Alexander Humboldt Quotes

There are three stages of scientific discovery: first people deny it is true; then they deny it is important; finally they credit the wrong person.

Die gefährlichste Weltanschauung ist die Weltanschauung derer, die die Welt nie angeschaut haben. (The most dangerous worldview is the worldview of those who have not viewed the world)

The most dangerous worldviews are the worldviews of those who have never viewed the world.

I am more and more convinced that our happiness or unhappiness depends more on the way we meet the events of life than on the nature of those events themselves.

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes. {Letter to celebrated scientist Alexander von Humboldt, 6 December, 1813}

The most dangerous worldview is the worldview of those have not viewed the world.

Knowledge, Humboldt believed, had to be shared, exchanged and made available to everybody.

What speaks to the soul, escapes our measurements.

Nature can be so soothing to the tormented mind

I saw with regret, (and all scientific men have shared this feeling) that whilst the number of accurate instruments was daily increasing, we were still ignorant

With most animals, as with man, the alertness of the senses diminishes after years of work, after domestic habits and progress of culture.

Our imagination is struck only by what is great; but the lover of natural philosophy should reflect equally on little things.

While we maintain the unity of the human species, we at the same time repel the depressing assumption of superior and inferior races of men. There are nations more susceptible of cultivation, more highly civilized, more ennobled by mental cultivation than others—but none in themselves nobler than others.

Humboldt ‘read’ plants as others did books – and to him they revealed a global force behind nature, the movements of civilizations as well as of landmass. No one had ever approached botany in this way.

This view of a living nature where man is nothing is both odd and sad. Here, in a fertile land, in an eternal greenness, you search in vain for traces of man; you feel you are carried into a different world from the one you were born into.

The effects of the human species’ intervention were already ‘incalculable’, Humboldt insisted, and could become catastrophic if they continued to disturb the world so ‘brutally’. Humboldt would see again and again how humankind unsettled the balance of nature.

The study of maps and the perusal of travel books aroused in me a secret fascination that was at times almost irresistible.

Nature is the domain of liberty,’ Humboldt said, because nature’s balance was created by diversity which might in turn be taken as a blueprint for political and moral truth. Everything, from the most unassuming moss or insect to elephants or towering oak trees, had its role, and together they made the whole. Humankind was just one small part. Nature itself was a republic of freedom.

Nature itself was a republic of freedom.

Without a diversity of opinion, the discovery of truth is impossible,’ he

Kühner, als das Unbekannte zu erforschen, kann es sein, das Bekannte zu bezweifeln.

In considering the study of physical phenomena, not merely in its bearings on the material wants of life, but in its general influence on the intellectual advancement of mankind, we find its noblest and most important result to be a knowledge of the chain of connection, by which all natural forces are linked together, and made mutually dependent upon each other; and it is the perception of these relations that exalts our views and ennobles our enjoyments.

The real discoverer of South America was [Alexander von] Humboldt, since his work was more useful for our people than the work of all conquerors.

The expression of vanity and self-love becomes less offensive, when it retains something of simplicity and frankness.

Die gefährlichste aller Weltanschauungen ist die Weltanschauung der Leute, welche die Welt nicht angeschaut haben.

What we glean from travellers' vivid descriptions has a special charm; whatever is far off and suggestive excites our imagination; such pleasures tempt us far more than anything we may daily experience in the narrow circle of sedentary life.

As a rule, theologians know nothing of this world, and far less of the next; but they have the power of stating the most absurd propositions with faces solemn as stupidity touched by fear. It is a part of their business to malign and vilify the Voltaires, Humes, Paines, Humboldts, Tyndalls, Haeckels, Darwins, Spencers, and Drapers, and to bow with uncovered heads before the murderers, adulterers, and persecutors of the world. They are, for the most part, engaged in poisoning the minds of the young, prejudicing children against science, teaching the astronomy and geology of the bible, and inducing all to desert the sublime standard of reason.

Every scientist is a descendant of Humboldt. We are all his family.

He [Alexander von Humboldt] was to science what Shakespeare was to the drama.

Columbus gave Europe a New World; [Alexander von] Humboldt made it known in its physical, material, intellectual, and moral aspects.

In the late eighteenth century scientists had begun to suggest that the earth must be older than the Bible, but they couldn’t agree on how the earth had formed.

