## 1. Life and Works


### 1.1 Early Life and Education



Alexander von Humboldt--the son of Alexander Georg Humboldt, a
Prussian army officer, and the widow Marie-Elisabeth von Holwede
(nee Colomb)--was born in Berlin on 14 September 1769. His
brother, Wilhelm, was born two years earlier, and both children were
raised at the Tegel Castle, in the east of Berlin. The later King
Friedrich Wilhelm II was Humboldt's godfather.



As was common for aristocratic families at the time, the Humboldt
brothers received their education from private tutors, including
Joachim Heinrich Campe and Gottlob Johann Christian Kunth, and had
lessons with Kant's former student, Markus Herz. Herz introduced
them to physical geography, and to his wife's salon. The two
brothers were regular attendees at Henriette Herz's salon, and
Alexander exchanged a significant set of letters with Herz
(Hey'l 2007). In addition, the brothers were tutored by the
botanist, Karl Ludwig Willdenow (1765-1812), whose writing on
Berlin's flora influenced Humboldt.



Following his mother's wishes, Humboldt (alongside his brother)
matriculated at the University of Frankfurt an der Oder in 1787 to
study law, with the goal of becoming a Prussian government servant. In
1789, the two brothers moved to the University of Gottingen,
where Humboldt studied under (among others) Blumenbach. In
Gottingen, he met August Wilhelm Schlegel, Friedrich Heinrich
Jacobi, and Georg Forster, the explorer and radical thinker who had
travelled with Captain Cook on his second world trip (1772) and
authored (with his father) *Reise um die Welt* [*Voyage
Around the World*] (1777). From March to July 1790, Humboldt
travelled with Forster across western Europe, and went on to dedicate
his first publication, *Beobachtungen uber einige Basalte am
Rhein* [*Observations of some Basalt at the Rhine*] (1790),
to Forster. Like Forster, Humboldt sought to detail both the
environmental and the cultural landscapes, and describe their mutual
influence.



In 1791, Humboldt began training at the Freiberg School of Mines
(where Friedrich von Hardenberg [i.e., Novalis] also trained), under
the geologist Abraham Werner. Following successful completion, he
assumed a post in the Prussian Department of Mines.


### 1.2 Jena Connections



Humboldt began to visit Jena and Weimar in the mind 1790s, after his
brother Wilhelm assumed a position at the University of Jena. Though
he had met Schiller some two years earlier (in 1792), it was at this
time that he met Goethe and Herder and over the years became
acquainted with Friedrich Schlegel and Schelling as well. While
Humboldt mentions Kant, Schelling, Herder, and Schiller in his
writings, it was Goethe to whom he felt the greatest affinity, both in
terms of personality and interests. As he put it in a letter composed
soon after their first encounter in March 1794, "he is in fact
my favorite here" (JB 254, letter no. 388).



During one of his visits, Humboldt undertook a number of experiments
with Goethe, which resulted in what has been touted as
Humboldt's "major work" in morphology, *Versuche
uber die gereizte Muskel- und Nervenfaser* [*Essays on the
Irritability of Muscle and Nerve Fibers*] (1797-8)
(Meyer-Abich 1970: 121). Following Goethe, Humboldt employs the notion
of "type" to explicate the structure of animal bodies and
relations among animal species.



Humboldt went on to dedicate the German edition of
*Geographie des Plantes* (1805), *Ideen zu einer
Geographie der Pflanzen* (1807), to Goethe. The dedication appears
in a frontispiece based on a sculpture by the Danish artist Bertel
Thorvaldsen. It depicts Orpheus holding a lyre while unveiling the
statue of the Egyptian goddess, Isis: the goddess of fertility,
symbolizing nature. Sitting at the feet of Isis is Goethe's 1790
essay *Metamorphose der Pflanzen* [*The Metamorphosis of
Plants*]. The implication is clear: through his creative
imagination Goethe, the poet-scientist, was able to reveal nature.




Another important figure in Humboldt's development during this
period is Friedrich Schiller. In 1794 Schiller invited Humboldt to
submit to his journal, *Die Horen.* The result was
Humboldt's essay, "*Die Lebenskraft oder der Rhodische
Genius: eine Erzahlung*" (Life Force or the Rhodian
Genius: A Tale; 1795). Though Humboldt went on to recant the idea of a
life force (by 1797, as he claims [DA 5: 325; VN: 265]), he
republishes the essay some thirty years later in the second edition of
*Ansichten der Natur*--an indication of his admiration for
Schiller and his desire to celebrate their connection (DA 5: xi).
Indeed, it appears that Humboldt had originally planned to dedicate
*Ideen zu einer Geographie der Pflanzen* not to Goethe, but to
Schiller, and only changed his mind after learning of Schiller's
death (Ette 2018: 225).



Humboldt's affinity to Schiller's ideas is perhaps most
evident in his response to Schiller invitation to write for *Die
Horen.* Following a long list of tasks he aims to accomplish,
Humboldt writes to Schiller, "You sense with me that there is
something higher to look for, and to find". This something
higher, Humboldt continues, is "aesthetic sense and
education", which he connects to "a more expansive
perspective than that of our contemporary archivers of nature
[*Registratoren der natur*]" (JB: 346-347, letter
no. 238).


### 1.3 Travel to the Americas



Following his mother's death in 1797, Humboldt received a
sizable inheritance that allowed him to leave his post at the mines
and begin to think seriously about travelling beyond Europe. In that
same year, he moved to Paris, with the aim of securing travel to one
of the French colonies. After a number of failed attempts in
France--largely on account of political events--Humboldt,
alongside his scientific companion, the French botanist Aime
Bonpland (1773-1858), travelled to Spain. There they were
granted permission from the Spanish Crown to visit South America. On 5
June 1799, they set sail on the *Pizarro*, stopping in Tenerife
on the way, and arriving some six weeks later in Cumana, in
present-day Venezuela.



Humboldt took with him a significant number of expensive
instruments--many of which were difficult to transport--for
measuring altitude, latitude, air pressure, the blueness of the sky,
atmospheric composition, and magnetism. As Humboldt explains in a
letter to the Spanish King from 22 March 1799, his desire to travel to
South America has to do with his interest in "analyzing the
atmosphere", and "recognizing the general relationships
that bind organized beings" (quoted in Puig-Samper 1999).



Over the next five years, Humboldt and Bonpland explored the northern
and western parts of South America, canoed down the Orinoco River,
trekked in the Andes, visited scientific luminaries in Quito, Bogota,
and Havana, and travelled through Mexico and Cuba. During their time
in Cuba (from December 1800 to March 1801), Humboldt observed the
situation of the slave laborers in the plantations. From there they
sailed to Columbia, and then to Ecuador. On 23 June 1802, with the
help of an Indigenous guide, the two companions, alongside their new
friend, Carlos Montufar (1780-1816), climbed Chimborazo,
which at the time was considered to be the highest peak. Though they
did not reach its summit, they achieved a record that was not
surpassed until 1838.



In 1804, Humboldt and Bonpland travelled to the United States of
America, where Humboldt met with Thomas Jefferson in the spring of
that year. A key topic of discussion was the American economic
dependence on slavery, which Humboldt challenged on moral grounds.


### 1.4 Paris



Upon returning to Europe, Humboldt spent a short time in Berlin, but
quickly decided to move to Paris, which he made his home from the end
of 1807 until 1827. It was in Paris that he compiled and published his
works on the Americas, which were mainly in French. But he also
published in German during this period, most notably the work he later
described as his "favorite", *Ansichten der Natur*
(BVE: 244). *Ansichten der Natur,* a collection of essays,
originally contained only three essays (1808) but in its final
iteration (1846) included eight essays. In each new edition, Humboldt
also added annotations, which in some instances became longer than the
original text. The annotations sought to updated readers with new
findings, draw on Humboldt's later expeditions, or, in the case
of the "*Rhodische Genius*", recant earlier
views.



