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Kosmos. Entwurf einer physischen Weltbeschreibung

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Er war ein weit gereister Universalgelehrter, in der ganzen Welt bekannt und bewundert. Ein Frauenschwarm, bei dem auch Männer glänzende Augen bekamen. Zu seinen Verehrern zählten Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ebenso wie Edgar Allan Poe, und zu seinen Vorlesungen pilgerte begeistert ganz Berlin, vom einfachen Arbeiter bis zum preußischen König. Als Forscher und als Denker war Alexander von Humboldt eine Klasse für sich -- um so verwunderlicher, dass diese so faszinierende Gestalt der deutschen Geistesgeschichte vielen seiner Landsleute bis heute nahezu gänzlich unbekannt geblieben ist. Dies dürfte sich jedoch schnell ändern, denn mit Hans Magnus Enzensberger hat sich ein bekannter zeitgenössischer Bewunderer Alexander von Humboldts für eine Wiederentdeckung von Person und Werk stark gemacht, der für diesen Plan namhafte Mitstreiter aus Politik und Wissenschaft gewinnen konnte. Eine Lichtgestalt wie der jüngere der beiden Humboldt Brüder, so hofft man, könnte auch der zunehmend verbissenen Debatte um den bedauernswerten Zustand der deutschen Bildung zwischen Pisa und Bologna eine positive Orientierung geben. Ein wenig von der Begeisterung seines damaligen Berliner Publikums können heutige Leser nun nachvollziehen, wenn sie in jenem Werk auf Entdeckungsreise gehen, das aus den Vorlesungen Humboldts der Kosmos , laut Untertitel der "Entwurf einer physischen Weltbeschreibung". Was damit gemeint war, hat Humboldt folgendermaßen "Ich habe den tollen Einfall, die ganze materielle Welt in einem Werke darzustellen, das zugleich in lebendiger Sprache anregt und das Gemüth ergötzt." Auf nahezu tausend Seiten entfaltet der Kosmos ein überwältigendes Panorama des verfügbaren Wissens, ein wahrlich erschöpfendes Magazin wissenschaftlicher Weltbeschreibung, das bei aller Empirie jedoch geradezu verführerisch unterhaltsam, eben 'ergötzend' bleibt. Heute wäre Humboldt sicher ein Star der Wissenschaftsbelletristik wie Hawkins, Gould oder Pinker, und sein Werk lebt vor allem vom jugendlichen Enthusiasmus des romantischen Eroberers fremder Welten, der den deutschen Alexander mit seinem antiken Vorbild verbindet. Humboldts Kosmos lohnt auch heute eine Entdeckung und verdient viele neugierige, wagemutige und wissensdurstige Leser, die bereit sind, sich von der Begeisterung des Autoren anstecken zu lassen. --Peter Schneck

941 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1862

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About the author

Alexander von Humboldt

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Expeditions of German scientist Baron Friedrich Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt to Latin America from 1799 to 1804 and to Siberia in 1829 greatly advanced the fields of ecology, geology, and meteorology.

Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander Freiherr von Humboldt, a naturalist and the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher, and linguist, Wilhelm von Humboldt, explored. Quantitative botanical work of Humboldt founded biogeography.

Humboldt traveled extensively, explored, and described for the first time in a generally considered modern manner and point of view. He wrote up his description of the journey and published an enormous set of volumes over 21 years. He first proposed that forces once joined South America and Africa, the lands, bordering the Atlantic Ocean. Later, his five-volume work, Kosmos (1845), attempted to unify the various branches of knowledge. Humboldt supported, included, and worked with Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac, Justus von Liebig, Louis Agassiz, and Matthew Fontaine Maury and most notably conducted much of his exploration with Aimé Bonpland.

