The Invention of Nature: Alexander Von Humboldt's New World
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Published: 2015
Place of publication: New York, USA
Language: eng
Format: eBook
Number of pages: 473
ISBN-13: 9780385350679
Description: From the Prologue...

When nature is perceived as a web, its vulnerability also becomes obvious. Everything hangs together. If one thread is pulled, the whole tapestry may unravel. After he saw the devastating environmental effects of colonial plantations at Lake Valencia in Venezuela in 1800, Humboldt became the first scientist to talk about harmful human-induced climate change. Deforestation there had made the land barren, water levels of the lake were falling and with the disappearance of brushwood torrential rains had washed away the soils on the surrounding mountain slopes. Humboldt was the first to explain the forest's ability to enrich the atmosphere with moisture and its cooling effect, as well as its importance for water retention and protection against soil erosion. He warned that humans were meddling with the climate and that this could have an unforeseeable impact on ‘future generations'.

The Invention of Nature traces the invisible threads that connect us to this extraordinary man. Humboldt influenced many of the greatest thinkers, artists and scientists of his day. Thomas Jefferson called him ‘one of the greatest ornaments of the age'. Charles Darwin wrote that ‘nothing ever stimulated my zeal so much as reading Humboldt's Personal Narrative,' saying that he would not have boarded the Beagle, nor conceived of the Origin of Species, without Humboldt. William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge both incorporated Humboldt's concept of nature into their poems. And America's most revered nature writer, Henry David Thoreau, found in Humboldt's books an answer to his dilemma on how to be a poet and a naturalist – Walden would have been a very different book without Humboldt. Simón Bolívar, the revolutionary who liberated South America from Spanish colonial rule, called Humboldt the ‘discoverer of the New World' and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany's greatest poet, declared that spending a few days with Humboldt was like ‘having lived several years'.
Table of contents: label: Maps; label: Author's Note; label: Prologue; label: PART I
title: DEPARTURE: EMERGING IDEAS; label: 1
title: Beginnings; label: 2
title: Imagination and Nature: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Humboldt; label: 3
title: In Search of a Destination; label: PART II
title: ARRIVAL: COLLECTING IDEAS; label: 4
title: South America; label: 5
title: The Llanos and the Orinoco; label: 6
title: Across the Andes; label: 7
title: Chimborazo; label: 8
title: Politics and Nature: Thomas Jefferson and Humboldt; label: PART III
title: RETURN: SORTING IDEAS; label: 9
title: Europe; label: 10
title: Berlin; label: 11
title: Paris; label: 12
title: Revolutions and Nature: Simón Bolívar and Humboldt; label: 13
title: London; label: 14
title: Going in Circles: Maladie Centrifuge; label: PART IV
title: INFLUENCE: SPREADING IDEAS; label: 15
title: Return to Berlin; label: 16
title: Russia; label: 17
title: Evolution and Nature: Charles Darwin and Humboldt; label: 18
title: Humboldt's Cosmos; label: 19
title: Poetry, Science and Nature: Henry David Thoreau and Humboldt; label: PART V
title: NEW WORLDS: EVOLVING IDEAS; label: 20
title: The Greatest Man Since the Deluge; label: 21
title: Man and Nature: George Perkins Marsh and Humboldt; label: 22
title: Art, Ecology and Nature: Ernst Haeckel and Humboldt; label: 23
title: Preservation and Nature: John Muir and Humboldt; label: Epilogue; label: Acknowledgements; label: Illustration Credits; label: Notes; label: A Note on Humboldt's Publications Sources and Bibliography; label: Index; label: Illustrations