{"id":997,"date":"2023-10-05T15:42:28","date_gmt":"2023-10-05T19:42:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/?page_id=997"},"modified":"2023-10-05T15:43:16","modified_gmt":"2023-10-05T19:43:16","slug":"review-alexander-von-humboldt","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/review-alexander-von-humboldt\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Alexander Von Humboldt: Explorer, Naturalist, and Environmental Pioneer"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Cover<\/figure>\n<\/div>

\n 
\nAlexander Von Humboldt: Explorer, Naturalist, and Environmental Pioneer<\/em>, written and illustrated by Danica Novgorodoff
\nNew York: Crown Books for Young Readers, 2022<\/strong>\n

Reviewed By Peter Shea<\/em>
\n<\/p><\/div><\/p><\/div>\n

\n

There are books about facts, and books about possibilities. Children \u2013 and all the other people \u2013 need fact-books to know things and to navigate, but they aren\u2019t fun and they don\u2019t inspire minds to go on trips \u2013 the sorts of trips to which philosophy sells tickets.<\/em><\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t everybody\u2019s view, all the time, but it is lots of people\u2019s view, a lot of the time, explaining why Principles of Canadian Geology<\/em> doesn\u2019t often get stuffed into beach bags \u2013 and why the bibliography of thought-provoking children\u2019s books has so little space for science, engineering, and history \u2013 yet.<\/p>\n

Danica Novgorodoff might shake up such over-stiff categories, if only she just keeps writing. Her introduction to Alexander Von Humboldt, a man who taught people how to see how facts go together, is a masterpiece of practicing what it preaches, and what Humboldt preached. It begins with Humboldt as a boy, seeing birds and mountains and rocks and animals, and coming up with divergent questions. That\u2019s the way a lot of \u201cgreat scientists\u201d books have to begin, with the junior great man or woman being curious. What this does that\u2019s different is to bring all the nature questions together under two big questions, and then to show how those questions stayed important for Humboldt over a long life \u2013 \u201cHow are these things different?\u201d and \u201cHow are they nevertheless connected?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\"Illustrated<\/figure>\n

\nArtwork by Danica Novgorodoff from Alexander Von Humboldt: Explorer, Naturalist, and Environmental Pioneer \u00a9 2022 by Crown Books for Young Readers<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

This tight structure of questions opens up this biography to being about thinking and to being a model for thinking. As the reader watches Humboldt looking at a hawk and a mouse, volcanoes and farmland, palm trees and pine trees, Europe and Ecuador, Europeans and Indigenous people, one comes to expect what he will say, \u201cThey are different, and yet they are connected.\u201d After a while, perhaps, one begins to inhabit that formula, to expect difference and connection \u2013 in many places. An alert teacher can encourage students to try on being Humboldt, being, in one way, ecologists. <\/p>\n

The last page of the book shows Humboldt in his prime, returned from his voyages, lecturing. The caption is, \u201cHe was no longer alone\u201d \u2013 which suggests what every one of Humboldt\u2019s discoveries also points to: if nothing in nature is isolated, disconnected, then I must also understand myself as integral to things, as connected. Scientific curiosity had led him back to the old philosopher\u2019s project: know yourself.<\/p>\n

A natural way to proceed forward from this book is just to test out its hypothesis about connection in many directions \u2013 that is, to use Humboldt, as Novgorodoff summarizes him, as a model for a way of thinking worth exploring: acknowledging difference, then finding connection. It\u2019s an idea much bigger than \u201cecology\u201d \u2013 at least as one might find that word defined in a biology text. For Humboldt, it was a key to making sense of experience generally, not just a scientific sub-field, and good discussion can try out this general approach.<\/p>\n

Here, as everywhere in philosophy, there\u2019s no advantage to proceeding uncritically. Perhaps there are things so different that connection fails. It is no disservice to Humboldt to criticize proposed connections as trivial or uninformative or uninteresting; the discussion about what counts as an important connection can be very rich. Humboldt saw his principle as magical, illuminating the world, and following his lead means looking for a kind of magic in the world, not being satisfied with superficial similarities and relationships.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Illustrated<\/figure>\n

\nArtwork by Danica Novgorodoff from Alexander Von Humboldt: Explorer, Naturalist, and Environmental Pioneer \u00a9 2022 by Crown Books for Young Readers<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

A reader might reasonably worry about Novgorodoff\u2019s treatment of one aspect of the legacy of Alexander Von Humboldt: she mentions his radical rejection of slavery in the notes, but not in the body of her story. It is important to make clear to a reader in 2023 that such oppressive practices have been objects of contempt since their inception. They cannot be simply excused as compatible with the morals of their time. There\u2019s room for a companion book on Humboldt\u2019s moral legacy, including his contributions to the independence movements in South America. Perhaps Novgorodoff will revisit this topic someday. <\/p>\n

The back matter of the book, usually easy to ignore, is very helpful for this book. It explains the way the author became obsessed with Humboldt\u2019s life, expands the story beyond the focused, structured account in the body of the book, traces the sayings and questions back to sources in Humboldt\u2019s writing, and gives a timeline and a bibliography that would allow someone to easily learn more about this central figure in environmental science. The account of the author\u2019s research, of her efforts to get the details right, helps the reader to see what is special about this, among the many treatments of Humboldt\u2019s life. This structure also makes this book usable at a variety of ages, for a variety of purposes. The bare story could be a bedtime story for a young child. The book as a whole could introduce older children first to Humboldt\u2019s basic insight, and then to the vast number of inquiries arising out of that basic insight. Any reading of this book, at any level, with careful discussion, will start long trains of inquiry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are books about facts, and books about possibilities. Children \u2013 and all the other people \u2013 need fact-books to know things and to navigate, but they aren\u2019t fun and they don\u2019t inspire minds to go on trips \u2013 the sorts of trips to which philosophy sells tickets. This isn\u2019t everybody\u2019s view, all the time, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":384,"featured_media":177,"parent":0,"menu_order":91,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-997","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/384"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=997"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/997\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1002,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/997\/revisions\/1002"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/iapc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}