"The Humboldt of Australia"!

Pacific Science (1998), vol. 52, no. 4: 294-300 © 1998 by University of Hawai'i Press. All rights reserved Humboldtian Imagery and "the Humboldt of Australia"! R. W. HOME2 ABSTRACT: When the great German geographer August Petermann called the botanist/explorer Ferdinand von Mueller "the Humboldt of Australia," what did he have in mind? Elaborating the circumstances of his doing so gives us a new view of Alexander von Humboldt's image among nineteenth-century scientists who declared themselves to be his followers and raises the question of how closely this might have corresponded with the notion of "Humboldtian science" that has been developed by present-day historians of science. ON 8 JANUARY 1870, the German geographer (Voigt 1996: 103); but there is no reference in August Petermann wrote from Gotha to the surviving correspondence to his later Ferdinand von Mueller in Australia a letter doing anything like that again. (There is a of introduction for the son of the British cataract in Brazil named after Mueller that Consul-General at Hamburg. The father, might perhaps have been given its name by Petermann wrote to Mueller, was "one of the Petermann, but I have been unable to trace best friends of German Geographers and the circumstances of its naming.) Scientific men, ... who therefore will be sure Petermann's coupling of Mueller's name to receive the sympathy of so great a patriot with that ofthe German polymath Alexander as yourself." Hence he was confident that von Humboldt provides the central theme Mueller, "in his position as the Humboldt of of this paper. It has become commonplace Australia," would make the son welcome among historians to represent much of (petermann 1870). nineteenth-century science as "Humboldt Some years later, in a letter dated 16 De ian." And here we have one leading scientist cember 1874, Petermann again used this im applying the very label, not once but twice to agery. On that occasion, Petermann thanked one of his colleagues! My intention is to use Mueller for instructing his protege, the ex what we know of the work of Mueller and plorer Ernest Giles, to name in Petermann's Petermann, and of the connection between honor a prominent mountain range he had them, to elucidate Petermann's usage-to discovered in Central Australia: "At the first shed new light upon Humboldt's influence opportunity I have to put new names on the among his contemporaries and successors. map," he told Mueller, "you may be sure It is clear that Petermann intended to that I shall not forget that of my high patron compliment Mueller. But if his linking of in the Antipodes, my revered Australian the two names were to flatter, he had to be Humboldt, and shall also think of the oblig sure that Mueller would see the connection ing Mr Giles" (Voigt 1996: 127). It is not as appropriate as well as pleasing. This clear whether Petermann lived up to his prompts a question. Given the differences promise. Earlier, in 1871, he had named a between the patrician Humboldt, securely mountain on Spitzbergen after Mueller located throughout his career at the heart of the intellectual world of the nineteenth cen tury, and Mueller, the orphaned son of a 1 Research for this paper was supported by a grant Rostock customs official who had emigrated from the Australian Research Council. Manuscript to distant Australia in 1847 and stayed there accepted IS January 1998. ever since, what parallels could Petermann 2 Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria 3052, possibly have had in mind, that he could Australia. expect Mueller also to recognize? What does 294 "The Humboldt of Australia"-HOME 295 his comparison say about his image of lines," he suggested, "was a philanthropic, Humboldt, and of Mueller? And what does even heroic act. ... To extend the reach of it tell us about "Humboldtian" science, as this mean values was to extend European civili term might have been understood at the time? zation in its best and most progressive as I add this qualification because Susan pect" (Dettelbach 1996:301). Faye Cannon has offered a characterization of "Humboldtian" science that has attracted THE AUSTRALIAN HUMBOLDT considerable attention among historians of nineteenth-century scientific thought (Can Humboldt's influence is apparent among non 1978: ch. 3). This style of science, she has many German scientists who traveled to argued, was "the great new thing in profes Australia in the nineteenth century (Home sional science in the first half of the 19th 1995a,b). Mueller was perhaps the most no century." Not for Humboldtians the easy table of these, and he acknowledged a strong generalizations of the casual observer, nor Humboldtian influence on his choice of ca the "sterile accumulation of insulated facts" reer-recalling in later life how, during his in the laboratory. On the contrary, Hum student days, he was inspired by Humboldt's boldtian science demanded careful and sys account of his travels in