Humboldt's Legacy and Environmentalism

Beach Bum's June Jackpot is dealing out winners all week long, score seven dollar Sun or sppray tans, seven dollars Red lightight or sauna, seven dollars lotions, and more. Feeling lucky? G buy one, get one seventy percent off packages. No gamble, just glow. The odds are in your favor, and these seven dollar deals are your ticket to a golden summer. Beach Bum's June Jackpot sale is live through june seventh Don't miss it at Beachbum Tanning. Your glow up starts now. Head to beachbum d. com and stay tan and tasty all summer long Hey everyone, it's Kell Pen. I'm inviting you to join the best sounding book Club you've ever heard with my podcast, Earsay, the Audible and IHart Audioobook Club Every episode, I nerd out with amazing guests and dive into the best new audiobooks available on Audible. It's the book Cub for your ears Listen to Earsay, the Audible and IHart Audio book Club on the IHart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts Hello everyone and welcome to the Mindscape podcast. I'm host Sean Carol As we've often mentioned here on Mindscape, our focus is on ideas, how we understand the world in the biggest possible sense of that term, trying to figure out what the theories are, how they fit with data, whether it's physics or economics or psychology or anything like that. But of course, as today's guest Andrea Wolf reminds us, ideas come from people. So even though it's important to understand the ideas, sometimes if you really want to understand the ideas and you want to understand why we have some ideas rather than others It helps you to look at the people who invented these ideas and the historical context in which they are embedded And in physics or in other sciences and chemistry or whatever, it's very often at least apparently straightforward to pinpoint where the ideas come from, right? The moment in time when someone came up with the idea. Actually, that's harder even in the very physical sciences than you might think because ideas are kind of in the air and they're shared and they finally appear somewhere But in the more human side of things, in culture, in literature, and art, and even in politics and philosophy, it can very often be harder to pinpoint where the ideas come from. Their gestation is a little bit slower And by the time they get to us, by the time we have a certain idea, what about, you know liberty O free will is an idea we talk about, or the individual and themselves and their relationship to the world All these kinds of ideas are just so embedded in who we are, how we talk about Where we are in the world that it's hard to imagine a time when they weren't there or at least they weren't there in the same way that they're there now So that's kind of what we'll be talking about today. Andre has written a series of books. She's written a number of books, but there's actually a sort of reverse chronological trilogy that she's just completed. Her most recent work is called The Traveler about Georg or George Forster who was a German naturalist and travel writer. He was arguably the first travel writer in the modern sense. He went on an expedition with Captain Cook to the South Seas for three years in the seventeen seventies and came back and wrote about it both about the naturalist kind of things that he discovered, the plants and the animals, but also as an ethnographer as talking about the human beings he met and actually standing up for their dignity against the kind of racial hierarchies that were present at the time. And then she had another book, The previous book was called Magnificent Rebels about what she labels the Yena Circle in the seventeen nineties. And Foroster was related to them. he actually interacted with them, but it was a group of intellectuals big names. Geta and Hegel and Schilling and Fichter. And they hung out in this tiny little town in Yenna and basically invented what we now call romanticism as an outgrowth of the Enlightenment And one of the peripheral figures there was Alexander von Humbolt, who is the prrotagonist, if you want, the subject of Andrea's previous book to that called The Invention of Nature And Homebolt again was a traveler and a naturalist, much like Foster And he visited South America and he came back with an enormously intricate measurements of temperature and pressure and magnetic fields and also observe the various kinds of plant life and so forth But he really focused following the romantics in the Aa circle on the connections between different things. It wasn't just a collection of this and that, it was the interactions, the systems level view And not only systems level of how plants talk to each other, but plants and animals and nature and humanity So there is actually kind of a common thread of inventing a whole bunch of really deep ideas about the unity of nature, about the connections between art and science, about the connection between individuals and collectives and our responsibility to the world broadly being invented at this moment in the late eighteenth century, the birth of modernity. So it's fun to both think about these big ideas for their own skes, but also Think about the people who came up with them and why they did that and what we can learn from them. So let's go Andrea Wolf, welcome to theindsescape Podcast. Thank you for having me So this is a slightly different kind of podcast than I usually do because you're a historian, which I don't usually do, but also you're kind of a narrative biographical historian. You actually focus on people. and my whole thing is I try to ignore the people and just talk about the ideas. But the ideas come from people? Well, exactly. And I do notice that and I do recognize that. so that's why I want to do the occasional departure of style I mean, tell us a little bit about that idea that the ideas come from people. I mean, how conscious is your methodology in writing these wonderful books that are both biography and history and intellectual books Very much so, I think I am interested in the ideas. I mean, I'm not You I'm I don't think you know, I don't like to be in a category. So I you know, I am kind of a historian.. I've done a lot of history of science, I've done phhilosophy So I think You know, I'm interested in the ideas, but I'm really interested in who had these ideas, because I think we sometimes tend to think about the work of someone or the idea of someone as a kind of standalone thing. And we forget that It was very much influenced also by the life they lived. So you know like a poet, for example, we read the poem or we read a drama or a novel. That is veryery often influenced by what that person just went through in their life. So that are things I'm interested in. but also I think because We tend to Fcus If we focus on a person, we tend to focus on one person. and we also forget that we don't really, unless you're a hermit, you don't really exist in a vacuum So we are all part of a community of a family, a group of friends at work in a country, in a nation. So I'm interested at these kind of threats and connections. But then also who were the people who have Given us the ideas of the Enlightenment or romanticism, for example And I'm interested in particular the kind of the so called long eighteenth century, so kind of from the late seventeenth century to the early nineteenth century, because I think a lot of the ideas we have today or who we are today is shaped by what happened during that time And I love the idea of the connections between the people whose lives you're discussing and other people and their culture and all those things because also is a theme at the intellectual level because the people who you talk about