Alexander von Humboldt: A Metabiography
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.96 (801 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0226731499 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 316 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-12-26 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
J. Withers, Progress in Human Geography . His momentous accomplishments have intrigued German biographers from the Prussian era to the fall of the Berlin wall, all of whom configured and reconfigured Humboldt’s life according to the sensibilities of the day.This volume, the first metabiography of the great scientist, traces Humboldt’s biographical identities through Germany’s collective past to shed light on the historical instability of our scientific heroes. “Rupke’s study will doubtless become a standard reference for the Humboldt industry and for writers of scientific metabiographies to come.”—Isis “Engaging. Rupke’s meticulous analysis is fascinating on many scores.”—Times Higher Education Supplement (UK) “A study borne of considerable scholarship and one with important methodological implications for historians of geography.”—Charles W. Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) is one of the most celebrated figures of late-modern science, famous for his work in physical geography, botanical geography, and climatology, and his role as one of the first great popularizers of the sciences
Larry N. Stout said "Riding his hobby hard". The author's extensive research into German sources enables him to demonstrate very convincingly in the example of Alexander von Humboldt that what is presented as biographical information can be, and in fact very often is, highly colored by the perceptions and motives of both contemporary and later biographical writers: the author aptly labels this phenomenon "appropriation". However, at book length, this revelatory research becomes tedious for the general reader who is not a specialist in German culture, hi. S. Hannover said Exceptional and pioneering. This is an exceptional and pioneering book, showing where historical scholarship is (or should be) headed. Rupke has succeeded in condensing an enormous amount of material into a short and readable account and as such his "Humboldt Metabiography" is rather British. In another way, the book is not British at all, in the sense that it undercuts the empiricist belief in the "definitive biography" and in fact destabilizes biography as a genre by convincingly showing that all biographical portraits of Humboldt are. "Great book, innovative, fun to read" according to Thomas Junker. This is not another conventional biography of Alexander von Humboldt but a "life of lives", a metabiography. In a fascinating way it demonstrates how Humboldt's life was configured and reconfigured according to the prepossessions of successive generations of German biographers. As Harvard's Steven Shapin has commented in his review in Nature (18 May 2006, p. 286) the book draws attention to the fact that shifting biographical traditions make one person have many lives. The book was a pleasure to read.
“Rupke is right to draw attention to the fact that shifting biographical traditions make one person have many lives, and his metabiography helps us to appreciate the historical instability of any scientific life, not just one as complex as Humboldt’s. Rupke has given us a Humboldt just right for our own less certain and more self-conscious times—fractured, multiple and unstable.”