Humboldt and Jefferson: A Transatlantic Friendship of the Enlightenment

7. Engagement with the Natural World

7 Engagement with the Natural World The eighteenth century—when Thomas Jefferson and Alexander von Humboldt were growing up—and the beginning of the nineteenth century were characterized by a seemingly endless series of discoveries and innovations, of which the development of new social and political structures was just a small part. In the broad field of natural history—defined for present purposes as the systematic study of any category of natural objects or organisms in their environment, based on observation rather than experimental methods—important changes were taking place. Innovative approaches to measuring and studying nature according to the scienti fic principles of the Enlightenment, and to establishing an order for all living beings led to biological classification systems. A deeper and more nuanced understanding of the natural environment was developing. The influence of the climate on human beings and man’s interaction with the natural world were much-debated issues. Once again, Humboldt and Jefferson—both deeply interested, and conditioned by their personal interests and backgrounds—showed distinctive approaches. The European encounter with America resulted in fundamental changes in the study of both nature and ethnography in the New World. The task now was to incorporate the newly discovered information into what was already known of the Old World, and to establish schemes into which both might fit. By the end of the eighteenth century, many a colonial territory had begun to search for an individual identity, a process likely moving toward political independence that cannot be seen as separate from the debate on nature. The understanding of the interconnection between nature and humans was influenced by multiple factors, including religious Rebok, final pages.indd 101 Rebok, final pages.indd 101 2/27/14 10:56 AM 2/27/14 10:56 AM 102 humboldt and jefferson convictions, Eurocentric beliefs, and nationalistic considerations. It further depended on the type and reliability of information available , and whether one was from the Old or New World. In the early eighteenth century, the meaning of the term“natural history” was quite different from what it is today. Natural history was bipartite,comprising natural philosophy (looking for definition, description, and material causes of nature and the physical universe) and moral philosophy (focusing more on questions of morality and metaethical discussion of the nature of moral judgments, meanings, and values). The study of natural history is considered to begin with Aristotle and other classical philosophers who analyzed the diversity of the natural world. Aristotle dedicated himself to the study of animals and classified them according to their method of reproduction ; he believed that living beings were arranged on a ladder of perfection rising from the most lowly plants to man. Together with Plato he developed the concept of the scala naturae, or great chain of being, organizing life forms into a strict hierarchical structure of life, believed to be of divine origin. The chain starts with God and the angels beneath him, moving downward to include mankind, animals, and plants, followed by minerals. Another early contribution was made by the Roman natural philosopher Pliny the Elder, whose encyclopedic work Historia naturalis, published around 79–77 BC, became a model for all subsequent such works. From the work of these ancient scholars until that of Carl Linnaeus and other eighteenth-century naturalists, the principal ordering concept of natural history remained the scala naturae. During the Enlightenment, rapidly expanding knowledge of natural history and the increase in the number of known species generated interest in the idea of imposing a general system of order upon the many natural-history collections being gathered. Several attempts to identify, classify, and organize the species into taxonomic groups culminated in the universally accepted system established by Linnaeus. He abandoned the long descriptive names of classes and orders used by his immediate predecessors and introduced the consistent application of binomial nomenclature. All organisms were given two Latin names: one for the genus and one for the species. This system, too, was hierarchical, starting with three Rebok, final pages.indd 102 Rebok, final pages.indd 102 2/27/14 10:56 AM 2/27/14 10:56 AM engagement with the natural world 103 kingdoms (mineral, vegetable, and animal), which were divided into five ranks: classes, orders, genera, species, and sometimes, below the rank of species,taxa named variety (botany) or subspecies (zoology).¹ His most famous work, Systema naturae (1735...