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This article sheds new light on Alexander von Humboldt’s political position in the revolutionary decade between 1789 and 1799. The young naturalist interacted with both supporters and opponents of the revolution. In July 1790, he even participated in the preparations for the Festival of the Federation in Paris together with Georg Forster. However, Humboldt remained detached from Europe’s polarized politics. He avoided taking a firm stance and distanced himself from revolutionary violence. Continuous emotional and physical crises, in addition to his immersion into scientific studies, fuelled this retreat. While steeped in Enlightenment ideas and committed to a cosmopolitan understanding of liberty, Humboldt absorbed the critique of the French Revolution and the skeptical take on rationalism that the philosophers Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi and Wilhelm von Humboldt, Alexander’s brother, articulated.By recognizing these influences and reexamining autobiographical sources, we can identify the various intellectual and political contexts in which Alexander von Humboldt operated during the 1790s. This polycentric approach leads to a nuanced understanding of Humboldt’s political thinking in revolutionary Europe. It explains his caution in political matters and revises the conventional image of Humboldt as a fervent supporter of the French Revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background The German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt conducted an expedition through the American continent, alongside Aimé Bonpland, from 1799 to 1804. Before finally returning to Europe, they decided to take a side trip to the USA between May 20 and July 7, 1804. Humboldt’s most detailed account of his time in the USA consists of a manuscript entitled “Plantae des États-Unis” (1804), containing information on useful plants and timber of the country. The aim of this paper is to retrieve, for the first time, ethnobotanical information regarding North American plants and their uses inside this Humboldt’s manuscript as well as to highlight the erasure and invisibilization of North American Indigenous knowledge within historical documents and bibliography, mainly during the nineteenth century. Methods “Plantae des États-Unis” (digitized version and its transcription) was carefully analyzed, and information on plant species mentioned in the manuscript (including botanical and vernacular names, traditional uses, and general observations) was retrieved. Traditional uses were correlated with ethnobotanical data from the Native American Ethnobotany Database and encyclopedic literature on North American plants from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as recent pharmacological studies searched in scientific papers. Results In the manuscript are mentioned 28 species distributed in 15 botanical families, with Fagaceae (9 Quercus species) being the most representative. All species are USA natives, except for one undetermined species (only the genus was mentioned, Corylus). Four species were directly mentioned as medicinal (Toxicodendron radicans, Liriodendron tulipifera, Actaea racemosa, and Gillenia stipulata), while other four were described as tanning agents (astringent) (Cornus florida, Diospyros virginiana, Quercus rubra, and Quercus velutina). Two species were described as bitter (Xanthorhiza simplicissima and A. racemosa). Nine Quercus species were described, but five were reported as the most useful oaks for cultivation in Europe (Quercus bicolor, Quercus castanea, Quercus virginiana, Quercus michauxii, and Quercus alba); three of them were used for ship construction (Q. virginiana, Q. michauxii, and Q. alba), two as astringent (Q. rubra and Q. stellata), and one had wood of poor quality (Quercus phellos). One species was described as a yellow dye (Hydrastis canadensis), and the other was mentioned as toxic (Aesculus pavia). Ten species did not have any useful applications listed. Conclusions Although “Plantae des États-Unis” is a brief collection of annotations, these data reveal a historical scenario of outstanding plants with social and economic interest in the USA at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The data highlight a clear process of suppression of the traditional knowledge of Native North American Indigenous peoples in past historical records and literature, due to the lack of acknowledgment by white European settlers and American-born explorers. This ethnobotanical inventory may help us understand the relationship between plants and Native North American Indigenous peoples, as well as European naturalists and settlers, and USA-born people in the past, and reflect on the importance of Indigenous traditional knowledge, bioeconomy, sustainable management, and conservation of biodiversity in the present and future.