Nature every where speaks to man in a voice,’ Humboldt said, that is ‘familiar to his soul’.

Humboldt wrote that nature had to be experienced through feelings

The philosophical study of nature endeavors, in the the vicissitudes of phenomena, to connect the present with the past.

We can never know how wide a circle of disturbance we produce in the harmonies of nature when we throw the smallest pebble in the ocean of organic life,’ Marsh wrote.

If the people of Europe had known as much of astronomy and geology when the bible was introduced among them, as they do now, there never could have been one believer in the doctrine of inspiration. If the writers of the various parts of the bible had known as much about the sciences as is now known by every intelligent man, the book never could have been written. It was produced by ignorance, and has been believed and defended by its author. It has lost power in the proportion that man has gained knowledge. A few years ago, this book was appealed to in the settlement of all scientific questions; but now, even the clergy confess that in such matters, it has ceased to speak with the voice of authority. For the establishment of facts, the word of man is now considered far better than the word of God. In the world of science, Jehovah was superseded by Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler. All that God told Moses, admitting the entire account to be true, is dust and ashes compared to the discoveries of Descartes, Laplace, and Humboldt. In matters of fact, the bible has ceased to be regarded as a standard. Science has succeeded in breaking the chains of theology. A few years ago, Science endeavored to show that it was not inconsistent with the bible. The tables have been turned, and now, Religion is endeavoring to prove that the bible is not inconsistent with Science. The standard has been changed.

Humboldt wrote about the destruction of forests and of humankind’s long-term changes to the environment. When he listed the three ways in which the human species was affecting the climate, he named deforestation, ruthless irrigation and, perhaps most prophetically, the ‘great masses of steam and gas’ produced in the industrial centres. No one but Humboldt had looked at the relationship between humankind and nature like this before.

After an early breakfast of black coffee – ‘concentrated sunshine’, as Humboldt called it – he worked all day and in the evening went on his usual tour of salons until 2 a.m. He

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Alle Widerstände lassen sich durch Energie besiegen.

But when on shore, & wandering in the sublime forests, surrounded by views more gorgeous than even Claude ever imagined, I enjoy a delight which none but those who have experienced it can understand - If it is to be done, it must be by studying Humboldt.

This aspect of animated nature, in which man is nothing, has something in it strange and sad....Here, in a fertile country, adorned with eternal verdure, we seek in vain the traces of the power of man; we seem to be transported into a world different from that which gave us birth.

Unlike Christopher Columbus or Isaac Newton, Humboldt did not discover a continent or a new law of physics. Humboldt was not know for a single fact or a discovery but for his worldview. His vision of nature has passed into our consciousness as if by osmosis. It is almost as though his ideas have become so manisfest that the man behind them has disappeared.

I regard marriage as a sin and propagation of children as a crime. It is my conviction also that he is a fool, and still more a sinner, who takes upon himself the yoke of marriage - a fool, because he thereby throws away his freedom, without gaining a corresponding recompense; a sinner, because he gives life to children, without being able to give them the certainty of happiness. I despise humanity in all its strata; I foresee that our posterity will be far more unhappy than we are; and should not I be a sinner, if, in spite of this insight, I should take care to leave a posterity of unhappy beings behind me? The whole of life is the greatest insanity. And if for eighty years one strives and inquiries, still one is obliged finally to confess that he has striven for nothing and has found nothing. Did we at least know why we are in this world! But to the thinker, everything is and remains a riddle; and the greatest good luck is that of being born a flathead.

It is far more difficult to observe correctly than most men imagine; to behold is not necessarily to observe, and the power of comparing and combining is only to be obtained by education. It is much to be regretted that habits of exact observation are not cultivated in our schools; to this deficiency may be traced much of the fallacious reasoning, the false philosophy which prevails.

I could not possibly have been placed in circumstances more highly favorable for study and exploration than those which I now enjoy. I am free from the distractions constantly arising in civilized life from social claims. Nature offers unceasingly the most novel and fascinating objects for learning. The only drawbacks to this solitude are the want of information on the progress of scientific discovery in Europe and the lack of all the advantages arising from an interchange of ideas.

