless, despite Ritter's undeniably speculative approach, his scientific achievements have since been widely acknowledged by scholars, not least because many of his conclusions have been verified by researchers in non-Romantic natural sciences. As early as 1894, Wilhelm Ostwald attempted in an address to the Deutsche Elektrochemische Gesellschaft to do justice to Ritter, a thinker who has always been regarded as one of the most enigmatic figures among those who formed the core group of early Romanticism in Jena.