Cultures of Science Seminar: “Earthrise: Nature vs. Planet in the Nineteenth Century”
Boston University hosts Laura Dassow Walls, author of Henry David Thoreau: A Life (Chicago, 2017) and Passage to Cosmos: Alexander von Humboldt and the Shaping of America (Chicago 2009). She is the 2019 Silas Peirce Lecturer at Boston University and will lead this seminar on the rise of nineteenth-century earth sciences and the changing concepts of nature.
We will read Alexander von Humboldt’s chapter “Concerning the Steppes and Deserts” from his Views of Nature; the essay is 13 pages long and the notes 73 pages, so feel free to dip into the notes (more like nested essays) as you wish. We will also read a recent essay by Laura Walls et al, “Introduction: Reclaiming Consilience” from their edition of Humboldt’s Views of Nature.
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