Cosmos (Humboldt book)

Humboldt and his Kosmos (1843), Joseph Karl Stieler

Kosmos (usually referred to in English as "Cosmos") was an influential treatise on science and nature written by the German scientist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt. Kosmos began as a lecture series delivered by Humboldt at the University of Berlin, and was published in five volumes between 1845 and 1862 (the fifth was posthumous and incomplete). Widely read by academics and laymen alike, it applied the ancient Greek view of the orderliness of the cosmos (the universe) to the Earth, suggesting that universal laws applied as well to the apparent chaos of the terrestrial world. Controversially for the time, Humboldt in Kosmos spoke of the spirituality of the natural world only in general terms, avoiding the notion of a creator.

References

• Aaron Sachs (2007). The Humboldt current: a European explorer and his American disciples. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-921519-7