It is easier to find courage for the daring act of a moment, and it requires less inner strength, than does the long patience of enduring physical suffering, deeply driven by a spiritual interest to move forward, disregarding the certainty of encountering again, but with weakened faculties, the same deprivations on the return trip.

I consider him [Alexander von Humboldt] the most important scientist whom I have met.

[Alexander von] Humboldt showers us with true treasures.

[Alexander von Humboldt was the] greatest scientific traveller who ever lived.

scientific

Nature must be experienced through feeling,’ Humboldt

Die gefährlichste Weltanschauung ist die Weltanschauung derer, die die Welt nie angeschaut haben. "The most dangerous worldview is the worldview of those who have not viewed the world.

Humboldt was the ‘greatest of the priesthood of nature’, Marsh said, because he had understood the world as an interplay between man and nature – a connection that would underpin Marsh’s own work because he was collecting material for a book that would explain how humankind was destroying the environment.

Im Gegensatz zu Christoph Kolumbus und Isaac Newton entdeckte Humboldt keinen Kontinent und kein neues physikalisches Gesetz. Humboldts Ruhm beruhte nicht auf einer bestimmten Tat oder Erfindung, sondern auf seiner Sicht der Welt.

School is different. Pupils are usually not encouraged to follow their own learning paths, question and discuss everything the teacher is teaching and move on to another topic if something does not promise to generate interesting insight. The teacher is there for the pupils to learn. But, as Wilhelm von Humboldt, founder of the Humboldt University of Berlin and brother to the great explorer Alexander von Humboldt, put it, the professor is not there for the student and the student not for the professor. Both are only there for the truth. And truth is always a public matter.

Nature is a living whole,' he later said, not a 'dead aggregate'. One single life had been poured over stones, plants, animals and humankind. It was this 'universal profusion with which life is everywhere distributed' that most impressed Humboldt. Even the atmosphere carried the kernels of future life - pollen, insect eggs and seeds. Life was everywhere and those 'organic powers are incessantly at work', he wrote. Humboldt was not so much interested in finding new isolated facts but in connecting them. Individual phenomena were only important 'in their relation to the whole', he explained.

During the first half of the present century we had an Alexander von Humboldt, who was able to scan the scientific knowledge of his time in its details, and to bring it within one vast generalization. At the present juncture, it is obviously very doubtful whether this task could be accomplished in a similar way, even by a mind with gifts so peculiarly suited for the purpose as Humboldt's was, and if all his time and work were devoted to the purpose.

This man [Alexander von Humboldt] is as knowledgeable as a whole academy.

When Humboldt later instigated a German translation of Voyage of the Beagle, Darwin wrote to a friend, ‘I must with unpardonable vanity boast to you.

it didn’t matter how far one journeyed ‘but how much alive you are’.

Humboldt later put it succinctly: ‘The wooded region acts in a threefold manner in diminishing the temperature; by cooling shade, by evaporation, and by radiation.

He wanted to excite a ‘love of nature’. At a time when other scientists were searching for universal laws, Humboldt wrote that nature had to be experienced through feelings.

El 14 de octubre, las tropas de Napoleón aniquilaron al ejército prusiano en dos batallas, en Jena y Auerstädt.

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but later English Romantics such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and American Transcendentalists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson would declare that man had once been one with nature – during a long vanished Golden Age. It was this lost unity that they strove to restore, insisting that the only way to do so was through art, poetry and emotions. According to the Romantics, nature could only be understood by turning inwards.

Then, in the late summer of 1790, Humboldt began to study finance and economics at the academy of trade in Hamburg. He hated it for it was all numbers and account books. In his spare time, Humboldt delved into scientific treatises and travel book, he learned Danish and Swedish - anything was better than his business studies. Whenever he could, he walked down to the River Elbe in Hamburg where he watched the large merchant vessels that brought tobacco, rice and indigo from the United States. The 'sight of the ships in the harbour', he told a friend, was what held him together - a symbol of his hopes and dreams. He couldn't wait to be finally the 'master of his own luck'.

