Cosmos (humboldt)
The Cosmos - Draft of a Physical Description of the World is a five-volume work by the German polymath Alexander von Humboldt , in which he tried to give the reader an overall view of the scientific exploration of the world, “the appearance of physical things in their interrelationship, nature as being moved by internal forces animated whole ”. The volumes appeared from 1845 to 1862. The fifth and last volume remained a fragment and was published posthumously .
The cosmos as a life's work - the history of the work
Already in 1796, three years before his big trip to South America, the then 27-year-old Alexander von Humboldt drew up a plan for a representation of the entire physical world: “Je concus l'Idee d'une physique du monde”, he wrote his at that time Friend Marc-Auguste Pictet . For decades, the execution of this idea remained before his eyes as a dream. Almost forty years later, it seemed that the time had come to begin writing the work.
"I have the great idea to represent the whole material world, everything we know today about the phenomena of heavenly spaces and earth life, from the nebulous stars to the geography of the mosses on the granite rocks, all in one work, and in one work, which at the same time stimulates in living language and delights the mind. Every great and important idea that glimmers up anywhere must be listed here alongside the facts. It must represent an epoch of the spiritual development of mankind (in its knowledge of nature). - The whole is not what is commonly called a physical description of the earth, it understands heaven and earth, everything created. "
Almost ten years earlier, in 1826, he had given lectures on the physical description of the world in a French salon, then from autumn 1827 to spring 1828 in Berlin - a total of 62 at the university and sixteen in a parallel cycle in the house of the Sing-Akademie in Berlin . These “Kosmos Lectures” were considered the cultural highlight of 1827 in Berlin. At the suggestion of Konrad Levezow , the auditorium thanked Humboldt for the lecture series with a medal of honor. It is therefore not surprising that calls for the publication of this series of lectures, which he held completely freely and without a written basis, were soon made and continued so undiminished that Humboldt took a public position to prevent notes from being published. Publishers stormed him, who despite his good earnings suffered from a chronic shortage of money, with lucrative offers. Humboldt ultimately decided to have his work published by the renowned Cotta publishing house . In addition to the good fee, the printing location Berlin and the possibility of making improvements at short notice were important to him. Everything was precisely defined in the contract. The work was to be published in two volumes (Volume 1 for the objective description of the world and Volume 2 for the sensitive world view) in December 1829.
But not a single one of the stipulations was adhered to. The publication was to be delayed by 16 years, because Humboldt was involved in other projects. Above all, his trip to Russia in 1829 prevented him from writing. In 1835 he was shaken by the death of his brother Wilhelm , in later years Humboldt complained of rheumatic complaints in his right arm, which he used to write. Depression and quiet premonitions of death alternated with phases of extraordinary pride in his old age and enormous intellectual creativity.
In 1845 the first volume of the Kosmos finally appeared, to which Humboldt remarks in a preface: "Late in the evening of a busy life, I present a work to the German public whose image in indefinite outlines floated in front of my soul for almost half a century."
The second volume followed in 1847. At this point in time, Humboldt was already aware that he could not stop at these two parts and that he would have to “romp around” “on this earth” for a while to finish his ambitious project. The completion of the third (1850) and fourth volume (1858) determined the work of his ninth decade of life. At the same time, he was well aware that this activity was more stressful than it could be "useful to an 82-year-old old man". During this time, as he said, he rarely went to bed before 3 o'clock because he could not work in peace during the day because of the many visitors that came to him. During the day, he wrote, "I feel like a brandy store".
Humboldt, who referred to himself as a “fossil”, was always afraid that he would die before his great work was completed. Again and again he urged his publishers to hurry (“The dead ride fast”). Despite the effort, however, and the optimism of completing the fifth volume before the turn of the year 1859/60, the last section of the Kosmos rudiment remained. "Death [took] the pen out of his hands," a few days after he had last sent a few pages of the manuscript to his publisher. Alexander von Humboldt died on the morning of May 6, 1859. If one believes a legend, after clearing away the manuscripts and mountains of books one found the words from Genesis 2, first book Mose 2,1: “so became completes heaven and earth ”.
Humboldt's long-time secretary Eduard Buschmann has a central function in the realization of the cosmos . He procured all copies of Humboldt's Kosmos manuscripts, edited the proofs and was responsible for getting the literature needed for the production of Kosmos from the Royal Library. The copies of Humboldt's manuscripts, which in turn show numerous modifications by Humboldt, are now in the Bibliothèque nationale de France . Humboldt also commissioned Buschmann to develop a register for the Kosmos, which was published in 1962 in the posthumously published fifth volume of the Kosmos . Buschmann also edited the Kosmos for the "Small Octave" or "Pocket Edition", which was still initiated by Humboldt and published in 1860, with which Cotta opened the recently launched series of the "German People's Library".
Finding the title
Humboldt had never made it easy for him to choose the title for any of his books, but this decision had never been as difficult for him as for the title of Kosmos, which he said he had pondered for five consecutive nights.
In 1828 he first took up the title Physique du monde (draft of a physical description of the world), which had already been considered in 1796 . As a subtitle, he also wished to "indicate the individual reason for the lecture [...]", as well as to make it clear that his life's work was much more than the writing of his Singakademie lectures.