In 1811, Humboldt published *Essai politique sur le royaume de la
Nouvelle-Espagne* [*Political Essay on the Kingdom of New
Spain*](2 vols, 1811), in which he criticizes the Spanish colonial
administration for its mismanagement of the natural world, points to
the variety of injustices faced by the Indigenous peoples of Mexico
(*Nouvelle-Espagne* 2: 128-9; KNS 1: 328), and argues
that the destruction of nature will inevitably result in the
destruction of culture. It was around the same time that he published
*Vues des Cordilleres, et monumens des peuples
indigenes de l'Amerique* (1810-1813),
which includes sixty-nine expensive artistic plates that present
artifacts of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, and thereby
challenges the view that the Americas are a "realm of
nature" with neither culture, nor agriculture. As in the
*Essai politique sur le royaume de la Nouvelle-Espagne,* so
also in this text, Humboldt criticizes claims concerning the
inferiority of Indigenous American cultures. 



Between 1805 and 1834 Humboldt published *Voyage aux regions
equinoxiales du nouveau continent, fait en 1799, 1800, 1802,
1803 et 1804* [*Voyage to the Equinoctial Regions of the New
Continent, from the years 1799-1804*], which includes thirty
folio and quarto volumes. This work is a compilation of some of
Humboldt's major writings alongside his unfinished narrative of
the American journey, *Relation historique du voyage aux regions
equinoxiales du Nouveau Continent* (3 volumes: 1814)
[*Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of the
New Continent during the Years 1799-1804*].



In 1826, Humboldt published *Essai politique sur l'ile de
Cuba* [*Political Essay on the Island of Cuba*]. In Chapter
6 Humboldt highlights Cuba's growing dependency on slavery, and
argues for the need to change the policy: 



> 
> 
> To remedy evil, to avoid public danger, to console the misfortunes of
> a race who suffer, and who are feared more than is acknowledged, the
> wound must be probed. (*L'ile de Cuba* 1: 123; DA 3: 66;
> PN 7: 106) 
> 
> 
> 



Importantly, Humboldt did not simply call for the end of slavery, but
also provided insights into how this can be brought about
(*L'ile de Cuba* 1: 317-8, 333; DA 3: 157-8,
167-9; see also Walls 2009-5).


### 1.5 Berlin



Humboldt moved to Berlin in 1827 at the behest of the Prussian King.
It was at the University of Berlin that Humboldt delivered his famous
Kosmos lectures (seventy-seven in total), between 3 November 1827, and
27 April 1828. Although Humboldt planned to publish the lectures soon
after delivering them, it took another two decades before he began
publishing his five-volume *Kosmos: eine physische
Wetlbeschreibung* [*Cosmos: A Physical Description of the
World*] (1845-1862). The final volume was published
posthumously.



As both the title and subtitle indicate, Humboldt's goals are
distinctive. The dual significance of the term
*cosmos*--which in ancient Greek means elegance and
world--implies that Humboldt's goal is to understand nature
*and* capture its beauty. As he puts it, the word
"*Kosmos*" signifies both the "order of the
world, and adornment [*Schmuck*] of this universal
order..." (*Kosmos* 1: 33; CO 1 69n). This goes hand
in hand with Humboldt's larger vision of the world as a dynamic
and harmonious unity of interrelated parts.



In Berlin, Humboldt assumed the role of court advisor, and often
travelled on diplomatic missions. Despite his proximity to the King,
Humboldt was supportive of the King's critics, including Bettina
Brentano von Arnim (1785-1859), who had been sentenced to prison
on account of her evasion of publication laws. Humboldt helped to
absolve her of the sentence. Furthermore, Humboldt used his connection
to help American slaves. With Humboldt's prodding, the Prussian
King enacted a law in 1857 that any slave would become free once on
Prussian soil.


### 1.6 Siberian Expedition



In 1829 Humboldt undertook a six-month journey through Siberia,
supported by Emperor Nicholas I. The trip, which began in St.
Petersburg, took Humboldt through the Ural Mountains, the West Siberian
Plains, and across to the Central Asian Altai Mountains. On the way
back, the party passed through the Caspian Sea. In total, Humboldt and
his travel companions covered some 9,000 miles. As with his trip to
South America, so here, Humboldt took with him the most advanced
instruments for measurement. He surveyed the geography, climate, and
geomagnetic features of the regions through which he travelled. Later
editions of his writings--in particular *Ansichten der
Natur*--reflect observations and measurements made during
this time, and include comparisons between these regions and the ones
he had observed in Europe and South America. 


## 2. Humboldt's Writings: Scope, Genre, and Translations



Humboldt lived a long life, during which he published amply. In his
writings, Humboldt brings together scientific, historical,
philosophical, and aesthetic perspectives, while also drawing on
personal experience. His aims were to convey nature and culture as
interconnected, articulate a vision of nature as an interrelated
unity, and enable his readers to imaginatively experience the natural
world that he had witnessed. To realize these aims, Humboldt used a
number of means--careful measurements, detailed observations, and
artistic approaches--all of which are intended to support one
another. Humboldt composed essays which he described as
*Naturgemalde* (nature-paintings), modelled on landscape
paintings, and which can themselves be regarded as "scientific
works of art", in that they at once deepen scientific knowledge
and heighten aesthetic experience. As Humboldt sees it, the essays
move in a "dual direction", joining "a literary with
a purely scientific goal" (DA 5: xi; VN: 27).



Whether Humboldt successfully realized his aims remains, however, a
matter of dispute. Some argue that Humboldt did indeed achieve this
goal--and, in so doing, developed an entirely new genre, which
Ottmar Ette has described as "Humboldtian Writing" on
analogy with Humboldtian science (Ette 2001). Others, however, see in
Humboldt's writings more confusion than seamless cohesion
(Bohme 2001). As an early reviewer put it: 



> 
> 
> Examples and comparisons... by their number and variety, impair
> the unity ... of the descriptions, and present collateral objects
> without a sufficient subordination of the principle. (*Edinburgh
> Review* 1815: 111)
> 
> 
> 



Humboldt's joining of genres is also evident in the
multi-mediality of other works--above all, in
*Geographie des plantes* and the *Tableau
physique* included in the essay. The French *tableau,*
which Humboldt translates as *Naturgemalde*in the German
edition, refers ambiguously to both text *and* image. This
ambiguity, as Sylvie Romanowski writes, 



> 
> 
> suggests that the words and the picture are inseparable--the two
> work together to form one work, and only combined into one work can
> they convey Humboldt's knowledge. (Romanowski 2009: 161)
> 
> 
> 



Humboldt's works were translated into many languages, with
English translations often appearing in the same year as the original
French (or German). Humboldt often played a role in seeking out
competent translators, and at times may have aided with the
translations. Many of his translators were women: Helen Maria Williams
translated *Relation historique* soon after it was published,
while Thomasina Ross translated it some fifty years later. Elizabeth
Sabine translated *Ansichten der Natur* in 1849, and with her
husband, Edward, she translated *Kosmos*between 1846 and 1858.
Elise C. Otte translated both *Ansichten der Natur*
(1850) and *Kosmos* (1848-1858). The translations were
often diverging, with the most explicit difference being between
Williams' seven-volume translation of *Relation
historique* (1814-1829) and Ross's three-volume
rendition (1852-3). As Alison Martin notes, the differences are
not only in size, but also in language, and in the way in which the
scientist is portrayed (Martin 2018). Ross, for instance, eliminates
sections in which Humboldt acknowledges a debt to his
predecessors--thereby furnishing an image of Humboldt as a lone
genius-scientist. Humboldt's advice was often sought by his
translators--in particular the Sabines--who in some cases
made significant changes or additions to the original (Martin 2018:
206, 221).



