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Science. Nonfiction. The acclaimed author of The Brother Gardeners and Founding Gardeners reveals the forgotten life of the visionary German naturalist whose ideas continue to influence how we view ourselves and our relationship with the natural world today. Alexander von Humboldt (1769 - 1859) was an intrepid explorer and the most famous scientist of his age. His restless life was packed with adventure and discovery, whether climbing the highest volcanoes in the world or racing through anthrax-infested Siberia. He came up with a radical vision of nature, that it was a complex and interconnected global force and did not exist for man's use alone. Ironically, his ideas have become so accepted and widespread that he has been nearly forgotten. Now Andrea Wulf brings the man and his achievements back into focus: his investigation of wild environments around the world; his discoveries of similarities between climate zones on different continents; his prediction of human-induced climate change; his remarkable ability to fashion poetic narrative out of scientific observation; and his relationships with iconic figures such as Simon Bolivar and Thomas Jefferson. Wulf examines how his writings inspired other naturalists and poets such as Wordsworth, Darwin, and Goethe, and she makes the compelling case that it was Humboldt's influence on John Muir that led him to his ideas of preservation and that shaped Thoreau's Walden. Humboldt was the most interdisciplinary of scientists and is the forgotten father of environmentalism. With this brilliantly researched and compellingly written book, she makes clear the myriad, fundamental ways that Humboldt created our understanding of the natural world.… (more)
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It is a wonderful book. Essentially a biography of Alexander von Humboldt, famous traveller and natural historian, it offers so much more. Humboldt was an extraordinary man, and enjoyed immense fame throughout his own lifetime. He travelled extensively, without regard for comfort or his own safety, collecting specimens of local flora and fauna wherever he went, and cataloguing his findings. His wanderlust led him to cross the Andes on foot, and without any mountaineering kit, sketching everything he saw as he went. He is credited with being the first biologist to identify nature as a series of interlaced ecosytems, vulnerable to sudden changes or human intervention.
Andrea Wulf has clearly researched Humboldt’s life exhaustively, though the book is not a dry catalogue of his achievements. She offers enticing vignettes of Humboldt’s friendships with Goethe (now, of course, primarily remembered as a literary figure, though he considered himself first and foremost as a scientist), and Thomas Jefferson. He also knew Simon Bolivar well, and was cited by him as a major inspiration.
A fascinating book. Entertaining and enlightening – biography at its best.
I don't know where to begin, but to put it as concisely as possible, read any headline
Humboldt was acerbic, impatient, and had a level of energy few can imagine without pharmaceutical assistance. He devoted his life in every way to science and nature, eschewing most personal relationships in favour of relentless study, but he was also generous with his knowledge and money - much to the betterment of the world and the detriment of his finances. He was in almost every way a true hero, as the title claims, and unarguably a role-model for more than just fellow scientists. Without Humboldt we very likely would not have Darwin (Darwin himself said without Humboldt, he would not have found his calling on the Beagle). Without Humboldt we wouldn't have those lines on weather maps, either (isotherms/isobars).
In short, his life was incredible and Wulf does a better than creditable job illustrating not only his adventures and indefatigable levels of energy, but his impact on the world; not just scientists, but artists, authors, poets and politicians. She writes a very readable narrative and communicates what must have been an enormous amount of information in a way that remains coherent throughout. She remains objective but is never dry or academic. My half-star demerit is only because some of the chapters devoted to others I found less interesting that the star of the book himself.
I'd like to insist that every single person read this book, but realistically... every single person should read this book. For those that enjoy science and history, it's a definite do-not-miss.
(This was a BookLikes-opoly Free Friday Read for July 7th and was 341 pages (minus the various appendices and index).
