Synopses & Reviews
Explorer, scientist, writer, and humanist, Alexander von Humboldt was the most famous intellectual of the age that began with Napoleon and ended with Darwin. With Cosmos, the book that crowned his career, Humboldt offered to the world his vision of humans and nature as integrated halves of a single whole. In it, Humboldt espoused the idea that, while the universe of nature exists apart from human purpose, its beauty and order, the very idea of the whole it composes, are human achievements: cosmos comes into being in the dance of world and mind, subject and object, science and poetry.
Humboldtandrsquo;s science laid the foundations for ecology and inspired the theories of his most important scientific disciple, Charles Darwin. In the United States, his ideas shaped the work of Emerson, Thoreau, Poe, and Whitman. They helped spark the American environmental movement through followers like John Muir and George Perkins Marsh. And they even bolstered efforts to free the slaves and honor the rights of Indians.
Laura Dassow Walls here traces Humboldtandrsquo;s ideas for Cosmos to his 1799 journey to the Americas, where he first experienced the diversity of nature and of the worldandrsquo;s peoplesandmdash;and envisioned a new cosmopolitanism that would link ideas, disciplines, and nations into a global web of knowledge and cultures. In reclaiming Humboldtandrsquo;s transcultural and transdisciplinary project, Walls situates America in a lively and contested field of ideas, actions, and interests, and reaches beyond to a new worldview that integrates the natural and social sciences, the arts, and the humanities.
To the end of his life, Humboldt called himself andldquo;half an American,andrdquo; but ironically his legacy has largely faded in the United States. The Passage to Cosmos will reintroduce this seminal thinker to a new audience and return America to its rightful place in the story of his life, work, and enduring legacy.
Review
"By recovering the excitement of Humboldtianand#160;explorations and travel experiences, Walls wins back Humboldt for the 21st century. Through her account, he joins forces with present-day heroes such as Edward O. Wilson and his
Cosmos of a sort,
Consilience, all of them reorienting and transforming disciplines and divisions that threaten 'to leach the poetry out of our technologically driven lives.' Walls reclaims for the present a man whose personality and work had a formative influence on the cultural landscape of antebellum America and whose legacy may to good effect be used in addressing current affairs. I recommend
The Passage to Cosmos as a fine piece of Humboldt scholarship, a heartfelt plea for environmental holism, and an enjoyable read."
Review
andquot;Not the least of the qualities of Dassow Wallsandrsquo; erudite and wide-ranging narrative is that she enables us to understand something of the manandrsquo;s genius and polymathic range. Humboldtandrsquo;s fundamental assumption, she tells us, was that neither humans nor nature could be understood in isolation.andquot;andmdash;Jeremy Jennings,
Times Higher Educationand#160;
Review
andquot;Walls's masterly prose makes this book an entertaining as well as enlightening look into the life, works, and impact on American thought of one of the giants of 19th-century intellect.andquot;andmdash;Choice
Review
andldquo;
The Passage to Cosmos is as wide-ranging, as integrative, as creative, and as suggestive, as the man of science who is at its center. . . . In Walls, Humboldt has found a reader whose originality, diligence, curiosity, and moral passion resembles his own. Wallsandrsquo;s book gives the reader a vivid sense of why this fertile polymath meant so much to so many people, how he seemed to provide a kind of key to all knowledge. She also comes to grips with the question of why his influence faded. But most of all, she makes a case for the value of recovering his way of knowing for the contemporary world, and the ways in which some of the most advanced thinkers are only now rediscovering insights that Humboldt proclaimed almost two centuries ago.andrdquo;
Review
and#8220;Long awaited by Humboldtians, this illuminating new edition of Views of Natureand#8212;offering not just vivid natural scenes (and#8216;viewsand#8217; in the most obvious sense) but also von Humboldtand#8217;s still-fresh views on the significance of nature and its studyand#8212;is a gift that transcends disciplines and even history.and#160;A book that was deeply relevant and constructively challenging in the age of empire has become even more necessary in the age of climate change. Today, thanks in part to the acutely sensitive translator and editors, von Humboldtand#8217;s finest one-volume work comes across as a perfect blend of art and science, a paean to interconnection that is both humbling and heartening.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;Alexander von Humboldtand#8217;s wide-ranging Views of Nature is a masterpiece of nineteenth-century natural history, at once science and art. Mark W. Personand#8217;s stunning new translation makes the wonders of this classic accessible to the English-language world of the present.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;Ever since his celebrated journey of exploration of the Americas, Alexander von Humboldt has been a defining figure of Western scientific culture. Today, his international reputation is enjoying a revival, especially in North America. Now the University of Chicago Press is adding to its list of Humboldtiana a new edition of von Humboldtand#8217;s most readable book, Views of Nature, skillfully translated from the original German and expertly introduced. It opens up to a twenty-first-century readership the magnificent panorama of tropical American landscapes, the aesthetic pleasure of which connotedand#8212;in von Humboldtand#8217;s viewand#8212;the underlying harmony of lawlike unity that pervades the cosmos.and#8221;