The proposal “Based on memories from lectures in 1827 and 1828, edited by Al. von Humboldt ”, Humboldt's friend and advisor Varnhagen von Ense categorically rejected as“ ridiculous ”and“ pretentious ”. The author himself confessed that he would like to give up this title and made new suggestions:
“How should I set up the title. , Draft of a phys. W. by A. v. H. (reworked at the instigation of lectures) '? All of this seems awkward to me. Adverbs are inappropriate titles. What if I added in very small letters: 'A part of this writing was the subject of lectures in 1827 and 1828'? But that's long, and then the verb! 'By request' is maybe even better. "
The discussions dragged on for many years. In the summer of 1833, Humboldt finally got the idea to write his work “Kosmos. Draft of a physical description of the world ”. At the same time, however, he was also aware that this title could and would be considered presumptuous and immodest. In October 1834 he wrote to Varnhagen von Ense:
“I know that Kosmos is very elegant and not without a certain affair, but the title says heaven and earth with a catchphrase. [...] My brother is also for the title Kosmos, I hesitated for a long time. "
In the first volume, Humboldt explains the change in meaning of the term cosmos within history and at the same time justifies the choice of the title:
While the word kósmos was originally a term for “jewelry, order and decoration of speech”, Pythagoras already uses it to mean “world order” and “world”. The term, explains Humboldt, then passed through the philosophical schools into the language of natural poets and prose writers, and meanwhile it was transformed into “the well-ordered world, indeed the whole mass of space-filling”. Aristotle uses kósmos for “world and world order”, but also as “spatially disintegrating into the sublunar world [telluric] and the higher, over the moon [uranologically].” “The concept of a physical description of the earth, which was previously undefined, went through extended consideration, yes, after a plan that is perhaps too bold, by embracing everything created in the earth and sky in the concept of a physical description of the world. "
No other word could therefore be more appropriate to give the title to a work that pursued the ambitious goal of "representing the whole material world [...] in one work". But Humboldt never succeeded in calming his conscience with regard to the choice of title. In the introduction to his fifth volume, begun in 1858, he described it as a risk.
The outline
Volume I.
(see main article Kosmos Volume I )
Humboldt's contemplation of the world as a whole begins with "the stars that glow between nebulae in the most distant parts of space and descend through our planetary system to the earthly vegetation and to the smallest, often airborne organisms hidden from the naked eye".
- Introductory considerations on the diversity of enjoying nature and a scientific exploration of the laws of the world
- Limitation and scientific treatment of a physical description of the world
- Nature paintings. General overview of the phenomena
Volume II
(see main article Kosmos Volume II )
Humboldt climbs out of the “circle of objects” into the circle of sensations and observes “the reflex of the image received through the external senses on the feeling and the poetic imagination” of people.
- Stimulants for studying nature
- Main moments in a history of the physical worldview
Volume III
(see main article Kosmos Volume III )
Special results of observation in the field of cosmic phenomena. To explain the general nature painting described in the first volume, Humboldt wants to provide those results of the observation on which the “current state of scientific opinions is mainly based”. The third volume is initially devoted entirely to the astronomy of the celestial bodies.
- Uranological part of the physical description of the world (planets, satellites, comets, ring of the zodiac light, swarms of meteor asteroids, etc.)
Volume IV
(see main article Kosmos Volume IV )
The fourth volume of the Kosmos contains the "special representation of telluric phenomena" as a counterpart and at the same time supplement to volume III.
- Size, shape and density of the earth, "inner warmth" and magnetic activity
- "Reaction of the interior of the earth against the surface"
- Comments on volcanoes
Volume V
(see main article Kosmos Volume V )
The content of the fifth volume is the continuation of the telluric phenomena. As a continuation of the fourth volume, with which he forms a “rounded whole”, “what is usually called a physical description of the earth”. Volume V should contain some geological topics, but above all the description of organic life on earth, at the end of which the human race would have been considered. Humboldt's secretary Eduard Buschmann put the following lines under the last sentence of the main text:
"The death of the great author cut the thread of this work."
- Fragment Volume V
- Detailed register
- Bushman's note with information about the missing sections (mountain types, continents, covering of the earth, distribution of organisms or geography of plants and animals, human races)
Universality in practice - Humboldt's network
Calling Alexander von Humboldt a universal genius is justifiably controversial. He was always a polyhistor in the sense of his lived universality. Some even claim that he was the last universalist. Indeed, at a time of constant specialization, Humboldt worked on depicting “nature as a whole that was moved and animated by inner forces” and to create something universal. Despite the increasing waning, not his courage, but his strength.
Humboldt's need to put the knowledge of his time in a broad context, the diversity of his interests, combined with a constant willingness to learn, but also the attempt to transfer the “common atmosphere of scientific education” that he knew from Paris to Berlin: these were the driving forces that prompted Humboldt to build, expand and maintain a huge network of relationships throughout his life.
In his first year of study in Frankfurt, his brother Wilhelm described Humboldt's need and talent for exchange and contact. Alexander von Humboldt knew: "Ideas can only be useful if they come to life in many minds."
