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In Review

There are more places in the world named after Prussian explorer and naturalist Alexander von Humboldt than anyone else. Rivers, waterfalls, glaciers, mountains, lakes, bays, counties, and towns across the globe carry his name. The state of Nevada was nearly the state of Humboldt.

Yet he鈥檚 almost forgotten, especially in the English-speaking world.

That鈥檚 because his influence on our view of nature is so fundamental that we can hardly perceive it, argues Andrea Wulf, author of The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt鈥檚 New World (Knopf, 2016). She spoke about the book in a public lecture in October. Her talk was part of the Humanities Center Lecture Series, focused this year on the environment.

Humboldt, who lived from 1769 to 1859, was once a household name, the most famous scientist of his day. The centenary of his birth was celebrated across the world. He was a tireless adventurer and astute scientific observer who, Wulf contends, invented the modern idea of nature: a global web of life in which humankind is only one piece among many.

鈥淗umboldt was not known for a single fact or a discovery but for his worldview,鈥� she writes. 鈥淗is vision of nature has passed into our consciousness as if by osmosis. It is almost as though his ideas have become so manifest that the man behind them has disappeared.鈥�

He was the first to suggest human-induced climate change. Wulf calls him the unacknowledged 鈥渇ounding father鈥� of current-day environmentalism, who influenced such pivotal figures as John Muir, George Perkins Marsh, and Rachel Carson. And he drew the veneration not only of scientists like Charles Darwin鈥攚ho called him 鈥渢he greatest scientific traveller who ever lived鈥濃�攂ut authors, artists, politicians, and poets. Among his admirers were Thomas Jefferson, Johann Goethe, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, and Henry David Thoreau.

鈥淗e鈥檚 a scientist who鈥檚 obsessed with hard scientific data, but at the same time he is saying we need to use our imaginations,鈥� says Wulf. 鈥淲e will only protect what we love鈥攈e鈥檚 driven by a sense of wonder.鈥�

She describes him as 鈥渙ne of the last polymaths,鈥� whose scientific work was shaped by his conviction that human experience of the natural world was not just a rational pursuit but also a sensory and emotional one. For him, science and the arts were inextricable.

Ironically, Humboldt was writing his masterwork, Cosmos鈥攑ublished in five volumes between 1845 and 1862鈥攋ust at the time that science was becoming professionalized. He began the book in 1834, the year that the term 鈥渟cientist鈥� was first used.

As he wrote Cosmos, he struggled with the burgeoning body of specialized scientific work. 鈥淗e sees how it exponentially increases everywhere,鈥� Wulf says. He would write to scientific experts, asking them to check over his drafts鈥攂ut by the end of his life, there was no way any one person could remain atop all the science being produced.

Historian and writer Wulf is the author of five books, including The Brother Gardeners: A Generation of Gentleman Naturalists and the Birth of an Obsession (Vintage, 2010), winner of the American Horticultural Society鈥檚 Book Award in 2010, and Founding Gardeners: The Revolutionary Generation, Nature, and the Shaping of the American Nation (Vintage, 2012), a New York Times best seller.

To write her newest book, she retraced some of Humboldt鈥檚 journeys. 鈥淗e wasn鈥檛 a cerebral scholar,鈥� she says. 鈥淗e was brazenly adventurous.鈥� In following his footsteps, especially in South America, she realized 鈥渉ow much he was pushing his body to his limits.鈥�

Fueling his travels was a love of nature that he sought to ignite in others. 鈥淎t a time when other scientists were searching for universal laws, Humboldt wrote that nature had to be experienced through feelings,鈥� she writes.

That her book is shelved among biographies in bookstores makes Wulf quizzical.

鈥淔or me, it鈥檚 never been a biography of Humboldt,鈥� she says. 鈥淚t was always a biography of how we think about nature.鈥� 鈥擪athleen McGarvey锘匡豢