Humboldt was deeply dissatisfied with the first English translation of
*Kosmos*, by Augustin Prichard. Pritchard had translated
*Beschreibung*in the work's subtitle as
"history" rather than "description". Humboldt
practically begged Edward and Elizabeth Sabine to undertake a second
translation, writing to Edward that 



> 
> 
> I have striven to demonstrate that *Weltbeschreibung* is not
> *Weltgeschichte*, that the history of the revolutions which our
> planet has undergone, as exemplified by the Milky Way, should not be
> confused with the description of the earth and of the celestial
> spaces.... (quoted in Martin 2018: 203)
> 
> 
> 



A far more egregious translation of Humboldt's works is Sidney
Thrasher's 1856 *The Island of Cuba, by Alexander
Humboldt*--a significantly censored version of
Humboldt's *Essai Politique sur l'ile de
Cuba*. Thrasher, an American who lived in Cuba for many years, was
of the view--along with President Polk--that Cuba should be
part of the United States. He was also pro-slavery. His edition of
Humboldt's work not only excluded the chapter on slavery, but
also included an essay by Thrasher, in which slavery is defended. Upon
reading an advance copy of Thrasher's translation,
Humboldt's was furious. In an open letter to a Berlin newspaper
published in July 1856, Humboldt complained that while the Spanish and
British translations of his work did not censor him, the American
translation did. He adds that the censored portions of the work are
the ones to which he attaches greatest significance. This open letter
was quickly translated into English and published in the *New York
Times*, the New York *Tribune* and the New York
*Herald* (Foner 1983). As Laura Dassow Walls observes, Humboldt
was aware that Americans would read his letter, and took the
opportunity to summarize his main arguments in it (Walls 2009).


## 3. Methodology



In *Kosmos*, Humboldt refers to Schelling's dynamic
account of nature--of nature not as a set of finished and fixed
products, but as productivity--as an inspiration for his own
work. "To the enthusiastic researcher", Humboldt writes
citing Schelling, nature appears as "the holy primordial power
[*Urkraft*] of the world, which brings forth all things from
itself..." (*Kosmos* 1: 25; CO 1: 55; see also
*Kosmos* 1: 38). This reiterates earlier expressions of
enthusiasm toward Schelling's *Naturphilosophie* (Werner
2000; Pinsdorf 2020). In a letter from January 1805, Humboldt
describes Schelling's *Naturphilosophie* as having
brought about "a revolution" in the empirical
sciences--a revolution which, Humboldt continues, has ushered in
"one of the most beautiful periods in these crazy times"
(Fuhrmans 1975: 180). A year later, in the introduction to *Ideen
zu einer Geographie der Pflanzen,* Humboldt writes, 



> 
> 
> I am not wholly unfamiliar with Schelling's system, and far from
> the view that the true nature-philosophical system can be destructive
> for the advance of empirical science. (DA 1: 45)
> 
> 
> 



These statements can be regarded as an indication of Humboldt's
openness to certain forms of idealism (Pinsdorf 2020). But Humboldt
was also clear that his own methodology differed from that of the
idealists--whether Schelling, Hegel, or Kant--in that he did
not seek to "construct" nature on the basis of an a priori
principle. As he elaborates in the Introduction to *Kosmos*,
his is not a "rational science of nature", which aims to
"derive" nature from "a few rational
principles". And in a letter to his friend Varnhagen, Humboldt
complains about speculative philosophies of nature, writing that it is
like "a chemistry, in which one cannot wet his hands"
(BVE: 90).



Humboldt, however, also distinguishes his methodology from what he
calls "a raw and incomplete empiricism". While the
idealist position remains one-sidedly abstract and empirically
deficient, the empiricist position, he maintains, fails to deliver any
insight, or discern necessity (*Kosmos* 1: 13; CO 1: 38). In
contrast to both, Humboldt describes his approach as a "thinking
observation [*denkende Betrachtung*]", which involves




> 
> 
> a meaningful ordering [*sinnvolle Anordnung*]of the appearances
> of nature ... [that is] deeply penetrated with the belief in an
> ancient internal necessity [*eine alte innere Notwendigkeit*]
> .... (*Kosmos* 1: 22; CO 1: 50)
> 
> 
> 



Humboldt's methodology bears a clear affinity to the approach
that Schiller dubbed "rational empiricism" and which he
identified with Goethe's methodology. In fact, in E. C.
Otte's English translation of *Kosmos*,
Humboldt's approach is described as a form of "rational
empiricism" (CO 1, 39). Furthermore, scholars have noted,
Humboldt's notion of "thinking observation" echoes
Goethe's idea of "intuitive judgment" and his
"gentle empiricism [*zarte Empirie*]" (Bohme
2016; Millan 2011; Nassar 2022). Indeed, Humboldt himself
acknowledged his deep debt to Goethe's methodology, in a letter
to Caroline von Wolzogen from May 1806. It was Goethe's
"views of nature [*Ansichten der Natur*]", he
relates to Wolzogen, that transformed his own approach and most
influenced his observations in South America. By working alongside
Goethe, Humboldt continues, he was "granted new organs [*mit
neuen Organen ausgerustet*]" of perception, through
which he was able to discern relations and connections between the
most varied living and non-living beings (AML: 180).



Like Goethe, Humboldt's form of empiricism aims to grasp the
phenomenon and, as Goethe puts it, "remain" with it. This
means resisting the move to abstraction, and locating
necessity--meaning, order--in the phenomenon itself. It also
means, as Goethe explains, that the knower must become "flexible
and plastic" like the natural phenomena (MA 12: 13).



To achieve these ends, Goethe developed the notion of
metamorphosis--which aims to describe the transforming forms of
living beings, and discern how these forms are meaningfully (rather
than contingently or randomly) related to one another. In
*Kosmos* Humboldt maintains that Goethe's greatest
contribution to science amounts to the "solution" he
offered to the "problem of metamorphosis". This solution,
he continues, is nothing other than the notion of "an ideal form
that corresponds to certain fundamental types [*auf gewisse
Grundtypen entspricht*]" (*Kosmos* 1: 22; CO 1:
41).



As Humboldt explains in the remarks preceding his mention of Goethe,
the "problem of metamorphosis" has to do with the dual
difficulties of the proliferation of organic forms (the infinite
diversity of nature) and the relation between the currently existing
organic forms and those long extinct. These two difficulties map onto
the ancient problem of the one and the many--of discerning unity,
relation, connection, in diversity. It is a problem that many had
tried to resolve. But, according to Humboldt, it was Goethe and his
notion of metamorphosis that offered a solution.



For Goethe, the study of metamorphosis involves discerning how the
parts that make up a living being (e.g., a plant) transform in
relation to one another and their larger context (the plant, and also
their surrounding). This involves a focus on *form*--on
the leaf form, for instance--and seeing how this form
*reappears* differently at various stages of the plant's
development (e.g., how the leaf form is reiterated in the petal, or
how the congregating tendency of the cotyledons reappears in the calyx
and again in the corolla). This allows the observer to discern unity
(continuity, relation) *in and through* the transforming forms.




While for Goethe metamorphosis primarily (though not exclusively)
describes the relations between the various parts of a living being
(e.g., the parts of a plant), for Humboldt the concept was extended to
describe the ways in which the same "fundamental forms
[*Urformen*]" reappear across the earth (DA 1: 53; EGP:
67; translation altered). Like Herder before him, Humboldt's aim
was not simply to discern necessity in the structure of individual
beings, but also in the *relations* between beings--and
between beings and their contexts.