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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
Profile Image for Noah.
548 reviews73 followers
May 14, 2025
Wie immer eine sehr schöne Ausgabe der anderen Bibliothek. Leider ist das Werk extrem zeitgebunden und deswegen hoffnungslos veraltet.
Profile Image for James F.
1,675 reviews124 followers
January 9, 2017
I've always been an avid reader of science popularizations, and I've read many especially in the past two years; so eventually I had to go back to one of the first, the most comprehensive, and certainly the most successful popularizations of all time -- Alexander von Humboldt's Kosmos. This book is a summary of early nineteenth century science. After an introductory section giving von Humboldt's conception of science and explaining what he intends to cover and what he wants to accomplish -- not an encyclopedic collection of facts or theories but a view of the interconnections of phenomena, the first volume (the general "Weltgemalde" or "world picture") is divided into an astronomic part and a "telluric" part. The first part begins with nebulas and the galaxy, and narrows down to the stars, the solar system, the planets, comets and meteors, and then describes the Earth in its general form as a planet. The second part deals with the structure of the Earth, earthquakes, volcanoes, mountains, rocks, the oceans, the atmosphere and weather, organic life, and physical anthropology. The most extensive sections are the geological ones; the biological and especially the human sections are short. I believe the second, third, and fourth volumes are more detailed accounts of astronomy and geology; he never got to the detailed views of biology and anthropology, which however are covered in many of his more specialized books. Kosmos was one of the major "best-sellers" of its time, despite its length and difficulty; it represents what the educated non-scientist could be expected to know about the sciences for most of the nineteenth century, and for that reason alone is worth reading for anyone interested in the thought of the period.

Although science was and is always changing, and any science popularization is somewhat outdated by the time it is even published (the later volumes make an effort to keep up with the latest developments, and a posthumously published fifth volume is made up entirely of such corrections and additions, along with the index to all five), von Humboldt seems curiously modern compared to many other figures of the time. The general view of astronomy here didn't change much until the time of Hubble in the 1920's; the geology was essentially (except for the Ice Ages, which had only recently been suggested about this time and might be in the later volumes) the same paradigm as what I learned in grade school -- the new view of plate tectonics didn't come until I was in high school. The biology on the other hand was superceded the year Humboldt died, with the publication of The Origin of Species, which relies on von Humboldt's discoveries in plant and animal geography for its most convincing arguments. The anthropological section, though only a few pages at the end (and censored out of the early American translations) was especially modern, as he emphasizes his belief in the unity of the human species and makes the case against racial theories with ideas that were only recovered in the 1940s and 1950s, after a century of racist anthropology: the facts that traits such as dark skin, "wooly" hair, and so forth do not vary together but separately in different groups, that various traits are a result of adaptation to the climate and other factors, that language groups and ethnic groups are not the same, and so forth. He ends up with a sharp attack on slavery, and unambiguously states that all races have the same rights to freedom.

If von Humboldt's work is worth reading, the same however cannot be said for the Kindle version. While, unlike many free or low-cost e-books, it is adequately proofread, the formatting is terrible; the original endnotes are inserted in the text without any indication of where they begin or end, so that a sentence will break off in the middle, and resume a page or two later without warning. This makes the book very confusing to read -- there are long notes on every page -- and is especially damaging in German, where verbs and separable prefixes come at the end of sentences. My view is that printed books should never have endnotes, and e-books should always have endnotes with links from the text. Given that von Humboldt was a pioneer in scientific illustrations, inventing isotherms, isoclines, etc. as well as geological sections, it is surprising that the book had no illustrations (although just as well in the Kindle version, since e-books don't generally do well with illustrations -- the one chart included here was cut off at the end.) Apparently there was an atlas published by someone else at the same time which contained illustrative material for the book.

