Humboldt's Cosmos

My ongoing appreciation of classic books of science includes this set, an eagerly awaited, best-selling work of its time.

Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was the preeminent scientist and explorer of his day. Although forgotten in popular consciousness for a long time, he has been the subject of recent, appreciative books by Laura Dassow Walls, Aaron Sachs, and Andrea Wulf. (I’m leading a book discussion on Wulf’s book next month.) Humboldt influenced Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace, John Muir, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Frederic Edwin Church, and many other artists, even Edgar Allan Poe, and he visited dignitaries like Thomas Jefferson and Simon Bolivar. He traveled extensively through Latin America and Asia; his 1804 travel book about South America accompanied Darwin on his own voyage.

Humboldt reclaimed the ancient Greek word kosmos and adapted it for his view of the harmony of the earth and the heavens. He combined a careful scientific method with an aesthetic appreciation of beauty that can together lead to a wholistic, contemplative view of life. One reason, I think, for recent interest in Humboldt is the fact that he predicted human-caused climate change.


His Kosmos – Entwurf einer physischen Weltbeschreibung (Cosmos: A Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe) was based on his lectures at the University of Berlin and were published in 1845 through 1862, the fifth and last volume a posthumous completion of his notes. It has been translated into several languages. Cosmos was nothing short of a comprehensive vision of the universe via science, history, art, philosophy, and other subjects.  The first volume surveys not only the physical phenomena of the earth—flora and fauna, volcanoes, climate, geography, etc.—but also outer space. In the next volume, he considers how nature has been perceived in different period of history and through the work of artists. Volumes 3 through 5 go into additional detail about geology, geography, and astronomy.

Here is an article by Laura Dassow Walls, “Introducting Humboldt’s Cosmos.”
https://www.humansandnature.org/introducing-humboldt-s-cosmos

Here is an article about Humboldt’s influence on Darwin:
https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/alexander-von-humboldt