This is a biography of the late 18th/early 19th century naturalist/explorer/scientist/writer Alexander Humboldt. To be honest, I had never heard of Humboldt, so I was interested to see how famous he was in his day and what an influence he had on others
Humboldt's main claim to fame was beginning the movement that saw nature as a global whole, not just getting stuck in the classification system on a small level. His travels throughout South America and particularly in current-day Ecuador where he climbed Chimborazo, an enormous active volcano, opened his eyes to the ways nature is connected around the globe. He realized that plants from different regions are often the same or similar when growing at the same altitude. He was also one of the first to point out man's destructive impact on nature.
This biography tells a lot about the people Humboldt influenced. In this book Simon Bolivar, Darwin, Thoreau, and John Muir (among others) are all talked about extensively and tied to Humboldt's ideas. I found this interesting but at the same time, sort of distracting. I wanted to get back to Humboldt during each diversion.
Overall, this was an interesting biography, but not a great one.
And while
So who was Alexander von Humboldt? In the early 19th century he traveled through much of South America studying plants, geology, rivers, animals, and the economic systems in place. He climbed mountains and rafted rivers. He met and corresponded with Thomas Jefferson, knew Goethe, and was long supported by Prussian nobility (even while living in Paris during Bonaparte's reign). He later, at the age of 60, traveled through Russia to the China/Mongolia border and back. He wrote many, many books on natural history, geology, and occasionally on politics.
In this biography, Wulf introduces this man, whom most readers will not be familiar with at all. Even though we know the name "Humboldt" as a place name. Even though we know his ideas�óîthat plants and animals live in zones determined by elevation and latitude; that man's actions can destroy nature (deforestation, over-irrigation); that nature is a web, with all parts acting together. He was the first naturalist to use drawings and diagrams rather than paragraphs of text alone to illustrate ideas. He first used isotherms (those lines that connect same/similar temperatures on maps). And we know well those he influenced with his books, travels, and ideas: Simon Bolivar, Charles Darwin, Henry David Thoreau, George Perkins Marsh, and John Muir. Students of ecology might recognize some others as well: Ernst Haeckel and the artist Frederic Edwin Church.
As Wulf suggests, we know longer know his name because so many of his ideas have become the norm.
A well- and thoroughly researched biography. I have only 2 complaints: on page 55 the word "watershed" is used when "divide" is meant. Twice in one paragraph. As in "All the scientific understanding of the day suggested that the Orinoco and Amazon basins had to be separated by a watershed because the idea of a natural waterway linking two large rivers was against all empirical evidence." Separated by a DIVIDE. The basins mentioned are each a watershed. UGH how does this stuff get through? And, second, rather than footnotes (my favorite) or properly noted endnotes, this books uses those annoying endnote-style notes that are NOT noted in the text. So you don't know when to refer to them. Annoying and frustrating.
Wulf's biography aims to put that right, by showing us Humboldt as the person who taught his contemporaries that when you look closely at nature with the eyes (and instruments!) of a scientific investigator, you need to go beyond mere cataloguing to discover the interconnectedness of the things you see into a larger picture: species with habitat, predator with food source, etc., and you can also see evidence of long and short-term changes. As well as looking at Humboldt directly, she looks at him through the eyes of some of his most important readers (in particular, Darwin, Haeckel, Thoreau, and John Muir) to show the enormous influence Humboldt's way of looking at the world has had on the development of what we are likely to think of as much more recent ideas - evolution, ecology, environmentalism, climate change, investigation of the effects of pollution and deforestation, and so on. And it was Humboldt who coined the word "cosmos"!
I vaguely knew about some of that already, but I didn't know that Humboldt was also a firm critic of slavery and colonialism and an associate of Simon Bolivar (I probably should have known that from Gabriel Garcia Marquez). It was probably these political views that prevented Humboldt from getting permission to visit British India.
I enjoyed the discussion of Goethe's influence on Humboldt and vice-versa, but I was a little disappointed not to get more on how Humboldt influenced other poets and artists: the title made me think the book would be more oriented towards how science changed the interpretation of the concept of "nature" in literature, but in practice all we get on that is a couple of paragraphs about Wordsworth and Coleridge. Probably fair enough, since that's a topic that's been dealt with quite often already by literary scholars, but it would have been interesting to see how someone approaching the question from the science side sees it.
