page_title: Cosmos (Humboldt book)
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Cosmos (Humboldt book) / Response to Cosmos / Legacy
caption_attribution_description: English: Memorial for Alexander von Humboldt in front of the Humboldt-Universität in Berlin-Mitte, Unter den Linden. Deutsch: Denkmal für Alexander von Humboldt vor dem Hauptgebäude der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin-Mitte, Unter den Linden.
context_page_description: Cosmos: A Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe is an influential treatise on science and nature written by the German scientist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt. Cosmos began as a lecture series delivered by Humboldt at the University of Berlin, and was published in five volumes between 1845 and 1862. In the first volume of Cosmos, Humboldt paints a general “portrait of nature”, describing the physical nature of outer space and the Earth. In the second volume he describes the history of science.
  Widely read by academics and laymen, Cosmos applied the ancient Greek view of the orderliness of the cosmos to the Earth, suggesting that universal laws applied as well to the apparent chaos of the terrestrial world. Humboldt suggests that when one contemplates the beauty of the cosmos, one can obtain personal inspiration and a beneficial, if subjective, awareness about life.
  Cosmos was influenced by Humboldt's various travels and studies, but mainly by his journey throughout the Americas. As he wrote, “it was the discovery of America that planted the seed of the Cosmos.”
context_section_description: Humboldt's Cosmos had a significant impact on scientific progress, as well as various scientists and authors throughout Europe and America. Humboldt's work gave a strong impetus to scientific exploration throughout the nineteenth century, inspiring many, including Charles Darwin, who brought some of Humboldt's earlier writings with him on his voyage as the naturalist aboard the Beagle in the 1830s. Darwin called Humboldt "the greatest scientific traveler who ever lived."
  Cosmos influenced several American writers and artists, including Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Frederic Edwin Church.  Emerson read Humboldt's work throughout his life, and for him, Cosmos capped Humboldt's role as a scientific revolutionary. Edgar Allan Poe was also an admirer of Humboldt, even dedicating his last major work, Eureka: A Prose Poem, to Humboldt. Humboldt's attempt to unify the sciences was a major inspiration for Poe's work. Walt Whitman was said to have kept a copy of Cosmos on his desk for inspiration as he wrote Leaves of Grass, and Henry David Thoreau's Walden, like Eureka, was a response to Humboldt's ideas. Following the itinerary of Humboldt's expeditions to Colombia and Ecuador, Church found subject matter for some of his most monumental landscape paintings, including The Falls of the Tequendama near Bogota, New Granada.
  Although Cosmos and Humboldt's work in general had such a lasting impact on scientific thought, interest in Humboldt's life, work, and ideas over the past two centuries has dwindled in comparison to what it once was. However, starting in the 1990s and continuing to date, an upswing in scholarly interest in Humboldt has occurred. A new edition of Cosmos released in Germany in 2004 received avid reviews, renewing Humboldt's prominence in German society. German media outlets hailed the largely forgotten Humboldt as a new avatar figure for German national renewal and a model cosmopolitan ambassador of German culture and civilization for the twenty-first century.
  Humboldt is also credited with laying the foundations of physical geography, meteorology, and especially biogeography. His account in Cosmos of the propagation of seismic waves also became the basis of modern seismology. His most enduring contribution to scientific progress, however, in his conception of the unity of science, nature, and mankind. Cosmos showed nature as a whole, not as unconnected parts.
caption: Humboldt statue at the Humboldt University of Berlin.
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