Alexander von Humboldt sought to see and understand everything. By the time he drew his self-portrait at age 45, Humboldt had tutored himself in every branch of science, spent more than five years on a 6,000-mile scientific trek through South America, pioneered new methods for the graphical display of information, set a world mountain climbing record that stood for 30 years and established himself as one of the world’s most famous scientists, having helped to define many of today’s natural sciences.
Born in Berlin 250 years ago on Sept. 14, 1769, Humboldt is sometimes called the last Renaissance man – he embodied all that was known about the world in his day. He spent the last three decades of his life writing “Kosmos,” an attempt to provide a scientific account of all aspects of nature. Though unfinished at the time of his death in 1859, the four completed volumes are one of the most ambitious works of science ever published, conveying an extraordinary breadth of understanding.
Throughout his life, Humboldt sought out the world’s interconnections. Today knowledge can seem hopelessly fragmented. The sciences and humanities speak different languages, the scientific disciplines frequently seem incommensurable and the university itself often feels more like a multiversity. Against this backdrop, Humboldt represents the aspiration for encompassing order; if only we look deeply enough, we can locate an intricate underlying harmony.
In reflecting on this ambition in “Kosmos,” Humboldt wrote:
“The principal impulse by which I was directed was the earnest endeavor to comprehend the phenomena of physical objects in their general connection, and to represent nature as one great whole, moved and animated by internal forces.”
To understand the entire natural order, however, Humboldt had to pour himself into “special branches of study,” without which “all attempts to give a grand and general view of the universe would be nothing more than a vain illusion.”
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