2018/03/01 by Patrick Anthony · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Immunology and Microbiology · Social Sciences · #Alexander von Humboldt Studies #Australian Indigenous Culture and History #History of Science and Natural History
paper · doi:10.1086/697061
openalex publication_date 2018/03/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/03/31
By resituating Alexander von Humboldt in the “working world” of mining, this essay offers a case study of the way in which industry has shaped practice and theory in the history of science. While Humboldt’s experience as a miner in Saxony and Prussia provided him a venue in which to study fossilized vegetation, revealing a fundamental link between the migrations of plants and of peoples, industrial concerns about miners’ safety inspired a study of the interplay between plants and people that shaped his later articulation of the verticality of plant distribution. Moreover, the cartographic methods Humboldt employed during his American journey depended as much on drawing practices indebted to mining as they did on patterns of vertical mobility above and below the surface of the earth. These arguments ultimately encourage a departure from “Humboldtian Science,” a term that has veiled an originally Prusso-Saxon science beneath a set of Anglo-American connotations.