A Humboldtian Balance

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Throughout his life, Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) 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 as follows.

“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".

Humboldt’s belief in the unity of the cosmos had far-reaching implications for understanding humanity, too. He rejected what he saw as obsolete and pernicious divisions of the world into Old and New. Through his geological, meteorological and botanical maps he showed that distant parts of the globe can be more like one another than their immediate neighbors. Not surprisingly, when Humboldt surveyed humanity, he was more impressed by the commonalities than the differences. In fact, he was an ardent champion of the freedom of all peoples.

Alexander von Humboldt in Wikipedia

(The above is borrowed and edited from https://theconversation.com under the Creative Commons license.)