Bauer, Ralph (Author)
This essay revisits the question of the relationship between the travel writings of Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) and the history of European imperialism in the Americas by investigating not Humboldt’s geopolitical views on empire per se but rather the role that Humboldtian science played in the history of the modern idea of scientific discovery, particularly, the Eurocentric modern fiction that America was “discovered” by Europeans in the fifteenth century. For this purpose, the essay places what the author calls Humboldt’s “tropicalist” hermeneutics of discovery in the tradition of late medieval and early modern alchemy, particularly Francis Bacon’s program in scientific empiricism. The author argues that Humboldt’s travel writings about America (re-)legitimate for a secular age the scientific objectification underlying the modern hermeneutics of discovery that had been rationalized in a late medieval and early modern Christian apocalypticism
...More
Book
Ette, Ottmar;
Bernecker, Walther L.;
(2001)
Ansichten Amerikas: neuere Studien zu Alexander von Humboldt
(/isis/citation/CBB000780044/)
Book
Lack, H. Walter;
(2009)
Alexander von Humboldt and the Botanical Exploration of the Americas
(/isis/citation/CBB000954778/)
Book
Ulrich Päßler;
(2020)
Alexander von Humboldt: Geographie der Pflanzen: Unveröffentlichte Schriften aus dem Nachlass
(/isis/citation/CBB673505639/)
Chapter
Sandra Rebok;
(2018)
Humboldt’s Exploration at a Distance
(/isis/citation/CBB367860718/)
Article
Robinson, Michael F.;
(2009)
Why We Need a New History of Exploration: Lewis and Clark, Alexander von Humboldt, and the Explorer in American Culture
(/isis/citation/CBB001022577/)
Book
Myron Echenberg;
(2017)
Humboldt's Mexico: In the Footsteps of the Illustrious German Scientific Traveller
(/isis/citation/CBB878153624/)
Book
Driver, Felix;
Martins, Luciana;
(2005)
Tropical Visions in an Age of Empire
(/isis/citation/CBB000650539/)
Book
McCrory, Donald;
(2010)
Nature's Interpreter: The Life and Times of Alexander von Humboldt
(/isis/citation/CBB001023124/)
Article
Azara, Francesca;
(2013)
The Maps of New Spain by Alexander Von Humboldt and Zebulon Montgomery Pike
(/isis/citation/CBB001251965/)
Article
(2000)
Humboldt y la Ciencia Americana Bicentario
(/isis/citation/CBB000102470/)
Thesis
Lindquist, Jason Howard;
(2007)
A “Pure Excess of Complexity”: Tropical Surfeit, the Observing Subject, and the Text, 1773--1871
(/isis/citation/CBB001560523/)
Book
Hill, David;
(2013)
The Great Race: The Race between the English and the French to Complete the Map of Australia
(/isis/citation/CBB001201480/)
Book
Julian Drews;
Ottmar Ette;
Tobias Kraft;
Barbara Schneider-Kempf;
Jutta Weber;
(2017)
Forster - Humboldt - Chamisso: Weltreisende im Spannungsfeld der Kulturen
(/isis/citation/CBB892473985/)
Chapter
Jon Mathieu;
(2021)
Divergent Perception: Deserts and Mountains in Transition to Modernity, Seen through Alexander von Humboldt’s Views of Nature
(/isis/citation/CBB984242932/)
Article
Fara, Patricia;
(2008)
Alexander von Humboldt: A Revolutionary Explorer
(/isis/citation/CBB000850058/)
Book
Clark, Rex;
Lubrich, Oliver;
(2012)
Cosmos and Colonialism: Alexander Von Humboldt in Cultural Criticism
(/isis/citation/CBB001251079/)
Book
Day, David;
(2013)
Antarctica: A Biography
(/isis/citation/CBB001421625/)
Thesis
Thode, Simon;
(2013)
The Practices of Observational Science and the Development of the American Nation in the Trans-Appalachian West, 1763--1814
(/isis/citation/CBB001567528/)
Thesis
Zinni, Mariana C.;
(2008)
El descubrimiento de América y la invención de un nuevo espacio hermenéutico: Alternativas de la mimesis y el surgimiento de una modernidad contaminada
(/isis/citation/CBB001561219/)
Book
Ralph Bauer;
Anna Brickhouse;
Kirsten Silva Gruesz;
(2019)
The Alchemy of Conquest: Science, Religion, and the Secrets of the New World
(/isis/citation/CBB352018741/)
Be the first to comment!