I will add my reviews for the subsequent volumes as I finish them.
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Volume 2
The second volume of Humboldt's Kosmos, this was not what I expected it to be (a more detailed version of the general sketch in the first volume); it was actually a history of the development of overall views of the physical world, from the time of the early Greeks to the beginning of the eighteenth century. The first few chapters deal with the view of the world as expressed in art and literature (and emphasize the Indian over the European works); the rest deals with the major events which changed humanity's view of the Cosmos: the discovery of the Black Sea, the discovery of the Indian Ocean, the expeditions of Alexander, the Roman Empire, the development of Arab science, the discovery of America, and the scientific revolution from Copernicus to Newton. This is one of the most interesting histories of science I have read, despite its age; especially impressive in its relative freedom from Eurocentrism -- he considers the modern scientific worldview to be essentially a product of the Arab world. As with the first volume, this was very hard to read due to the poor formatting of the Kindle edition; and despite my enjoyment of the book I think I will skip the third and fourth volumes until either Amazon fixes the Kindle version or I manage to find a print edition.
Profile Image for Lili.
105 reviews11 followers
October 4, 2024
Humboldt, erster populärwissenschaftler, meine maus<3
Crazy dass schon so viel von unserem Sonnensystem und dem Universum bekannt war bevor es überhaupt menschengemachte Maschinen im All gab? Like woher wussten sie die Entfernung von verschieden Sternen von der Erde? (rhetorische Frage; wird im Buch erklärt - hab ich nciht verstanden). Jedenfalls wild dass so viel über Himmel und Sterne erforscht wurde bevor man wusste, dass es dinosaurier auf Erde gab (1824 wurde der erste Dino beschrieben [quelle: wikipedia], auch wenn das 3 Jahre vor den Vorträgen war, kamen dinos nicht in diesen vor, also versteht ihr meinen Punkt? Idk ist crazy in meinen Augen).
Punkte abgezogen weil das Kapitel über "Menschenrassen" sehr uncomfortable war und die meisten Infos heutzutage Allgemeinwissen sind. (und der eurozentrismus oder eher Euroüberlegenheit - "oh die alten Griechen waren das erste und einzige kultivierte Volk und die Ägypter und Inder und pp gab es zwar aber die hatten keine Ahnung von irgendwas" (obwohl sie schon vor den Griechen wissenschaftliche Entdeckungen gemacht haben also idk was er meint. Die Römer haben es nichtmal geschafft von selbst darauf zu kommen dass das Konzept von 'nichts' (null) existiert likeeeee))
Profile Image for Sicofonia.
345 reviews
April 8, 2025
This is a review of the Spanish edition of 2011 by publisher Los libros de la Catarata, which should be ashamed of themselves for publishing such a relevant work with plenty of erratum. Unforgivable. The book itself grouped together the 5 volumes of Cosmos into a single one.

With Cosmos, renown explorer and scholar Alexander von Humboldt strived to present a unified vision of nature, combining scientific knowledge from various fields to show how everything in the universe is interconnected. He wanted to bridge the gap between the sciences and the humanities, making complex scientific ideas accessible to a broader audience. In a way, Von Humboldt is a sort of a precursor to cybernetic thinking.

The areas he covered in this work are as follows:
Volume 1 (1845): Overview of the physical universe and Humboldt's vision of nature as an interconnected whole; introduces the unity of nature and the relationship between the natural world and human perception.

Volume 2 (1847): Exploration of the methods and history of scientific discovery; focuses on the development of the natural sciences and the importance of observation and measurement.

Volume 3 (1850): Detailed discussions of specific sidereal phenomena, including astronomy, Earth sciences, and atmospheric physics.

Volume 4 (1858): Scientific analysis of planet Earth, particularly in geology, plant geography, and terrestrial magnetism.

Volume 5 (1862, posthumous): Historical survey of humanity’s efforts to understand the universe, focusing on cosmological ideas through time—from ancient civilizations to modern astronomy.