Background: The German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt conducted an expedition through the American continent, alongside Aimé Bonpland, from 1799 to 1804. Before finally returning to Europe, they decided to take a side trip to the USA between May 20 and July 7, 1804. Humboldt's most detailed account of his time in the USA consists of a manuscript entitled "Plantae des États-Unis" (1804), containing information on useful plants and timber of the country. The aim of this paper is to retrieve, for the first time, ethnobotanical information regarding North American plants and their uses inside this Humboldt's manuscript as well as to highlight the erasure and invisibilization of North American Indigenous knowledge within historical documents and bibliography, mainly during the nineteenth century. Methods: "Plantae des États-Unis" (digitized version and its transcription) was carefully analyzed, and information on plant species mentioned in the manuscript (including botanical and vernacular names, traditional uses, and general observations) was retrieved. Traditional uses were correlated with ethnobotanical data from the Native American Ethnobotany Database and encyclopedic literature on North American plants from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as recent pharmacological studies searched in scientific papers. Results: In the manuscript are mentioned 28 species distributed in 15 botanical families, with Fagaceae (9 Quercus species) being the most representative. All species are USA natives, except for one undetermined species (only the genus was mentioned, Corylus). Four species were directly mentioned as medicinal (Toxicodendron radicans, Liriodendron tulipifera, Actaea racemosa, and Gillenia stipulata), while other four were described as tanning agents (astringent) (Cornus florida, Diospyros virginiana, Quercus rubra, and Quercus velutina). Two species were described as bitter (Xanthorhiza simplicissima and A. racemosa). Nine Quercus species were described, but five were reported as the most useful oaks for cultivation in Europe (Quercus bicolor, Quercus castanea, Quercus virginiana, Quercus michauxii, and Quercus alba); three of them were used for ship construction (Q. virginiana, Q. michauxii, and Q. alba), two as astringent (Q. rubra and Q. stellata), and one had wood of poor quality (Quercus phellos). One species was described as a yellow dye (Hydrastis canadensis), and the other was mentioned as toxic (Aesculus pavia). Ten species did not have any useful applications listed. Conclusions: Although "Plantae des États-Unis" is a brief collection of annotations, these data reveal a historical scenario of outstanding plants with social and economic interest in the USA at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The data highlight a clear process of suppression of the traditional knowledge of Native North American Indigenous peoples in past historical records and literature, due to the lack of acknowledgment by white European settlers and American-born explorers. This ethnobotanical inventory may help us understand the relationship between plants and Native North American Indigenous peoples, as well as European naturalists and settlers, and USA-born people in the past, and reflect on the importance of Indigenous traditional knowledge, bioeconomy, sustainable management, and conservation of biodiversity in the present and future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the activities of those British travellers and settlers who carried out open field research in the Andean northwest of Río de la Plata during the 1820s. The focus is set upon Doctor Joseph Redhead, who became a regional expert on questions of mountain altitudes and natural portents such as giant fossil bones and large masses of native iron. Redhead was at the centre of a network of British doctors, entrepreneurs, adventurers and civil servants who crisscrossed the territory attracted by new mining ventures and the opening of trade, and driven by the need for geographical surveys implicit in the logic of empire. James Paroissien, Woodbine Parish, Joseph Pentland and others managed to combine research on the natural environment while engaged in their commercial, diplomatic or military missions. Particular attention is paid to the interactions of Redhead and his fellow countrymen with Humboldt and the kind of science cultivated by him, as well as to issues of scientific authority at the time of deciding on the cause of unexplained natural phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Zusammenfassung In dem Aufsatz wird ein Brief erstmalig veröffentlicht, in dem Alexander von Humboldt im Jahr 1849 bei einem Minister der liberalen Regierung von Kurhessen die Verdienste eines an der Universität in Marburg lehrenden jungen Professors hervorhob. Die Rede ist hier von dem später durch bahnbrechende Entdeckungen berühmten Physiologen Carl Ludwig. Vermittelt wurde das Schreiben durch den Humboldt nahestehenden Mediziner und Physiologen Emil du Bois-Reymond. Der Empfehlungsbrief, mit dem Humboldt versuchte, Ludwigs finanzielle Situation zu verbessern, ist ein Beispiel für die Förderung junger Forscher wie auch freier wissenschaftlicher Institutionen durch Humboldt. Abstract A letter from Alexander von Humboldt to a minister in the liberal government of the Electorate of Hesse is published here for the first time. In this letter from 1849, Humboldt praised the achievements of a young professor at the University of Marburg: Carl Ludwig, now famous for his groundbreaking discoveries in physiology. Humboldt’s friend and colleague, Emil du Bois-Reymond, had facilitated the contact between Ludwig and Humboldt. The letter of recommendation, with which Humboldt sought to help improve Ludwig’s financial situation, is an example of how Humboldt promoted the work of young scientists and independent scientific institutions. Resumen En el ensayo se publica por primera vez una carta en la que Alexander von Humboldt, en 1849, enfatizaba los méritos de un joven profesor que enseñaba en la Universidad de Marburg a un ministro del gobierno liberal de Hesse. Estamos hablando del fisiólogo Carl Ludwig, que más tarde se hizo famoso por sus descubrimientos innovadores. La carta fue mediada por el médico y fisiólogo Emil du Bois-Reymond, cercano a Humboldt. La carta de recomendación con la que Humboldt intentó mejorar la situación financiera de Ludwig es un ejemplo del apoyo de Humboldt a los jóvenes investigadores y a las instituciones científicas independientes.

