This is the third and final episode of our discussion of Andrea Wulf's biography of Alexander von Humboldt, The Invention of Nature. In this episode, we will discuss part 5 and have a general discussion about the entire book. As always with the book club, in each episode we will talk about whatever happened, so there will be spoilers and it probably makes most sense if you have read as far as we have.

For this series, I'm joined by Cody Kommers, former guest of the podcast (episode 4), fellow podcaster, and fellow PhD student in cognitive neuroscience. Cody has a particular interest in travel and psychology.

Podcast links

Cody's links

Website: https://www.codykommers.com/
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=ImTtx_kAAAAJ
Twitter: https://twitter.com/codykommers
Newsletter: https://codykommers.substack.com/

Ben's links

Website: www.bjks.blog/
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=-nWNfvcAAAAJ
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bjks_tweets

References

Humboldt (1807). Personal narrative of travels to the equinoctial regions of the new continent during the years 1799-1804. G. Bell.
Humboldt (1845-62). Cosmos: a sketch of a physical description of the universe. Harper.
Isaacson (2011). Steve Jobs. Simon & Schuster
Menand (2002). The metaphysical club: A story of ideas in America. Macmillan.
Menand (2021). The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War. Farrar, Strauss & Giroux.
Pausas & Bond (2019). Humboldt and the reinvention of nature. Journal of Ecology.
Poe (1848). Eureka: a prose poem.(An essay on the material and spiritual universe.). GP Putnam.
Rillig, Kiessling, Borsch, Gessler, Greenwood, Hofer ... & Jeltsch (2015). Biodiversity research: data without theory—theory without data. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.
Wulf (2015). The invention of nature: Alexander von Humboldt's new world. Knopf.

36. Book club: The Invention of Nature (Humboldt biography) by Andrea Wulf, part 5 & general discussion