From Alexander von Humboldt to Charles Darwin: Evolution in Observation and Interpretation

Frank Baron (The University of Kansas)

Email: fbaron@ku.edu

 

ABSTRACT:

Scholars who trace the background of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution generally overlook the contributions of Alexander von Humboldt. When Darwin embarked on his famous voyage, he took along Humboldt’s narrative of American travels: “I believe from what I have seen, Humboldt's glorious descriptions are & will for ever be unparalleled . . . I am at present fit only to read Humboldt; he like another sun illumin[at]es everything I behold.” Darwin’s sister complained that in his correspondence Darwin had adopted, “probably from reading so much of Humboldt,” Humboldt’s phraseology and flowery French expressions. Humboldt’s influence went far beyond style. This presentation will show the extent to which Darwin learned from and used the “Humboldtian method,” which Susan Faye Cannon has termed “the accurate, measured study of widespread but interconnected real phenomena in order to find a definite law and a dynamical cause.”