Humboldt introduces the idea of a "physiognomy of nature"
to explicate his approach. Just as we discern a person's
character through their gestures, body language and expressions, so
the physiognomist of nature discerns the *character of a
landscape* through the expressions and gestures of plant and
animal life. Thus, the physiognomist of *plants* focuses on the
"form" of the plant--those aspect of a plant that
make the greatest impression on the viewer: whether it attains to
great heights (like palms) or twists and turns (like lianas), whether
its leaves are broad like those of the banana tree or narrow like
conifer needles. The emphasis is on visibility and expressiveness,
with the goal of discerning *reappearing forms* across regions
and in different contexts. By studying the *Urformen* of
plants, and discerning how they reappear across regions, Humboldt
elaborates, we begin to develop a physiognomy of nature--that is,
an understanding of the environments, in which the plants grow. In
this way, we begin to grasp where and when plants appear, how they
influence their contexts and how their context influences them. This,
Humboldt contends, is the goal of the student of nature--and
forms the foundations of the geography of plants and bio-geography more
generally.



The emphasis on visibility, expressiveness, and remaining with the
empirical phenomenon in order to discern meaning and necessity
therein, clearly underpins Humboldt's philosophy of nature. But
it also underpins his philosophy of culture, widely construed.


## 4. The Philosophy of Nature


### 4.1 Ecology



Although it was Ernst Haeckel who coined the term "ecology
[*Oecologie*]" some seven years after Humboldt's
death, it was Humboldt's way of thinking and his understanding
of the natural world that made Haeckel's coinage of the term
possible. In fact, some scholars (Pausas & Bond 2019) have argued
that Haeckel had Humboldt in mind when he wrote that 



> 
>  by ecology, we understand the whole science of the relationships
> between organisms and their surrounding external world, which we could
> count as their "conditions of existence" in a wider sense.
> (Haeckel 1866 (Volume 2), 286, translation by author) 
> 
> 
> 



Thus, while Haeckel gave us the term *ecology*, it was Humboldt
who elaborated the idea of nature as a "household (oikos)"
in which living beings mutually influence and support one another
(*Kosmos* 1: 33 n. 27; CO 1: 69n).



Humboldt's first concrete ecological observations have been
traced back to his research at Lake Valencia (Lake Tacarigua) in
present-day Venezuela. Humboldt and Bonpland arrived in Lake Valencia
in March 1800. In contrast to their expectations, they encountered a
region suffering from drought. Through conversations with Indigenous
locals, Creole farmers and his own investigations, Humboldt came to a
surprising conclusion: the felling of trees, and the replacement of
forests by farms, had fundamentally transformed the climate and soil.
What was once a verdant region, with regular rain, had become a
desert. The trees, Humboldt realized, were crucial to maintaining the
integrity of the soil and bringing the rain. While a number of
thinkers before Humboldt--including Buffon, Kant and
Herder--had acknowledged the influence of the environment on
living beings, none had realized that the influence was mutual. Living
beings transform their environment just as they are transformed by it.
The trees determine the soil and the seasons, as much as they are
determined by them. Accordingly, the felling of the trees
fundamentally altered both. This is how Humboldt put it: 



> 
> 
> When forests are destroyed ... as they are everywhere in America
> by the European colonists, the springs ... dry up, or become less
> abundant. The beds of the rivers, remaining dry during a part of the
> year, become torrents whenever heavy rain falls on the heights. With
> the disappearance of sward and moss from the sides of the mountains,
> the waters falling in rain are no longer impeded in their course: and,
> during heavy showers, instead of slowly augmenting the level of the
> rivers by progressive filtrations, they furrow the sides of the hills,
> bear down the loosened soil, and form those sudden inundations that
> devastate the country. And so it results that the destruction of the
> forests, the want of permanent springs, and the existence of torrents
> are three phenomena closely connected to one another. (*Voyage*
> 2: 71; PN 4: 143-4; translation altered)
> 
> 
> 



Humboldt's statement, which had a profound impact on
environmental policy across the world (Grove 1990; Sachs 2004), points
to two fundamental (but at that point hardly recognized) facts: the
influence of trees (forests) on the environment and the influence of
human beings on the environment. The implication is that environments
are not stable backdrops of animal and human activity, but dynamic
entities, themselves the outcome of ongoing activity, transformation,
and collaboration.


### 4.2 The Physiognomy of Plants and the Physiognomy of Nature



Humboldt first introduced the notion of a physiognomy of nature in a
lecture delivered at the Prussian Academy of the Sciences in Berlin in
January 1805. Titled "*Ideen zu einer Physiognomik der
Gewachse* [Ideas for a Physiognomy of Plants]", the
lecture was later published in the first edition of *Ansichten der
Natur.* Its aim is to introduce Humboldt's audience to a new
way of looking at the natural world: physiognomy. 



Humboldt is clear that the work of the physiognomist of nature
contrasts with that of the botanist, who generally focuses on small,
almost hidden parts of the plant--the sexual organs or, at times,
the fruit. This goes hand in hand with the fact that the physiognomist
aims to discern the "fundamental forms" of plants. These
forms do not align with taxonomic categories.



Though Humboldt offers different fundamental forms in his writings (at
times adding, at times subtracting a form), he is clear that his list
is incomplete, given that it is based on his knowledge and research,
and that new plants will be discovered and perhaps also new forms.
When he distinguishes a form, Humboldt describes both its individual
characteristics--detailing, for instance, the shape of its
leaves, its usual size (height and width), its overall
gesture--and its growth patterns--where and when it grows,
under which conditions, next to which other plants, and so on.



By focusing on forms, Humboldt recognizes that certain plant
forms--whether tall grasses, or conifers, myrtles, or
mosses--reappear across the earth. This leads him to conclude
that there are fundamental forms which are "repeated" or
"replaced", even though they are "separated by
oceans or broad expanses of land" (DA 5: 266; VN: 219).
Humboldt's insight paved the way for Carl Troll's later
research on "convergent evolution" (Beck 1989:
266-7; Troll 1959). It also allowed Humboldt to discern a deep
connection between plants and their contexts: certain forms only
appear next to certain neighbors, while others only appear at certain
altitudes, and so on. Humboldt was not, however, an environmental
determinist. For, he emphasized, plant forms *persist* across
the earth, and although they are sensitive to their contexts, they are
not entirely determined by them. The form of the willow, for instance,
persists despite the fact that a willow growing on a windy and cold
mountainside will never achieve the shape and size of a willow growing
near a river (DA 5: 287; VN: 234). 


### 4.3 The Trees *and* the Forest



To elucidate the task of the physiognomist of nature, Humboldt looks
to the landscape painter. Like the landscape painter, the
physiognomist is interested in the overall impression that a landscape
makes--in those aspects, which give the landscape its unique
character. Furthermore, in contrast to a botanist, who aims to
categorize, distinguish, and separate plants, the physiognomist, like
the landscape painter, binds them together. This means that the
physiognomist's aims is not to focus on separating trees or
distinguishing species, but rather seeing trees in *relation to one
another,* seeing them *as members of* a forest, and seeing
the forest *in them.*



To give his audience a concrete sense of what he means, Humboldt
considers the diverging ways that a painter and a botanist treat leafy
hardwoods. While the botanist distinguishes different hardwoods (oak,
beech, walnut), the landscape painter allows them, as Humboldt puts
it, "to run one into the other", portraying them as
members of a forest (DA 5: 184; VN: 162). This is because the painter
is interested in capturing the overall impression that hardwoods make
on the viewer--an impression that is connected to the fact that
different hardwoods grow in relation to one another and together form
a distinctive forest.



Just as a willow on the mountainside looks different to a willow by
the river, so also an oak (a hardwood) growing in a forest of
hardwoods looks different from a solitary oak on a hill. The crown of
a solitary oak spreads out in all directions, eventually achieving a
dome shape. By contrast, the forest oak develops a small crown, and
its growth is patterned on the growth of the other trees in the
forest. An oak in a hardwood forest is an expression not only of the
individual tree or the genus oak, but also of the forest itself. The
forest is not "outside" the individual oak tree, but
literally inscribed in it its very form.



