He inspired generations of scientists, writers and poets, including Thoreau, Emerson, Darwin, and Jules Verne. In his book Views of Nature, Humboldt wrote about how weather and geography influence the moods of people-and this was a revelation.
In fact, Darwin took Humboldt's seven-volume book Personal Narrative of a Journey to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent along with him during his voyage aboard the Beagle. In 1806, his writings were about evolutionary ideas, long before Darwin. Perhaps because of the influence of Goethe, Humboldt strongly advocated merging of art and science.
He saw nature as a unified whole, an "organism in which parts only worked in relation to each other." His approach was holistic, and was entirely against the reductionist approach to science. Humboldt was a great explorer and scientist. Today, in the United States, his name is practically unknown, despite being a world-wide celebrity in his day. This is a wonderful biography of a man about whom I knew very little.
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