The dissemination of Alexander von Humboldt's ideas in China can be traced back to the late Qing dynasty, where a few articles in English-language newspapers served as the earliest means of exposure. However, the reach and availability of these articles were highly limited. It was not until the Republican era that Humboldt gained a relatively broader publicity through the translations of foreign academic works. The general public's acquaintance with Humboldt mostly came from the extensive distribution of textbooks as well as biographical dictionaries of renowned scientists and explorers. Nevertheless, Humboldt's reputation coexisted with a lack of comprehensive academic research. While his ideas were referenced in various fields, such as geography, social sciences, and humanities, there was a notable absence of in-depth exploration. The underlying reason can be the disparity between Humboldt's global perspective and encyclopedic knowledge and the gradual subdivision of academic disciplines in the modernization process of Chinese universities. In recent years, Chinese literary researchers have taken the lead in revisiting Humboldt's works, signaling a renewed interest. It reflects the growing recognition of interdisciplinary research in China and the significance attributed to holistic knowledge in fields like philosophy of science and anthropology. These developments offer an opportunity to dismantle the barriers that have impeded the blending of Humboldtian knowledge into the Chinese intellectual landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies on the Prussian writer and naturalist Alexander von Humboldt and editions of his work are abundant. Among the many outstanding chapters of his famous journey through the American tropics, the two visits to Cuba (1800–1801/1804) stand out as a particular case. To this day very few original documents are known about his actual visits, the colonial sources that informed him and the history of his reception. This is due, in large part, to the fact that documentary sources are difficult to access. To overcome this difficulty, the Project Humboldt Digital was born in 2019, a cooperation project carried out between Havana and Berlin, whose main objective is to publish a collection of texts related to Humboldt’s stay in Cuba. In this article we aim to explain how our digital scholarly editions have been created from a methodological point of view. After outlining the origins, we present the workflow developed between the Oficina del Historiador de la Ciudad de La Habana and the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities to digitize, describe, publish, edit and preserve in digital format a collection of previously selected texts. Also, we describe the model of data representation in TEI format, as well as the tools employed to encode and publish the editions. Finally, we analyze the first editorial results obtained and offer some conclusions on the main challenges faced.

RESUMO Daobra de Humboldt - que não foi autorizado a viajar pelo Brasil - são estudados: a apresentação científica e estética da natureza; a descrição de paisagens típicas; a valorização das culturas indígenas; os ensaios políticos sobre Cuba e o México; a crítica da escravização e a defesa da independência das colônias; a comparação entre os continentes e a visão do nosso planeta no conjunto do Universo. As ideias de preservação do meio ambiente e de uma humanidade que supere preconceitos e inimizades são um legado importante para nós, que vivemos - depois da era dos descobrimentos e a dos impérios - na terceira fase da globalização.

Alexander von Humboldt conducted his best-known work on the slopes of the Ecuadorian Andes. He did this by applying his own characteristic brand of multidisciplinary scientific approach. This consisted of thorough data collection while synthesizing and visualizing the data in innovative formats. Also important for his scientific success in South America was his collaborative network that helped him to identify specimens and formulate his transformative scientific thoughts. It is no surprise that Humboldt was captivated by Ecuador, as it is one of the most biodiverse places in the world, and this astounding diversity was formed in an intricate, dynamic geological and climatological setting. As of yet, this biodiversity is far from being fully documented and the processes that generated it are still poorly understood. The IBS meeting in Quito 1 and the Second Latin American Congress of Biogeography will form the perfect platform to both commemorate Humboldt while addressing current and unresolved matters concerning the biodiversity of Ecuador and South America at large.

The integration and synthesis of data from varied sources is becoming increasingly common in biogeography and ecology. Although analyses of large, global datasets from multiple, varied sources only became common recently, such studies trace their origin to the early 19th century. Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was an eminent and much-celebrated scientist, who introduced the concept of collecting high-quality quantitative data across continents. More importantly, he championed inter-disciplinary research, data-driven studies, and global comparative syntheses. With these studies, he helped to lay the foundations for the fields of biogeography and ecology, and his ideas, concepts, and scientific approach remain at the forefront of exciting recent developments in both disciplines. Remembering Humboldt’s 250th birthday, we show how his scientific philosophy and visionary approach to multi-disciplinary data integration and synthesis have recently been revitalized due to increasing computing power and the numerous complex environmental challenges facing our planet.

La historia y teoría del paisaje han incluido reflexiones sobre su desarrollo paralelo como concepto analítico y como género visual y pictórico. En tal contexto, el trabajo del polímata Alexander von Humboldt es un referente, al haber considerado a la estética y la epistemología del paisaje como elementos sustanciales de su noción de “fisionomía”. A través de los casos de Humboldt, del pintor bávaro Johann Moritz Rugendas y de sus imágenes para el libro de Christian Sartorius, este artículo propone un análisis del desarrollo del paisaje en el marco interdisciplinario de la geografía y la geología y sus redes de agentes interesados en la mutua dependencia de conocimientos científicos y el desarrollo industrial. El enfoque adoptado explora el modo de construcción visual del paisaje y las trayectorias científicas y sociales involucradas en su producción. A través del caso del volcán Jorullo, se presenta la forma en que la estética del paisaje fue usada para generalizar conocimientos geológicos y, en paralelo, una geografía para la colonización del país. Asimismo, a partir del caso del volcán de Colima, se analiza la producción imbricada de paisaje, observaciones geológicas, geográficas y cartográficas, al igual que puntos de vista sobre la modernización industrial. A esta constelación de relaciones se denomina “complejo humboldtiano del paisaje”.

