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COSMOS A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe Vol. 1
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452 pages, Paperback
First published March 12, 2002
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1056 people want to read
About the author
Alexander von Humboldt
1,077 books213 followersExpeditions of German scientist Baron Friedrich Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt to Latin America from 1799 to 1804 and to Siberia in 1829 greatly advanced the fields of ecology, geology, and meteorology.
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander Freiherr von Humboldt, a naturalist and the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher, and linguist, Wilhelm von Humboldt, explored. Quantitative botanical work of Humboldt founded biogeography.
Humboldt traveled extensively, explored, and described for the first time in a generally considered modern manner and point of view. He wrote up his description of the journey and published an enormous set of volumes over 21 years. He first proposed that forces once joined South America and Africa, the lands, bordering the Atlantic Ocean. Later, his five-volume work, Kosmos (1845), attempted to unify the various branches of knowledge. Humboldt supported, included, and worked with Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac, Justus von Liebig, Louis Agassiz, and Matthew Fontaine Maury and most notably conducted much of his exploration with Aimé Bonpland.
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander Freiherr von Humboldt, a naturalist and the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher, and linguist, Wilhelm von Humboldt, explored. Quantitative botanical work of Humboldt founded biogeography.
Humboldt traveled extensively, explored, and described for the first time in a generally considered modern manner and point of view. He wrote up his description of the journey and published an enormous set of volumes over 21 years. He first proposed that forces once joined South America and Africa, the lands, bordering the Atlantic Ocean. Later, his five-volume work, Kosmos (1845), attempted to unify the various branches of knowledge. Humboldt supported, included, and worked with Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac, Justus von Liebig, Louis Agassiz, and Matthew Fontaine Maury and most notably conducted much of his exploration with Aimé Bonpland.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
March 29, 2016
I fell in love with Alexander von Humboldt when I read Andrea Wulf's Invention of Nature and wanted to read him in his own words. I hope this translation was up to his standards. According to Wulf, he was very picky and quite annoyed by some of the translations of his books.
When Darwin read Cosmos, he said he was disappointed because von Humboldt included large chunks of information that were already in von Humboldt's Personal Narrative. I am about 1/8 of the way through Personal Narrative, Vol 1 and there is already some overlap, but I find Personal Narrative more relatable than Cosmos. If there are repeats of the science, I will be more than happy to read them again. Humboldt was an extraordinary scientists.
Thanks to Wulf, von Humboldt is now my very favorite scientist. However, his writing seems frantic. I wanted more facts about the world and larger universe. I understand that arguing philosophy was a mainstay, because in von Humboldt's day, you had to reason out what you could not substantiate with fact. However, the book was laden with a little too much philosophical conversation over observation and theory. I don't seem to mind his philosophical debates in Personal Narrative as much. They seem to fit there. Here in this book, somehow they felt in the way. Though, I am certain they were necessary at the time.
It is entirely amazing to me that someone who lived in the late 1700s and early 1800s could have understood the world in way that many scientists are only now beginning to understand. Humboldt's passion and drive produced a plethora of scientific information that traces how all things are driven by the same laws, the same forces. If we can recognize the patterns, we can understand how things are connected to each other. For Humboldt, you cannot understand any single piece of matter without understanding how it is connected to every other piece of matter. To help his reader realize the connections, Humboldt begins by describing the universe outside Earth; our solar system, the stars and planets within it; and then moves on to earth by describing its dynamic nature. He examines Earth's physical traits (and provides exact measurements of mountain- lots of measurements), volcanoes, patterns on rocks that have come up from Earth (I loved that part), the relationship between plants and other plants and between animals and plants, as well as their connection to human animals. Above all, Humboldt wanted his reader to understand that nature *is* beauty. Patterns not only help us understand the world, they actually define beauty.
When Darwin read Cosmos, he said he was disappointed because von Humboldt included large chunks of information that were already in von Humboldt's Personal Narrative. I am about 1/8 of the way through Personal Narrative, Vol 1 and there is already some overlap, but I find Personal Narrative more relatable than Cosmos. If there are repeats of the science, I will be more than happy to read them again. Humboldt was an extraordinary scientists.
