By Andrea Wulf. Published by John Murray, 2015
“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.
