Alexander's Amazing Adventures

 “The Invention of Nature: The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt, the Lost Hero of Science”

By Andrea Wulf. Published by John Murray, 2015

 Alexander van Humboldt, the subject of Andrea Wulf’s Costa Book Award winning biography, lived a remarkable & singular life.  Born into privilege in aristocratic Prussia in 1769, outstanding academically & from a young age a fixture in Berlin’s intellectual circles, the young Humboldt did not lack ambition:

“According to family lore, the Prussian King, Frederick the Great, asked the boy if he planned to conquer the world like his namesake, Alexander the Great. Young Humboldt’s answer was: “Yes, Sir, but with my head.”

Nevertheless, Humboldt was constrained by family obligations to a career as a civil servant in the Prussian Ministry of Mines until his mother’s death freed him from any such ties.  Along with a significant inheritance, this emancipation from expectation provided Humboldt with the opportunity to pursue his dreams: travel, exploration, scientific enquiry & investigations into the “Gordian knot of the processes of life.”

Humboldt’s journey to South America, and subsequent writings, became the foundation stone of his career & of this book.  Both a picturesque adventure tale & an extraordinary account of scientific discovery, Wulf’s retelling of the relationships, travails & encounters during the three years the Prussian spent in South America resound with awe & wonder for the natural world.  It is during this journey that Humboldt develops his concept of “Naturgemalde – an untranslatable term that can mean a ‘painting of nature’ but which also implies a sense of unity or wholeness.” This interconnectedness, & the importance of systems, networks and interrelationships to the “unity in variety” in nature mirror Humboldt’s own curiosity & desire for understanding beyond specialisms & academic frameworks.  “If nature was a web of life, he couldn’t look at it just as a botanist, a geologist or a zoologist.  He required information about everything and from everywhere.” Fittingly, to convey this approach Humboldt dispensed with tradition & produced a drawing, at first a sketch & later published as a three foot by two foot colour illustration with supporting information, pioneering the development of what we now know as infographics.  “Knowledge, Humboldt believed, had to be shared, exchanged and made available to everyone.”

The fame & adoration which followed Humboldt’s return to Europe & the publication of his accounts of scientific discovery are reflected in the fact that more things – rivers, mountains, ocean currents, cities, penguins – are named after him than anyone else. Later works, especially the five volume Cosmos, sold in enormous quantities & confirmed him as a pre-eminent thinker of the age.  Interestingly, Wulf devotes several later chapters of her book to the influence & continuation of Humboldt’s ideas in the careers of subsequent acolytes whose current fame exceeds that of their hero; including Charles Darwin, Henry David Thoreau, & John Muir.  In doing so, the author re-establishes Humboldt’s importance having been relegated (at least in the English-speaking world) to the margins of history.

The Invention of Nature is a biography on a grand canvas, reflecting the multifaceted career & interests of its subject.  Scientist, adventurer, author, data visualisation pioneer & mentor for subsequent scientists & writers amongst many other things, Humboldt was no mere cataloguer of nature.  He “was not so much interested in finding new isolated facts but in connecting them”, & in reconnecting her subject & his works into the grand sweep of the Enlightenment, Andrea Wulf’s vital book more than succeeds in her quest “to rediscover Humboldt, and to restore him to his rightful place in the pantheon”; it reclaims the importance of her subject’s work & its legacy far beyond the confines of the history of science.

Infinite Futures Books of the Year 2015

It's book review of the year time, & below are the inaugural & highly prestigious Infinite Futures Books of the Year awards for 2015.  Some of these have been read for reviewing purposes & some not, but the thing that unites all of these books is their focus on ideas & the possibilities for creative thinking.  Let me know what you think.

