IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB896137027

Mines, Mountains, and the Making of a Vertical Consciousness in Germany Ca. 1800 (2020)

Centaurus: International Magazine of the History of Mathematics, Science, and Technology
Volume: 62
Issue: 4
Pages: 612-630

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1600-0498.12337

URI: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1600-0498.12337

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Academia.edu

Travel; exploration Science and society Science and culture Oceanography Oceans and seas Geography Mountains Mines and mining 19th century Germany Humboldt, Alexander von

The insight that scientific theories are “practice-laden” has animated scholarship in the history of science for nearly three decades. This article examines a style of geographical thought that was, I argue, movement-laden. The thought-style in question has been described as a “vertical consciousness that engulfed science in the early nineteenth century,” and is closely associated with the geographical vision of Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859). Humboldt’s science spanned nature’s horizontal and vertical axes, from Saxon mines to Andean summits, and from the currents of the ocean to those of the aerial ocean. In probing the origins of Humboldt’s vertical thinking, this article opens up a broader history about the industrial practices and travel cultures that originally animated it. Humboldt’s “global physics” first emerged within a context of vertical travel, up mountains and into mines and caverns. Rhythms of the body—lethal for some, “sublime” for others—became rhythms of the mind. A view of nature as set of vertically complementary spaces rippled through mining culture, Romantic art, and the geographical sciences. To trace the earliest routes of Humboldt’s science is to acknowledge the many actors—some celebrated, most unsung—who took part in the making of a vertical consciousness.

...More

Included in

Article Wilko Graf von Hardenberg; Martin Mahony (2020) Introduction—up, down, Round and Round: Verticalities in the History of Science. Centaurus: International Magazine of the History of Mathematics, Science, and Technology (pp. 595-611). unapi

Citation URI

https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB896137027/

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Book Brayton, Daniel; (2012)
Shakespeare's Ocean: An Ecocritical Exploration (/isis/citation/CBB001201603/)

Article Wyder, Margrit; (2009)
Höhen der alten und neuen Welt -- Goethes Beitrag zum Genre der vergleichenden Höhendarstellung (/isis/citation/CBB001024654/)

Book Mills, Eric. L.; (2009)
The Fluid Envelope of Our Planet: How the Study of Ocean Currents Became a Science (/isis/citation/CBB001030030/)

Chapter Maria Enrica D'Agostini; (2003)
J.W. Goethe, Alexander e Wihelm von Humboldt in un foglio di laboratorio (/isis/citation/CBB490594438/)

Article Antony Adler; (2020)
Deep Horizons: Canada's Underwater Habitat Program and Vertical Dimensions of Marine Sovereignty (/isis/citation/CBB981240817/)

Book Fabio D'Angelo; (2022)
La scienza itinerante. Formazione delle competenze e impiego delle risorse minerario-metallurgiche tra il Regno di Napoli e l'Europa (secoli XVIII-XIX) (/isis/citation/CBB161563605/)

Book Raffaello Vergani; (2003)
Miniere e società nella montagna del passato. Alpi venete, secoli XIII-XIX (/isis/citation/CBB432582515/)

Book Patrice M. Dabrowski; (2021)
The Carpathians: Discovering the Highlands of Poland and Ukraine (/isis/citation/CBB941389150/)

Book Antony Adler; (2019)
Neptune’s Laboratory: Fantasy, Fear, and Science at Sea (/isis/citation/CBB539930107/)

Article Stefan Witold Alexandrowicz; (2017)
Karl Kolbenheyer ( 1841 – 1901 ) – nauczyciel, przyrodnik, turysta / teacher, naturalist, tourist (/isis/citation/CBB691305373/)

Chapter Kortum, Gerhard; (2002)
Germania in Pacifico: Humboldt, Chamisso and Other Early German Contributors to Pacific Research, 1741-1876 (/isis/citation/CBB000202307/)

Article Francesco Luzzini; (2017)
Agordo fu fatale. Le ricerche e l’ultimo viaggio di Friedrich Mohs (1773-1839) (/isis/citation/CBB971582027/)

Book Francesco Luzzini; (2022)
Quando il mondo scalò il Sublime. Scienza e storia nel primo Memoriale dell'Hotel Nave d'Oro di Predazzo (1820-1875) (/isis/citation/CBB828950191/)

Article Patrick Anthony; (2018)
Mining as the Working World of Alexander von Humboldt’s Plant Geography and Vertical Cartography (/isis/citation/CBB344446536/)

Book Igler, David; (2013)
The Great Ocean: Pacific Worlds from Captain Cook to the Gold Rush (/isis/citation/CBB001201479/)

Book Ernesto Bassi; (2017)
An Aqueous Territory: Sailor Geographies and New Granada’s Transimperial Greater Caribbean World (/isis/citation/CBB892398471/)

Thesis Sachs, Aaron Jacob; (2004)
The Humboldt Current: Avant-Garde Exploration and Environmental Thought in 19th-Century America (/isis/citation/CBB001561836/)

Article Leitner, Ulrike; (2011)
El Diario de Alexander von Humboldt en España (/isis/citation/CBB001450420/)

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/)

Thesis Sherwood, Robert M., III; (2008)
The Cartography of Alexander von Humboldt: Images of the Enlightenment inAmerica (/isis/citation/CBB001561370/)

Comments

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}