This is an enjoyable and very accessible book, sometimes a touch pedestrian in its efforts to be accommodating to the ignorant ("Voltaire, the French thinker"), but generally very agreeable to read. It isn't a super-detailed biography of Humboldt, but I'm sure there are plenty of those gathering dust in libraries if you want to know about the parts of his life that didn't fit into Wulf's book, like his travels in Mexico. Although Wulf talks a lot about Humboldt's writing, she doesn't quote from him very extensively, so the book left me wanting to try him out first-hand and see if the magic Darwin found is still there (it clearly was for Wulf). Which I consider a plus point for the book.
Humboldt’s many visionary achievements have had a lasting impact. He began talking about man-made climate change in 1800, he invented isotherms--lines of temperature and pressure--that we still see on today’s weather maps, he initiated the idea of vegetation and climate zones, he denounced slavery and colonialism when both still had a strong hold, he inspired many great thinkers and leaders of his day and beyond, and he revolutionized how we think about nature by describing it as an interconnected web in which what happens to one part affects everything else.
Though colonial powers weren’t crazy about some of his revolutionary political ideas, Humboldt had an energetic charisma that drew people to him and he was widely celebrated in his life. His death was mourned around the globe, and huge world-wide celebrations were held on the hundredth anniversary of his birth. So why isn’t he better known today? One reason Wulf gives is that unlike Newton or Columbus, Humboldt isn’t recognized for a one great discovery--his methods were holistic, combining the hard data of science with art, poetry, history and politics, and his biggest successes involved making science both popular and accessible through his ingeniously imagined graphics and widely read books. The other reason Humboldt fell off radar in the English speaking world is the anti-German sentiment that developed during WWI.
Andrea Wulf’s enthusiasm about her subject is contagious, so this book she’s written about Humboldt and his legacy is fascinating, even gripping, and highly readable. Beautiful illustrations from some of Humboldt’s own books are included. Because Humboldt spent time in many places and knew well or influenced a lot of notable people, Wulf has included in-depth, idea-rich portraits of a wide variety of people, including members of the Prussian royal family, Goethe, Kant, Thomas Jefferson, Simón Bolívar, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charles Darwin, John Muir, Ernst Haeckel, George Perkins Marsh, and Henry David Thoreau. I especially enjoyed reading about Humboldt’s enthusiastic explorations of the world around him, Napoleonic era Paris, the revolutionary history of South America, and Humboldt’s wild ride across Russia.
I read an advanced review copy of this book supplied by the publisher. If the finished version has color plates instead of black and white it will be even more spectacular.
Alexander von Humboldt (1759-1869) was one of the last great polymaths, a scientist (before “scientist” was coined) who was fascinated with all aspects of the natural world, and went to great lengths to explore it. He was the first scientist to really grasp nature as a web of life, interconnected and interdependent. While he is not well-known today, many of his concepts are still used in our daily lives, so interwoven that we probably don’t even consider how they got there. He invented isotherms (the lines of temperature and pressure on our weather maps) and is the reason we plant in climate zones. Through his study of their similar costal plants, he grasped that Africa and South America had once been connected, and planted the seeds for our understanding of shifting tectonic plates. He discovered the magnetic equator. He started our (still, shockingly, controversial) conversation about the human causes of global climate change, and was ahead of his time in speaking out against unjust land distribution, monocultures, poor treatment of indigenous populations, and slavery. He influenced other scientists, writers, artists, world leaders, naturalists, and thinkers. In his long life, he was one of the most famous men in Europe, who dominated every room he entered.
