Alexander von Humboldt
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (/ˈhʌmboʊlt/;[5] German: [ˈhʊmbɔlt] ( |
| Alexander von Humbold |
listen); 14 September 1769 –
6 May 1859) was a Prussian polymath, geographer, naturalist, explorer, and influential proponent of Romantic philosophy and science.[6] He was the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher, and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835).[7][8][9] Humboldt's quantitative work on botanical geography laid the foundation for the field of biogeography. Humboldt's advocacy of long-term systematic geophysical measurement
laid the foundation for modern geomagnetic
and meteorological monitoring.[10][11] Between 1799 and 1804, Humboldt travelled extensively in the Americas, exploring and describing them for the first time from a modern scientific point of view. His description of the journey was written up and published in an enormous set of volumes over 21 years. Humboldt was one of the first people to propose that the lands bordering the Atlantic Ocean were once joined (South America and Africa in particular). Humboldt resurrected the use of the word cosmos from the ancient Greek and assigned it to his multivolume treatise, Kosmos, in which he sought to unify diverse branches of scientific knowledge and culture. This important work also motivated a holistic perception of the universe as one interacting entity.[12] He was the first person to describe the phenomenon and cause of human-induced climate change, in 1800 and again in 1831, based on observations generated during his travels.[13]
Travels and work in Europe
Humboldt graduated from the Freiberg School of Mines in 1792 and was appointed to a Prussian government position in the Department of Mines as an inspector in Bayreuth and the Fichtel mountains. Humboldt was excellent at his job, with production of gold ore in his first year outstripping the previous eight years.[29] During his period as a mine inspector, Humboldt demonstrated his deep concern for the men laboring in the mines. He opened a free school for miners, paid for out of his own pocket, which became an unchartered government training school for labor. He also sought to establish an emergency relief fund for miners, aiding them following accidents.[30]Humboldt's researches into the vegetation of the mines of Freiberg led to the publication in Latin (1793) of his Florae Fribergensis, accedunt Aphorismi ex Doctrina, Physiologiae Chemicae Plantarum, which was a compendium of his botanical researches.[31] That publication brought him to the attention of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who had met Humboldt at the family home when Alexander was a boy, but Goethe was now interested in meeting the young scientist to discuss metamorphism of plants.[32] An introduction was arranged by Humboldt's brother, who lived in the university town of Jena, not far from Goethe. Goethe had developed his own extensive theories on comparative anatomy. Working before Darwin, he believed that animals had an internal force, an urform, that gave them a basic shape and then they were further adapted to their environment by an external force. Humboldt urged him to publish his theories. Together, the two discussed and expanded these ideas. Goethe and Humboldt soon became close friends.
Humboldt often returned to Jena in the years that followed. Goethe remarked about Humboldt to friends that he had never met anyone so versatile. Humboldt's drive served as an inspiration for Goethe. In 1797, Humboldt returned to Jena for three months. During this time, Goethe moved from his residence in Weimar to reside in Jena. Together, Humboldt and Goethe attended university lectures on anatomy and conducted their own experiments. One experiment involved hooking up a frog leg to various metals. They found no effect until the moisture of Humboldt's breath triggered a reaction that caused the frog leg to leap off the table. Humboldt described this as one of his favorite experiments because it was as if he were "breathing life into" the leg.[33]
During this visit, a thunderstorm killed a farmer and his wife. Humboldt obtained their corpses and analyzed them in the anatomy tower of the university.[33]
The Andes 1801–1803
Humboldt and his fellow scientist Aimé Bonpland at the
foot of the Chimborazo volcano, painting by Friedrich Georg Weitsch (1810)
After their first stay in Cuba of three months, they
returned to the mainland at Cartagena de Indias
(now in Colombia), a major center of trade in northern South America. Ascending
the swollen stream of the Magdalena River to Honda, they arrived in
Bogotá on 6 July 1801, where they met the Spanish botanist José Celestino Mutis, head of the Royal Botanical Expedition to New Granada, staying there until
8 September 1801. Mutis was generous with his time and gave Humboldt access to
the huge pictorial record he had compiled since 1783. Mutis was based in
Bogotá, but as with other Spanish expeditions, he had access to local knowledge
and a workshop of artists, who created highly accurate and detailed images.
