20 Quotes by Andrea Wulf

Nature was Humboldt’s teacher. And the greatest lesson that nature offered was that of freedom. ‘Nature is the domain of liberty’, Humboldt said, because nature’s balance was created by diversity which might in turn be taken as a blueprint for political and moral truth. Everything from the most unassuming moss or insect or elephants or towering oak trees, had its role, and together they made the whole. Humankind was just a small part. NATURE ITSELF WAS A REPUBLIC OF FREEDOM.

Whenever he stood on a summit or a high ridge, he felt so moved by the scenery that his imagination carried him even higher. This imagination, he said, soothed the 'deep wounds' that pure 'reason' sometimes created.

La posición de Kant estaba entre el racionalismo y el empirismo. (…) Los seres humanos era ciudadanos de dos mundos, del mundo del Ding an sich (la cosa en sí), que era el mundo externo y el mundo interno de la propia percepción (cómo “percibía” las cosas cada persona). Según Kant, la “cosa en sí” no podía conocerse nunca del todo, y el mundo interno era siempre subjetivo.”.

The effects of the human species’ intervention were already ‘incalculable’, Humboldt insisted, and could become catastrophic if they continued to disturb the world so ‘brutally’. Humboldt would see again and again how humankind unsettled the balance of nature.

Without a diversity of opinion, the discovery of truth is impossible,’ he.

Die Menschheit sir nur ein kleiner Teil Aber die Natur selbst sei eine Republik der Freiheit.

Im Gegensatz zu Christoph Kolumbus und Isaac Newton entdeckte Humboldt keinen Kontinent und kein neues physikalisches Gesetz. Humboldts Ruhm beruhte nicht auf einer bestimmten Tat oder Erfindung, sondern auf seiner Sicht der Welt.

Humboldt ‘read’ plants as others did books – and to him they revealed a global force behind nature, the movements of civilizations as well as of landmass. No one had ever approached botany in this way.

Humboldt wrote that nature had to be experienced through feelings.