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Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859): Connecting geodiversity, biodiversity and society

2019; Wiley; Volume: 46; Issue: 8 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/jbi.13500

1365-2699

Sietze J. Norder,

Indigenous Studies and Ecology

The Invention of Nature, Andrea Wulf, Alfred A. Knopf. 15 September 2015. €14.00/$17.00/£11.00, 496 pp. ISBN10: 038535066X/ISBN13: 9780385350662. http://www.andreawulf.com/about-the-invention-of-nature.html The year 2019 marks the 250th anniversary of the birthday of the naturalist, biogeographer and explorer Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859). His 100th birthday in 1869 was celebrated across the world: there were festivities in cities throughout Europe, Africa, Australia and the Americas. On the opening pages of The Invention of Nature, a comprehensive biography about Humboldt's life, Andrea Wulf writes that there were public talks in Buenos Aires and Melbourne, fireworks in Alexandria, festivities in Moscow and New York City, and concerts in San Francisco and Philadelphia. The invention of Nature introduces the reader to Alexander von Humboldt: his life, his ideas and his ways of doing science. Andrea Wulf also places Humboldt's life in the broader societal developments of the time and explores the links with his successors. The Invention of Nature consists of five parts. The first part is a brief outline of Humboldt's early years in Prussia, his studies in Freiberg and some of his early career travels within Europe. In the second part of the book, the reader follows the 30-year old Humboldt during his great trip across the Americas between 1799 and 1804 (Figure 1). After this 5-year journey, Humboldt returns to Europe (part 3), where he tries to organize his ideas but struggles with the political climate in war-torn Europe. In part 4, Wulf describes Humboldt's trip across Russia in 1829 (Figure 1), and his efforts to share his knowledge with a wider audience through books and lectures. The last part of the book deals with Humboldt's legacy on ideas about the relationship between people and nature. The Invention of Nature presents the life of a researcher who tried to understand “the big picture.” Humboldt viewed the natural world as an interconnected whole and was highly motivated to discern relationships between distant and seemingly isolated natural phenomena. Wulf argues that Humboldt developed a radically new perspective on the relationships between biodiversity, climate and geography and that his work has laid the foundations for our current understanding of ecosystems (p. 89). According to one of his contemporaries, “Humboldt united his vast knowledge with a painters eye and a poets feeling” (p. 169). Humboldt was convinced that descriptions of nature could be simultaneously scientifically accurate and inspiring. The clearest example of these are Humboldt's innovative tableaus, which he developed to depict vegetation zones and their relation to climate and elevational gradients (Figure 2). A recent study (Morueta-Holme et al., 2015) that compared the vegetation zonation of the Chimborazo Mountain (Ecuador) as described by Humboldt with the present-day distribution found an upward shift consistent with increasing temperatures. While climbing the Chimborazo, Humboldt compared his observations to places he visited before: the Alps, the Pyrenees and Teide Mountain (Tenerife). Humboldt's detailed measurements allowed him to compare natural phenomena across the world. For example, in Ideen zu einer Geographie der Pflanzen (“Essay on the Geography of Plants,” published in 1807), he describes the commonalities between the plants of Africa and South America and hypothesizes that these continents once formed a single land mass (p. 241). Similarly, he suggested that some islands which are separated today were connected in the past (cf. Juárez-Barrera, Bueno-Hernández, Morrone, Barahona-Echeverría, & Espinosa, 2018). The biodiversity implications of these ideas were later further explored by Joseph Dalton Hooker and Charles Darwin, and are still a topic of ongoing research in biogeographical studies (Fernández-Palacios et al., 2016; Norder et al., 2018). Humboldt's prime interest was on understanding biogeographical patterns, rather than on the origins of biodiversity. Wulf draws an interesting contrast between the “tree of life” of Charles Darwin, and Humboldt's perspective on nature as a “web of life” in which all plant and animal life is connected through a network of complex relations. Wulf mentions that according to Humboldt, the natural world was deeply connected to the political and moral history of human kind. For example, Humboldt highlighted the disastrous environmental consequences of colonialism and criticized the violence towards indigenous tribes and the treatment of slaves. He observed that in several places locally grown food crops were replaced with export crops such as sugar cane. The environmental legacies of the sugar cane plantation