Sadly for myself, this book felt short of expectations. It is not an easy read for someone who may not be familiarized with basic concepts in astronomy, geology, geography or physics. While there are parts that I found more inspiring and engaging, a lot of times reading it felt like going through a dense amount if data that made for a dry as parchment read. Lastly, the biggest issue for me was the vast amount of erratum in this book: spelling mistakes, typographical errors and even duplication of lines in paragraphs that made me suspect the translation was a machine job that was copy pasted into the manuscript. All in all, a very unprofessional editing job done here. I do wonder if part of my dissatisfaction was due to such errors and the uninspiring prose in the translation.

While some of the content in the book has been rendered inaccurate after 200 years of science advancement, from a historiographical point of view there's value in Cosmos as a snapshot of what was known in the natural sciences at a point of time. Although I believe that any reader wanting to tackle this book would do well in dusting off his chops in geography, astronomy and physics if (s)he is to make the most of the reading experience.
Profile Image for Roman Weishäupl .
7 reviews3 followers
September 17, 2020
A must read to partially understand the genius of A.v.H. His drive to discover and describe the world in this beautiful nature paired with the evil european colonials is a real historical document. Makes you want to know even more about man.
10.6k reviews36 followers
September 29, 2024
A BOOK SUMMARIZING "THE PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION OF THE UNIVERSE" (WITHOUT ANY MENTION OF GOD)

Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was a Prussian geographer, naturalist, and explorer, whose work on botanical geography laid the foundation for the field of biogeography.

He wrote in his Preface to this 1845 book, "Travels... could not fail to encourage the natural tendency of my mind toward a generalization of views, and to encourage me to attempt, in a special work, to treat of the knowledge which we at present possess, regarding the sidereal and terrestrial phenomena of the Cosmos in their empirical relations... The hitherto undefined idea of a physical geography has thus, by an extended and perhaps too boldly imagined plan, been comprehended under the idea of a physical description of the universe, embracing all created things in the regions of space and in the earth...

"I have endeavored to show... that a certain degree of scientific completeness in the treatment of individual facts is not wholly incompatible with a picturesque animation of style... I undertook... to deliver a course of lectures on the physical description of the universe... My lectures were given extemporaneously..." (Pg. 7-9)

He asserts, "Nature considered rationally, that is to say, submitted to the process of thought, is a unity in diversity of phenomena; a harmony, a blending together all created things, however dissimilar in form and attributes; one great whole... animated by the breath of life." (Pg. 24)

He adds, "We may here trace the revelation of a bond of union, linking together the visible world and that higher spiritual world which escapes the grasp of the senses. The two become unconsciously blended together, developing in the mind of man... independently of the aid of observation, the first germ of a Philosophy of Nature." (Pg. 37)

He observes, "A philosophical study of nature strives ever to elevate itself above the narrow requirements of mere natural description, and does not consist... in the mere accumulation of isolated facts. The inquiring and active spirit of man must be suffered to pass from the present to the past, to conjecture all that can not yet be known with certainty, and still to dwell with pleasure on the ancient myths of geognosy [knowledge of the earth] which are presented to us under so many various forms." (Pg. 237)

He suggests, "the empirical domain of objective contemplation, and the delineation of our planet in its present condition, do not include a consideration of the mysterious and insoluble problems of origin and existence. A cosmical history of our universe... has... necessarily no connection with the obscure domain embraced by a history of organisms... The natural tendency of the human mind involuntarily prompts us to follow the physical phenomena of the Earth, through all their varied series, until we reach the final stage of the morphological evolution of vegetable forms, and the self-determining powers of motion in animal organisms. And is it by these links that the geography of organic beings... is connected with the delineation of the inorganic phenomena of our terrestrial globe." (Pg. 339-341)

He concludes, "Thus deeply rooted in the innermost nature of man, and even enjoined upon him by his highest tendencies, the recognition of the bond of humanity becomes one of the noblest leading principles in the history of mankind." (Pg. 359)

This book will interest those studying the history of scientific thought.

Profile Image for Fritz.
6 reviews
December 4, 2009
Hervorragender Reprint dieses Klassikers von Alexander von Humboldts aus dem 19. Jahrhunderts.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews

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