Questioning Nature by Bailes Melissa;

Author:Bailes, Melissa;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Virginia Press

Alexander von Humboldt’s Tableau Physique (1807), charting his various observations and measurements taken during his ascent of Chimborazo. (Kew Gardens)

In his explorations, Humboldt wished to depart from the mode of collecting and identifying plants associated with Cook’s first voyage and Joseph Banks. Although he considered the steps of collecting and classifying to be necessary, he often contrasted “descriptive” natural history with his own emphasis on geographical variations of plants and of other physical parameters.67 Humboldt strove “to create what he termed la physique générale—the universal, synthetic science that would comprehend both the unity and the diversity of nature.”68 Part of accomplishing his universalist form of scientific investigation involved measuring everything possible, using the latest technical innovations in scientific instruments, a litany of which he carried with him through South America. Humboldt hoped this wide array of measurements could then be compared with similar measurements performed in other geographical locations around the globe, making real linkages between apparently disparate phenomena more readily perceptible. One recent scholar represents Humboldt’s terrestrial physics as “natural history conducted in an observatory,” with numerous observatories located around the world.69

In her preface to the Personal Narrative, Williams praises Humboldt’s imaginative mode of science. His illumination of harmonies and aesthetics through natural inquiry aligns him with the German Romantic movement, and Williams affirms that nature “speaks in a voice . . . well understood by the mysterious sympathy of the feeling heart.”70 In December 1821 Robert Southey admiringly wrote, “Humboldt is among travelers what Wordsworth is among poets. The extent of his knowledge and the perfect command which he has of it are truly surprising; and with this he unites a painter’s eye and a poet’s feelings.”71 However, Southey’s surprise at Humboldt’s poetic style may owe much to the translation. Just as she interjected her own insights when translating Ramond, Williams also takes liberties in her translation of Humboldt, augmenting his “passionate enthusiasm.” A modern editor of the Personal Narrative states that Humboldt’s “French is curiously flat, scientific and modern” and “I was struck by the disparity between” Humboldt’s writing and Williams’s English translation.72 According to him, Williams’s “collaborati[on] with Humboldt” proves “faithful . . . except when Humboldt enthused—then his translator interpreted and exaggerated.”73 Williams publicizes Humboldt’s approval of her interpretation, stating in her preface, “I have been encouraged by the care with which [Humboldt] has read most of my pages, and corrected many of my errors.”74 Her version of the Personal Narrative inspired Charles Darwin’s own quest for scientific discovery and accompanied him on the H.M.S. Beagle. Reading Williams’s translation, Darwin called Humboldt’s style a “rare union of poetry with science.”75 When Williams embellishes Humboldt’s prose, melding her own originality with that of this naturalist, she often responds to the “poetry” of his methods and ideas, striving to create a unitary vision of the world by synthesizing its various phenomena.76

Recent historians of science argue that “only in [Humboldt’s] pictorial representation” of Chimborazo in the Essay on the Geography of Plants “did he truly succeed in consolidating an abundance of particulars into a few generalities.

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