In Views of Nature Humboldt conjured up the quiet solitude of Andean mountaintops and the fertility of the rainforest, as well as the magic of a meteor shower and the gruesome spectacle of catching the electric eels in the Llanos. He wrote of the ‘glowing womb of the earth’ and ‘bejewelled’ riverbanks. Here a desert became a ‘sea of sands’, leaves unfolded ‘to greet the rising sun’, and apes filled the jungle with ‘melancholy howlings’. In the mists at the rapids of the Orinoco, rainbows danced in a game of hide-and-seek – ‘optical magic’, as he called it. Humboldt created poetic vignettes when he wrote of strange insects that ‘poured their red phosphoric light on the herb-covered ground, which glowed with living fire as if the starry canopy of heaven had sunk upon the turf’.

Alexander von Humboldt, yet another friend, may have had Agassiz at least partly in mind when he observed that there are three stages in scientific discovery: first, people deny that it is true; then they deny that it is important; finally they credit the wrong person.

Alexander von Humboldt, yet another friend, may have had Agassiz at least partly in mind when he observed that there are three stages in scientific discovery7: first, people deny that it is true; then they deny that it is important; finally they credit the wrong person.

Alexander von Humboldt, yet another friend, may have had Agassiz at least partly in mind when he observed that there are three stages in scientific discovery: first, people deny that it is true; then they deny that it is important; finally they credit the wrong person. At

Alles, womit sich der Mensch beschäftigt, wenn es gleich nur bestimmt ist, physische Bedürfnisse mittelbar oder unmittelbar zu befriedigen oder überhaupt äußere Zwecke zu erreichen, ist auf das genaueste mit innren Empfindungen verknüpft. Manchmal ist auch neben dem äußeren Endzweck noch ein innerer, und manchmal ist sogar dieser der eigentlich beabsichtete, jener nur notwendig oder zufällig damit verbunden. Je mehr Einheit der Mensch besitzt, desto freier entspringt das äußere Geschäft, das er wählt, aus seinem innren Sein, und desto häufiger und fester knüpft sich dieses an jenes da an, wo dasselbe nicht frei gewählt wurde. Daher ist der interessante Mensch in allen Lagen und allen Geschäften interessant; daher blüht er zu einer entzückenden Schönheit auf in einer Lebensweise, die mit seinem Charakter übereinstimmt.

With this Humboldt brought together the external physical world with the internal world of the mind. Humboldt’s Cosmos was about the relationship between humankind and nature, and Thoreau placed himself firmly into this cosmos. At Walden Pond, he wrote, ‘I have a little world all to myself’ – his own sun, stars and moon. ‘Why should I feel lonely?’ he asked. ‘Is not our planet in the Milky Way?’ He was no more lonely than a flower or bumblebee in a meadow because like them he was part of nature. ‘Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself?’ he asked in Walden.

In Views of Nature Humboldt showed how nature could have an influence on people’s imagination. Nature, he wrote, was in a mysterious communication with our ‘inner feelings’. A clear blue sky, for example, triggers different emotions than a heavy blanket of dark clouds. Tropical scenery, densely filled with banana and palm trees, has a different effect than an open forest of white-stemmed slender birches. What we might take for granted today – that there is a correlation between the external world and our mood – was a revelation to Humboldt’s readers. Poets had engaged with such ideas but never a scientist.

Humboldt was the first to relate colonialism to the devastation of the environment. Again and again, his thoughts returned to nature as a complex web of life but also to man’s place within it. At the Rio Apure, he had seen the devastation caused by the Spanish who had tried to control the annual flooding by building a dam. To make matters worse, they had also felled the trees that had held the riverbanks together like ‘a very tight wall’ with the result that the raging river carried more land away each year. On the high plateau of Mexico City, Humboldt had observed how a lake that fed the local irrigation system had shrunk into a shallow puddle, leaving the valleys beneath barren. Everywhere in the world, Humboldt said, water engineers were guilty of such short-sighted follies. He debated nature, ecological issues, imperial power and politics in relation to each other. He criticized unjust land distribution, monocultures, violence against tribal groups and indigenous work conditions – all powerfully relevant issues today. As a former mining inspector, Humboldt had a unique insight into the environmental and economic consequences of the exploitation of nature’s riches. He questioned Mexico’s dependence on cash crops and mining, for example, because it bound the country to fluctuating international market prices. ‘The only capital,’ he said, that ‘increases with time, consists in the produce of agriculture’. All problems in the colonies, he was certain, were the result of the ‘imprudent activities of the Europeans’.

