A Great Naturalist Rediscovered

 

Illustrated 403 pp. Alford A. Knopf, 2015

 

Most of you do not know his name, yet in Napoleon’s era, Alexander von Humboldt was second in international fame only to Napoleon himself. In 1869, the Centennial of his birth was celebrated in Europe, Africa, Australia and all of the Americas. In Moscow, he was called the Shakespeare of the sciences. In Boston, Emerson called Humboldt “one of those wonders of the world” and the London Daily News wrote “that he was in some way bound up with the universe itself.”  

 

In Syracuse alone 15,000 people joined in a mile-long march. The streets of New York City were lined with flags. Thousands of people followed ten marching bands from the Bowery along Broadway to Central Park to honor him, and thousands more joined them to hear speech after speech as a bust of Humboldt was unveiled. In Humboldt’s home city, Berlin, 80,000 people listened to speeches and sang songs for hours in a cold torrential rain. Can we imagine such a celebration of intellect today? 

  

The only visible remnant of that excitement is a geography filled with streams, rivers, mountains, glaciers, and parks named after him. Nevada was almost named Humboldt State, and today the organic Humboldt Creamery is making ice cream in Humboldt County CA. Living in that geography are almost 300 plants and 100 animals named after him, probably because he was the first to introduce their existence to the wider world.

 

Alexander von Humboldt gave us our concept of nature itself. His writing about his travels in South America inspired Charles Darwin to take his voyage on the Beagle. Like Humboldt, Darwin spent 5 years exploring, and observing South America. The books Darwin had next to his hammock as he traveled were by Humboldt. Without Humboldt there would not have been The Origin of the Species. 

 

The Hudson River School of painters was so taken by Humboldt’s ideas that they saw no higher ideal than to elevate in art not only the beauty of the natural world, but a natural world unchanged by man.  Landscape painting without humans was a first in the history of painting. Effectively, those painters became environmental missionaries. As if on cue, Frederick Church appeared on the scene with the technical skill to captivate the public with his huge painting of Niagara Falls and another of Arctic ice.  Church followed Humboldt to South America where he painted an expansive canvas called, The Heart of the Andes. It details, with exacting perfection, the vegetation of the region. In this way, Church focused the public’s attention on nature as sublime. 

 

Thoreau found in the writing of Humboldt a mentor and friend with whom he maintained a daily dialogue. Humboldt’s thinking was the nourishment that helped Thoreau become the writer we know. Eventually it blossomed into the concept of “civil disobedience” that we use today in defense of planetary life.

 

Sierrans have a special reason to be grateful to Alexander von Humboldt.  He inspired in John Muir the passion that led to his founding the Sierra Club. John Muir studied Humboldt closely and tried to model his life by his example. This motivated his move to California and it is why he traveled, often on foot, into wilderness at every opportunity. As with Thoreau, he believed that a walk in the forest was to meet the truth. For them, that walk was a daily spiritual tonic.

 

Humboldt gave both Thoreau and Muir the idea that the duality of science and love of nature is the most productive approach to life and intellectual discovery. For balance and rationality, Humboldt believed in the need to experience nature through feelings as well as science, and taught that they nourish each other. In that sense, he was not just a scientist, but also an artist. It is why he appealed to painters, poets and scientists and finally, to the imagination of the broad public.  Clearly, those concepts were still dominant in 1869 at the time of the Centennial celebrations.

 

However, industrialization, driven by convenience, power, greed and a focus on the stock market eclipsed Humboldt’s belief in the primacy of natural law.   Industrialization replaced it with the idea that nature is at the disposal of man for his personal use. This attitude remains the driving force of economics and government today. No wonder the name of Alexander von Humboldt is covered in dust. 

 

While we do not remember Humboldt’s name, much of his thinking is imbedded in our culture through his science and those he influenced. 

 

Humboldt viewed nature as a global force with corresponding climate zones across continents, a radical concept at the time. He invented isothermes, or the lines of temperature pressure still used on maps. He discovered the magnetic equator and wrote that in this great chain of causes and effects no single fact can be considered in isolation. With this insight, he not only invented the web of life, but proposed that all science is better science if the approach includes as wide a field of inquiry as possible. 

 

Humboldt was the first scientist to write about harmful human-induced climate change. He warned that climate change could have an unforeseeable impact on future generations. He first noticed this when he proved that a disappearing lake was a consequence of nearby deforestation. 

 

Alexander von Humboldt’s writing proved to be the springboard for environmental science and philosophy for more than 200 years starting with Darwin. He deserves a place in history as a foundational thinker who had discovered and promoted the ”inner correlation between all aspects of nature.” 

 

Andrea Wulf invested years into as meticulous and complete research as possible. She retraced many of Humboldt’s journeys in order to experience them herself. The result is a splendid and richly woven narrative telling the amazing story of Humboldt’s life. It quickly became recognized as a landmark biography. I found the Invention of Nature riveting, and a pleasure to read every minute.