Andrea Wulf’s excellent [The Invention of Nature] is a rich exploration of Humboldt’s life and work, reflecting Humboldt’s concept of nature as a web in her many interesting discursions into other people who were influenced by Humboldt (Charles Darwin, Henry David Thoreau, Simon Bolivar, and John Muir, to name just a few). I know it’s only January, but I can’t imagine this book not being on top of my best-books list come the end of the year.
At first, I didn't read this book because I took the title at face value. Any time I hear someone us a word like "invention" or "discover" in combination with some term from the
I was right about the first bit; Wulf does almost nothing to presence the place of indigenous peoples in the history here. That said, I was very much wrong that this is a book about dualing. Copernicus and Descartes aren't here to correct me, so I'll oversimple things for the time being and place the blame of dualing at their feet. Humboldt was very much a force for undualing—deepening human relationship with nature.
To say a little more on this—I'm current reading Christopher Alexander's, "The Nature of Order." In it he describes a "new" method of discerning the aliveness of something not by asking ourselves whether or not we like it, but by sitting with the question, "does this thing increase my somatic experience of aliveness." This is very much in the lineage of Goethe, Humbodlt, Thoreau, and Muir. All of these men used their full serves as deeply subtle instruments to assess things that are simply accessible with the external instrumentation we have available (and ultimately begins to unite the spiritual and scientific world, as such capacities require ongoing development). Alexander's position that "his" somatic method is "new" shows just how far we still have to come in regard to honoring the capacities of our whole human selves.
Wulf has done something beautiful here in that the book reads as a personal memoir rather than a history. And I mean this in the best of ways; you feel like her subjects are your uncle by the time you're done reading. She brings so much personality and eccentricity through about her subjects, unlike many histories, which try to stay impersonal.
I've been hearing Humbolt's name for years, and new he had produced some beautiful visual representations of nature, but hadn't thought much of him until I read this book. Wulf is right that Humbolt's place in the evolution of Western thought has mostly been forgotten in the United States. I had even written about Goethian Science (and I work in an ecology-adjacent field), so it is a little stunning I didn't know more about Humboldt. After reading the book, Humboldt joins the ranks of Copernicus and Einstein as the most influential of Western thinkers.
The book begins with a note on Humbodlt's mentor, Goethe, then spends its bulk on a chronological biography of Humboldt, then moves into a review of his biggest disciples—Thomas Jefferson, Simón Bolívar, Charles Darwin, Henry David Thoreau, George Perkins Marsh, Ernst Haeckel, and John Muir. As you might already be guessing from this list, it could be argued that Humboldt was the most influential person of the 19th century (although others might argue for various warlords). This structure places Humboldt in a context to help understand the magnitude of his influence (and actually many other biographies would do well to learn from Wulf's methods).
One interesting note about the "explorer" archetype—the evidence infers the conclusion that Humboldt was gay and asexual. This certainly runs counter to one of the dominant myths about the explorer archetype. Maybe Humboldt can help to posthumously contribute to shifting norms in this regard.
Despite Humboldt's renown, we're constantly reminded of his mortality and impotence in certain aspects of his ability to navigate his destiny. Humboldt went on his career-defining trip during the first five years of his thirties. He got out on one other six-month expedition at the end of his fifties. He spent the rest of his life trying to write down what he learned, following up with correspondence, and serving as a chamberlain to two Prussian kings. Due to his generosity in funding other scientists, and his utter lack of interest in business and entrepreneurial matters, he generally was short on cash, although never fell fully into destitution.
I'm left with the feeling that pervades the film "Cloud Atlas." Yes—the forces of domination and extraction continue to hold power across generations. And yet, the resistance manages to subsist, and it is through the seeds that we plant in our generation that gives deliverance for the next. Humboldt was one of these gardeners of the resistance, and I'm grateful to Wulf's brilliant research and storytelling to remind us that that which Humboldt planted is still with us!
Second, the book manages to combine telling the story of Humboldt with describing the times he lived in, and the political, historical and social context. I found the passages that weren't about Humboldt at all (eg the descriptions of Bolivar's revolution) equally fascinating as those that were about him.
