Alexander von Humboldt Quotes

Alexander von Humboldt was a German geographer, naturalist, and explorer.  Humboldt's quantitative work on botanical geography laid the foundation for the field of biogeography. His description of the journey was written up and published in an enormous set of volumes over 21 years. Later, his five-volume work, Kosmos, attempted to unify the various branches of scientific knowledge. Alexander von Humboldt thought an approach to science was needed that could account for the harmony of nature among the diversity of the physical world. For Humboldt, "the unity of nature" meant that it was the interrelation of all physical sciences—such as the conjoining between biology, meteorology and geology—that determined where specific plants grew.