Thanks to Wulf, von Humboldt is now my very favorite scientist. However, his writing seems frantic. I wanted more facts about the world and larger universe. I understand that arguing philosophy was a mainstay, because in von Humboldt's day, you had to reason out what you could not substantiate with fact. However, the book was laden with a little too much philosophical conversation over observation and theory. I don't seem to mind his philosophical debates in Personal Narrative as much. They seem to fit there. Here in this book, somehow they felt in the way. Though, I am certain they were necessary at the time.
It is entirely amazing to me that someone who lived in the late 1700s and early 1800s could have understood the world in way that many scientists are only now beginning to understand. Humboldt's passion and drive produced a plethora of scientific information that traces how all things are driven by the same laws, the same forces. If we can recognize the patterns, we can understand how things are connected to each other. For Humboldt, you cannot understand any single piece of matter without understanding how it is connected to every other piece of matter. To help his reader realize the connections, Humboldt begins by describing the universe outside Earth; our solar system, the stars and planets within it; and then moves on to earth by describing its dynamic nature. He examines Earth's physical traits (and provides exact measurements of mountain- lots of measurements), volcanoes, patterns on rocks that have come up from Earth (I loved that part), the relationship between plants and other plants and between animals and plants, as well as their connection to human animals. Above all, Humboldt wanted his reader to understand that nature *is* beauty. Patterns not only help us understand the world, they actually define beauty.
May 14, 2017
I have just recently become acquainted with the work of a remarkable man, Alexander von Humboldt, about whom I was almost completely ignorant; knowing only that the cold ocean current that runs north from Antarctica along the west coast of South America is named for him. My initial discovery came from Andrea Wulf's wonderful book The Invention of Nature - Alexander von Humboldt's New World previously reviewed. I was so impressed with his story, I wanted to read the man's words for myself.
Carl Sagan is associated with the word cosmos due to his outstanding book and TV series of the name from 1981 which were wildly popular. Others have used the word as a book title, something I discovered when I did a search here on Goodreads. Strangely, the book by Humboldt, also wildly popular when the first volume came out in 1859, was not found. This is a shame but understandable, demonstrating how popularity is by nature fleeting.
Because of the history of the word in print, I went to the library and looked at the introduction Sagan wrote for his Cosmos. I wondered if he had read Humboldt's book and had perhaps been inspired by it, a very reasonable conjecture, but I found no mention of the book or the man.
Whereas Sagan limited himself to astronomy, Humboldt took on everything from soils to volcanoes to the atmosphere to comets and the history of life on earth. This book, volume one, was added to with multiple volumes (all the rest out of print) because the man was so filled with information he wanted to impart that the flow could not be stopped short of his death.
It's difficult for us today to understand the time in which Humboldt lived, a time of great intellectual excitement over the new discoveries of science as the fog of theology was being gradually dispersed. The public traveled little and then not far. South America and Africa were wrapped in mystery for the English speaking world, while even western North America was only recently and partially illuminated by the travels of Lewis and Clark. Not only were lands being revealed but the processes of physics on the world were too.
Where does lava come from? How deep are the oceans? Why does the wind blow from a certain direction? How is it that this species of animal or plant in Peru looks so much like another in Poland? What causes the Northern Lights? What do the stars look like south of the equator? How far away are the moon and the stars? Everything is newly seen and answers, if not readily available will surely be found and soon! The man in the street cannot go and see for himself, but he can read avidly for hours on end sharing the fabulous adventures of one who has the driving curiosity, financial means and technical education (geology in particular) to give very plausible opinions informed by detailed experimentation. As technology awes you and me, this dramatic rising of the curtain on rational thought about the universe was the excitement of the 19th century.
Humboldt is an admirable man. He readily gives credit to the work of others that provide a basis for or parallel his own work. He has no time for idle speculation, at which he rightly says the ancient Greeks were masters. Instead, he wants proof. Lugging instruments along, he takes on mountains, deserts, jungle. Is the altitude getting too high to breathe? Push on! Are clouds of mosquitoes biting for days on end? Push on! Stop here there and everywhere to examine the leaf of a plant, the angle of a rock formation, or to measure air pressure with a barometer. Charles Darwin was awed by Humboldt's work and all but memorized his writings before his famous voyage aboard the Beagle.