The same, Humboldt maintains, holds for the forest. The *kind*
of forest it is--whether it is cool and humid, or temperate and
dry, whether its soil is nutrient rich or poor, and how much rain it
receives--depends on its particular trees. The forest
environment, in other words, is realized in and maintained through the
activities of its trees. The forest is an expression of its trees as
much as the trees are an expression of the forest.



By working with form, expression, and gesture, the landscape painter
captures this relationship, and thereby presents trees and forest,
organism and environment, as interdependent realities--as beings
that emerge with and through one another. Thus, by invoking the
landscape painter, Humboldt's goal was to introduce a new
approach to the study of nature--one that regards nature as an
ongoing and dynamic collaboration between beings that are internally
dependent on one another.



It was this ecological insight, and this way of observing nature, that
underpinned Humboldt's research at Lake Valencia. For what he
saw there was that the climate cannot exist without the trees, and the
trees cannot exist without this climate. This means that the one does
not pre-exist the other, because both--tree and
climate--mutually influence and determine one another.


## 5. Philosophy of Art



Humboldt is hardly known as a philosopher or historian of art and
aesthetics. Yet, the second volume of *Kosmos*offers a lengthy
exploration of the relationship between the history of art and the
history of science. As Humboldt explains in volume three of
*Kosmos*, while the first volume examines "the pure
objectiveness of external phenomena", in the second his aim is
to consider nature "as the reflection of the image impressed by
the senses upon the inner human being, that is, upon his ideas and
feelings" (*Kosmos* 3: 386; CO 3: 1; translation
altered). The goal, in other words, is to see nature *through*
human ideas and feelings *about* nature, which are most clearly
and eloquently expressed in art.



Though some scholars have expressed confusion about Humboldt's
sudden shift to art and feeling in this second volume (Dettelbach
1997), in light of Humboldt's use of the arts (e.g., landscape
painting), it is clear that, for Humboldt, art does not only carry
aesthetic value but also cognitive value. Indeed, Humboldt took issue
with philosophers who--like Edmund Burke and Kant--argued
that aesthetic experience and intellectual interest occupy two
different (and unrelated) spheres in the human mind (*Kosmos*
1: 18; CO 1: 40). As he saw it, aesthetic presentation has the
potential to transform the very way we know nature. By furnishing a
historical exposition of the relation between artistic expression and
empirical investigation, and showing how the arts aided in the
expansion of knowledge, Humboldt's goal is to furnish a
historical justification of this view.


### 5.1 Humboldt's History of Art and the Study of Nature



Humboldt begins volume two of *Kosmos*by drawing on
Schiller's distinction between "naive" and
"sentimental" poetry, as articulated in his 1795-6
work *Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung* [*On
Naive and Sentimental Poetry*]. Although Humboldt agrees with
Schiller's historicization of art as a development from a more
immediate or naive unity of humanity and nature to a more
abstracted and self-reflexive (sentimental) human consciousness, he is
aware of its limits. It only holds for European art, and says nothing
about the human relation to the natural world outside of Europe
(*Kosmos* 2: 191; CO 2: 21-22). Examining poetry from the
Hindu Vedas, for instance, Humboldt remarks on their vastly different
interest in nature, which contrasts not only to Greek and Roman
poetry, but also to Hebrew poetry. While the Greeks expressed
little--if any--interest in direct depictions of the natural
world, Humboldt notes that in certain Vedas, the "main
subject...is the veneration and praise of nature"
(*Kosmos* 2: 206; CO 2: 50). Accordingly, a more sensitive
approach to the history of art would also be comparative.



Humboldt goes on to distinguish crucial moments in the history of art
and situates them in their larger historic and geographic context. In
so doing, he connects transformations in artistic depictions of nature
to transformations in our knowledge about nature. Speaking of the
emergence of landscape painting in the seventeenth century, for
instance, he writes that landscape painting is indebted to the new
instruments and tools of observation that became available in the
seventeenth century, just as these instruments are themselves indebted
to discoveries in perspective in art in earlier periods
(*Kosmos* 2: 228; CO 2: 89). 


### 5.2 "Truth to Nature": The Epistemic Significance of Art



In addition to a historical account, Humboldt articulates the idea of
"truth to nature [*Naturwahrheit*]"
(*Kosmos* 2: 207; CO 2: 51) to describe art's potential
to present the natural world in a "living"
(*Kosmos* 2: 216-217; CO 2: 68) rather than
"dead" way (DA 5: 142; VN: 159; see also *Kosmos*
1: 55). This presentation, Humboldt emphasized, must be imbued with
aesthetic feeling--which includes the feeling of pleasure, but
also feelings of awe and wonder, fear and shock, loneliness, sadness,
the sense of constraint and bewilderment.



As Humboldt saw it, art had a twofold significance. On the one hand,
by presenting the natural world in an aesthetic way, art has the
potential to transport the reader or viewer to a place she may not
otherwise visit (DA 1: 61-62; EGP: 75). On the other hand, the
aesthetic presentation of nature can reveal the extent to which we are
ourselves part of nature, and can thus shift the way we think about
and engage with nature. Accordingly, an aesthetic presentation of
nature offers an alternative mode of knowledge--one that is not
objective, distanced, or pure, but embodied and embedded, and, in the
words of Caroline Schaumann "dirty" (Schaumann 2011).



Humboldt introduces the idea of "truth to nature" in his
examination of the poem "The Messenger of Clouds
[*Megaduta*]". Composed by the fourth-century Sanskrit
poet, Kalidasa, the poem, Humboldt writes, 



> 
> 
> describes with admirable truth to nature [*Naturwahrheit*] the
> joy which, after long drought, the first appearance of a rising cloud
> is hailed as the harbinger of the approaching season of rain.
> (*Kosmos* 2: 207; CO 2: 51) 
> 
> 
> 



What Humboldt describes as "truth to nature" is not only a
portrait of a natural event but also the "joy" associated
with it. To this he adds a reference to the Sanskrit scholar, Theodor
Goldstucker. According to Goldstucker, the poem depicts
"the influence of external nature on human feelings"
(*Kosmos* 2: 209; CO 2: 53).



Not all writing, Humboldt emphasizes, achieves "truth to
nature". He criticizes Buffon's works, for instance, on
account of their "style and rhetorical pomp", which
inspire a feeling of the "sublime" in the reader that has
less to do with what is presented, and more to do with Buffon's
style. By contrast, the works of Rousseau, Bernardin de St. Pierre,
and Chateaubriand express a "depth of feeling" through
"individualizing true depictions [*individualisirend
wahr*]" (*Kosmos* 2: 220; CO 2: 75-6).



In the works of these authors, the feelings depicted are inspired by
the landscape and thus speak *of* and *about* the
landscape. They are thus neither subjective and interior feelings
(having only to do with the specific individual experiencing them) nor
arbitrary (random associations, for instance). Rather, they reveal
something about the landscape. Furthermore, as feelings for the
landscape, they heighten one's interest in the landscape. They
draw the observer's attention to the landscape, leading her to
become aware of aspects of the landscape she may have otherwise
missed. 



Humboldt's notion of "truth to nature" involves a
form of presentation in which thinking and feeling mutually support
one another--where thinking is imbued by and anchored in feeling,
and feeling inspires thinking. Both feeling and thinking reflect and
refer to a natural landscape or a natural process and are connected to
careful observations. Yet, as feeling and thinking, they also belong
to a human subject. Thus, "truth to nature" occupies a
space between inner and outer, subjective and objective. It is truth
that emerges in the embodied encounter with a living world--and,
as Humboldt sees it, it is truth that has cognitive and moral value.
It can transform the way we think about nature and the way we relate
to nature.



While Humboldt described a number of works as achieving truth to
nature, the question remains as to whether Humboldt himself was
successful in realizing truth to nature in his own works. In other
words, do Humboldt's *Naturgemalde* achieve the
"dual direction" he set out for them?


