Comments on: Book review – The Invention of Nature: The Adventures of Alexander Von Humboldt, the Lost Hero of Science

By: inquisitivebiologist

inquisitivebiologist — Sat, 15 Feb 2025 10:06:33 +0000

In reply to Michele.

Hi Michele, nice to hear you had the opportunity to discuss the book with her.

You are quite right to be left with that impression and it is something that came up explicitly when I read Daum’s biography. He puts it well in his final chapter: “Unlike Darwin, Humboldt did not come up with a clearly defined theory that fundamentally changed scientific and social thinking. Humboldt was neither a revolutionary in the scholarly
realm nor one in the political world. But he left us with myriad complex thoughts and incentives for further research.” (p. 151)

My take is that he inspired many people with his ideas and his way of viewing nature. Despite my criticism about Wulf’s book going on tangents, that is exactly what she shows so well by profiling so many other scholars, naturalists, and statesmen contemporary with him or coming after him (i.e. the chapters on Goethe, Bolívar, Jefferson, Darwin, Haeckel, Marsh, Muir, and Thoreau).

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By: Michele

Michele — Sat, 15 Feb 2025 03:43:47 +0000

I read ‘The Invention of Nature’ when it came out and had the opportunity to discuss it with Andrea Wulf during a Q&A session. Despite this, I remained unsure about Humboldt’s specific contributions and their impact. I must be missing something. Did you understand what Humboldt changed in the concept of nature and life, concepts that we often conflate today and see as a flat ontology?

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[…] More than once he acknowledges that he could say much more about certain scholars (e.g. Lamarck or Humboldt) but will focus on the bits relevant to high-level biological classification. Given that I just […]

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By: Book review – Alexander von Humboldt: A Concise Biography | The Inquisitive Biologist

Tue, 11 Feb 2025 19:38:32 +0000

[…] opportunity to fill this knowledge gap, so I sat down to compare it with Andrea Wulf’s The Invention of Nature, which received widespread acclaim ten years ago. Historian Andreas W. Daum shows that good things […]

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