Alexander von Humboldt provides a point of reference for questions that arise when reflecting on the papers in this special issue on "Experiencing the Global Environment," for he aimed to integrate local and global experience and qualitative and quantitative observation in his conceptions of physiognomy and of instruments. What are we to understand by direct experience? How do we draw the limits of our senses, whether in the larger world or internally? Does recent scholarly interest in distributed cognition illuminate the distributed experience of global phenomena obtained through mapping? How do our concepts shape our experience, whether local or global? Finally, do recent trends in the sciences, emphasizing complexity and contingency, tend to make traditional tensions between local and global priorities and between qualitative and quantitative description less relevant? Humboldt would have thought so.

Durante el año 2019 en distintas partes de América Latina se celebró el nacimiento de Alexander von Humboldt. Este texto analiza desde una geografía descolonial y antirracista lo que significa la celebración de Humboldt en términos de la racialización del espacio. Asombrados de la falta de acercamientos críticos a la celebración de Humboldt, seguimos a los eventos desarrollados en el Ecuador para comprender los discursos y prácticas alrededor de estas actividades. En base al análisis de lo que observamos en tres eventos especialmente emblemáticos, sostenemos que la celebración de Alexander von Humboldt fomenta el blanqueamiento del espacio en América Latina. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Map historians have long thought that their field of study has an exceptional origin, springing into life fully-fledged in Paris in the 1840s when the Frenchman Edme-François Jomard and the Portuguese visconde de Santarém created large collections of facsimiles of medieval and Renaissance maps and then squabbled over credit for creating the 'history of cartography'. This essay revises the story by adducing three earlier and much smaller collections by the Prussian Alexander von Humboldt, the Spaniard Ramón de la Sagra, and the French couple Xavier and Adèle Hommaire de Hell. The existence of these collections has hitherto been obscured by common bibliographical practices. This essay analyses the structure and design of all these facsimile collections and reads them in concert with their accompanying texts to reveal the emergence in Paris in the 1830s and 1840s of a scholarly concern for the comparative study of early maps. Together, these scholars wove existing threads of scholarship in the history of geography and discovery into a new field of study. The history of cartography thus possesses a communal and Western European rather than an idiosyncratic and national origin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of the Text Encoding Initiative is the property of Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) Consortium and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The intersection of cities, bodies and politics and their material flows creates an interdisciplinary platform for new radical urbanisms. Alberto de Salvatierra, founder and director of the Center for Civilization and assistant professor of urbanism and data in architecture at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada, believes we are at a critical perturbation in human society, that all that has been stable for some time is now changing, more voices are being heard, and one dominant point of view is no longer predicated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the author discusses articles within the issue on topics including the drawing convention of the analytique as a means of understanding the complex life of a building, scale of refusal to civilization, and deviance as refusal in South African shebeens or drinking establishments.

The Rustic Corridor, una de las doce acuarelas que ilustran el libro Narratives of South America (1836) del viajero británico Charles Empson, representa la esencial de la observación estética de las montañas en una etapa muy temprana del interés de la República de Colombia hacia la construcción del paisaje. La composición formal y conceptual de este dibujo, determina una serie de premisas humboldtianas esenciales en el estudio de la representación visual de las montañas: aparición de arquitectura intencional para crear un sentido de escala humana, la importancia de la observación subjetiva como narrativa principal de la imagen, y la falta de especificidad del lugar representado geográficamente. El objetivo de esta ilustración parece ser el de lograr un sentido de universalidad donde hay un espectador de la cadena montañosa al tiempo que hay una contemplación de los observadores Los solitarios observadores de este lugar representan a un nuevo ciudadano colombiano quien, a través de una ventana rústica, son testigos de los picos milenarios de los Andes que recientemente se han convertido en parte de una república moderna. Al igual que otros viajeros, Empson parece construir esta imagen en resonancia con ideas humboldtianas de distancia, infinitud, estructura, observación y universalidad.

