Mining as the Working World of Alexander von Humboldt's Plant Geography and Vertical Cartography

Dados Bibliográficos

ID3129072
AutoresPatrick Anthony (0000-0002-0285-2552, Vanderbilt University, autor correspondente)
Ano2018
Volume109
Fascículo1
Páginas28-55
Data de publicação2018-03-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoIsis (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0021-1753 • E-ISSN: 1545-6994
EditoraUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/697061
OpenAlexW2794367489
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas11
Referências citadas29

By resituating Alexander von Humboldt in the "working world" of mining, this essay offers a case study of the way in which industry has shaped practice and theory in the history of science. While Humboldt's experience as a miner in Saxony and Prussia provided him a venue in which to study fossilized vegetation, revealing a fundamental link between the migrations of plants and of peoples, industrial concerns about miners' safety inspired a study of the interplay between plants and people that shaped his later articulation of the verticality of plant distribution. Moreover, the cartographic methods Humboldt employed during his American journey depended as much on drawing practices indebted to mining as they did on patterns of vertical mobility above and below the surface of the earth. These arguments ultimately encourage a departure from "Humboldtian Science," a term that has veiled an originally Prusso-Saxon science beneath a set of Anglo-American connotations

Archaeology · Articulation (sociology · Geography · Political science · Sociology · Vegetation (pathology · Alexander von Humboldt Studies · Anthropology · Australian Indigenous Culture and History · History of Science and Natural History · Law