There is a problem, however. I don't think the modern reader would enjoy this book. I came to it with a lifelong love of geography and astronomy. I found it fascinating because I could compare what Humboldt thought with what we now know from further research on the many subjects covered. He was on the right track far more often than not. One glaring oversight is his failure to consider the volume of ice as a factor in the level of the oceans, though admittedly the polar regions were still unknown. His prose is verbose in keeping with the time it was written and he goes on at great length, never letting go a subject until he has exhausted all he can say about it. 2017 readers are not patient particularly when they can say, "but we KNOW all of this stuff now." Humboldt uses many unfamiliar words. The typeface in this book is very tiny and too frequently flawed (letters clipped or broken) and some pages are almost entirely even tinier footnotes.
That said, let me close with an extended quote from Humboldt that knocked me over for the enlightened mind that it shows, the mind of a man that let reason transcend the time in which he lived, a time when racism was rampant and it was generally accepted that white Europeans, like Humboldt, were of the superior race. He writes...
While we maintain the unity of the human species, we at the same time repel the depressing assumption of superior and inferior races of men. There are nations more susceptible of cultivation, more highly civilized, more ennobled by mental cultivation than others, but none in themselves more noble than others. All are in like degree designed for freedom; a freedom which, in the ruder conditions of society, belongs only to the individual, but which, in social states enjoying political institutions appertains as a right to the whole body of the community. (then quoting his brother, Wilhelm Humboldt):
"If we would indicate an idea which throughout the whole course of history has ever more widely extended its empire, or which, more than any other, testifies to the much-contested and still more decidedly misunderstood perfectibility of the whole human race, it is that of establishing our common humanity - of striving to remove the barriers which prejudice and limited views of every kind have erected among men, and to treat all mankind, without reference to religion, nation or color, as one fraternity, one great community, fitted for the attainment of one object, the unrestrained development of the physical powers. This is the ultimate and highest aim of society, identical with the direction implanted by nature in the mind of man toward the indefinite extension of his existence.
He regards the earth in all its limits, and the heavens as far as the eye can scan their bright and starry depths, as inwardly his own, given to him as the objects of his contemplation, and as a field for the development of his energies. Even the child longs to pass the hills or the seas which enclose his narrow home; yet, when his eager steps have borne him beyond those limits, he pines, like the plant, for his native soil; and it is by this touching and beautiful attribute of man - this longing for that which is unknown, and this remembrance of that which is lost - that he is spared from an exclusive attachment to the present. Thus deeply rooted in the innermost nature of man, and even enjoined upon him by his highest tendencies, the recognition of the bond of humanity becomes one of the noblest leading principles in the history of mankind."
Carl Sagan is associated with the word cosmos due to his outstanding book and TV series of the name from 1981 which were wildly popular. Others have used the word as a book title, something I discovered when I did a search here on Goodreads. Strangely, the book by Humboldt, also wildly popular when the first volume came out in 1859, was not found. This is a shame but understandable, demonstrating how popularity is by nature fleeting.
Because of the history of the word in print, I went to the library and looked at the introduction Sagan wrote for his Cosmos. I wondered if he had read Humboldt's book and had perhaps been inspired by it, a very reasonable conjecture, but I found no mention of the book or the man.
Whereas Sagan limited himself to astronomy, Humboldt took on everything from soils to volcanoes to the atmosphere to comets and the history of life on earth. This book, volume one, was added to with multiple volumes (all the rest out of print) because the man was so filled with information he wanted to impart that the flow could not be stopped short of his death.
It's difficult for us today to understand the time in which Humboldt lived, a time of great intellectual excitement over the new discoveries of science as the fog of theology was being gradually dispersed. The public traveled little and then not far. South America and Africa were wrapped in mystery for the English speaking world, while even western North America was only recently and partially illuminated by the travels of Lewis and Clark. Not only were lands being revealed but the processes of physics on the world were too.
Where does lava come from? How deep are the oceans? Why does the wind blow from a certain direction? How is it that this species of animal or plant in Peru looks so much like another in Poland? What causes the Northern Lights? What do the stars look like south of the equator? How far away are the moon and the stars? Everything is newly seen and answers, if not readily available will surely be found and soon! The man in the street cannot go and see for himself, but he can read avidly for hours on end sharing the fabulous adventures of one who has the driving curiosity, financial means and technical education (geology in particular) to give very plausible opinions informed by detailed experimentation. As technology awes you and me, this dramatic rising of the curtain on rational thought about the universe was the excitement of the 19th century.
