This dissertation aims at an approximation between the scientific production and the autobiographical writing of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832). In order to work on this objective, an analysis of the essay The Metamorphosis of Plants (Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen) and his best-known autobiography, From my life: poetry and truth (Aus Meinem Leben, Dichtung und Wahrheit) is developed. First, from the retrieval of texts in which the writer recalls central concepts developed in that essay about the process of plant growth, first published in 1790, it is discussed to what extent the recurrent commitment to an access to the past represented the opportunity of revisiting, explaining, corroborating and perfecting some of these concepts, above all, the one of metamorphosis. Sharing the argument that the recollection, in Goethe, acts over the past experience in a profitable, productive way, the analysis is, then, redirected to his autobiographical writing. After an initial examination of the status of the genre, drawing attention to its discursive malleability, both the similarities and specificities of the Goethian autobiographical text are highlighted. Thus, by using the articulation of a series of concepts mobilized by the writer, it becomes possible to emphasize the singular way in which Goethe redimensioned his existence, in the later act of writing, making it possible to associate particular conceptions of science and history in conformation of his autobiographical perspective.