economies that were operational in Humboldt's time are now becoming visible (Norder et al., 2017), but Humboldt already saw them emerging. For example, he noted the negative consequences of deforestation and irrigation on soil loss and lowering of water-tables. After summarizing the three ways in which—according to Humboldt—human activities could affect climate: deforestation, reckless irrigation and production of steam and gas, Wulf writes: “No one but Humboldt had looked at the relationship between humankind and nature like this before” (p. 213). The Invention of Nature contains several of these claims that sometimes feel a bit exaggerated or hard to substantiate. For example, Wulf claims that after Humboldt visited Lake Valencia, “[he] became the first scientist to talk about harmful human-induced climate change” (p. 5). But, there were contemporaries of Humboldt—and also people before him—who noted these issues. One notable example is Pierre Poivre (1719–1786) who lived and worked on Mauritius and realized that deforestation of the island affected its climate (Grove, 1996). Although it sometimes seems as if all events in The Invention of Nature have their origin in the work of Humboldt, this is perhaps inherent to any book about a single person and it is just a small weakness in an otherwise great biography. Wulf makes a convincing case that Humboldt has inspired many scientists after him. Humboldt's scientific work was hampered by the wars that plagued the countries in which he worked. He encountered several difficulties because of wars between European countries and political issues. Nevertheless, he was able to navigate through these challenges, partly with the help of his colleagues in countries on both side of the conflict. Wulf describes how on one occasion Humboldt's specimens aboard a French ship were captured by an English captain who subsequently sent them to one of Humboldt's friends in London. Reading The Invention of Nature makes clear that Alexander von Humboldt had many connections with colleagues across the world: “All scholars are brothers” he once said (p. 166)—and sisters, we would add today. Throughout his career, Humboldt was supported by colleagues who provided him with data or revised his writings. In turn, Humboldt helped and inspired many others, for example by providing (financial) assistance to young researchers, and by sharing his knowledge with scientists, politicians and the public. Wulf mentions that the interdisciplinary lectures that Humboldt gave in Berlin attracted hundreds of people. There were no entrance fees and the audience—according to Wulf, half of them women—came from all segments of society. Humboldt had the strong conviction that science should be free and unrestrained. By making the lectures freely accessible Humboldt contributed to the democratization of science, Wulf argues. Perhaps today we are getting closer to the ideal that Humboldt envisaged, given the development of new open-access publishing models and other approaches to make scientific knowledge freely available (Bohannon, 2016; Else, 2018). Given the current (global) biodiversity challenges, scientists today would do well to follow in Humboldt's footsteps. By engaging the wider public in our research, by sharing our expertise and fascination, we can contribute to increasing environmental literacy and awareness (Novacek, 2008; Bickford, Posa, Qie, Campos-Arceiz, & Kudavidanage, 2012). Wulf shows that Humboldt was highly successful in doing exactly this: he not only embodied a great knowledge of the natural world, but was also able to communicate his findings in a clear and appealing way to broad audiences. The Invention of Nature is a joy to read; Wulf consulted a wide range of sources but managed to integrate them into a fluid story. For those readers wishing to become acquainted with Humboldt's work, The Invention of Nature forms a casual starting point for further reading (the book contains a brief description of Humboldt's major publications, and a detailed bibliography). However, the emphasis of The Invention of Nature is more on the life of Alexander von Humboldt and the societal context, rather than an in-depth analysis of Humboldt's ideas in relation to other scientific developments. That said, I would still recommend this book for a scientific audience. After reading The Invention of Nature, I feel there are at least three of Humboldt's character traits that could inspire natural scientists today: 1) his strong drive to understand the natural world, 2) his broad interest in topics at the interface of nature and society and 3) his generosity in sharing his knowledge with many others, including other scholars and the public. Overall, Wulf has done a great job in drawing renewed attention to the role Humboldt played in laying the foundations for the field of biogeography. S.J.N. received funding from the Portuguese National Funds, through FCT—Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, within the project UID/BIA/00329/2013 and the research Fellowship PD/BD/114380/2016.