Brilliant exposition of Romantic Era science: holistic, contextual, poetic
Review of The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World by Andrea Wulf
I cannot praise this book enough: it is the life and times of perhaps the greatest biologist and environmentalist of the 19th century, Alexander von Humboldt. Wulf follows his development from the Prussian bureaucracy through Romantic circles, an adventurous exploration of South America and Russia to his career as a courtier in Berlin. He also influenced a wide array of eminent personalities, including Goethe, Thomas Jefferson, Darwin, Thoreau and John Muir. Simply put, it is one of the best intellectual biographies I have ever read.
Humboldt started life as a Junker, receiving the individualized education in the Enlightenment style. (The Junkers were Prussian aristocrats, who were known for their martial style, over-the-top sense of honor, and rigid arrogance.) In spite of his intellectual precocity, he obeyed his domineering mother and trained as a mine inspector. Once he became an intimate of Goethe, he developed his particular method of research: pay great attention to detailed observations and documentation, but keep the big picture in mind; more specifically, he would categorize plants, but also look for the important environmental factors – climate and geography – in order to see them as a symbiotic whole, in the fullest biological context, including species' inter-relations. He also drew on Goethe's poetic vision, expressing his own perception and the inspiration he found in nature. Furthermore, under the personal influence of Kant, he was able to see how his mind set – in contemporary terms his cognitive framework – shaped his perception of reality and that of others, which he undertook to transform into a greater awareness of man's global environmental impact.
His approach stood in sharp contrast to Enlightenment philosophes, whose mechanistic methodology sought to break problems down into smaller parts, eliminating both context and individual perception in the name of objectivity or "truth", which should somehow indicate the "right way" forward to any rational person. In a nutshell, Humboldt's thinking was holistic and he acknowledged the irrational and contingent.
Once his mother passed away, Humboldt felt free to follow his radical ambitions. This was the start of a 5-year exploration of Spanish S. America, where he was granted extraordinary access by the King. With minimal retinue, Humboldt climbed volcanoes and went deep into jungles, taking measurements and botanical samples under extremely harsh and dangerous conditions. (He brought back 60,000 samples and identified some two thousand new species.) Conceptually speaking, he also made great strides: human practices, he observed, could be destructive to the environment in far more global a fashion than had yet been recognized. In this way, he was the founding father of the ecological movement. The maps he made were also pioneering, showing the bio-geography of species on mountainsides so accurately that today they are used to gauge climate change.
His South American adventure too place under the most primitive of conditions. Many of his observations of fauna and flora were so accurate that today they serve as the baseline for scientific inquiry into the impact of climate change. His book on the trip made him into a world class celebrity, which lasted until his death 50 years later. His books were bestsellers and he was in demand everywhere he went, advising Presidents and princes, but also completely open to a fellowship of selfless scientific exchange. His writings exerted a seminal influence on some of the greatest intellectuals of the time, helping to shape Darwin's theory of natural selection – he would not have gone on the Beagle voyage without having read Humboldt – but also Ernst Haeckel's naturalistic art and George Marsh's and John Muir's environmental movements. Wulf portrays a dazzling array of intellectual portraits that, if somewhat elementary for specialists, serves as a splendid introduction to a major new vision of life on Earth.
His political views were also surprisingly progressive. Not only did he believe in the equality of the races, but he was a determined opponent of both slavery and colonialism, the latter representing to him a socio-economic system that destroyed existing ecosystems in favor of immediate profit. Of course, during the times of the Napoleonic wars and the decades of conservative backlash that followed, he had to tread carefully.
Wulf also explores the seamier sides of Humboldt. He could be cutting and irascible, egotistical yet insecure, and always near-broke. As he was financially dependent on Kaiser Friedrich Wilhelm III, he was often beholden to him, having to guard his tongue during the 1848 revolts, but also as a kind of pet courtier, a living encyclopedia to have on hand. Preternaturally intellectually dominant, he often could not listen to others except under exceptional circumstances. Darwin, for example, was turned off by his monologues, even though Humboldt helped him to achieve prominence as he did that of many other young scientists.
I was utterly spellbound by this book. Wulf's writing style is elegant and clear, capable of being read on many levels. This is a masterpiece of popular science that I believe will become a classic.
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