## 6. *Naturgemalde*



Humboldt coined the term *Naturgemalde*to describe the
works of authors he regards as having achieved truth to nature, and
his own works, including the essays he published in *Ansichten der
Natur.* He also used it to translate the French *tableau*,
which he had originally applied to describe his drawing of Chimborazo.
In that context, and as noted above, *tableau* refers to two
different media--the plate and the text, each of which supports
and illuminates the other. The plate offers a visual presentation of a
particular landscape and its inhabitants through a cross-sectional
profile of the Andes from the Atlantic to the Pacific at the latitude
of Chimborazo. It also includes information about animals and plants
at different altitudes. The text provides further information about
the landscape, draws analogies, and makes connections more explicit.
The aim, Humboldt writes, is 



> 
> 
> to gather in one single tableau the sum of the physical phenomena
> present in equinoctial regions, from the sea level of the South Sea to
> the very highest peak of the Andes. 
> 
> 
> 



By integrating the two media, Humboldt's aim is to enliven
"both our imagination and our spirit at the same time",
and in this way "stimulate people to study" (DA 1: 71;
EGP: 79-80).



Similarly, Humboldt's essays employ different modes of
presentation--the personal, the scientific, the literary and the
philosophical--with the goal of, as he puts it,
"occupy[ing] the imagination and at the same time, through the
increase of knowledge, enrich[ing] life with ideas..." (DA
5: xi; VN: 27). In both instances, the outcome is a new genre, which
interweaves science and art, and draws on aesthetic pleasure and
experience to incite reflection and careful observation, and vice
versa.



Humboldt opens *Ansichten der Natur* with the essay that he
later described as his most "daring" (DA 5: 128; VN: 117).
Titled "*Uber die Steppen und Wusten*
[Concerning the Steppes and Deserts]", it begins by situating
the reader, imaginatively placing her in a particular spot: the foot
of a high granite mountain--or as Humboldt describes it, a
granite spine. Immediately, the reader is invited not only to
*picture* the mountain, but also to *stand* at its foot.
From there her gaze turns southward, and rests on "a broad,
immeasurable plain", the steppes or llanos. What the reader sees
is not a God's eye-view of the landscape, but the steppes as
they appear from a particular angle. This angle colors her impression.
The steppes *seem* to "climb and dwindle into the
horizon". Having walked to the steppes from the lush valleys of
Caracas, the reader is also struck by the sudden change in landscape
from the "luxuriant fullness of organic life" to
"the barren edge of a sparse and treeless desert..."
and feels astonished (DA 5: 3; VN: 29).



In this opening paragraph, Humboldt makes no mention of himself. The
reader presumes, however, that what is being described is the path
that Humboldt had trodden, and the view he had seen. However, by the
end of the paragraph, any evidence of Humboldt, the explorer,
disappears and in his place stands the "astonished
wanderer". That Humboldt invokes the astonished
wanderer--rather than himself--allows the reader to take on
the perspective of the wanderer, to imaginatively *become* the
wanderer. In turn, by appealing to all of the reader's senses,
her feelings and imagination, as well as her body, Humboldt's
essay invites the reader to imaginatively walk from the verdant
valleys to the strikingly barren steppes; to watch the clouds
thickening overhead, portending months of rain, and sense the
constriction in the atmosphere; to smell the oncoming deluge, and
observe with wonder the changed behavior of the animals. In reading
these descriptions, the reader does not only *think* about a
particular aspect of nature, nor does she simply *see* it from
a specific standpoint. She also *imagines* herself *in*
the landscape, experiencing it in an embodied and emotive way.



Interwoven with vivid descriptions of embodied experience are careful
observations and detailed measurements of various natural phenomena,
as well as comparative, historical and geographical analyses. The
technical details and scientific explanations are not separated from
the embodied experiences, but emerge from them. This is particularly
clear in Humboldt's description of an internal sense of
"constriction" in relation to a shift in atmospheric
pressure preceding an electric storm. In this passage, which Humboldt
includes in other works--and which is mentioned in reference
works on electrical
 storms[1]--he
 offers both a detailed account of the atmosphere prior to an
electrical storm, pointing to the various elements that contribute to
the physical transformations, and the experience of witnessing the
transformation in the atmosphere. Humboldt begins by taking note of
the low-hanging clouds, the narrowing of the horizon, the thickening
of the air, and the smothering heat and dust. He proceeds to describe
the experience of witnessing these events, highlighting the ways in
which the shifts in the atmosphere are connected to a shift in the
wanderer's mood. By the end of the analysis, Humboldt writes
that the wanderer experiences a sense of "constriction"
which, while felt *internally,* has its source in the
atmosphere itself, and is thus an expression of (a human way of
presenting) the atmospheric event. As Humboldt puts it, "It
constricts the steppe and the mood of the wanderer as well" (DA
5: 14; VN: 37).



Humboldt's detailed description of the shift in the atmosphere
allows the reader to imaginatively experience what it is like to stand
in the midst of an oncoming electrical storm. Thus, by the time that
the reader is *told* about the feeling of constriction, she is
already gripped by this feeling. In this way, the reader recognizes
that there is nothing random about the internally felt sense of
constriction: it is *inspired by* the natural process and
reveals something--via the medium of feeling--about it.



For this reason, critics have argued that Humboldt's description
of the electric storm realizes the goal he set out, achieving
"truth to nature" (Nassar 2022). While this passage is not
unique in Humboldt's writings, it is the most explicit and
concise demonstration of Humboldt's "dual
direction": it conveys aesthetic feeling *and* enriches
our understanding of a natural phenomenon--seamlessly moving from
one to the other.


## 7. Social and Political Thought



As Laura Dassow Walls has noted, Humboldt's political analysis
and critique of imperialism and slavery, "however valuable, did
not lie at the core of his thinking on race". This is because,
Walls explicates, Humboldt "thought of himself above all as a
natural scientist..." (Walls 2009: 181). Thus, despite his
ardent critique of slavery and of the colonial project more generally,
he did not articulate this critique in a systematic way, nor did he
write any one work that directly deals with political and social
questions. Instead, we find statements concerning slavery strewn
throughout his works, without a detailed analysis or critique of the
practice, or of the European treatment of Indigenous peoples.



While Humboldt may have not systematically addressed social and
political questions, it is clear that these questions were deeply
important to him. As he puts it in an 1858 letter to the German
intellectual Julius Frobel (1805-1893), the future of
American slavery is "nearer my heart" than the elevations
of mountains. In the same letter, Humboldt describes his *Essai
politique sur l'ile de Cuba* as a "book against
slavery", deploring the fact that while the book is widely
accessible in Madrid, it remains censored in the United States (Foner
1984: 23-24).



Humboldt's understanding of the idea of a "race" and
his critique of slavery were well-established prior to his arrival in
the Americas (*L'ile de Cuba* 1: 307; DA 3: 155; PN 7:
260). His view, which contrasts with Kant's but coheres with
Herder's and Forster's, was that there are no different
races, but, as he puts it in *Kosmos*, that all human beings
are of "one species", and all "are alike designed
for freedom" (*Kosmos* 1: 187; CO 1: 368). For this
reason, Humboldt criticizes those philosophers who used philosophical
means to support the idea that human beings belong to different and
unequal races, writing that 



> 
> 
> the very cheerless and in recent times too often discussed doctrine of
> unequal human rights to freedom, and of slavery as an institution in
> conformity with nature, is unhappily found most systematically
> developed in Aristotle's *Politica*. (*Kosmos* 1:
> 187 n. 442; CO 1: 368n)
> 
> 
> 



From this one might suspect that Humboldt's views on slavery and
his critique of the colonial social system may be connected to his
larger project: to his understanding of nature as an integrated whole,
to his view that nature and culture are interconnected, and to his
aesthetic approach to the study of both.