Humboldt is an admirable man. He readily gives credit to the work of others that provide a basis for or parallel his own work. He has no time for idle speculation, at which he rightly says the ancient Greeks were masters. Instead, he wants proof. Lugging instruments along, he takes on mountains, deserts, jungle. Is the altitude getting too high to breathe? Push on! Are clouds of mosquitoes biting for days on end? Push on! Stop here there and everywhere to examine the leaf of a plant, the angle of a rock formation, or to measure air pressure with a barometer. Charles Darwin was awed by Humboldt's work and all but memorized his writings before his famous voyage aboard the Beagle.
There is a problem, however. I don't think the modern reader would enjoy this book. I came to it with a lifelong love of geography and astronomy. I found it fascinating because I could compare what Humboldt thought with what we now know from further research on the many subjects covered. He was on the right track far more often than not. One glaring oversight is his failure to consider the volume of ice as a factor in the level of the oceans, though admittedly the polar regions were still unknown. His prose is verbose in keeping with the time it was written and he goes on at great length, never letting go a subject until he has exhausted all he can say about it. 2017 readers are not patient particularly when they can say, "but we KNOW all of this stuff now." Humboldt uses many unfamiliar words. The typeface in this book is very tiny and too frequently flawed (letters clipped or broken) and some pages are almost entirely even tinier footnotes.
That said, let me close with an extended quote from Humboldt that knocked me over for the enlightened mind that it shows, the mind of a man that let reason transcend the time in which he lived, a time when racism was rampant and it was generally accepted that white Europeans, like Humboldt, were of the superior race. He writes...
While we maintain the unity of the human species, we at the same time repel the depressing assumption of superior and inferior races of men. There are nations more susceptible of cultivation, more highly civilized, more ennobled by mental cultivation than others, but none in themselves more noble than others. All are in like degree designed for freedom; a freedom which, in the ruder conditions of society, belongs only to the individual, but which, in social states enjoying political institutions appertains as a right to the whole body of the community. (then quoting his brother, Wilhelm Humboldt):
"If we would indicate an idea which throughout the whole course of history has ever more widely extended its empire, or which, more than any other, testifies to the much-contested and still more decidedly misunderstood perfectibility of the whole human race, it is that of establishing our common humanity - of striving to remove the barriers which prejudice and limited views of every kind have erected among men, and to treat all mankind, without reference to religion, nation or color, as one fraternity, one great community, fitted for the attainment of one object, the unrestrained development of the physical powers. This is the ultimate and highest aim of society, identical with the direction implanted by nature in the mind of man toward the indefinite extension of his existence.
He regards the earth in all its limits, and the heavens as far as the eye can scan their bright and starry depths, as inwardly his own, given to him as the objects of his contemplation, and as a field for the development of his energies. Even the child longs to pass the hills or the seas which enclose his narrow home; yet, when his eager steps have borne him beyond those limits, he pines, like the plant, for his native soil; and it is by this touching and beautiful attribute of man - this longing for that which is unknown, and this remembrance of that which is lost - that he is spared from an exclusive attachment to the present. Thus deeply rooted in the innermost nature of man, and even enjoined upon him by his highest tendencies, the recognition of the bond of humanity becomes one of the noblest leading principles in the history of mankind."
Read
July 15, 2020Recently I learned that Alexander von Humboldt was one of the four marble statues atop the pilasters who graced the 1903 entrance view of Stanford university. As a geologist, he joined Louis Agassez, Benjamin Franklin, and Johannes Gutenberg. Today, thanks to Andrea Wulf's "The Invention of Nature," von Humboldt is now my most intriguing scientist. Humboldt's speaking is said to have been always hectic, his travels impetuous, his writing seems frantic.
Arguing philosophy was a mainstay in the early 1800's, because you had to reason out what you could not substantiate with fact. Will "Cosmos" be laden with a little too much philosophical conversation over observation and theory. I don't seem to mind his philosophical debates in his "Personal Narrative" and yet here in this book, somehow - well, let's find out. I am reading the 1851 Bohn edition of COSMOS online at Project Gutenberg, which is beautifully translated into English by Elise Otté (1818-1903) who was an Anglo-Danish linguist, scholar and historian.