Review
andldquo;From the plains of Venezuela to volcanoes and waterfalls, von Humboldt combines observations with travel narratives and philosophical musings. Annotations really help provide a context to the essays; this work also includes an index, conversions for von Humboldtandrsquo;s various measurement units, an introduction, and preface. This excellent translation of one of von Humboldtandrsquo;s most important works should introduce this great naturalist to an entirely new audience.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Despite von Humboldtandrsquo;s tremendous influence on many of the worldandrsquo;s greatest writers and naturalists, including Goethe, Darwin, Emerson, and Thoreau, outside of specialist circles, this new translation has not received the attention it richly deserves. This is something I intend to do my part in helping to rectify at the earliest opportunity.andrdquo;
Synopsis
Alexander von Humboldtandrsquo;s Views of Nature was his best-known work in the 19th Century. Written for both a literary and scientific audience, it was Humboldtandrsquo;s personal favorite among his numerous volumes. It was translated into English (twice) and French in the mid-19th Century, and was read widely in Europe and the Americas, influencing artists, poets, essayists, novelists, and scientists alike. The English versions of Ansichten have been out of print since the late 19th Century, in contrast to many of Humboldtandrsquo;s more technical works (e.g., Cosmos, Personal Narrative, Essay on the Geography of Plants, Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain). Humboldtandrsquo;s contributions to the humanities and the sciences, largely neglected in the U.S. for the past century, are undergoing a revival and this book represents a critical contribution in this context. For example, the bookandrsquo;s extensive footnotes incorporate some of Humboldtandrsquo;s most mature thinking about vegetation structure, its origins in climate patterns, and its implications for the visual and written arts. The main essays are remarkable in their own right as influential and innovative works in the tradition of Anglo-American nature writing, and were cited by Thoreau as a model for his own work.
Synopsis
While the influence of Alexander von Humboldt (1769and#150;1859) looms large over the natural sciences, his legacy reaches far beyond the field notebooks of naturalists. Von Humboldtand#8217;s 1799and#150;1804 research expedition to Central and South America with botanist Aimand#233; Bonpland not only set the course for the great scientific surveys of the nineteenth century, but also served as the raw material for his many volumesand#151;works of both scientific rigor and aesthetic beauty that inspired such essayists and artists as Emerson, Goethe, Thoreau, Poe, and Frederic Edwin Church.
Views of Nature, or Ansichten der Natur, was von Humboldtand#8217;s best-known and most influential workand#151;and his personal favorite. While the essays that comprise it are themselves remarkable as innovative, early pieces of nature writingand#151;they were cited by Thoreau as a model for his own workand#151;the bookand#8217;s extensive endnotes incorporate some of von Humboldtand#8217;s most beautiful prose and mature thinking on vegetation structure, its origins in climate patterns, and its implications for the arts. Written for both a literary and a scientific audience, Views of Nature was translated into English (twice), Spanish, and French in the nineteenth century, and it was read widely in Europe and the Americas. But in contrast to many of von Humboldtand#8217;s more technical works, Views of Nature has been unavailable in English for more than one hundred years. Largely neglected in the United States during the twentieth century, von Humboldtand#8217;s contributions to the humanities and the sciences are now undergoing a revival to which this new translation will be a critical contribution.
About the Author
Stephen T. Jackson is professor emeritus of botany and ecology at the University of Wyoming. He lives in Tucson, AZ.
Laura Dassow Walls is the William P. and Hazel B. White Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame. She lives in Granger, IN.Mark W. Person is associate academic professional lecturer in German in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages and director of the language lab at the University of Wyoming. He lives in Laramie, WY.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface: Romancing the Ruby-Crowned Kinglet
Prologue: Humboldtand#8217;s Bridge
Chapter 1: Confluences
Humboldtand#8217;s America
Humboldtand#8217;s Europe
A New Earth and a New Heaven
Chapter 2: Passage to America, 1799and#8211;1804
Portals and Passages
The Casiquiare Crossing
High Peaks and Hanging Valleys
Chapter 3: Manifest Destinies
Humboldtand#8217;s Visit to the United States, 1804
The Humboldt Network
The Many Faces of Humboldtian Science
By Land and by Sea
Interchapter: Finally Shall Come the Poet
Chapter 4: and#8220;All are alike designed for freedomand#8221;: Humboldt on Race and Slavery
(De)Constructing Race
(Re)Constructing Race
Humboldt and American Slavery
Chapter 5: The Community of Cosmos
Franz Boas, Cosmographer
Introducing Humboldtand#8217;s Cosmos
Behold the Earth
Chapter 6: The Face of Planet America
The Apocalypse of Mind: Emerson and Poe
The Face of Nature: Thoreau, Church, and Whitman
Dwelling: Susan Cooper, Muir, Marsh
Epilogue: Recalling Cosmos
Endnotes
Bibliography
Index