20 novembro 2005

Alexander von Humboldt

Yes, I clearly was uncluttering my desk with these due posts, and this is one of my favourites, again from the TLS:

Alexander von Humboldt was the last man who knew everything. Traveller, explorer and mountaineer no less than scientist, he combined the ideals of Enlightenment and Romanticism: a genius in thought and deed, as remarkable for his sensibility as for his universality. Not only did he invent or reinvent several new branches of earth and life science (including human and plant geography, climatology and vulcanology, hydrology and geomagnetism) and greatly augment most others, he also transformed the historiography and philosophy of science. We owe to him such familiar scientific notions as the isothermal lines on weather maps, seismic waves, magnetic storms, reverse polarity, the Jurassic era. He investigated the igneous formation of rocks, the decrease in the earth’s magnetism towards the Equator, and the formation of galaxies. Long before they could be realized, he conceived of a Panama Canal, a United Nations, academic think tanks and a “universal library”, a scientific database not unlike the internet.


Read on.

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