This is evident, for instance, in his caution towards ethnographic
research that is often hasty in drawing conclusions, and tends to
essentialize race without adequately recognizing differences
*within* cultures--or the *connections among*
cultures. Both differences within cultures and connections across
cultures are evident, Humboldt writes, as soon as one pays close
attention to languages, which reveals that 



> 
> 
> totally different linguistic families have been found to exist in one
> and the same race [and] the same idioms can be found among people of
> very different descent. (*Kosmos* 1: 187; CO 1: 368) 
> 
> 
> 



The diversity within languages, in other words, points to a diversity
within cultures--such that speaking of cultures as monolithic and
isolated entities, and, on that basis, essentializing and
hierarchizing cultures and races, is nothing other than a false
abstraction based on overhasty (or simply bad) research.



In the same volume in which Humboldt describes slavery as the greatest
evil humanity has wrought upon itself, he notes the significance not
only of our natural environment on our sensibility, but also of our
social-political environment, and the ways in which certain political
contexts can inhibit moral concerns. "In climates where slavery
exists", he writes, "the mind is familiarized with
suffering, and that instinct of pity is stifled which characterizes
and ennobles our nature" (PN 7: 464). Just as the natural
environment affects sensibility, so also does our social and political
environment. In a context where slavery is accepted and widely
practiced, Humboldt claims, moral instincts are disturbed and
suppressed. This is because, as Humboldt repeatedly argues in relation
to the natural environment, *how* one perceives and thinks
cannot be separated from the world of which one is part. Sensibility
and understanding are enmeshed in the world, even as they also
construct it. A world in which slavery is practiced is a world that
disturbs our moral compass.



Furthermore, by placing human cultures squarely within the natural
world, and showing how "nature" and "culture"
cannot be conceptually separated from one another, Humboldt arrives at
the conclusion that the destruction of nature will lead to the
destruction of culture. Though he notes that these effects are most
acutely felt by Indigenous cultures, he is clear that it is human
culture at large that will suffer from the destruction of nature.
Whether it is the mass deforestation connected to the Spanish desire
to transform the South American landscape to resemble "in every
way the soil of Castile, arid and devoid of vegetation", or the
thoughtless construction of new cities, dams and underground tunnels,
the destruction of nature has been catastrophic for all cultures
(*Nouvelle-Espagne* 2: 128-9; KNS 1: 328). Or, as he puts
it in *Voyage,*



> 
> 
> The changes which the destruction of forests, the clearing of plants
> and the cultivation of indigo have produced within half a
> century--in the quantity of water flowing in, on the one hand,
> and on the other, the evaporation from the soil and the dryness of the
> atmosphere--present causes sufficiently powerful to explain the
> successive diminution of the lake of Valencia. I am not of the opinion
> of a scientific traveller [M. Depons] (who was in these countries
> after I was there) "that to set the mind at rest, and for the
> honour of science [*l'honneur de la physique*]", a
> subterranean issue must be admitted. By felling the trees which cover
> the tops and the sides of mountains, men in every climate prepare at
> once two calamities for future generations: want of fuel and scarcity
> of water. (*Voyage* 2: 71-2; PN 4: 142-3;
> translation altered)
> 
> 
> 



In contrast to Depons, who claims that significant changes to the
natural landscape have nothing to do with the colonial project and
instead points to "subterranean issues", Humboldt
contends--some two-hundred years before the coinage of the term
Anthropocene--that the European transformation of the landscape
directly resulted in the decrease of Lake Valencia, and, as he
concludes with some horror, will result in further future calamities.



## 8. Controversies



Humboldt's cross-sectional profile of Chimborazo--the
*Tableau physique*--shows the zone occurrence of plant
life at different altitudes. It thus served as the foundation for
Humboldt's law of vegetational distribution, which claims that
changes in plants in relation to latitude match those by altitude.
Some have argued that Humboldt learned this practice of depicting
vegetation at different altitudes from the South American scientists
he met--in particular, the Colombian Francisco Jose de
Caldas (1768-1816).



Caldas joined Humboldt's party in 1801 for several weeks, and it
appears that this period was fruitful for Humboldt and Bonpland, as
well as for Caldas. From Humboldt and Bonpland, Caldas learned the
formal elements of botany (Appel 1994). Caldas, in turn, taught
Humboldt about the novel method he developed to measure air-pressure
in relation to vegetation, and it is likely that he also shared with
Humboldt maps he made in order to depict visually the distribution of
vegetation.



While Humboldt acknowledges Caldas's innovative method of
measuring air-pressure, he does not discuss Caldas's maps. This,
as some have contended, may have to do with Humboldt's desire to
present his own maps--in particular, the *Tableau
physique*--as entirely original (Serje 2005). Accordingly,
the question has arisen concerning Humboldt's originality. In
other words, the question, in Jorge Canizares-Esguerra's
words, is: "how derivative was Humboldt?"
(Canizares-Esguerra 2006). 



One answer to this question, given by Canizares-Esguerra,
considers the extent to which Caldas himself was original. For it
appears that Caldas' way of presenting the relation between
vegetation, climate, and altitude, and depicting it on maps, was a
widespread practice in late eighteenth-century South America,
particularly in the Andes, which were regarded as a
"microcosm" of the universe. The assumption was that
studying Andean vegetation in relation to latitude would yield
knowledge about other similar environments (Canizares-Esguerra
2006). Thus, while the fact that Humboldt does not acknowledge his
debts is problematic, these debts may not be specifically to
Caldas--but to South American researchers and mapmakers more
generally, whose practices most likely provided inspiration for
Humboldt's own. 



Another questionable aspect of Humboldt's thinking came to the
fore following the publication of Mary Louise Pratt's
influential study on imperialistic modes of knowing, seeing, and
presenting. As Pratt sees it, Humboldt's vision of South
America, as presented in *Ansichten der Natur,* problematically
erases the peoples living in South America by focusing entirely on a
presentation of nature. Accordingly, Pratt contends, Humboldt's
writing directly or indirectly supported an imperialist agenda of
*terra nullius*. Pratt writes: 



> 
> 
> Three images in particular, all canonized by Humboldt's
> *Views*, combined to form the standard metonymic presentation
> of the "new continent": superabundant tropical
> forests...snow-capped mountains...and vast interior plains.
> 
> 
> 
> 



To this she adds: 



> 
> 
> What is shared with scientific travel writing is the erasure of the
> human... The human inhabitants of the *Llanos* are absent.
> (Pratt 1992: 125) 
> 
> 
> 



Pratt's analysis has, however, come under criticism, above all
for its failure to consider Humboldt's other works. Most
relevant in this regard are the *Essai politique sur le royaume de
Nouvelle-Espagne,* which, as Nicolaas Rukpe notes, was the work
that brought Humboldt to prominence and made him a household name
(Rupke 1999), and the *Essai politique sur l'ile de
Cuba*. The latter includes a chapter on slavery, which details the
situation of slaves on Cuban plantations, and decries their treatment,
while the *Essai politique sur le royaume de Nouvelle-Espagne*
includes detailed descriptions of the cultures of the Indigenous
peoples of South America, and seeks to reconstruct these cultures
prior to contact. Humboldt's presentation of pre-contact
Indigenous Americans, as Lee Schweninger has shown, reveals them to be
deeply cultured, possessing a clear sense of their own history, with
sophisticated writing systems and arts comparable to the best European
works (Schweninger 2016). Or, in Humboldt's words, Indigenous
American pre-contact arts and writing systems "are strikingly
similar to many monuments of the most civilized nations"
(*Nouvelle-Espagne* 1: 82; KNS 1: 235).



