Lives After Death

BOOKS & ARTS NATURE|Vol 441|18 May 2006

Republic, Humboldt’s early career as a mining engineer was used to embellish his proletarian Lives after death credentials, and his remarks against slavery established him, according to an East German Alexander von Humboldt: A Metabiography text of the 1970s, as an opponent of by Nicolaas A. Rupke “every form of racial discrimination, Peter Berg: 2005. 320 pp. $38.95, £22.80, against every form of colonial expan- €32.50 sion, and for the brotherhood of human AKG-IMAGES beings of all colours”. Steven Shapin More recently, the marxist Humboldt It’s said that you only live once, but a great sci- has been replaced with Humboldt the entist has many lives. These lives are not, how- networking pioneer of globalized infor- ever, personal existences but biographies, mation economies, a ‘green’ Humboldt written by others, that make sense of the life who viewed nature “as an ecological and identify its historical significance. If the system”, and a homosexual Humboldt scientist is regarded as the founder of a disci- whose long-suspected tendencies were pline, or the author of a cherished theory or ‘outed’ by several gay German writers, method, then biography can be a continuous although this was disputed by scholars creative act, changing in content and character who either insisted on his heterosexual- as the science changes over time. Founding ity or claimed that Humboldt had sacri- myths may be historically flawed but they ficed sexual pleasures on the altar of often serve a function for the science con- scientific asceticism. Finally, the prisms cerned. And if the scientist is also a national of postmodernist scholarship have hero, then even more is at play in these lives revealed a Humboldt who was a practi- after death. tioner of disunified science and a man For Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859), with no stable intellectual or political biographical life after death has been complex make-up at all, a ragbag of a man from and contested. He was a polymath, or at least a whose life practically any evidence poly-scientist; the only modern discipline that could be plucked to establish almost any has plausibly laid claim to him as a founding identity, point or purpose. figure is physical geography. His contributions A changing picture: perceptions of Alexander von Rupke is right to draw attention to the to the field are marked by the names of the Humboldt depend on the social context of the viewer. fact that shifting biographical traditions Humboldt Current along the west coast of make one person have many lives, and South America, the Humboldt Glacier in views of such naturalists as Louis Agassiz. his metabiography helps us to appreciate the Greenland, the Humboldt Mountain Range in In the years leading up to German unifica- historical instability of any scientific life, not Antarctica, and the Humboldt River and tion under Bismarck, Humboldt was a hero to just one as complex as Humboldt’s. The past is Humboldt Bay in the United States. But he also liberal nationalists, despite having served as never wholly a foreign country, and we make made contributions to natural history: a hand- royal chamberlain to a deeply conservative and remake past lives to suit our present pur- ful of plant and animal species are named after Prussian court. The Nazis did their best to poses. No one whose life and work is of future him, from the Humboldt penguin (Spheniscus make Humboldt into a philosophical idealist interest can escape that fate. But one could humboldti) to the spectacular Humboldt lily of their preferred mystical type and, as also say that Rupke has given us a Humboldt (Lilium humboldtii). He was also a well-known Rupke says, “a herald of the Third Reich’s new just right for our own less certain and more traveller, diplomat, courtier, intellectual and socio-political order”. The ‘de-Nazifiers’ of the self-conscious times — fractured, multiple popularizer of science. postwar Federal Republic saw Humboldt as and unstable. ■ Humboldt was a German who spent most of a model of global cosmopolitanism and toler- Steven Shapin is Franklin L. Ford professor of the his productive life outside the country and ance, a “good German”, and even an active History of Science, Harvard University, 1 Oxford wrote much of his scientific work in French. friend of the Jews. In the German Democratic Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA. Together with his elder brother Wilhelm, a linguist who founded the University of Berlin, he has been a major German cultural icon, in the same pantheon as Goethe, Schiller and Beethoven. A single survivor But who was Alexander von Humboldt? Nicolaas Rupke doesn’t seek a coherent answer Lonesome George: The Life and Loves of a This tension can occasionally result in an to that question, nor does he think there can be Conservation Icon extraordinarily high public profile for an indi- one. He has not written a conventional bio- by Henry Nicholls vidual organism that can be argued to have graphy but a life of lives, or ‘metabiography’, Macmillan Science: 2006. 256 pp. £16.99, some singular importance to conservation a meticulous study of how Humboldt’s life $24.95 because it constitutes ‘the last of its kind’. Some was configured and reconfigured according kind-hearted humans who are all too aware of to the sensibilities and needs of the changing Rick Shine the pain of loneliness on a personal level can cultural settings. Conservation biology is a peculiar hybrid dis- readily empathize with the tragic circum- In the late nineteenth and early twentieth cipline, bounded on one side by hard empiri- stances of the last survivor. The animal can century, some German scientists saw Hum- cal science and on the other by ageing actresses then take on iconic status — and (a cynic boldt as a darwinian, even though he died cuddling cute baby seals. As a result, conser- might say) attract publicity and financial before On the Origin of Species was published, vation priorities reflect a sometimes bizarre resources out of all proportion to its actual and even though there is only patchy evi- balancing act between knowledge- and emo- conservation significance. The iconic indi- dence of his dissent from the anti-evolutionist tion-based perspectives of the natural world. viduals that evoke empathy from humans are

