Divine Cosmos: Humboldt's Ecology in Nineteenth-Century American Literature

Tells the story of how 19th—century American writers re—envisioned science and religion in the age of German naturalist—explorer Alexander von Humboldt's “cosmic” ecology.

When Alexander von Humboldt began to publish the volumes of his Cosmos: A Sketch of a Physical Description of the Earth (1845–1859), Americans suddenly found themselves reimagining the natural world. Humboldt presented nature as a “cosmos,” an interconnected web that exceeded the scientific world of static taxonomy and in...