South America tematic recording of a range of variables (Mueller 1887). Mueller was the principal in the hope that these could eventually be speaker at a commemoration of Humboldt's shown to be linked together as different life and work held in Melbourne on 14 Sep aspects of large-scale (or even global) dy tember 1859, shortly after the great man's namical systems. The Humboldtian traveler death; there he recorded how his reading always looked for relationships between phe of Humboldt's inspiring vision of an exact, nomena; a trademark was the plotting of unified science embracing nature in all its lines ("iso-lines") representing equal values aspects had given direction to his life of some physical variable or other on maps. (Mueller 1859a). Under Humboldt's influ Precision, whether of observation or of mea ence, the highest task was no longer to perfect surement, was a sine qua non. individual disciplines, but rather "to explore Other authors have subsequently elabo the inner connection of the sciences, to dis rated Cannon's idea. In particular, Malcolm cover their reciprocal relations, and thereby Nicolson has highlighted the importance of to extend the whole empire of knowledge botany, Mueller's science, in Humboldt's simultaneously." The period in which he scheme of things (Nicolson 1987). What lived would thus be reckoned "the epoch Humboldt advocated was not, however, the in which the isolated scientific explana botany of Linnaeus, with its focus on taxon tion was merged into a harmonious whole" omy, but rather a botany that studied vege (Mueller 1859a: 20). Mueller included a quo tation as a whole-that is, the relationships tation from Humboldt's Cosmos on the title within and between plant communities. The page of his first major Australian publication Humboldtian botanist, on this account, is a (Mueller 1860-1862), and in a letter, he re plant geographer, concerned not so much to ferred to Humboldt as "the greatest genius of discover and identify new species-although this century" (Mueller 1859b). Late in life, this remained an important part of the Mueller was still espousing the Humboldtian task-but to explore the distribution of creed: "the greatest triumph of sciences," he species and the connections between plant maintained in his presidential address to the distribution and variables such as climate, Australasian Association for the Advance elevation, and geological structure. More ment of Science in 1890, "consists in bringing recently, Michael Dettelbach has suggested them into the fullest contact, somewhat in yet another feature of Humboldtianism, an Aristotelean and Plinian-or speaking of namely a determination to bring remote and our own epoch-in an Humboldtian spirit" uncivilized parts of the world under scientific (Mueller 1890: 5). law and order. "Contributing to Humboldt's These points are revealing in the way they 296 PACIFIC SCIENCE, Volume 52, October 1998 emphasize the dream of unifying the sciences however, that there had been earlier, indirect to embrace the Earth in all its aspects. The contact through Mueller's Hamburg friend, theme of the quotation Mueller extracted the botanist Otto Wilhelm Sonder, who on at from Cosmos-"everywhere presses upon us least two occasions had forwarded publica the sense ofthe existence ofNature according tions to Petermann on Mueller's behalf.) to inner, eternal laws" CUberall durchdringt Mueller was a much more regular corre uns das Gefiihl des Bestehens der Natur nach spondent than Petermann: indeed, for long innern ewigen Gesetzen)-was of a piece with periods he made a point of writing to Peter this idea, because it was these very "inner, mann every month. Petermann's surviving eternal laws" that would emerge. However, letters to Mueller, on the other hand, are having introduced the theme, what Mueller much less numerous and almost invariably stressed in his 1859 address-by far his most include an apology for not having written extensive discussion of Humboldt's work more often. It is, however, clear from Muel was the breadth of the great man's interests ler's acknowledgment that Petermann was as displayed in his achievements as a scientific also, and much more regularly, sending explorer. Mueller highlighted the romance of Mueller copies of his publications, including Humboldt's South American journey, noting issues of the journal that he edited, his the rich variety oftropical nature, the majesty Geographische Mittheilungen. Mueller in re of the Andes, the drama of an eruption of turn sent Petermann a range of Australian Cotopaxi, and Humboldt's ascent of Chim publications, including his own; and from borazo. He listed Humboldt's comments on the more geographically orientated of these, earthquakes and on the pyramids built by the Petermann often included excerpts in his Incas, his scientific survey of Mexico, and his journal and also extracted details that he in visit to the United States.

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