La invención de la naturaleza

El Nuevo Mundo de Alexander von Humboldt

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  • 4.2 (12 ratings) ·
  • 46 Want to read
  • 2 Currently reading
  • 16 Have read

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Last edited by AgentSapphire
January 14, 2022 | History

La invención de la naturaleza

El Nuevo Mundo de Alexander von Humboldt

  • 4.2 (12 ratings) ·
  • 46 Want to read
  • 2 Currently reading
  • 16 Have read

From the Prologue...

When nature is perceived as a web, its vulnerability also becomes obvious. Everything hangs together. If one thread is pulled, the whole tapestry may unravel. After he saw the devastating environmental effects of colonial plantations at Lake Valencia in Venezuela in 1800, Humboldt became the first scientist to talk about harmful human-induced climate change. Deforestation there had made the land barren, water levels of the lake were falling and with the disappearance of brushwood torrential rains had washed away the soils on the surrounding mountain slopes. Humboldt was the first to explain the forest's ability to enrich the atmosphere with moisture and its cooling effect, as well as its importance for water retention and protection against soil erosion. He warned that humans were meddling with the climate and that this could have an unforeseeable impact on ‘future generations'.

The Invention of Nature traces the invisible threads that connect us to this extraordinary man. Humboldt influenced many of the greatest thinkers, artists and scientists of his day. Thomas Jefferson called him ‘one of the greatest ornaments of the age'. Charles Darwin wrote that ‘nothing ever stimulated my zeal so much as reading Humboldt's Personal Narrative,' saying that he would not have boarded the Beagle, nor conceived of the Origin of Species, without Humboldt. William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge both incorporated Humboldt's concept of nature into their poems. And America's most revered nature writer, Henry David Thoreau, found in Humboldt's books an answer to his dilemma on how to be a poet and a naturalist – Walden would have been a very different book without Humboldt. Simón Bolívar, the revolutionary who liberated South America from Spanish colonial rule, called Humboldt the ‘discoverer of the New World' and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany's greatest poet, declared that spending a few days with Humboldt was like ‘having lived several years'.

Publish Date
Publisher
TAURUS
Pages
584

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Previews available in: English

Edition Availability
Cover of: La invención de la naturaleza
La invención de la naturaleza: El Nuevo Mundo de Alexander von Humboldt
Mar 02, 2017, TAURUS
paperback
Cover of: Invention of Nature
Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World
2016, Hodder & Stoughton
in English
Cover of: Invention of Nature: Alexander Von Humboldt's New World, The
Invention of Nature: Alexander Von Humboldt's New World, The
2015, Alfred A. Knopf
eBook in English
Cover of: The invention of nature
The invention of nature: Alexander von Humboldt's new world
2015
in English - First American edition.

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Book Details


Edition Notes

Source title: La invención de la naturaleza: El Nuevo Mundo de Alexander von Humboldt

The Physical Object

Format
paperback
Number of pages
584

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL35635503M
ISBN 10
8430618996
ISBN 13
9788430618996

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amazon.com record

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History

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January 14, 2022 Edited by AgentSapphire Merge works
November 6, 2021 Created by ImportBot Imported from amazon.com record