When he was in company he talked a lot, when he was alone he wrote a lot. But trying to describe Humboldt's network with a claim to completeness is next to impossible. His correspondence is extremely incomplete. Humboldt only kept the letters most important to him or gave them away to friends; he burned the others or used them as scraps of paper. This procedure is by no means evidence of a lack of respect for his correspondence partners, but with the myriad of letters, archiving them was simply not possible.
So far, around 2,500 different letter partners are known by name. While the Kosmos volumes were being written, Humboldt wrote an average of around 2,000 letters a year. Sometimes only a few lines long, sometimes over many pages. In recent years, due to its increasing popularity, it has been closer to 3,000 a year. In his life, Humboldt wrote more than 50,000 letters, of which around 13,000 have survived.
On the basis of a few thousand of the letters received, the network of preparatory workers for the cosmos can be characterized as follows:
- Humboldt was the central figure,
- the exchange was multilateral,
- the exchange took place across schools and disciplines,
- the exchange took place internationally,
- based on long-term relationships and therefore stable
- many young scientists were part of it,
- a woman was seldom included
- Numerous smaller networks (subject-specific and institutional) were subordinate to the overall network
- pyramid-shaped arrangement based on the principle of a hierarchy of trust or recognition
- were exchanged: a. social services in their diversity (help with the procurement of financial and social support, chairs, memberships in academies, etc.); b. Expressions of opinion and advice (selection of titles and structure), information (tables and figures), corrections (multiple checks of the proofs)
When it came to writing and answering letters, Humboldt was as adamant towards others as he was towards himself. He once made 92 morning visits to the already blind François Arago in order to encourage him to look through his manuscripts in the most friendly manner. Arago's wife finally read the scripts to her husband. When Humboldt himself tried to recover from the flu in the last months of his life, his doctor ordered the mail to be locked in a room, worried that his patient might be tempted not only to read the letters that arrived three times a day, but how to do it his way of answering was at once regardless of his well-being.
Alexander von Humboldt kept contacts between scientists of various professions and nationalities alive. As a central figure in his network, he knew exactly the sympathies and disputes of the individual members of his "scientific family" and often acted as a mediator with diplomatic skill. The fact that he never took a clear position on this contributed decisively to keeping his network of relationships alive as effectively and smoothly as possible.
expenditure
- Ottmar Ette , Oliver Lubrich (Ed.): Kosmos: Draft of a physical description of the world . Edited and provided with an afterword by Ottmar Ette and Oliver Lubrich (= Humboldt Edition of the Other Library ). The Other Library , Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-8477-0014-2 .
bibliography
- Andreas W. Daum : Alexander von Humboldt . Munich 2019, ISBN 978-3-406-73435-9 .
- Petra Werner : Heaven and Earth: Alexander von Humboldt and his Kosmos , Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-05-004025-4 .
- Otto Krätz : Alexander von Humboldt: Scientist, Citizen of the World, Revolutionary , 2nd edition Munich 2000, ISBN 3-7667-1447-3 .
- Ulrike Moheit (Ed.): Wanting the great and the good: Alexander von Humboldt's American letters , Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-9806685-0-9 .
- Heinrich Pfeiffer (Ed.): Alexander von Humboldt: Werk und Weltgeltung , Munich 1969.
- Fritz Kraus (Ed.): Cosmos and Humanity: Alexander von Humboldt's work in selection , Bielefeld 1960.
- Bernhard Sticker: Humboldt's Kosmos: The Real and the Ideal World; Speech on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the death of Alexander von Humboldt on May 6, 1959 , Bonner akademische Reden 21, Bonn 1959.
Web links
- Alexander von Humboldt : Cosmos. First volume in the Gutenberg-DE project ( archive version )
- Alexander von Humboldt : Cosmos. Second volume in the Gutenberg-DE project
- Alexander von Humboldt : Cosmos. Third volume in the Gutenberg-DE project
- Alexander von Humboldt : Cosmos. Fourth volume in the Gutenberg-DE project
Individual evidence
- ^ Humboldt to Karl August Varnhagen von Ense , Berlin, October 24, 1834 . In: Ludmilla Assing (ed.): Letters from Alexander von Humboldt to Varnhagen von Ense from the years 1827 to 1858 . FA Brockhaus, Leipzig 1860.
- ^ Andreas W. Daum: Alexander von Humboldt . CH Beck, Munich 2019, ISBN 978-3-406-73435-9 , pp. 87 .
- ↑ Sabine Schneider: "Hidden Kosmos" opens up Alexander von Humboldt's lectures - press portal. Retrieved November 26, 2019 .
- ^ Andreas W. Daum: Alexander von Humboldt . CH Beck, Munich 2019, ISBN 978-3-406-73435-9 , pp. 103 .
- ^ Humboldt to Karl August Varnhagen von Ense , Berlin, April 15, 1828 . In: Ludmilla Assing (ed.): Letters from Alexander von Humboldt to Varnhagen von Ense from the years 1827 to 1858 . FA Brockhaus, Leipzig 1860, p. 4f. .