This essay explores how Susan Fenimore Cooper's Rural Hours (1850) anticipates the ecological concept of nature. It argues that Cooper uses print culture, in particular transatlantic scientific writings and works of Anglican natural history, to create an aesthetics of wonder that negotiates ecological relationships between self and world, individual species and life zones, seasons and geological epochs. Yet wonder is not a presciently areligious affect that vaults her book into natural science's more secular future, as some critics have suggested. In Rural Hours , the religious and secular mutually inform each other as Cooper writes a wondrous earth. The essay details her interventions in Alexander von Humboldt's emergent ecological science and illuminates the ways her Episcopalian Christianity enriches Rural Hours through her denomination's emphasis on communion and balanced textual authority, in contrast to nineteenth-century Protestantism's reputation for individualist, sola scriptura hermeneutics. The essay also proposes that understanding Cooper's religious-scientific aesthetic of wonder helps clarify the gender and settler colonialism contexts of Rural Hours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The visualization of spatial knowledge is so common today that we rarely give it a second thought. But it depends upon the fairly recent recognition that maps are not just representations of the landscape, but also tools of analysis. By the end of the eighteenth century, Americans and Europeans began to use maps and other graphic tools to harvest data about the natural world. In the United States, this experimentation was prompted by political independence and the attendant need to govern the population, master the natural environment, facilitate white settler expansion, and establish agricultural self-sufficiency. To navigate this volatility, individuals began to experiment with visual and spatial representation from 1790 to the 1810s, and when considered together their efforts suggest a new era of visual thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Anuario de Historia Regional y de las Fronteras is the property of Universidad Industrial de Santander and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Procesos: Revista Ecuatoriana de Historia is the property of Universidad Andina Simon Bolivar, Sede Ecuador and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Alexander von Humboldt, 1769-1859, scientific explorer of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, wrote with a rational mind as well as a romantic spirit. Humboldt's Personal Narrative of a Journey to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent during the Years 1799-1804 is a blend of the objective/rational and subjective/romantic, so much so that this work can be considered an early form of science writing in the tradition of literary journalism. Personal Narrative reveals that Humboldt drew on and combined his empirical, rational, and romantic backgrounds to inform and inspire the public and his fellow researchers. The strongest case for Humboldt's work being considered an early form of literary journalism is his consistent use of the picturesque, of which his particular use in Personal Narrative operates at the crossroads between an Age of Reason and Romanticism. In so doing, Humboldt uses the picturesque to entertain as well as inform his audience. Analyses looking for only objectivity, or only subjectivity, in Humboldt's work fall short because he actively uses both in his writing. His scientific philosophy and epistemology create a dynamic feedback loop between objectivity and subjectivity. Further analysis of Humboldt's work as a literary journalistic piece will shed more light on the methodological holism of his epistemology. Recognizing Personal Narrative as an early form of literary journalism opens the door to the works of other authors who were inspired by Humboldt's work to write in ways that could also be considered forms of literary journalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Los perfiles biogeográficos producidos en 1802 y 1803 por Alexander von Humboldt y Francisco José de Caldas pueden considerarse como infografías sincrónicas, aunque disímiles. Ambas síntesis gráficas habrían surgido de un dibujo fundacional: la nivelación barométrica que Humboldt trazó cuando viajaba de Cartagena a Santafé por el río Magdalena, antes de su primer encuentro con Caldas. Se postula aquí que este perfil barométrico de Humboldt es la imagen que, una vez compartida, desencadenó un estimulante contrapunto y llevó a ambos viajeros a elaborar perfiles propiamente fitogeográficos -no solo geográficos-, centrados en los volcanes Chimborazo e Imbabura, respectivamente. Este artículo presenta evidencias epistolares e iconográficas que apoyan tal apreciación, y discute las influencias recíprocas de estos dos viajeros naturalistas, así como la asimetría que se presentó en su difusión y apropiación en la historia de la ciencia y la biogeografía.

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This article consists of two parts, the first deals with the actuality of Humboldtian and Bonplandian science, and the second with the popularity of both scientists. Although after their voyage to America (1977-1804) Humboldt and Bonpland pursued their life in a very different way, we aim to address both topics in a comparative mode, especially the reason why Bonpland has become much less well, known than Humboldt even though they did the long voyage together and become famous because of their stay in the equinox regions. The basic idea is to provide a global and actual vision in both directions in spite of the conviction that the two topics, the popularity of both figures and the actuality of their scientific legacy, can’t really be separated. Our guide is their different characterization which has been given to them over the last centuries, and we will also discuss some critical questions about the two naturalists. In order to reach the best possible conclusions, we also review investigations about both Humboldt and Bonpland presented in the last five years in congresses and publications from all over the world.