México es el país de la desigualdad. Acaso en ninguna parte la hay más espantosa en la distribución de fortunas, civilización, cultivo de la tierra y población… La capital y otras muchas ciudades tienen establecimientos científicos que se pueden comparar con los de Europa. La arquitectura de los edificios públicos y privados, la finura del ajuar de las mujeres, el aire de la sociedad; todo anuncia un extremo de esmero, que se contrapone extraordinariamente a la desnudez, ignorancia y rusticidad del populacho. Esta inmensa desigualdad de fortunas no sólo se observa en la casta de los blancos (europeos o criollos), sino que igualmente se manifiesta entre los indígenas.

Humboldt's early biographer, F.A. Schwarzenberg, subtitled his life of Humboldt What May Be Accomplished in a Lifetime. He summarised the areas of his subject's extraordinary curiosity as follows: '1) The knowledge of the Earth and its inhabitants. 2) The discovery of the higher laws of nature, which govern the universe, men, animals, plants, minerals. 3) The discovery of new forms of life. 4) The discovery of territories hitherto but imperfectly known, and their various productions. 5) The acquaintance with new species of the human race--- their manners, their language and the historical traces of their culture.' What may be accomplished in a lifetime---and seldom or never is.

French scientists feared that Paris was going to lose its status as a centre for innovative scientific thinking. At the Académie des Sciences, Humboldt said, the savants did little and what little they did often ended in quarrels. Even worse, the scholars had formed a secret committee to sanitize the library there – removing books that propounded liberal ideas like those written by Enlightenment thinkers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire. When the childless Louis XVIII died in September 1824 his brother Charles X, the leader of the ultra-royalists, became king. All those who believed in liberty and in the values of the revolution knew that the intellectual climate could only become more repressive.

Sometimes neither translation captured Humboldt’s prose, or whole sentences were missing –in which case I have taken the liberty of providing a new translation. When other protagonists referred to Humboldt’s work, I have used the editions that they were reading. Charles Darwin, for example, read Humboldt’s Personal Narrative that was published in Britain between 1814 and 1829 (translated by Helen Maria

Fue allí, en el lago Valencia, donde Humboldt desarrolló su idea del cambio climático provocado por el ser humano. Cuando publicó sus notas, no dejó duda alguna sobre lo que pensaba: "Cuando los bosques se destruyen, como han hecho los cultivadores europeos en toda América, con una precipitación imprudente, los manantiales se secan por completo o se vuelven menos abundantes. Los lechos de los ríos, que permanecen secos durante parte del año, se convierten en torrentes cada vez que caen fuertes lluvias en las cumbres. La hierba y el musgo desaparecen de las laderas de las montañas con la maleza, entonces el agua lluvia ya no encuentra ningún obstáculo en su camino: y en vez de aumentar poco a poco el nivel de los ríos mediante filtraciones graduales, durante las lluvias abundantes forma surcos en las laderas, arrastra la tierra suelta y forma esas inundaciones repentinas que destruyen el país.

the promise about the bruising of the serpent's head, recorded in Genesis, as made to our first parents, was actually made, and if all mankind were descended from them, then it might be expected that some trace of this promise would be found in all nations. And such is the fact. There is hardly a people or kindred on earth in whose mythology it is not shadowed forth. The Greeks represented their great god Apollo as slaying the serpent Pytho, and Hercules as strangling serpents while yet in his cradle. In Egypt, in India, in Scandinavia, in Mexico, we find clear allusions to the same great truth. "The evil genius," says Wilkinson, "of the adversaries of the Egyptian god Horus is frequently figured under the form of a snake, whose head he is seen piercing with a spear. The same fable occurs in the religion of India, where the malignant serpent Calyia is slain by Vishnu, in his avatar of Crishna; and the Scandinavian deity Thor was said to have bruised the head of the great serpent with his mace." "The origin of this," he adds, "may be readily traced to the Bible." In reference to a similar belief among the Mexicans, we find Humboldt saying, that "The serpent crushed by the great spirit Teotl, when he takes the form of one of the subaltern deities, is the genius of evil--a real Kakodaemon.

For throughout history, the synthesizing impulse has proved a powerful even world-changing, tool for understanding the universe, capable of penetrating the intricate,contradictory web of surface phenomena to reveal the universal,unified cosmos beneath--that fundamental,unchanging phenomenon we call truth.

were receiving, along with his experiments in Galvanism.