HERE IS EXPLANATION OF HIS TITLE - COSMOS. "In this work I use the word Cosmos in conformity with the Hellenic usage of the term subsequently to the time of Pythagorus, and in accordance with the precise definition given of it in the treatise entitled 'De Mundo', which was long erroneously attributed to Aristotle. It is the assemblage of all things in heaven and earth, the universality of created things constituting the perceptible world. If scientific terms had not long been diverted from their true verbal signification, the present work ought rather to have borne the title of 'Cosmography', divided into 'Uranography' and 'Geography.' The Romans, in their feeble essays on philosophy, imitated the Greeks by applying to the universe the term 'mundus', which, in its primary meaning, indicated nothing more than ornament, and did not even imply order or regularity in the disposition of parts. It is probable that the introduction into the language of Latium of this technical term as an equivalent for Cosmos, in its double signification, is due to Ennius,* who was a follower of the Italian school, and the translator of the writings of Epicharmus and some of his pupils on the Pythagorean philosophy." Just the title explained. in such detail!
Here is the way Humboldt begins Cosmos. "REFLECTIONS ON THE DIFFERENT DEGREES OF ENJOYMENT PRESENTED TO US BY THE ASPECT OF NATURE AND THE STUDY OF HER LAWS.
In attempting, after a long absence from my native country, to develop the physical phenomena of the globe, and the simultaneous action of the forces that pervade the regions of space, I experience a two-fold cause of anxiety. The subject before me is so inexhaustible and so varied, that I fear either to fall into the superficiality of the encyclopedist, or to weary the mind of my reader by aphorisms consisting of mere generalities clothed in dry and dogmatical forms. Undue conciseness often checks the flow of expression, while diffuseness is alike detrimental to a clear and precise exposition of our ideas. Nature is a free domain, and the profound conceptions and enjoyments she awakens within us can only be vividly delineated by thought clothed in exalted forms of speech, worthy of bearing witness to the majesty and greatness of the creation." I am intrigued.
It is clear from the beginning that Humboldt is not only a scientist, explorer, geologist, but also an artist with words, a poet of nature. Example
"In reflecting upon the different degrees of enjoyment presented to us in the contemplation of nature, we find that the first place must be assigned to a sensation, which is wholly independent of an intimate acquaintance with the physical phenomena presented to our view, or of the peculiar character of the region surrounding us. In the uniform plain bounded only by a distant horizon, where the lowly heather, the cistus, or waving grasses, deck the soil; on the ocean shore, where the waves, softly rippling over the beach, leave a track, green with the weeds of the sea; every where, the mind is penetrated by the same sense of the grandeur and vast expanse of nature, revealing to the soul, by a mysterious inspiration, the existence of laws that regulate the forces of the universe. Mere communion with nature, mere contact with the free air, exercise a soothing yet strengthening influence on the wearied spirit, calm the storm of passion, and soften the heart when shaken by sorrow to its inmost depths."
The detail is overwhelming to me, footnotes often several times the length of the parent passage. Occasionally a short paragraph enlightens, here is one about EARTHQUAKES. "In the city of Quito, which lies at the foot of a still active volcano (the Rucu Pichincha), and at an elevation of 9540 feet above the level of the sea, which has beautiful cupolas, high vaulted churches, and massive edifices of several stories, I have often been astonished that the violence of the nocturnal earthquakes so seldom causes fissures in the walls, while in the Peruvian plains oscillations apparently much less intense injure low reed cottages. The natives, who have experienced many hundred earthquakes, believe that the difference depends less upon the length or shortness of the waves, and the slowness or rapidity of the horizontal vibrations. than on the uniformity of the motion in opposite directions." And later on earthquakes: "Animals, especially dogs and swine, participate in the same anxious disquietude; and even the crocodiles of the Orinoco, which are at other times as dumb as our little lizards, leave the trembling bed of the river, and run with loud cries into the adjacent forests."
A scientist today has written: "It is entirely amazing to me that someone who lived in the late 1700s and early 1800s could have understood the world in way that many scientists are only now beginning to understand. Humboldt's passion and drive produced a plethora of scientific information that traces how all things are driven by the same laws, the same forces. Humboldt writes, you cannot understand any single piece of matter without understanding how it is connected to every other piece of matter. To help his reader realize the connections, Humboldt begins by describing the universe outside Earth; our solar system, the stars and planets within it; and then moves on to earth by describing its dynamic nature. He examines Earth's physical traits (and provides exact measurements of mountain - lots of measurements), volcanoes, patterns on rocks that have come up from Earth, the relationship between plants and other plants and between animals and plants, as well as their connection to human animals. Above all, Humboldt wanted his reader to understand that nature *is* beauty. Patterns not only help us understand the world, they actually define beauty."