December 23, 2022 marked the 150th commemoration of painter George Catlin's death. Two days before Christmas of 1872, this artist passed away, a humble, penniless, almost forgotten old man, after having an extraordinary life experience, travelling enormous distances in space and time, from the forms of the primitive village lost in the northern prairies of the New World, to the glittering metropolises and royal palaces of the Old World. Catlin had an adventurous life, full of satisfactions, glory, unanimous recognition, but also of hardships, of financial entanglements that even led him to the debtors' prison and to the loss of his valuable works and collections, built up with great sacrifices. Educated to become a lawyer, he gave up the bar to devote himself to painting, in which he trained as a self-taught artist. He had some success as a miniature and portrait painter in Philadelphia but his great calling was the prairies and the natives who still roamed them in the first half of the 19th century. Catlin realized the imminent absorption and disappearance of these Native Americans into the mass of European-style civilization. He realized also that, through his art, he could preserve the natural, unaltered appearance of these communities, especially those that, being far from the urban area, had not been altered by contact with the whites. In 1830 he began his great adventure through the still virgin lands of the West. With no financial backing from any institution or wealthy patron, Catlin set out, brave and determined, at his own expense, on this far-reaching venture. For eight years he travelled to remote areas and visited 48 tribes. To make it easier for him to transport his materials, he only bought canvas of a small size (29 × 24 in/74 × 61 cm), which he could wrap in cylinders of waterproof oilskin. Thus, most of his works are of the same size whatever the subject, be they bust or full-length portraits, landscapes or large compositions of buffalo hunters or ceremonies with many figures. For his uncanny ability to reproduce the features of models, the Indians gave him the name Te-ho-pe-nee Wash-ee which translated to White Medicine Man. In 1837 he began exhibiting his Indian Gallery, first in New York, then in Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Boston, and in 1839 he crossed the ocean with 600 paintings and 8 tons of ethnographic pieces, including a 25 feet (7.60 m) high Crow tepee, which he exhibited with great success in London, Paris and Brussels. He was received by Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle and by King Louis Philippe at the Tuileries and St. Cloud. The latter invited him to exhibit at the Louvre and commissioned several copies of works he liked. A gifted memoirist, Catlin wrote several volumes of memoirs about his travels and the Indian chiefs and European royalty he met. George Sand, Théophile Gautier and Charles Baudelaire devoted enthusiastic lines to his works of art. George Catlin is one of the most important 19th century documentary painters of America and worldwide. A pioneer of this art form, a dilettante ethnographer, a talented memoirist of his adventures, an ingenious entrepreneur of folkloric shows, and a world celebrity of his time, George Catlin left a work of enduring value in which the faces and daily activities of Native Americans in the last days of glory of their traditional way of life were preserved before they were assimilated into the mainstream of European-style American civilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1820s and 1830s saw the beginnings of the modern social-scientific study of urban life. In Great Britain and France, these years gave rise to the "Dickensian" anxiety about cities as squalid, disease-infested slums. This article examines how the physical space of St. Petersburg and Moscow was represented during these years by four pioneers of the study of Russian urban society – Vasilii Androssov, Aleksandr Bashutskii, Semen Gaevskii, and Andrei Zablotskii-Desiatovskii. Drawing on ideas and methodologies of Western contemporaries, especially Alexander von Humboldt and the French hygienist Louis-René Villermé, they depicted Russia's capitals on three spatial scales: that of the individual house or street, the city as a whole, and the entire planet. Rejecting the pessimism of their Western counterparts, they depicted St. Petersburg and Moscow as wholesome cities managed by a wise government and inhabited by a benign population. However, they also argued that the forces driving the development of both cities were partly independent of the imperial state and could only be understood by trained experts. They thereby contributed to the rise of a public opinion engaged in critical discussion about Russian society, and bolstered both Nicholas I's nationalist ideology of Official Nationality and his government's cautious efforts at socioeconomic modernization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though travel literature is not usually consulted to follow the evolution of economic reflection, a certain number of these works about Mexico in the nineteenth century allow a reading from this point of view. Beginning with the famous Alexander von Humboldt, a good number of foreign travelers were intent on elucidating certain economic questions whose relevance sharpened in a social and political scenario as the Mexican one. One concern was the question about the civilizing effect of commerce. Another one was about the so much emphasized principle of self-interest as an unfailing motive for economic dynamism. Finally, some travelers asked themselves to which degree the construction of an administrative apparatus was the decisive factor to put Mexico on the path of economic progress. The survey includes the works of several significant European travelers and covers until the year of 1910. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alexander von Humboldt ha sido considerado por muchos como el pionero de la biogeografía, y la obra que lo ha situado en el imaginario popular como el primer biogeógrafo fue publicada por primera vez entre 1805 y 1807 en París, con el título Essai sur la géographie des plantes. El miércoles 2 de mayo de 1804 apareció un breve aviso en un periódico de La Habana, Cuba, bajo el título: “Geografía física. Ideas sobre el límite inferior de la nieve perpetua, y sobre la geografía de las plantas: por el Señor Barón de Humboldt, traducidas del francés al español por A. R.”. Este artículo incluía una sección final sobre los límites de la nieve y la vegetación, y constituiría la primera referencia de Humboldt a la geografía de las plantas impresa en América.

Lorsque la doyenne de votre Faculté, Madame Hannelore Lee-Janke m’a fait l’honneur de me demander d’ouvrir l’année académique, je me suis demandé quel type de leçon je pourrais bien faire à de futurs traducteurs et interprètes. Il m’est rapidement venu à l’esprit qu’il pourrait être intéressant de présenter la figure d’un grand savant dont on fête justement cette année le 240 e anniversaire de la naissance et en même temps le 150 e de la mort. Alexander von Humboldt, non seulement naturaliste, est aussi un philosophe dont les travaux font partie aujourd’hui de ce qu’on n’appelait pas encore les sciences humaines. Il a illustré tout autant les Naturwissenschaften que les Geisteswissenschaften. Il a su traduire et interpréter la réalité matérielle dans un langage scientifique nouveau. Il a rendu disponible la réalité par les représentations qu’il a données de la nature mais aussi par celles qu’il a données des sociétés.