EXHIBITION Martian arts BERNARD COOKSON The outwardly dry, forbidding territory of Not all missions to Mars were the pair of almost science might seem infertile soil for the whimsy as successful as Viking 1, identical cartoons of the newspaper cartoonist. But judging by however. The bad luck and sketched in Mars in their Eyes, an engaging exhibition at cock-ups along the way are, anticipation of London’s newly opened Cartoon Museum, inevitably, mercilessly Beagle’s landing on missions to our planetary neighbours are lampooned. “Do we measure Christmas Day 2003. a notable exception. After all, everybody light years in centimetres or Of these, only the one knows that martian soils are populated by feet and inches?” wonders a entitled Silent Night — little green men. white-coated, bespectacled not Hark! Hear the As the martian physiognomy is unknown, scientist from the pen of Beagle Sing! — ever it is a gift to a cartoonist’s imagination. The David Haldane of The Times went to press. inhabitants of the red planet are also used to in response to one egregious example — Whether as a potted great effect as mostly perplexed, sometimes the failure of NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter in history of Mars mischievous commentators on their Earthly 1999 following a disagreement between metric exploration, a primer of the press’s view of neighbours’ aspirations. In a 1976 cartoon and imperial units. science, or simply as a bit of fun, Mars in their from The Philadelphia Inquirer, for instance, The British-built Mars lander Beagle 2 Eyes is well worth a visit. It can be seen at the a martian housewife bangs irritatedly on the (missing, presumed lost) features particularly Cartoon Museum in London, a block away from ceiling of her underground condo as the Viking 1 prominently: its lead scientist, Colin Pillinger, is the British Museum, until 1 July. R.W. probe drills through her roof. co-curator of the exhibition. A poignant item is ➧ www.cartooncentre.com

One foot in the These include a young Swiss biologist who grave: Lonesome massaged George’s genitals on a daily basis for REUTERS George is thought six months to try to arouse his sexual passions; to be the last of a local fisherman who sends death threats the Pinta Island against George whenever the government tries tortoises. to regulate the harvest of marine fauna; scientists whose ideas and suggestions about managing George’s affairs rarely manage to penetrate the regulations that surround such an icon; and a series of park directors deter- mined to protect George at all costs. Nicholls skilfully and seamlessly brings in a broad array of snippets from recent scientific research in a diverse array of disciplines as he outlines the potential approaches that a conservation biologist might take to George’s plight. However, it is not even clear that George really is the last Pinta tortoise, as opposed to a recent reintroduction, because the genetic usually mammals or birds, but one reptile has has also served as a lightning rod for scores of differences between the Pinta and Espanola captured hearts and minds — the forlorn fig- political, economic and scientific debates that tortoises are so small. Such local populations ure of Lonesome George. have raged around the Galapagos as the are blinking out all around us and rarely George is an adult male Galapagos tortoise, islands have been transformed from a quiet receive much attention from conservation and is believed to be the last surviving member site of scientific focus to a mecca for inter- biologists, let alone the public. of a race that was abundant on Pinta Island national tourism. If George were a small brown lizard (or even before being slaughtered as a protein source The science surrounding George is murky. worse, a snake), nobody would care. But the for the crews of passing vessels. Closely related How should you treat an internationally giant tortoises of the Galapagos convey a sense organisms from different islands in this archi- known conservation icon? Maintain him in of serene contemplation and prehistoric dig- pelago differ in size and shape, an observation luxury, where the tourists can pay to see him nity, and it is difficult not to anthropomor- that Charles Darwin famously used as evi- and be inspired about the urgent need for con- phize and imagine the world from George’s dence for his theories of evolutionary change. servation efforts? Or release him back to free- viewpoint. The literary device of placing a Indeed, it was an observation about the dis- dom on his island, with females of a closely reptilian icon at the centre of a dynamic play tinctiveness of tortoises from different islands related lineage, at the risk that he will fall down about science, conservation and our attitudes that first alerted Darwin to the possibility of a crevice and die? Or try to extract some of to nature results in a highly readable book that such spatial variation. So Lonesome George — those Pinta-specific genes so his lineage can has much to say about the ways we flounder captured in 1972, many decades after the Pinta live on — at the risk of causing harm to this around in our attempts to protect things that race was thought to be extinct — is an icon for taciturn and decidedly non-amorous tortoise? seem important to us. ■ evolutionary biology as well as island conser- George continues to plod through his luxuri- Rick Shine is at the School of Biological Sciences, vation. As Henry Nicholls brings out in this ous enclosure over the decades as the battle University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales delightfully written book, Lonesome George rages around him, and people come and go. 2006, Australia.