Today we know that there are multiple reasons for the changing water levels. One factor is the amount of water coming in from the Volga which is tied to the rainfall of a huge catchment region – all of which in turn relates to the atmospheric conditions of the North Atlantic. Many scientists now believe that these fluctuations reflect climatic changes in the northern hemisphere, making the Caspian Sea an important field of study for climate change investigations. Other theories claim that the water levels are affected by tectonic forces. These are exactly the kinds of global connections that interested Humboldt. To see the Caspian Sea, Humboldt wrote to Wilhelm, was one of the ‘highlights of my life

spring delicate flowers carpeted the forest floor and in May blueberries paraded their dangling bell-shaped blooms.

He was confident, yet constantly yearned for approval. He was admired for his breadth of knowledge but also feared for his sharp tongue. Humboldt’s books were published in a dozen languages and were so popular that people bribed booksellers to be the first to receive copies, yet he died a poor man. He could be vain, but would also give his last money to a struggling young scientist. He packed his life with travels and incessant work. He always wanted to experience something new and, as he said, ideally, ‘three things at the same time’.

South America—the land of explorers like Charles Darwin and Alexander von Humboldt—was still teeming with untold stories of nature in 1913. Roosevelt’s small tastes of Cuba and Panama had only whetted his appetite for the neotropics, and since Kermit was living and working in Brazil, it seemed an opportune time to explore the region.

En su opinión, la política y la economía de un gobierno colonial estaban basadas en la «inmoralidad»(609).

Todos los hombres eran iguales, subrayaba, y ninguna raza estaba por encima de otra, porque «todas están igualmente diseñadas para la libertad»

«El hombre puede actuar sobre la naturaleza y apoderarse de sus fuerzas para utilizarlas —escribiría Humboldt más tarde— solo si comprende sus leyes»(360). La humanidad, avisó, tenía el poder de destruir el entorno, y las consecuencias serían catastróficas(361).

Las ideas que debatían eran las que tenían cautivados a científicos y pensadores de toda Europa: como entender la naturaleza. En términos generales, había dos corrientes de pensamiento que se disputaban la primacía: el racionalismo y el empirismo. Los racionalistas tendían a creer que todo el conocimiento procedía de la razón y el pensamiento racional, mientras que los empiristas sostenían que solo se podía “conocer” el mundo a través de la experiencia. (…) Para las ciencias, eso significaba que los empiristas siempre tenían que contrastar sus teorías con observaciones y experimentos, mientras que los racionalistas podían basar una tesis en la lógica y la razón”.

La posición de Kant estaba entre el racionalismo y el empirismo. (…) Los seres humanos era ciudadanos de dos mundos, del mundo del Ding an sich (la cosa en sí), que era el mundo externo y el mundo interno de la propia percepción (cómo “percibía” las cosas cada persona). Según Kant, la “cosa en sí” no podía conocerse nunca del todo, y el mundo interno era siempre subjetivo.”.

As they continued, Humboldt also investigated the cinchona forests in Loja (in today’s Ecuador) and once again recognized how humankind devastated the environment. The bark of the cinchona tree contains quinine which was used to treat malaria, but once the bark was removed, the trees died. The Spanish had stripped huge swathes of wild forest. Older and thicker trees, Humboldt noted, had now become scarce. Humboldt’s enquiring mind seemed inexhaustible. He studied layers of rocks, climate patterns and the ruins of Inca temples, and was also fascinated with geomagnetism – the study of the magnetic fields of the earth. As they climbed across mountain chains and descended into valleys, he set up his instruments. Humboldt’s curiosity originated in his urge to understand nature globally, as a network of forces and interrelationships – just as he had been interested in vegetation zones across continents and the occurrences of earthquakes. Since the seventeenth century scientists had known that the earth is itself a gigantic magnet. They also knew that the needle of a compass doesn’t show the true north, because the magnetic North Pole is not the same as the geographic North Pole. To make matters even more confusing, the magnetic north and south move, which caused great navigational problems. What scientists didn’t know was whether the intensity of magnetic fields across the world varied randomly, or systematically, from location to location. As Humboldt had moved south along the Andes from Bogotá to Quito, coming closer to the Equator, he had measured how the earth’s magnetic field decreased. To his surprise, even after they had crossed the Equator near Quito the intensity of the magnetic field had continued to drop, until they reached the barren Cajamarca Plateau in Peru which was more than 7 degrees and about 500 miles south of the geographic Equator. It was only here that the dip of the needle turned from north to south: Humboldt had discovered the magnetic equator. They