This article is an attempt to discuss the image of Alexander von Humboldt as a pure natural scientist with a humanist ethos, and to highlight that he was in fact one of the first thinkers who anticipated positions known today as political ecology. We outline that his universal knowledge obviously has contradictory perspectives, and was interpreted in several directions. On the one hand, there is the position taken by post-colonial critics that Humboldt showed Eurocentric and imperialist thinking during his travels to the Americas, as Pratt has advocated. On the other hand, and in explicit contrast to the post-colonial critique, Humboldt has been regarded by Sachs as a founding figure of American environmentalism and as "perhaps, the first ecological thinker." Furthermore, Wulf's biography titled The Invention of Nature tries to show that Humboldt wanted to bridge the gap between the emerging natural sciences and Romanticist aesthetics. However, based on his writings, we argue that his perception of nature has been misread and that his position was shaped by a view akin to open and critical political ecology, as opposed to pure nature constructivism without including local humans. We show this by focusing on his research methods that were open to local Indigenous ecological knowledge, his appraisal of Indigenous socio-cultural systems, his perception of nature as Indigenous cultural landscapes degraded by colonial and early capitalist market forces, his openness towards Indigenous ontologies of what we call nature, and finally his focus on local institutions for the sustainable governance of resources.

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A polymath and ahead of his time, Alexander von Humboldt had numerous interests and insights that have shaped modern science. His holistic viewpoint on nature founded the principles of several branches of sciences such as comparative biology, ecology, and biogeography, and inspired scientists who went on to make notable contributions during and after his time. From geologists to founders of evolutionary principles, poets to anti-colonial revolutionists, Humboldt was an inspiration to generations of thinkers. In this article, we attempt to highlight a few of his notable discoveries that influence biologists today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates why Humboldtian Science, as a heuristic concept, has gained prominence in the historiography of science and requires clarification. It offers an ideal-type model of comparative research and exact measurements across vast spaces, which Susan F. Cannon and others tied to Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859). Yet, he himself was less “Humboldtian” than this concept suggests. The article proposes to disentangle Humboldtian Science from Humboldt’s science, which constituted a set of individual research practices that defied the ideal of precision. Humboldt’s science was often impromptu, marked by epistemological and personal insecurities, and embedded in the protagonist’s peripatetic way of living and frequently erratic writing style. Historicizing Humboldt’s science undermines the exceptionalism that elevates the Prussian savant above his contemporaries and casts him as a singular figure. This critical reflection encourages biographical approaches to the history of science, balancing heuristic generalizations and attention to individual research styles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

En 1829 Alexander von Humboldt emprendió una expedición a Asia. Este segundo gran viaje del científico alemán fue complementario, en muchos sentidos, de su más conocido viaje a América, que realizó entre 1799 y 1804. En Rusia, Humboldt viajó y trabajó bajo una fuerte presión política. En su Asie centrale (1843) se sirve de técnicas sutiles y de una crítica indirecta. Humboldt concluyó que, en una economía de monopolios estatales, generar energía era poco eficiente y causa de la destrucción del medio ambiente y del cambio climático.

Resumen Este artículo estudia el papel de Alexander von Humboldt como promotor de una representación iconográfica del Nuevo Mundo. El objetivo de Humboldt era proporcionar una nueva imagen de América, basada en hechos reales, encontrados in situ, y no en la fantasía europea. Esta representación se sitúa entre su estricta visión científica, y su combinación con su elaborada sensibilidad artística, y, por lo tanto, utiliza tanto elementos textuales como visuales para transportar el conocimiento producido. En este trabajo se analizan las fuentes que inspiraron a Humboldt para desarrollar lo que hoy entendemos por «arte científico» así como los criterios que deberían aplicarse a este género. Partiendo de la importancia que tuvo la pintura de viaje para su gran proyecto americano, interesa de particular manera su interacción con los inicios del nuevo medio de la fotografía y las ventajas que él vio en este importante avance tecnológico. Zusammenfassung Dieser Artikel untersucht die Rolle Alexander von Humboldts als Förderer einer ikonographischen Repräsentation der Neuen Welt. Humboldts Ziel war es, ein neues Bild von Amerika zu liefern, basierend auf realen Ereignissen, die in situ und nicht in der europäischen Fantasie stattfanden. Diese Darstellung verbindet seine strenge wissenschaftliche Vision mit seiner ausgeprägten künstlerischen Sensibilität und verwendet sowohl textliche als auch visuelle Elemente, um das erzeugte Wissen zu transportieren. In diesem Beitrag werden die Quellen analysiert, die Humboldt dazu inspirierten, das zu entwickeln, was wir heute unter "wissenschaftlicher Kunst" verstehen, sowie die Kriterien, die für dieses Genre gelten sollten. Ausgehend von der Bedeutung, die die Reisemalerei für sein großes amerikanisches Projekt hatte, ist auch seine Interaktion mit den Anfängen des neuen Mediums Fotografie und die Vorteile, die er in diesem wichtigen technologischen Fortschritt sah, von besonderem Interesse. Abstract This paper studies the role Alexander von Humboldt played as forerunner of an iconographic representation of the New World. Humboldt’s aim was to provide a new image of America, based on actual facts, found in situ, and not coming out of the European imagination. This representation lies somewhere between his rigorous scientific vision and its combination with his elaborate artistic sensibility, therefore using both textual and visual elements to convey the knowledge produced. In this work, the sources that inspired Humboldt to develop what today is known as “scientific art” as well as the criteria that should be applied to this genre, are analyzed. Starting with the relevance of travel painting for his great American project, it is of particular interest the study of its interaction with the incipient photographic technology, as well as the benefits he identified on the utilization of this innovation.

