Divine cosmos : Humboldt's ecology in nineteenth-century American literature /
Alexander von Humboldt presented nature as a "cosmos," an interconnected web that exceeded the scientific world of static taxonomy and individual species that 18th-century science had produced. As this study shows, Humboldt's ecology did more than initiate a change in natural science....
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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New York :
Bloomsbury Academic,
2025.
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| Summary: | Alexander von Humboldt presented nature as a "cosmos," an interconnected web that exceeded the scientific world of static taxonomy and individual species that 18th-century science had produced. As this study shows, Humboldt's ecology did more than initiate a change in natural science. His writings caused Americans to reconsider how to portray the divine in nature. Writers such as Thoreau, Douglass and Melville utilized their religious contexts and Humboldtian modes of observation to envision nature holistically rather than in terms of singular evidences of "design." They discovered that natural forms connected across regions, and indeed, across the entire divine creation. |
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| Physical Description: | xi, 182 pages ; 24 cm |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages [162]-175) and index. |
| ISBN: | 9798765125656 9798765125694 |