Thoughts on The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World by Andrea Wulf

I keep an eye on the Forest and Nature Conservation Policy Group at Wageningen university. The current me thinks, if I ever do a PhD, it would be at somewhere like this. This group runs a book club, and their next book is The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World by Andrea Wulf. I doubt I’ll attend the book club in person, but I did read the book.¹ Some disconnected thoughts:

Dabblers and polymaths

Science wasn’t always so specialised. I found this heartening, as someone who feels like they didn’t specialise enough.

Travelling by wind

It surprised me how it only took 41 days for Humboldt to cross the Atlantic (from La Coruña to New Andalusia). Fair Ferry is planning a pan-Atlantic trip in 2025. If you’re doing a straight across crossing, it can take as little as 18 days (see this blog post).

Women’s magic, Thoreau, and Nature at home

Having recently finished Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, I couldn’t help but wonder if the revelations Humboldt made in South America could’ve been made at home too if he’d spent more time getting to know the people who knew and depended on the lands at home.

And then I thought of the saying in Earthsea, Weak as woman’s magic (as well as Wicked as woman’s magic). I always understood the difference between man and woman’s magic in Earthsea to be cultural instead of inherent. Man’s magic was (seen as) institutional and rational; woman’s magic was (seen as) distributed and intuitive.

Woman’s science. Small science. Backyard science.

Earthsea’s magic comes from deep knowledge of nature. The chapters on Henry David Thoreau and John Muir reinforced this thought, that surely if you spent enough time in nature that felt like home, you would understand the interconnectedness of it all.