The present study tries to recover from oblivion versions of an essay written by Alexander von Humboldt on Central America in 1826. This article explores the different versions of the text and its diffusion with the aim once again of demostrating the internationalization of the scientifc project of the German wise.

On April 27th, 1859, The Studio Building of New York unveils the feature exhibition of the season: The Heart of the Andes, an oil on canvas painted by Frederic Church, produced after his second trip to South America in 1857. He made sketches and studies in situ, and also wrote, in rudimentary Spanish, a Diary recording his experience. Traveling to South America under the influence of Humboldt seeking inspiration and artistic recognition was vital for Church’s artistic style and career. The exhibition was a success, attracting 12.000 people in three weeks before its grand European touring. In this article I would like to explore the relationship between art, science and nature, and the concept of heroic landscape painting coined by Humboldt, in Church’s New World canvases.

Although the place of Alexander von Humboldt in the tradition of the history of the sciences corresponds with a privileged one in both ends of the Atlantic, not in all cases there have been suitable reflections around the place that the discursive aspects and the networks of knowledge have fulfilled on the representativeness of a figure as complex and surrounded by meaning as the German scholar. The present study aims to organize new ways of understanding the knowledge in which Humboldt was a pioneer, while taking into account other subjects that correspond to different political contexts, such as Francisco José de Caldas and José Celestino Mutis. Also, bridges will be built with concepts and functions as determinant as creole identity and geography, as they transcend the axes proposed by botany and physics, and shape up as integrating axes of knowledge immersed in social dynamics that merit a careful analysis.

The Humboldt Portal has been designed and implemented as part of an ongoing research project to develop an information system on the Internet to share the documents and rare books of Alexander von Humboldt, a 19th century German scientist and explorer, who viewed the natural world holistically and described the harmony of nature among the diversity of the physical world. Even after more than two centuries he is admired for his ability to see the natural world and human nature in the context of a complex network of relationships. The design and implementation of the Humboldt Portal are also oriented to support further research on Humboldt's intellectual perspective. Although all of Humboldt's works can be found on the internet as digitized documents, the complexity and internal inter-connectivity of his vision of nature cannot be adequately represented only by digitized papers or scanned documents in digital libraries. As a consequence a specific portal of the Humboldt's documents was developed, which extends the standards of digital libraries and offers a technical approach for the adequate presentation of highly interconnected data. Due to the continuous scientific and literary research, new insights and requirements for the digital presentation of Humboldt documents are constantly emerging, so that this article only provides a summary of the concepts realized at now. Consequently, the design and implementation of the Humboldt Portal is both: a consequence of a continuing research project and oriented to support more research on Humboldt´s intellectual holistic perspective, which was an anticipation to the System Approach of the last Century.

This article’s premise is that science holds the promise of deepening religious perspectives on creation. The natural sciences have convincingly proved that nature is not static, or a ready-made creation dropped from heaven. Theologians need to read nature as scientists see it and engage with that understanding theologically. The concept of resonance is applied to denote this tangential relationship as an eco-social constructivist understanding of reality. Two proponents, one scientist and one theologian, have been chosen who share this view of a holistic reality, and the objective is to determine the degree of resonance viable of these magisteria. A method of polycentric hermeneutics is thus pursued. Although we referred to the concept of consilience regarding von Humboldt’s enterprise, it is not in the authors’ scope to achieve this with science and theology as disciplines sui generis. However, if resonance becomes vital in understanding reality, faith is inevitable (Anselm). If a creation theology seeks a degree of plausibility, it requires the feedback-loop methodology of science. We all share one earth: the closer we all come to a shared end, the closer we also come together and relativise differences. The naturalist Edward O. Wilson suggested that science and religion should set aside their differences to save the planet. Resonance has the potential to let new horizons emerge in our mutual endeavour to come to grips with reality and to map out certain tangentially overlapping magisteria. Contribution: Through resonance, the thought constructs of a scientist and a theologian are juxtaposed. An iterative hermeneutics’ importance is emphasised in the theology and science discourse, if faith seeks understanding and leads to awe. And the conclusion is that the ‘spiritual dimension’ and the ‘natural dimension’ do not only overlap but are tangential, as they engage with the same reality.