This type of careful recording meant that even if specimens were not available
to study at a distance, "because the images traveled, the botanists did
not have to".[59] Humboldt was astounded at Mutis's accomplishment; when Humboldt
published his first volume on botany, he dedicated it to Mutis "as a
simply mark of our admiration and acknowledgement".[60] Their stay in Ecuador was marked by the ascent of Pichincha and their climb of Chimborazo, where Humboldt and his party reached an altitude of 19,286 feet (5,878 m). This was a world record at the time, but 1000 feet short of the summit.[61] Humboldt's journey concluded with an expedition to the sources of the Amazon en route for Lima, Peru.[62]
At Callao, the main port for Peru, Humboldt observed the transit of Mercury on 9 November and studied the fertilizing properties of guano, rich in nitrogen, the subsequent introduction of which into Europe was due mainly to his writings.[17]
Mexico 1803–04
Humboldt and Bonpland had not intended to go to New Spain, but when they were unable to join a voyage to the Pacific, they left the Ecuadorian port of Guayaquil and headed for Acapulco on Mexico's west coast. Even before Humboldt and Bonpland started on their way to New Spain's capital on Mexico's central plateau, Humboldt realized the captain of the vessel that brought them to Acapulco had reckoned its location incorrectly. Since Acapulco was the main west-coast port and the terminus of the Asian trade from the Spanish Philippines, having accurate maps of its location was extremely important. Humboldt set up his instruments, surveying the deep-water bay of Acapulco, to determine its longitude.[63][64]Humboldt and Bonpland landed in Acapulco on 15 February 1803, and from there they went to Taxco, a silver-mining town in modern Guerrero. In April 1803, he visited Cuernavaca, Morelos. Impressed by its climate, he nicknamed the city the City of Eternal Spring.[65][66] Humboldt and Bonpland arrived in Mexico City, having been officially welcomed via a letter from the king's representative in New Spain, Viceroy Don José de Iturrigaray. Humboldt was also given a special passport to travel throughout New Spain and letters of introduction to intendants, the highest officials in New Spain's administrative districts (intendancies). This official aid to Humboldt allowed him to have access to crown records, mines, landed estates, canals, and Mexican antiquities from the prehispanic era.[67] Humboldt read the writings of Bishop-elect of the important diocese of Michoacan Manuel Abad y Queipo, a classical liberal, that were directed to the crown for the improvement of New Spain.[68]
They spent the year in the viceroyalty, traveling to different Mexican cities in the central plateau and the northern mining region. The first journey was from Acapulco to Mexico City, through what is now the Mexican state of Guerrero. The route was suitable only for mule train, and all along the way, Humboldt took measurements of elevation. When he left Mexico a year later in 1804, from the east coast port of Veracruz, he took a similar set of measures, which resulted in a chart in the Political Essay, the physical plan of Mexico with the dangers of the road from Acapulco to Mexico City, and from Mexico City to Veracruz.[69] This visual depiction of elevation was part of Humboldt's general insistence that the data he collected be presented in a way more easily understood than statistical charts. A great deal of his success in gaining a more general readership for his works was his understanding that "anything that has to do with extent or quantity can be represented geometrically. Statistical projections [charts and graphs], which speak to the senses without tiring the intellect have the advantage of bringing attention to a large number of important facts".[70]
Humboldt was impressed with Mexico City, which at the time was the largest city in the Americas, and one that could be counted as modern. He declared "no city of the new continent, without even excepting those of the United States, can display such great and solid scientific establishments as the capital of Mexico".[71] He pointed to the Royal College of Mines, the Royal Botanical Garden and the Royal Academy of San Carlos as exemplars of a metropolitan capital in touch with the latest developments on the continent and insisting on its modernity.[72] He also recognized important creole savants in Mexico, including José Antonio de Alzate y Ramírez, who died in 1799, just before Humboldt's visit; Miguel Velásquez de León; and Antonio de León y Gama.[68]
Humboldt spent time at the Valenciana silver mine in Guanajuato, central New Spain, at the time the most important in the Spanish empire.[73] The bicentennial of his visit in Guanajuato was celebrated with a conference at the University of Guanajuato, with Mexican academics highlighting various aspects of his impact on the city.[74] Humboldt could have simply examined the geology of the fabulously rich mine, but he took the opportunity to study the entire mining complex as well as analyze mining statistics of its output. His report on silver mining is a major contribution, and considered the strongest and best informed section of his Political Essay. Although Humboldt was himself a trained geologist and mining inspector, he drew on mining experts in Mexico. One was Fausto Elhuyar, then head of the General Mining Court in Mexico City, who, like Humboldt was trained in Freiberg. Another was Andrés Manuel del Río, director of Royal College of Mines, whom Humboldt knew when they were both students in Freiberg.[75] The Bourbon monarchs had established the mining court and the college to elevate mining as a profession, since revenues from silver constituted the crown's largest source of income. Humboldt also consulted other German mining experts, who were already in Mexico.[68] While Humboldt was a welcome foreign scientist and mining expert, the Spanish crown had established fertile ground for Humboldt's investigations into mining.
