| Description |
xv, 404 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm |
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text txt rdacontent |
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unmediated n rdamedia |
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volume nc rdacarrier |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 371-389) and index. |
| Contents |
Prologue: Humboldt's bridge -- Confluences -- Passage to America, 1799-1804 -- Manifest destinies -- Interchapter: Finally shall come the poet -- " All are alike designed for freedom": Humboldt on race and slavery -- The community of Cosmos -- The face of planet America -- Epilogue: recalling Cosmos. |
| Summary |
Explorer, scientist, writer, and humanist, Alexander von Humboldt was the most famous intellectual of the age that began with Napoleon and ended with Darwin. With Cosmos, the book that crowned his career, Humboldt offered his vision of humans and nature as integrated halves of a single whole. In it, he espoused the idea that, while the universe of nature exists apart from human purpose, its beauty and order, the idea of the whole it composes, are human achievements : cosmos comes into being in the dance of world and mind, subject and object, science and poetry. Humboldt's science laid the foundations for ecology and inspired the theories of his disciple, Charles Darwin. In the United States, his ideas shaped the work of Emerson, Thoreau, Poe, and Whitman. His ideas helped spark the American environmental movement through followers like John Muir and George Perkins Marsh. And they even bolstered efforts to free the slaves and honor the rights of Indians. The author traces Humboldt's ideas for Cosmos to his 1799 journey to the Americas, where he first experienced the diversity of nature and of the world's peoples and envisioned a new cosmopolitanism that would link ideas, disciplines, and nations into a global web of knowledge and cultures. In reclaiming Humboldt's transcultural and transdisciplinary project, she situates America in a lively and contested field of ideas, actions, and interests, and reaches beyond to a new worldview that integrates the natural and social sciences, the arts, and the humanities. |
| Subject |
Humboldt, Alexander von, 1769-1859 -- Influence -- United States.
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Humboldt, Alexander von, 1769-1859. Kosmos.
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Humboldt, Alexander von, 1769-1859 -- Political and social views.
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United States -- Intellectual life -- 19th century.
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Science -- History -- 19th century.
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Humboldt, Alexander von, 1769-1859. (OCoLC)fst00054219
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Kosmos (Humboldt, Alexander von) (OCoLC)fst01362594
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Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.) (OCoLC)fst00972484
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Intellectual life. (OCoLC)fst00975769
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Political and social views. (OCoLC)fst01353986
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Science. (OCoLC)fst01108176
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United States. (OCoLC)fst01204155
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| Chronological Term |
1800-1899
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| Genre/Form |
Biographies. (OCoLC)fst01919896
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History. (OCoLC)fst01411628
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Biographies.
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| ISBN |
9780226871820 (alk. paper) |
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0226871827 (alk. paper) |
| Standard No. |
40017092774 |
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