that it was cold. Humboldt was assembling the data he needed to make sense of nature as a unified whole. 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, because ‘observations from the most disparate regions of the planet must be compared to one another’. Humboldt amassed so many results and asked so many questions that some people thought him to be stupid, because he asked ‘the seemingly obvious’. His coat pockets, one of his guides noted, were like those of a little boy – full of plants, rocks and scraps of paper. Nothing was too small or insignificant to investigate because everything had its place in the great tapestry of nature.

Personal Narrative followed Humboldt’s and Bonpland’s voyage chronologically from their departure from Spain in 1799.1 It was the book that would later inspire Charles Darwin to join the Beagle – and one ‘which I almost know by heart’, as Darwin said.

Paris skyscape. Paris was ‘less disposed than ever’ to be a centre for the sciences, Humboldt wrote to a friend in Geneva, as the funds for laboratories, research and teaching were slashed. The spirit of enquiry was stifled as scientists found themselves having to curry favours from the new king. The savants had become ‘pliant tools’ in the hands of politicians and princes, Humboldt told Charles Lyell in 1823, and even the great George Cuvier had sacrificed his genius as a naturalist for a new quest for ‘ribbons, crosses, titles and Court favours’. There was so much political wrangling in Paris that governmental positions seemed to change as quickly as in a game of musical chairs. Every man he met now, Humboldt said, was either a minister or an ex-minister. ‘They are scattered thick as the leaves in autumn,’ he told Lyell, ‘and before one set have time to rot away, they are covered by another and another.

Nature was Humboldt’s teacher. And the greatest lesson that nature offered was that of freedom. ‘Nature is the domain of liberty’, Humboldt said, because nature’s balance was created by diversity which might in turn be taken as a blueprint for political and moral truth. Everything from the most unassuming moss or insect or elephants or towering oak trees, had its role, and together they made the whole. Humankind was just a small part. NATURE ITSELF WAS A REPUBLIC OF FREEDOM.

A pesar de algunos malos reyes y sus validos, la eficacia administrativa se mantuvo al menos en América. Cuando Alexander Humboldt escribe su Ensayo político sobre el Reino de la Nueva España poco antes de la independencia, describe un territorio moderno y próspero: la lengua española se hablaba en más de 1900 leguas de largo, existía un eficaz servicio de correos desde Paraguay hasta la costa noroeste de la América septentrional, y eso que los dominios del rey de España eran todavía entonces más vastos que los de Gran Bretaña o Turquía. El territorio se organizaba en nueve grandes gobiernos que se podían mirar como independientes unos a otros, México era una ciudad bella y mucho más próspera que Washington y además a ninguno de los gobernantes de México se les podía acusar en esa época de corrupción o falta de integridad. ¿Es ésta la imagen de un imperio anquilosado, antiguo e ineficaz?

En 1812 Hispanoamérica era bastante más próspera que Estados Unidos e incluso que la propia España. El virreinato de Nueva España (1535-1821), actuales Estados Unidos Mexicanos, eran la región más rica, culta y avanzada no sólo de América, sino superior a muchas naciones europeas. Y la ciudad de México era más moderna y avanzada que Washington o Filadelfia. Es más, lideraba una forma de economía y civilización global, pues se abrieron rutas que unían China y Japón con Cádiz y Sevilla, con el «duro» mexicano de plata como primera moneda de circulación universal de la historia, y con una imprenta establecida en fecha tan temprana como 1539 que permitió el intercambio y difusión de ideas y cultura. Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), en su libro de viajes Ensayo político sobre el Reino de la Nueva España, describió las bondades de la labor española en Latinoamérica, en comparación con la anglosajona del norte, destacando sobre todo México y otras ciudades, su arquitectura y las instituciones académicas y científicas con las que eran dotadas al nivel de sus homólogas europeas.

La política y la naturaleza debían ir de la mano: una idea que Humboldt iba a discutir con los estadounidenses.