The Invention of Nature

⁷ Humboldt wrote in Personal Narrative: ‘The beasts of the forest retire to the thickets; the birds hide themselves beneath the foliage of the trees, or in the crevices of the rocks. Yet, amid this apparent silence, when we lend an attentive ear to the most feeble sounds transmitted by the air, we hear a dull vibration, a continual murmur, a hum of insects, that fill, if we may use the expression, all the lower strata of the air. Nothing is better fitted to make man feel the extent and power of organic life. Myriads of insects creep upon the soil, and flutter round the plants parched by the ardour of the Sun. A confused noise issues from every bush, from the decayed trunks of trees, from the clefts of the rock, and from the ground undermined by the lizards, millepedes, and cecilias. There are so many voices proclaiming to us, that all nature breathes; and that, under a thousand different forms, life is diffused throughout the cracked and dusty soil, as well as in the bosom of the waters, and in the air that circulates around us.’

18

Humboldt’s Cosmos

‘THE MAD FRENZY has seized me of representing in a single work the whole material world,’ Humboldt declared in October 1834. He wanted to write a book that would bring together everything in the heavens and on earth, ranging from distant nebulae to the geography of mosses, and from landscape painting to the migration of the human races and poetry. Such a ‘book on Nature’, he wrote, ‘ought to produce an impression like Nature herself’.

At the age of sixty-five, Humboldt began what would become his most influential book: Cosmos. A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe. It was loosely based on his Berlin lecture series, but the expedition to Russia had given him the final comparative data he had needed. A colossal endeavour, Cosmos was like a ‘sword in the breast that now has to be drawn’, he said, and the ‘opus of my life’. The title, Humboldt explained, came from the Greek word κόσμος

– Kosmos – which meant ‘beauty’ and ‘order’, and which had also been applied to the universe as an ordered system. Humboldt now used it, as he said, as a catchphrase to express and encapsulate ‘both heaven and earth’.

And so, in 1834, the very year that the term ‘scientist’¹ was first coined, heralding the beginning of the professionalization of the sciences and the hardening lines between different scientific disciplines, Humboldt began a book that did exactly the opposite. As science moved away from nature into laboratories and universities, separating itself off into distinct disciplines, Humboldt created a work that brought together all that professional science was trying to keep apart.

Because Cosmos covered a vast range of subjects, Humboldt’s research rippled into all conceivable areas. Aware that he didn’t and couldn’t know everything, Humboldt recruited an army of helpers – scientists, classicists and historians – who were all experts in their fields. Well-travelled British botanists happily sent him long lists of plants from the countries they had visited. Astronomers handed over their data, geologists provided maps and classicists consulted ancient texts for Humboldt. His old contacts in France proved useful too. A French explorer obliged by sending Humboldt a long manuscript about Polynesian plants, for example, while close friends from Paris such as François Arago were at Humboldt’s regular disposal. At times Humboldt asked specific questions or enquired which pages he should consult in which book, and at others he sent out long questionnaires. When chapters were completed, he would distribute proof pages with gaps that he requested his correspondents to fill in with the relevant numbers and facts, or he would ask them to correct his drafts.

Humboldt was in charge of the general overview, while his helpers provided the specific data and information he needed. He had the cosmic perspective and they were the tools in his grand scheme. Intensely meticulous about accuracy, Humboldt always consulted several experts about each subject. His thirst for facts was insatiable – from questioning a missionary in China about the Chinese dislike of dairy products to querying another correspondent about the number of palm species in Nepal. It was his obsession, he admitted, ‘to pursue one and the same object until I can explain it’. He dispatched thousands of letters and questioned visitors. A young novelist who had recently returned from Algiers, for example, was terrified when Humboldt bombarded him with enquiries about rocks, plants and strata of which he knew absolutely nothing. Humboldt could be relentless. ‘This time you won’t escape,’ he told another visitor, for ‘I have to plunder you.’