Arguing philosophy was a mainstay in the early 1800's, because you had to reason out what you could not substantiate with fact. Will "Cosmos" be laden with a little too much philosophical conversation over observation and theory. I don't seem to mind his philosophical debates in his "Personal Narrative" and yet here in this book, somehow - well, let's find out. I am reading the 1851 Bohn edition of COSMOS online at Project Gutenberg, which is beautifully translated into English by Elise Otté (1818-1903) who was an Anglo-Danish linguist, scholar and historian.
HERE IS EXPLANATION OF HIS TITLE - COSMOS. "In this work I use the word Cosmos in conformity with the Hellenic usage of the term subsequently to the time of Pythagorus, and in accordance with the precise definition given of it in the treatise entitled 'De Mundo', which was long erroneously attributed to Aristotle. It is the assemblage of all things in heaven and earth, the universality of created things constituting the perceptible world. If scientific terms had not long been diverted from their true verbal signification, the present work ought rather to have borne the title of 'Cosmography', divided into 'Uranography' and 'Geography.' The Romans, in their feeble essays on philosophy, imitated the Greeks by applying to the universe the term 'mundus', which, in its primary meaning, indicated nothing more than ornament, and did not even imply order or regularity in the disposition of parts. It is probable that the introduction into the language of Latium of this technical term as an equivalent for Cosmos, in its double signification, is due to Ennius,* who was a follower of the Italian school, and the translator of the writings of Epicharmus and some of his pupils on the Pythagorean philosophy." Just the title explained. in such detail!
Here is the way Humboldt begins Cosmos. "REFLECTIONS ON THE DIFFERENT DEGREES OF ENJOYMENT PRESENTED TO US BY THE ASPECT OF NATURE AND THE STUDY OF HER LAWS.
In attempting, after a long absence from my native country, to develop the physical phenomena of the globe, and the simultaneous action of the forces that pervade the regions of space, I experience a two-fold cause of anxiety. The subject before me is so inexhaustible and so varied, that I fear either to fall into the superficiality of the encyclopedist, or to weary the mind of my reader by aphorisms consisting of mere generalities clothed in dry and dogmatical forms. Undue conciseness often checks the flow of expression, while diffuseness is alike detrimental to a clear and precise exposition of our ideas. Nature is a free domain, and the profound conceptions and enjoyments she awakens within us can only be vividly delineated by thought clothed in exalted forms of speech, worthy of bearing witness to the majesty and greatness of the creation." I am intrigued.
It is clear from the beginning that Humboldt is not only a scientist, explorer, geologist, but also an artist with words, a poet of nature. Example
"In reflecting upon the different degrees of enjoyment presented to us in the contemplation of nature, we find that the first place must be assigned to a sensation, which is wholly independent of an intimate acquaintance with the physical phenomena presented to our view, or of the peculiar character of the region surrounding us. In the uniform plain bounded only by a distant horizon, where the lowly heather, the cistus, or waving grasses, deck the soil; on the ocean shore, where the waves, softly rippling over the beach, leave a track, green with the weeds of the sea; every where, the mind is penetrated by the same sense of the grandeur and vast expanse of nature, revealing to the soul, by a mysterious inspiration, the existence of laws that regulate the forces of the universe. Mere communion with nature, mere contact with the free air, exercise a soothing yet strengthening influence on the wearied spirit, calm the storm of passion, and soften the heart when shaken by sorrow to its inmost depths."
The detail is overwhelming to me, footnotes often several times the length of the parent passage. Occasionally a short paragraph enlightens, here is one about EARTHQUAKES. "In the city of Quito, which lies at the foot of a still active volcano (the Rucu Pichincha), and at an elevation of 9540 feet above the level of the sea, which has beautiful cupolas, high vaulted churches, and massive edifices of several stories, I have often been astonished that the violence of the nocturnal earthquakes so seldom causes fissures in the walls, while in the Peruvian plains oscillations apparently much less intense injure low reed cottages. The natives, who have experienced many hundred earthquakes, believe that the difference depends less upon the length or shortness of the waves, and the slowness or rapidity of the horizontal vibrations. than on the uniformity of the motion in opposite directions." And later on earthquakes: "Animals, especially dogs and swine, participate in the same anxious disquietude; and even the crocodiles of the Orinoco, which are at other times as dumb as our little lizards, leave the trembling bed of the river, and run with loud cries into the adjacent forests."