 

Finance

Andrew McNally Debtonator, published by Elliot & Thompson

There has been no shortage of books focussing on inequality, & what to do about it, in the years following the financial crisis.  Radical responses from within finance itself have been much scarcer; however, this short essay from an investment & stockbroking veteran provides just that.  McNally’s thesis is that debt, & the reliance on cheap credit, concentrates power & wealth within a small elite. The answer, perhaps, is to focus on equity –that is, shareholding, & thus investing in the long term success of ventures, rather than short term gain.  The author argues his case for shared risk & opportunity in order to challenge inequality, highlighting existing examples & avoiding the over complicated jargon of many finance books to make a compelling case for the virtues of equity & equality.

Full review here

Politics

Simon Parker Taking Power Back, published by Policy Press

Devolution seems to be the only game in town for English local government, & whether you trust the motives behind Whitehall’s embrace of local democracy or not, the reality of city mayors & combined authorities is upon us.  Simon Parker views the opportunity for devolution as a launch pad for something much broader & ambitious, namely Commonism: a new kind of society based around self-help, mutualism & community. Far from a utopian dreamland, the examples cited throughout Taking Power Back illustrate the potential for a genuine revolution in localism & how we as a society adapt to the challenges of the future.  A must read for anyone with an interest in how devolution might be made to work.

Full review here

 

Biography

Andrea Wulf, The Invention of Nature: The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt, published by John Murray

The Invention of Nature is a biography on a grand canvas, reflecting the multifaceted career & interests of its subject.  Scientist, adventurer, author, data visualisation pioneer & inspiration for Charles Darwin amongst many other things, Humboldt’s contemporary fame & renown in the 19^th Century are reflected in the fact that more things – rivers, mountains, ocean currents, cities, penguins – are named after him than anyone else. More than a mere cataloguer of nature, however, Humboldt “was not so much interested in finding new isolated facts but in connecting them.”  Andrea Wulf’s vital book reclaims the importance of her subject’s work & its legacy and influence far beyond the confines of the history of science.

I’ll be posting a full review of The Invention of Nature on this blog in due course.

 

Fiction

Tom McCarthy Remainder, published by Alma Books (2010)

Ok, so hardly a new book for 2015, as this novel was first published ten years ago.  However, McCarthy’s shortlisting for this year’s Man Booker Prize for his latest book Satin Island encouraged me to finally take this book off the “I’ll read it one day” pile & get on with it. I wish I’d not taken so long.  Remainder is an unsettling & darkly humorous novel exploring memory, trauma & a search for meaning as seen from the perspective of a narrator obsessed with trying to recreate, at first, seemingly mundane events. Aptly enough, the book is itself echoes & prefigures other works – some of David Foster Wallace’s short stories, Charlie Kaufman’s film Synecdoche, New York – whilst remaining entirely singular.  I’m looking forward to getting on with the rest of McCarthy’s back catalogue.

 

Something else

Darran Anderson, Imaginary Cities, published by Influx Press

Described on the back cover as a “work of creative non-fiction”, Imaginary Cities defies straightforward categorisation.  I eventually tracked my copy down in the Literary Theory section of a well-known bookshop, but this is hardly the dry & academic text that suggests.  Instead, this is a book brimming with ideas, quotations, allusions & illusions – from Conrad to Plato to Le Corbusier to Taxi Driver. If that sounds highfalutin or pretentious, think again.  “The idea of cities will exist as long as there is a mind left to imagine them”, Anderson concludes. This is an amalgam of the histories, philosophies & literatures of cities, real & imagined; a guidebook for the future.

Commons People

Review of Taking Power Back, by Simon Parker
Published by Policy Press, October 2015

 

There’s no doubting that when it comes to political fashion, devolution is one of this Parliament’s essential items.  Following the Scottish referendum, the much-vaunted “Northern Powerhouse” schemes & the introduction of the Cities & Local Government Devolution Bill, the recent deadline for local proposals to be submitted to DCLG saw over thirty detailed bids put forward.  Cities, regions, counties & as yet unnamed combinations of local areas in England are bidding to assume greater powers & responsibilities from Whitehall.  If the previous century did witness, as Taking Power Back suggests, Britain “arguably becom(ing) the most centralised country in the developed world”, then it would seem centralism’s reversal is en vogue for the 21^st century.

