The Invention of Nature

The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World by Andrea Wulf

Historian Andrea Wulf documents the life of the Prussian naturalist, explorer and geographer Alexander von Humboldt.

The book follows Humboldt from his early childhood and his travels through Europe as a young man to his journey through Latin America and his return to Europe. Wulf makes the case that Humboldt synthesized knowledge from many different fields to form a vision of nature as one interconnected system, that would go on to influence scientists, activists and the public.   The book is divided into five sections with monochrome figures, maps and coloured plates.

Part 1. Departure: Emerging Ideas

Wulf describes Humboldt's childhood with his emotionally distant mother. As a child his interests in nature and travel were not taken seriously. His mother, on whom he was financially dependent, insisted he become a civil servant. As a young man, Humboldt became friends with Goethe and other German intellectuals. His mother's death allowed him the freedom and financial independence needed to journey to the new world.

Part 2 Arrival: Collecting Ideas

Humboldt arrives in Cuba with his companion Bonpland and begins his journey through Central and South America. He brought with him a plethora of scientific instruments. He chronicles his travels and the measurements he obtained using scientific instruments in his journals. Humboldt climbs the Chimborazo Volcano, which was then believed to be highest mountain in the world. The trip concludes with his visit to the United States where he visited the White House to discuss science and politics with Thomas Jefferson before returning to Europe.

Part 3 Return: Sorting Ideas

Humboldt returns to Europe where he is greeted as a celebrity. He lives as an expat in Paris for a seven months as he finds the city and its scientific culture more stimulating than that of Berlin. While in France, he meets a young Simon Bolivar, who is impressed with Humboldt's knowledge and passion for his home country of Venezuela, and they discuss South American politics. Humboldt returns to Prussia, to earn a salary in the King's court before returning to Paris. At this point he begins to work several manuscripts based on his travels. The books are widely read. As Bolivar begins to plan and execute Revolutions in South America, Humboldt publishes a series of books on the politics of Latin America that criticize colonialism.

Part 4 Influence: Spreading Ideas

Wulf discusses Humboldt's personal correspondence and influence on a young Charles Darwin. Darwin attributed the inspiration for his voyage on the Beagle to Humboldt. Humboldt's influence on the American poet and philosopher Henry David Thoreau is explored. Humboldt's magnum opus Cosmos, where he talks of the interconnections of the natural world, is discussed

Part 5 New Worlds: Evolving Ideas 
This section deals with the old age and death of Humboldt at the fantastic age of 89.  Chapters outline and discuss Humboldt's legacy viz a viz George Marsh, and Ernest Haeckel (a German biologist, naturalist, philosopher, physician, professor, marine biologist, and artist who discovered, described and named thousands of new species, mapped a genealogical tree relating all life forms, and coined many terms in biology, including anthropogeny, ecology, phylum, phylogeny, stem cell, and Protista. Haeckel promoted and popularised Charles Darwin's work in Germany).  A third chapter deals with John Muir, also known as "John of the Mountains" and "Father of the National Parks".  He was an influential Scottish-American naturalist, author, environmental philosopher, glaciologist and early advocate for the preservation of wilderness in the United States.

Epilogue:  Alexander von Humboldt has been largely forgotten in the English-speaking world.  He was one of the last polymaths and died at a time when scientific disciplines were hardening into tightly fenced and more specialised fields.   As scientists are trying to  understand and predict the global consequences of Climate Change, Humboldt's interdisciplinary approach to science and nature is more relevant than ever.

The Blurb:  Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) is the great lost scientist - more things are named after him than anyone else. There are towns, rivers, mountain ranges, the ocean current that runs along the South American coast, there's a penguin, a giant squid - even the Mare Humboldtianum on the moon.

His colourful adventures read like something out of a Boy's Own story: Humboldt explored deep into the rainforest, climbed the world's highest volcanoes and inspired princes and presidents, scientists and poets alike. Napoleon was jealous of him; Simon Bolívar's revolution was fuelled by his ideas; Darwin set sail on the Beagle because of Humboldt; and Jules Verne's Captain Nemo owned all his many books. He simply was, as one contemporary put it, 'the greatest man since the Deluge'.

Taking us on a fantastic voyage in his footsteps - racing across anthrax-infected Russia or mapping tropical rivers alive with crocodiles - Andrea Wulf shows why his life and ideas remain so important today. Humboldt predicted human-induced climate change as early as 1800, and The Invention of Nature traces his ideas as they go on to revolutionize and shape science, conservation, nature writing, politics, art and the theory of evolution. He wanted to know and understand everything and his way of thinking was so far ahead of his time that it's only coming into its own now. Alexander von Humboldt really did invent the way we see nature.

What I thought:  a reading of this biography gave me a synthesis of much that I learnt during my three year degree course in Geology and Zoology, which I read in the early 90s.  I loved every minute of study and read as widely as I could around the subject. Coming to university study I was as keen as mustard, I would sit in the lecture theatre like a large sheet of blotting paper.  During that interval I rejected fiction as far being too superficial when there was so much learning I needed to do.  Since I gained that degree (and the PhD after, which frankly was a slog) I have never looked back in terms of my respect for my mother planet Earth and all that lives thereon.  Earth is my goddess, her ways my religion.  Her restlessness brings our planet alive and nowhere has reinforced this more than when I made a trip to Iceland after graduating and saw geological processes in action - vulcanity, tectonic plate spreading and ocean formation, hot springs and the waxing and waning of glacial activity.  During a reading of Wulf's book so many familiar names crop up in the text, Goethe, Schiller, Charles Darwin, Charles Babbage - the polymath and mathematician, another mathematician Carl Gauss, Henry David Thoreau.  Humboldt travelled with explorer and botanist, Aime Bonpland.  He consorted with Simon Bolivar.  As I read Wulf's detailed and thoroughly researched account (with a comprehensive section of notes, by page number,  giving references to quotes in the text) I was reminded from time to time of one of my favourite quotations, this by Isaac Newton: "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants".  Humboldt and all those great men who were his associates, his thought-shapers, companions and adherents were giants, taking it in turn to stand on each other's shoulders, the better to consolidate their own discoveries and ideas.