Furthermore, while Pratt is right to note that *Ansichten der
Natur* does not offer a detailed examination of the human
inhabitants, strewn throughout the text are remarks that--like
the one above--emphasize the creativity of Indigenous Americans
and compare their cultures favorably to European culture (Schweninger
2016).


## 9. Conclusion: Humboldt's Influence



Humboldt is perhaps the most famous scientist of the nineteenth
century, and has been described as the second most famous person in
Europe after Napoleon. His Kosmos-lectures drew thousands of
Berliners, as well as international visitors, who had come especially
to listen to Humboldt. These lectures were decisive for the
popularization of science, as was *Kosmos*, the first volume of
which (over 1000 pages long) sold out in two months and was translated
into almost every major language. But already earlier in the century
Humboldt had become a household name, thanks to his political works,
especially his essay on Cuba, and the *Relation Historique*
(*Personal Narrative* ), which had been a favorite by the likes
of Charles Darwin and Russell Alfred Wallace. 



Darwin, who described Humboldt as "the greatest traveler who
ever lived", boarded the *Beagle* in imitation of
Humboldt's travels to South America, and wrote in his diary that
it was Humboldt's *Personal Narrative* that he repeatedly
read while on the *Beagle* (Sloan 2009). Wallace, in turn,
wrote that among all the works he read, the one which most influenced
his future "were Humboldt's 'Personal Narrative of
Travels in South America'" (Wallace 1905: vol. 1, 232).
Indeed, Robert Richards has argued that the origins of the theory of
evolution can be traced back to Humboldt and the German romantic
tradition of which he was part (Richards 2002).



Humboldt's synthesizing approach to
science--"Humboldtian Science"--was, as Susan
Cannon put it, "the great new thing in professional science in
the first half of the 19th century" (Cannon 1978).
Humboldtian scientists travelled across the world, founding botanical
gardens or leading expeditions. In a speech commemorating Humboldt,
Ferdinand von Muller, founder of the Melbourne Botanical Gardens,
explains that for the Humboldtian scientist the most important goal is
not to perfect individual disciplines, but 



> 
> 
> to explore the inner connections of the sciences, to discover their
> reciprocal relations, and thereby to extend the whole empire of
> knowledge simultaneously. (Muller 1859: 20)
> 
> 
> 



US Congressman George Perkins Marsh read Humboldt's writings
before the US Congress in 1847, to provide evidence of the negative
impact of human activity on the environment, and three years later, in
1850, the US Commissioner of Patents Thomas Ewbank cited
Humboldt's observations at Lake Valencia in support of the
campaign for national parks. Yellowstone National Park was established
in 1872--the first in the world--though the campaign for
designating it a national park had begun in the 1860s (Lindstrom 2011:
836). In 1890 Yosemite became a national park, thanks to the efforts
of John Muir, who was also influenced by Humboldt--however, as
Aaron Sachs has noted, by the later stage of his life, Muir had moved
away from his Humbolditan origins, in that he came to prioritize
nature over the human cultures that inhabited it (Sachs 2004: 28; see
also Wulf 2015).



Humboldt's descriptions of Latin and South American landscapes
supported the development of national identities independent of Spain.
The Mexican historian and politician Lucas Ignacio Alaman y
Escalada invited Humboldt to work with him to bring about an
independent Mexico and regarded Humboldt's *Essai Politique
sur le royaume de la Nouvelle-Espagne* as furnishing a compelling
presentation of a liberal Mexican constitution (Ortega y Medina 1960:
25-26). Furthermore, and as Juan Ortega y Medina has argued,
Humboldt's work encouraged Mexican mapmakers and geographers to
draw maps of an independent Mexico (Ortega y Medina 1960). In turn, it
appears to have been after a meeting with Humboldt at a Paris salon in
1804 that Simon Bolivar was inspired to carry out an
independence movement in South America (Walls 2009: 17).
Bolivar led the Venezuelan revolution, and went on to lead
revolutions in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. 



Many artists, in particular visual artists, followed in
Humboldt's footsteps, travelling to South American to depict
visually and with exactness the landscape that Humboldt described in
his writings. These include the American Frederic Edwin Church, a
member of the Hudson River school of art (Harvey 2020), and the
German, Johann Moritz Rugendas. Rugendas met Humboldt in Paris in 1825
and in 1830 travelled to Mexico with Humboldt's assistance
(Bunkse 1981). This was followed by trips to Chile and Argentina.
Church, in turn, retraced Humboldt's footsteps in Ecuador and
Mexico (Baron 2005). Like Humboldt, Church and Rugendas--among
others--sought to combine precision with artistic feeling and
thereby realize Humboldt's ideal in the visual arts.



Humboldt's works and ideas were, however, also
censored--and not only in Sidney Thrasher's translation of
the Cuba essay. Humboldt tried to travel to India on a number of
occasions but was repeatedly denied permission on account of his
critique of colonialism (Grove 1995: 375). Furthermore, Americans who
respected Humboldt for his scientific works either ignored or
intentionally misrepresented his social and political views. In a
meeting held in Boston to honor Humboldt, the Harvard anthropologist,
Louis Aggasiz--who had argued in his 1850 essay, "The
Diversity of the Origin of the Human Race", that Africans are an
inferior race--provided an overview of Humboldt's ideas,
but failed to mention Humboldt's views on slavery. In a eulogy
following Humboldt's death, the American diplomat George
Bancroft falsely claimed that Humboldt was in favor of American
expansion into Cuba (Foner 1983). Nonetheless--and in large part
thanks to his open letter--Humboldt became known as an
abolitionist in the United States, and became an important voice
supporting the cause (Harvey 2020).



While Humboldt's influence on philosophers has been less
studied, it is evident that he played a significant role in the
development of American Transcendentalism. Emerson claims to have
understood nature's "unity in variety" by reading
Humboldt, while Thoreau began classifying New England's climate
zones using Humboldt's model (Walls 1995;
Worster 1977). Furthermore,
Humboldt's use of analogy seems to have influenced Charles
Sanders Pierce's semiotics (Walls 2009).



In Germany, Humboldt inspired Goethe, Schelling, and even Hegel.
Goethe describes Humboldt as 



> 
> 
> a fountain with many ducts, under which one need only hold a vessel
> and from which refreshing and inexhaustible streams are ever flowing.
> (MA 19: 168; dated 13 December 1826) 
> 
> 
> 



Importantly, Goethe felt encouraged by Humboldt's interest in
his work. It was, for instance, following the Humboldt brothers'
visit to Weimar 1795, during which Goethe had discussed his notion of
the animal "type [*Typus*]", that Goethe began to
write down his ideas. As Goethe reflects on this moment years later,
it was the Humboldt brothers' prodding that led him to pursue
the matter further (MA 12, 181).



Schelling, in turn, saw in Humboldt the exemplary natural
scientist--not despite his empirical research, but because of it
(Pinsdorf 2020). In fact, Schelling regarded Humboldt's research
as providing empirical foundations for *Naturphilosophie*, and
saw him as playing a crucial spiritual role in European culture. As he
put it in a letter to Humboldt composed soon after the latter's
return to Europe, Humboldt's work will "restore to the
human spirit its ancient possession, nature" (quoted in
Dettelbach 2001: 18). Hegel, though dismayed by Humboldt's
critical remarks on *Naturphilosophie* in his Kosmos lectures,
sought to determine--along Humboldtian lines--the
"geographic foundations of world history" (Bond 2014).



Furthermore, Humboldt paved new paths for the study and estimation of
Indigenous American culture and language--not only by helping his
brother acquire one of the largest collections of languages in Europe,
including the Kawi language, but also by inspiring US Treasury
Secretary, Albert Gallatin, to write his major work in American
ethnology, *A Synopsis of the Indian Tribes within the United
States* (1836) (Sachs 2004).



All in all, it is difficult to imagine the nineteenth century without
Humboldt, and the scientific, artistic, and philosophical traditions
that he founded and supported.