Third, I found all of the concepts he seems to have pioneered fascinating, both because of the ideas themselves but that he came up with so many and challenged and often changed conventional wisdom. He (and the book) are all the more interesting because he also had modern and progressive views on so many social issues (slavery etc). Was there any subject he wasn't an expert in?
If there's one small criticism of the book, I wonder if it doesn't make him into too much of a hero, and that it glosses over some of his shortcomings. He seemed to have a pretty high opinion of himself, to be socially awkward and sometimes unpleasant to people, to treat his brother quite badly at times, and to be disorganised in some aspects of his personal life -- more attention to his shortcomings would round out our understanding of his character more.
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He gave his name to all manner of previously undiscovered species, notably Humboldts Penguin.
His name is up there with other well known Victorian botanists and explorers and we are all the richer for their
I was given a digital copy of this book by the publisher John Murray via Netgalley in return for an honest unbiased review.
This book not only details the life and adventures of Humboldt, but touches upon some of the people that he influenced in the fields of naturalism and ecology. Humboldt was one of the last true polymaths, expert in many fields of science prior to the era of increasing specialization. He was a pioneer in exploration solely for the benefit of scientific discovery. He published many works on nature, and what came to be the field of ecology, that were among the most popular works of his time. He was revered all over the world.
While this book was therefore quite educational for me, it is not the most well written biography I have ever read. It is very simply written. While many authors of biography (most?) engage in various degrees of hagiography, the author in this case goes overboard in several instances. For example, it is quite clear and widely acknowledged that Humboldt was homosexual. He maintained numerous very close personal relationships with male colleagues and never expressed any interest in women. Nevertheless, the author states that Humboldt was not homosexual, because he said so. Gee, I wonder why Humboldt would deny his homosexuality? After all, homosexuality in the 19th century was widely accepted, right?
The author also inflates several of his accomplishments, which is totally unnecessary given his actual achievements. Because he hiked to the top of several dormant volcanoes in South America, he labels Humboldt the “most experienced” mountain climber of his age, an absurd characterization. Upon reaching the peak of such a mountain (17,000 feet), it is stated that no one on the earth had ever climbed so high. I would suspect that there were generations of Sherpas in the Himalayas that not only climbed so high, but possibly lived at such elevations. He credits Humboldt with developing the theory of climate change, which in my opinion is a stretch. He certainly pointed out the negative effects of such practices as deforestation and excessive irrigation, but only on a local level.
Humboldt certainly influenced a generation of naturalists and essentially founded the science of ecology and what later became environmentalism. He was a close friend of Goethe and Simon Bolivar, both of whom he greatly influenced. He mentored Charles Darwin and was an inspiration to such men as Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Perkins Marsh and John Muir, who advanced his ground breaking world view into what has become the science of ecology and the environmentalism movement.
How could such a world famous and widely influential person be practically unknown in the United States? The author theorizes that because of his German heritage, his accomplishments were deemphasized due to the First and Second World Wars. In any event, his genius cannot be denied and his long term influence has to be regarded as among the greatest of the last 200 years.
Humboldt was one of the last great scientists able to work across almost all the fields of what can loosely be described as Earth science - geology, geography, biology, botany, oceanography, and the list goes on. He was almost certainly the first modern scientist to propose Gaia-like theories of the interconnectedness of the natural world and human activity. He was able to communicate both with his scientific peers through rigorous technical papers and with the general public with his major works. Many of the greatest scientists and naturalists of the 19th century acknowledged their debt to Humboldt in sparking their interest in their fields - Darwin took a copy of Humboldt with him on his Beagle voyages around South America.
Humboldt lived such a full and eventful life that any biography is in danger of being an extended appointment book full of facts and figures. Wulf goes much further than this and lays open for us the man himself with his friendships, enmities and relationship with his family.
This is a wonderful book that opens for a new age the amazing achievements of Humboldt and his contribution to modern science.