It is fair to say, however, that when it comes to devolution & the localist agenda, Simon Parker is no arriviste.  As the director of a local government think tank & frequent contributor to the debates surrounding public services & the state, Parker’s work has often been ahead of the game when analysing the challenges & prospects for local democracy.  With Taking Power Back, these experiences & the opportunities presented by the devolution zeitgeist are distilled into a prospectus for a radical shift in how & why government exists, & what might (at least in part) replace it.

The book includes an examination of shifts in the structures of government power, from pre-war municipal corporations via the centralisation of the post-war settlement, through to the ideological battlegrounds of the Thatcher era & the statism of the New Labour years.  The author contends that throughout these significant periods of government, the opportunities for decentralisation to more local pluralism in public services have either been squandered or purposely rejected.  “Britain’s centralism”, he writes, “is ultimately a result of political ideology and managerial convenience”.  The perverse outcomes arising from this centralist “hoarding” of power are vividly illustrated by Parker’s analysis of three pillars of the public sector; housing, skills & the NHS.  The latter, examined under the subtitle “Why we spend more on gastric bands than on losing weight”, exposes the absurdity of how little is spent on preventative healthcare in comparison to treating illness, a situation that may only change through redesigning the system so “local places and local people take a bigger role in healthcare”.

 

Taking Power Back is not merely a rage against the political machine, however, & moving beyond critique of the past and present, Parker illustrates his alternative view with some exemplars of the radical approaches witnessed in recent years – some of which may be well known or even fashionable: the story of Greater Manchester’s Combined Authority; Occupy Sandy in New York; citizen-led projects in Bologna.  But alongside these examples are equally compelling vignettes from less heralded sources: healthcare innovation in Greenwich; renewable energy in Woking; libraries in Colchester.  These may be less glamorous or publicised, but author’s knowledge & passion for these projects is evident, & alongside generation change & the parallel crises in trust with government and business, informs Parker’s idea of “the commons”:

“Localities are the engine rooms of prosperity and well-being, something that we all have a stake in but that none of us owns. That means that we all, as citizens and as businesses, have a role to play in looking after them.”

The commons includes community assets & cooperatives, but goes beyond the vagaries of the Big Society to a philosophy characterised by mutual relationships & is defined as “the combination of a resource, the social community that manages that resource & the rules & practices they use to do so”.  Taking Power Back argues that channelling these communal approaches & harnessing the opportunities for more local decision making offers the possibility of a new kind of society.

It’s important to state this is not an exercise in woolly-minded idealism, & many potential pitfalls are identified.  Centralists may be reluctant to let go of power; local leaders may succumb to parochialism; such a participatory democracy & society requires a rare level of engagement & leadership.  However, perhaps as a result of the current appetite for urban Mayors & the spotlight on the trailblazing example of Greater Manchester, there is little examination of how devolution might be adapted to suit the often complex social geography of more rural areas beyond the major conurbations. The big regional cities may be in the current vanguard of devolution, but non-urban areas are equally hungry for a greater say in their futures.

 

But Taking Power Back is not a manifesto for devolution or a political shopping list, & thus should not be criticised for failing to provide a blueprint for the future.  As the author points out, “we do not know how we get from peak state to peak commonism, or we would be doing it already.”  Rather, what his book does do is set out is a robust analysis of how we got to the current position, & more importantly a set of ideas for how change may be brought about.  & whilst there are plenty of big ideas in this text it is also a book with a big heart: its focus is on people & communities, not theory.  As Parker says, “change will not come from grand theoretical narratives”: it will come from the actions & commitment of ordinary people.  Self-help & mutual aid are as vital to commonism, & thus to devolution, as any legislation or policy change from above.  The key, Parker concludes, “is not to draw more lines between ‘them’ and ‘us’, but to radically expand our sense of what ‘us’ means, and then to rediscover what we can achieve together.” If the reality of devolution does reflect this pluralism & inclusivity then we may hope it's a style (& not a fashion) that’s here to stay.

Taking Power Back is published on 1st October.
An interview with the author will be on this blog soon.