Geographical Thoughts of Alexander Von Humboldt – UGC NET – Notes

• Humboldt (1779-1859) was the last of the great polymaths. He mastered a number of disciplines and put all his energy into travel and research in order to understand the whole complex system of the universe. He contributed to so many branches of science that his work is almost as difficult to summarise as Carl Ritter’s.
• At various times, he did research in botany, geology, physics, chemistry, anatomy, physiology, history and all aspects of geography. On several occasions Humboldt had to defend himself against the charge of being too versatile.

Life and Works of Alexander Von Humboldt

• He was born in Berlin in 1769 and belonged to the family of a Prussian land-owning aristocracy. His father was an officer in the Prussian army. The unity of human races, an idea which Humboldt pioneered in the latter part of his academic career, seems to have been developed on account of his frequent meetings (arranged by his mathematics tutor) with the Jewish philosopher, Moses Mendelssohn.
• With him and others, Humboldt discussed matters relating to the contemporary social inequities of an aristocratic society and drew up plans to do something about these things. He also attended the lectures on scientific subjects, delivered by the noted physician, Marcus Herz, who was a disciple of Immanuel Kant. These lectures had a profound impact on the thinking of Humboldt. He also witnessed the demonstration of scientific experiments which Marcus performed.
• At the age of 18, Humboldt entered the University of Frankfurt, but there he stayed for six months only. In 1789, he entered the University of Gottingen, where he had the opportunity to meet George Forster who had lately returned from his voyage around the world with Captain Cook.
• Before Humboldt came into contact with George Forster, he was very fascinated by geology, and this fascination led him to organise a short scientific tour, in the autumn of 1789, to the Rhineland Basaltic region. He published a short monograph and several articles on the Rhineland Basalt and attempted to uphold the current theory of the aqueous origin of basaltic rock.
• However, in the company of George Forster, Humboldt made his first foreign tour in 1790 through Holland, Belgium, central and southern England and northern France. Forster’s interest in geography, his method of careful observation and critical treatment of facts, and above all his talent for artistic though scientific description of landscape made an indelible impression on his young companion. Humboldt said later that his interest in geography started with his acquaintance with George Forster.
• After he came back from the foreign tour, Humboldt joined the School of Mines at Freiberg in Saxony in 1791 where he met the famous geologist and scholar A. G. Werner. There, Humboldt attended lectures in physics, chemistry, geology and mining.
• In 1792, he was appointed as the director of mines in the Prussian state of Franconia. His official position provided him opportunities to travel across southern Germany and carry out extensive investigations in botany, geology and meteorology. His active mind was always formulating new questions about almost everything that caught his imagination and attention.
• He is said to have studied the effect of different rocks on magnetic declination. He also carried out scientific experiments on the subterranean plants which he found growing in the underground mines and in 1793 published his first scientific paper, based on the results of these findings. There was no limit to the range of his curiosity and he wanted to travel and see for himself what the different parts of the world were like.
• Humboldt visited Bavaria, Austria, Switzerland and Italy, on which trip he observed the rock structure of the Alps and tested some of the ideas of the Swiss scholar, Horace Benedict de Saussure, who thought that the deep Alpine valleys had been cut by the rush of water in the receding flood. Visits to his brother Wilhelm, who was then living in Jena, brought Humboldt into contact with Goethe and Schiller, which strengthened his aesthetic appreciation of and philosophical approach to nature.
• Humboldt gave up his government job in 1797 after the death of his mother, and began to plan for travelling. In Paris, he had access to a variety of instruments and learned how to make use of them. There he met Pierre Simon Laplace and learnt from him how to use the aneroid barometer to determine elevations above sea level. Humboldt had to call off his expedition to Egypt and also to the Pacific due to some unavoidable circumstances.
• In 1798, he sailed with the French botanist Aime Bonpland across the Mediterranean Sea. The purpose of the voyage was to go to Marseilles and then to sail for Algiers, from where they intended to travel overland to Egypt. However, the plan could not succeed as the ship was wrecked off the coast of Portugal before it ever reached the shores.
• They then decided to set out for the city of Madrid. On the way to Madrid, Humboldt made daily observations of temperature and altitude, and he was the first to make an accurate measurement of the elevation of the Spanish Meseta. In Madrid, Humboldt’s position in the Prussian aristocracy gave him access to the ruling aristocracy and he succeeded in getting permission to visit the Spanish colonies in America.
• Humboldt and Bonpland sailed for America in June 1799. They returned to France in 1804 and Humboldt lived in Paris until 1827. In Paris itself, Humboldt was much influenced by one of the five methodological precepts of August Comte’s ‘le reel’ which meant that the scientific status of knowledge had to be guaranteed by the direct experience of an immediate reality, and this required a particular conception of causality in which causal relations amounted to regular associations between phenomena. It can be said that Humboldt was impressed by Comte’s positivist approach.
• Exhausted financial position forced him to go back to Berlin in 1827. He was offered a post of Chamberlain to the King of Prussia which he accepted. In 1829, Humboldt was invited by the Russian Tsar to explore the virgin lands of Siberia across the Ural mountains.