Beyond Humboldtian science and Goethe's way of science: challenges of Alexander von Humboldt's geography

Abstract

This paper describes some pioneering works of Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) in the light of his correspondence with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), and his travels in the Americas (1799-1804). Two contrasting interpretations are sketched, i. e., those of Humboldtian science and Goethe's way of science, both of which sought more direct observation and study of nature than those which had become conventional in the contrasting eighteenth century approaches of Encyclopédisme and Naturphilosophie. Humboldtian Science emphasized objectivity and rigour in measurement and eventual generalization of results, while Goethe's way emphasized careful attunement to the observation process itself, and the inevitable subjectivity in human perception and understanding. Elements of both approaches are evident in the work of Humboldt. But there are aesthetic and experience-based facets of his overall vision which enable the work to transcend tensions between objectivity and subjectivity, macro-scale survey and micro-scale theatre, scientific explanation and artistic representation. This transcendence has been achieved through discursive strategies which highlight at least four cardinal sensitivities in Humboldt's geography: (1) scale and location, (2) temporality, (3) sociality and cultural relativism, and (4) the poetics of landscape visualisation.