The Invention of Nature

ANDREA WULF was born in India and moved to Germany as a child. She lives in London, where she trained as a design historian at the Royal College of Art. She is the author of Chasing Venus, Founding Gardeners, and The Brother Gardeners, which was long-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize and awarded the American Horticultural Society Book Award. She has written for The New York Times, the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the Los Angeles Times. She appears regularly on radio and TV, and in 2014 copresented British Gardens in Time, a four-part series on BBC television.www.andreawulf.com

出版者:Knopf

作者:Andrea Wulf

页数:496

出版时间:2015-9-15

价格:USD 30.00

装帧:Hardcover

isbn号码:9780385350662

图书标签:传记自然英文原版洪堡历史外国文学科技英语

The acclaimed author of Founding Gardeners reveals the forgotten life of Alexander von Humboldt, the visionary German naturalist whose ideas changed the way we see the natural world—and in the process created modern environmentalism.

Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) was an intrepid explorer and the most famous scientist of his age. In North America, his name still graces four counties, thirteen towns, a river, parks, bays, lakes, and mountains. His restless life was packed with adventure and discovery, whether he was climbing the highest volcanoes in the world or racing through anthrax-infected Siberia or translating his research into bestselling publications that changed science and thinking. Among Humboldt’s most revolutionary ideas was a radical vision of nature, that it is a complex and interconnected global force that does not exist for the use of humankind alone.

Now Andrea Wulf brings the man and his achievements back into focus: his daring expeditions and investigation of wild environments around the world and his discoveries of similarities between climate and vegetation zones on different continents. She also discusses his prediction of human-induced climate change, his remarkable ability to fashion poetic narrative out of scientific observation, and his relationships with iconic figures such as Simón Bolívar and Thomas Jefferson. Wulf examines how Humboldt’s writings inspired other naturalists and poets such as Darwin, Wordsworth, and Goethe, and she makes the compelling case that it was Humboldt’s influence that led John Muir to his ideas of natural preservation and that shaped Thoreau’s Walden.

With this brilliantly researched and compellingly written book, Andrea Wulf shows the myriad fundamental ways in which Humboldt created our understanding of the natural world, and she champions a renewed interest in this vital and lost player in environmental history and science.

读后感

1827年冬，五十八岁的亚历山大·冯·洪堡在新建不久的柏林大学开办讲座，半年内不重样讲了七十七场，天文与诗歌，地质与风景画，火山，极光，地球磁场，气象学，人的迁徙，动植物分布……所有讲座无偿向社会大众开放，皇室贵族跟他们的仆役成了同学，学者专家与贩夫走卒抢座，...  

文/宝木笑 “那么多种声音都在告诉我们，自然中的一切都在呼吸。” ——亚历山大•冯•洪堡 上面的话是刚过而立之年的亚历山大•冯•洪堡在南美洲的雨林中写下的，那段时间他和他的伙伴险象环生，睡觉时会有蛇盘踞在垫子下面，也许还有美洲豹毛茸茸的利爪慢慢伸来，搜...  

如果不是因缘巧合或者是冥冥之中自有天意，自己应该不会看到这本书。想当一个和洪堡一样纯粹的人，又怀疑这种纯粹是不是也是“天选之子”的幸运。 就内容来讲，主要着重描写洪堡行走南美探索热带自然种种，真的是用脚丈量，用手描绘奇异世界（对比想到现在的各种科技真的是为科...

不知道为什么，原书的副标题“洪堡的新世界”在中文版被改成了“洪堡的科学发现之旅”。对比起来，原文显然精妙得多。一方面是一语双关地影射了洪堡在研究方面的开创性成果；另一方面则是更好地对应了洪堡所倡导的“自然之网”概念。 在这部传记中，并非只有洪堡一人的开拓经历...  

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Every poet has trembled on the verge of science

这书的组织安排上大有问题，感觉作者根本就没想好自己到底要写什么：说是科学史和观念史吧，洪堡占的戏份太大；说是洪堡传记吧，注水状况严重，大段大段和他没什么关系，传主都死了还能再写100页。而且读完以后心里产生一个巨大的问号：为什么洪堡会从家喻户晓到籍籍无名（至少对大部分人来说）？这反映了怎样的社会和观念变迁？我觉得这才是最让人感兴趣的，可书里基本没提。搞不懂是怎么拿到这么多奖的，environmentalism porn？