The Invention of Nature

Citation

Wulf, A. (2015). The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World. Alfred A. Knopf.

Chapter Summary

The book is a narrative biography of the Prussian naturalist Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) of about 470 pages, with notes, bibliography and index. Its twenty-three chapters fall into five parts whose titles trace the life of Humboldt's ideas: departure, arrival, return, influence and new worlds. Most chapters follow Humboldt himself, but at regular intervals a chapter titled "X and Nature" or "X and Humboldt" turns to someone he influenced or who influenced him. Kirkus Reviews singled out these pauses for chapters on the great figures who acknowledged his influence, and the second half of the book increasingly becomes a history of his ideas after him.

Part I: Departure: Emerging Ideas

Beginnings; Imagination and Nature: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Humboldt; In Search of a Destination.

Humboldt's upbringing as the son of a wealthy Prussian family, his friendship with Goethe, and the search for an expedition that he could pay for with his own money. The Goethe chapter sets up the book's recurring theme, the joining of imagination and scientific observation.

Part II: Arrival: Collecting Ideas

South America; The Llanos and the Orinoco; Across the Andes; Chimborazo; Politics and Nature: Thomas Jefferson and Humboldt.

The 1799–1804 expedition through Spanish America: the plains of the llanos, the Orinoco, the crossing of the Andes, and the ascent of the volcano Chimborazo. The publisher's description emphasizes the discoveries of this period, including the similarities between climate and vegetation zones on different continents. The part ends with Humboldt's visit to President Jefferson in the United States on his way home.

Part III: Return: Sorting Ideas

Europe; Berlin; Paris; Revolutions and Nature: Simón Bolívar and Humboldt; London; Going in Circles: Maladie Centrifuge.

Humboldt back in Europe, in Berlin, Paris and London, turning his results into publications; his relationship with Simón Bolívar, framed as a chapter on revolutions and nature; and a closing chapter whose title, "Going in Circles: Maladie Centrifuge", points to a restless, centrifugal life.

Part IV: Influence: Spreading Ideas

Return to Berlin; Russia; Evolution and Nature: Charles Darwin and Humboldt; Humboldt's Cosmos; Poetry, Science and Nature: Henry David Thoreau and Humboldt.

Humboldt's late return to Berlin, his 1829 expedition across Russia, and his book Cosmos, alongside chapters on his influence on Charles Darwin and on Henry David Thoreau.

Part V: New Worlds: Evolving Ideas

The Greatest Man Since the Deluge; Man and Nature: George Perkins Marsh and Humboldt; Art, Ecology and Nature: Ernst Haeckel and Humboldt; Preservation and Nature: John Muir and Humboldt.

The final part follows Humboldt's legacy through three successors, each paired with a theme in the chapter titles: George Perkins Marsh with the relationship between people and nature, Ernst Haeckel with art and ecology, and John Muir with preservation. The publisher's description states the book's claim that Humboldt's influence led Muir to his ideas of preservation.

Key Concepts

Parts I–II: Forming the vision

• Nature as an interconnected whole: the book's central claim about Humboldt, that he saw the Earth as a living web in which climate, vegetation, animals and people are connected.
• Vegetation and climate zones: the observation that comparable zones of plant life recur with altitude and latitude across continents.
• Imagination and science: the conviction, developed with Goethe, that feeling and aesthetic response belong alongside measurement in understanding nature.

Parts III–V: Spreading the vision

• Human-induced climate change: the publisher's description credits Humboldt with predicting, as early as 1800, that human activity could harm the climate.
• Science and politics: Humboldt's relationships with political leaders, above all Jefferson and Bolívar, given chapters of their own.
• Ecology, conservation and preservation: the traditions the final part traces through Marsh, Haeckel and Muir.
• Science writing for the public: Humboldt's combination of scientific observation and poetic narrative, which the book presents as a model for Thoreau and others.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A readable, well-researched life. The book won the Royal Society Science Book Prize and the Costa Biography Award among other prizes. Reviewers quoted on the author's website praise both the story and the research: the New York Times Book Review called it readable, thoughtful and widely researched, informed by German sources richer than the English-language canon, and noted that it was the first formal biography in many years.
• Biography and history of ideas together. Kirkus Reviews described it as combining a biography with a history of Humboldt's times. The chapters on Goethe, Jefferson, Bolívar, Darwin, Thoreau, Marsh, Haeckel and Muir show how one person's ideas moved through science, politics, literature and conservation.
• Geographical substance. For geography students, the account of the American expedition and of vegetation zones gives a vivid picture of field science at the origin of physical geography and biogeography, and of the idea of nature as a connected system.

Limitations

• Popular rather than scholarly. It is written for a general audience. Paul Giles, reviewing it in Australian Book Review, called it well written, with an eye for comic anecdote, and likely to restore Humboldt's claim on public attention, which is a description of its strengths as a popular biography; it is not a technical account of Humboldt's science or a guide to the history of geographical thought.
• An argument for its subject. The book sets out to restore a "lost hero" and makes the case that later ideas of ecology and conservation stem from Humboldt. Students should read its claims of influence, on Muir and Thoreau in particular, as an interpretation to weigh rather than settled history.
• Uneven focus on Humboldt. The later parts give whole chapters to other figures, so Humboldt's own later work, apart from Cosmos and the Russian journey, receives less attention than the American expedition.

Where It Fits in the Course

The book appears in a cross-disciplinary list of further reading rather than in a taught geography course, and it works best as a companion to one. Its natural partners are histories of geographical ideas: Livingstone's The Geographical Tradition and Cresswell's Geographic Thought place Humboldt within the longer development of the discipline in a more critical, academic register, and reading Wulf alongside them shows the difference between a celebratory biography and a contested disciplinary history.

Among its listmates, D'Arcy Thompson's On Growth and Form is another classic about the patterns of the natural world, written from mathematics and physics, and Dawkins's The Selfish Gene is a popular account of evolution that pairs with Wulf's Darwin chapter. All three show how ideas about nature reach a wide readership.

How to Use This Book

The book suits any student with an interest in geography, ecology, environmental history or the history of science; it requires no background and reads as a continuous narrative.

Suggestions for reading:

• For a geography or environmental course: read Parts I and II in full, since they contain the expedition and the formation of Humboldt's view of nature, then the chapters on Marsh and Muir in Part V for the roots of environmental thought and conservation.
• For the history of science: add the Goethe, Darwin and Cosmos chapters, which show how Humboldt's methods and writing travelled.
• For politics and Latin America: the Jefferson and Bolívar chapters stand alone well.

Keep a map of Humboldt's journeys at hand while reading Part II. Note each claim of influence and check how it is supported in the endnotes. Following the book with a scholarly history of geographical thought, or with a short selection from Humboldt's own writings, gives a fuller and more critical picture.