A scientist today has written: "It is entirely amazing to me that someone who lived in the late 1700s and early 1800s could have understood the world in way that many scientists are only now beginning to understand. Humboldt's passion and drive produced a plethora of scientific information that traces how all things are driven by the same laws, the same forces. Humboldt writes, you cannot understand any single piece of matter without understanding how it is connected to every other piece of matter. To help his reader realize the connections, Humboldt begins by describing the universe outside Earth; our solar system, the stars and planets within it; and then moves on to earth by describing its dynamic nature. He examines Earth's physical traits (and provides exact measurements of mountain - lots of measurements), volcanoes, patterns on rocks that have come up from Earth, the relationship between plants and other plants and between animals and plants, as well as their connection to human animals. Above all, Humboldt wanted his reader to understand that nature *is* beauty. Patterns not only help us understand the world, they actually define beauty."
May 26, 2018
Great read: part adventure, part philosophy. I like the way Humboldt worked to unite the arts and sciences into a unified understanding of the cosmos, a word Humboldt brought back from the Greek and infused with new meaning. Sad how little recognition Humboldt gets in the English speaking world. He was revered in his time by leading American thinkers from Jefferson to Thoreau. Some times for me the detail was a bit much and obviously the science is today a bit dated.
May 5, 2018
Aaron Sachs' book, The Humboldt Current was the book which introduced me to Alexander von Humboldt and put him into a larger context. Andrea Wulf's book on von Humboldt made him more tangible in a way. He became a person who had many interests and acted on all of them. He was a keen observer of all sorts of phenomena and he wanted to experience as much as he could On top of this, his writing (translated) made him accessible. Why have we not learned more from this man?
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April 23, 2024I was inspired to read Humboldt's work after reading Andrea Wulf's incredible book, The Invention of Nature.
This first volume of Cosmos looked at our solar system including comets and meteors, and the physical geography of our planet spanning our oceans, atmosphere, landmasses, meteorology, fossils, and flora, as well as an overview of humans, amongst numerous other subjects.
It clearly shows that Humboldt was a polymath with knowledge across many disciplines.
This first volume of Cosmos looked at our solar system including comets and meteors, and the physical geography of our planet spanning our oceans, atmosphere, landmasses, meteorology, fossils, and flora, as well as an overview of humans, amongst numerous other subjects.
It clearly shows that Humboldt was a polymath with knowledge across many disciplines.
October 19, 2020
"Taken in a still more limited sense, the word ['dasan'] appears to have signified among the Goths the terrestrial surface girded by seas ('marei, meri',) the 'merigard', literally, 'garden of seas.'"
December 13, 2019
Grundsätzlich ist es eher schwierig, das Buch zu bewerten. Es gibt - im Rahmen seiner Zeit - einen faszinierenden Überblick über das Universum, die Erde und Erdgeschichte und das Pflanzenwachstum in verschiedenen Klimazonen/Höhen.
Die verschiedenen Maßeinheiten, zumal in den meisten Fällen heutzutage ungebräuchlich, erschweren teilweise zwar den Lese-/Verständnisfluss, doch auch ohne genaue Umrechnung lassen sich v. Hulboldts Gedanken sehr gut nachvollziehen.
Am wohl interessantesten ist allerdings der letzte Teil, welche sich zumindest in den Grundzügen mit der Entstehung der Menschheit befasst und damit - wie von Darwin auch gesagt - einen elementaren Grundstein für Charles Darwins "Entstehung der Arten" legt.
Die verschiedenen Maßeinheiten, zumal in den meisten Fällen heutzutage ungebräuchlich, erschweren teilweise zwar den Lese-/Verständnisfluss, doch auch ohne genaue Umrechnung lassen sich v. Hulboldts Gedanken sehr gut nachvollziehen.
Am wohl interessantesten ist allerdings der letzte Teil, welche sich zumindest in den Grundzügen mit der Entstehung der Menschheit befasst und damit - wie von Darwin auch gesagt - einen elementaren Grundstein für Charles Darwins "Entstehung der Arten" legt.
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