Spanish America's ancient civilizations were a source of interest for Humboldt, who included images of Mexican manuscripts (or codices) and Inca ruins in his richly illustrated Vues des cordillères et monuments des peuples indigènes de l'Amerique (1810–1813), the most experimental of Humboldt's publications, since it does not have "a single ordering principle" but his opinions and contentions based on observation.[76] For Humboldt, a key question was the influence of climate on the development of these civilizations.[77] When he published his Vues des cordillères, he included a color image of the Aztec calendar stone, which had been discovered buried in the main plaza of Mexico City in 1790, along with select drawings of the Dresden codex and others he sought out later in European collections. His aim was to muster evidence that these pictorial and sculptural images could allow the reconstruction of prehispanic history. He sought out Mexican experts in the interpretation of sources from there, especially Antonio Pichardo, who was the literary executor of Antonio de León y Gama's work. For American-born Spaniards (creoles) who were seeking sources of pride in Mexico's ancient past, Humboldt's recognition of these ancient works and dissemination in his publications was a boon. He read the work of exiled Jesuit Francisco Javier Clavijero, which celebrated Mexico's prehispanic civilization, and which Humboldt invoked to counter the pejorative assertions about the new world by Buffon, de Pauw, and Raynal.[78] Humboldt ultimately viewed both the prehispanic realms of Mexico and Peru as despotic and barbaric.[79] However, he also drew attention to indigenous monuments and artifacts as cultural productions that had "both ... historical and artistic significance".[80]
One of his most widely read publications resulting from his travels and investigations in Spanish America was the Essai politique sur le royaum de la Nouvelle Espagne, quickly translated to English as Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain (1811).[81] This treatise was the result of Humboldt's own investigations as well as the generosity of Spanish colonial officials for statistical data.[82]
The United States 1804
1804 Map of the Louisiana Territory. Jefferson and his
cabinet sought information from Humboldt when he visited Washington, D.C.,
about Spain's territory in Mexico, now bordering the U.S.
Leaving from Cuba, Humboldt decided to take an
unplanned short visit to the United States. Knowing that the current U.S.
president, Thomas Jefferson, was himself a scientist, Humboldt wrote to him saying that he would be
in the United States. Jefferson warmly replied, inviting him to visit the White House in the nation's new capital. In his letter Humboldt had gained Jefferson's
interest by mentioning that he had discovered mammoth teeth near the Equator. Jefferson had previously written that he
believed mammoths had never lived so far south. Humboldt had also hinted at his
knowledge of New Spain.[83] Arriving in Philadelphia, which was a center of learning in the U.S., Humboldt met with some of the major scientific figures of the era, including chemist and anatomist Caspar Wistar, who pushed for compulsory smallpox vaccination, and botanist Benjamin Smith Barton, as well as physician Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, who wished to hear about cinchona bark from a South American tree, which cured fevers.[84] Humboldt later published a treatise in English on cinchona.[85]
After arriving in Washington D.C, Humboldt held numerous intense discussions with Jefferson on both scientific matters and also his year-long stay in New Spain. Jefferson had only recently concluded the Louisiana Purchase, which now placed New Spain on the southwest border of the United States. The Spanish minister in Washington, D.C. had declined to furnish the U.S. government with information about Spanish territories, and access to the territories was strictly controlled. Humboldt was able to supply Jefferson with the latest information on the population, trade agriculture and military of New Spain. This information would later be the basis for his Essay on the Political Kingdom of New Spain (1810). Jefferson was unsure of where the border of the newly-purchased Louisiana was precisely, and Humboldt wrote him a two-page report on the matter. Jefferson would later refer to Humboldt as "the most scientific man of the age". Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury, said of Humboldt "I was delighted and swallowed more information of various kinds in less than two hours than I had for two years past in all I had read or heard". Gallatin, in turn, supplied Humboldt with information he sought on the United States.[83]
After six weeks, Humboldt set sail for Europe from the mouth of the Delaware and landed at Bordeaux on 3 August 1804.
Travel diaries
Humboldt kept a detailed diary of his sojourn to Spanish America, running some 4,000 pages, which he drew on directly for his multiple publications following the expedition. The leather-bound diaries themselves are now in Germany, having been returned from Russia to East Germany, where the Red Army took them after World War II. Following German reunification, the diaries were returned to a descendant of Humboldt. For a time, there was concern about their being sold, but that was averted.[86] A government-funded project to digitize the Spanish American expedition as well as his later Russian expedition has been undertaken (2014–2017) by the University of Potsdam and the German State Library—Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation.[87]With affection,
Ruben
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