are to oversimplify things a lot, famous for drawing connections between different parts of the natural world Yeah, so I wrote a book about Alexander von Humborg called The Invention of Nature and he's probably, you know, the most famous man who U in my in the books I've written who He said that everything in nature is connected, that nature is this kind of living organism where everything hangs together from the smallest insect to the tallest tree. So he gave us really this concept of nature that very much shapes us today U But he was all he was also part of a group of young romantics who came together in this kind of small town in Germany Korduina That's my other book, Magnificent Rebels. And they were very much interested again in this idea that humans and nature belong together, so that we are part of this one kind of system And then my latest book is about George Foster. with the traveler and There I really wanted to look at humanity itself. It was kind of I've written a kind of triology the wrong way around. don't I noticed this The one the one I just published should have been the first one, but that never works like this, does it? So I started off with Hmbord and then through Hmbord I kind of came across the others, but They are you know, in terms of the history of ideas, I think they are they are very important and for the way we think today. And also you know, in fastest case really a rememinder of the importance of ideas of humanity, our common humanity. So he was someone who return from Captain Cook's second voyage with a deep seated belief in the equality of rac, which you know, given our current climate at the moment, I find a very you know inspiring story and a hopeful story, but also a very important story. You know, how can someone who was brought up deeply racist society be So open minded. you know, can we learn something from that. and that's That's something that was very important for me in this book And I'm tempted and you'll tell me how accurate this is, but you know, the time period we're talking about, the late seventeen hundreds, basically Um The common theme of the three books might be cast as something like the invention of modernity But I'm not sure what modernity is, and I'm not sure if that's the common theme. so maybe you can help us out. No I think it's definitely themes that are important in the kind of coming together of modernity if, you know, if you look at Hombalt, his way of looking at nature as a living organism. So not as a mechanical system not a machine that somehow kind of, you know, you put together, but as a living organism, that was a, you know, a very new idea and an idea that has shaped our understanding of nature to this day, but also because he then understands that Well, if it is a living organism, if it is this kind of web of life then if you pull one thread in this web. You know, you might unravel the whole thing. So he's the first to really talk about and warn about harmful human induced climate change Um whichich of course, is you know, we are living with the consequences of ignoring him and then you have Faster U Who is You know, he's a He was Hombaloldt's mentor actually. So I came across George Foster through Hombaldt And he u, He He's a quite extraordinary human being. So I'm going to talk a little bit about him hisis ideas make more sense, I think.. One of the I think his life is a really good example why you should also look at the life of someone and when you look at the ideas because he So he was born in seventeen fifty four in Gons, so in today's Poland and part of Royal Prussia He was he became a traveler and my book is called the traveler for that reason. He became a traveler at the age of ten when he accompanied as a botanist, his rather difficult and tempestuous father on a wild expedition through Russia Just before his twelfth birthday, his father took young George to London, where the young boy became the family's breadwinner by translating popular and best selling travel accounts. was a bit of Wundain really who picked up languages and scientific concepts kind of like this. I mean, quite extraordinary. So what was he sorry, what languages was he translating to and from? R So he spoke Russian, English, German and French. And he's twelve years old. He's twelve years old. And so he translates into English, which is not his mother tongue.. In English, he basically picked up on the journey from Russia to England because they were travelling on an English ship. Sure. as one does. As one does. At the age of sixteen, he starts to attend the learearn at meetings of the Royal Society. So he has No formal education quuite an extraordinary education if you think that this is the royoyal Society at that time is the place where all the great ideas are exchanged. And then at seventeen He joins Captain Kirook's second voyage The resolution and he So this is a you know, voyage of extremes where they kind of sail through, you know, labyrinths of icebergs and tropical islands in the South Pacific, but for George Foster, it really is A voyage off. human interaction and he returns with unshakable belief in humankind, which is very unusual. So this is a time when I mean, almost everybody in Western in the Western society in Western Europe is racist, you know, where explorers have looked at indndigenous people with arrogance at best at her disgust and brutality it was where European philosophers such as Imano Kant He or David Hume, they have no qualms in talking about Back people as being an inferior race So his attitude young George Foroster's attitude to the indigenous people is very, very unusual. He believes that they are Humans like everybody else he does not see them as savages or barbarians. So he also turns against Rousseau's idea of the kind of peaceful noble savage because he se he sees a war martr in Tahiti, for example, he says, so, you know, This is not. They kind of Peaceful. savage in quotation marks. who lives in this kind of happy natural state He says every society has good and evil The world is not neatly divided into virtuous and immoral quite the opposite. It's this kind of complex tapestry O the many shades of human lives and experiences. And that you know, it's Highly unusual U atttitude And completely different to most people. and I think also prove that We tend to say that in the eighteenth century, you know, it was kind of inevitable to be Racist That's just know the way people were. And I think his life really proves that it was a choice even back then. It is not an unavoidable way to see the world. and So I became interested in Wh, you know, how is it possible that this young man things so differently. you know he does not talk about the indigenous people as half humans or keys half human He sees them as humans who have their own kind of value system and cultural norms and he said, you know, I am not going to use European norms or morals to judge them U Vice and virtue are relative concepts, he says And u And I think There are many reasons for this, but I think one reason is that he was still very, very young You know, it's almost like his mind is still quite malleable you know, he's kind of open to other ideas But I think it's also because he was a traveler. He was always And for the rest of his life, he remains like this. He's always in transit. he's this perpetual outsider. If you are an outsider yourself tend to be nicer to other people who are outsiders And he does not feel He doesn't even know which country he belongs to because by the time he's seventeen he's lived in Russia in Prussia, in England and then he goes off on the resolution. So there's an open mindedness, I think, that comes from a very very much not being part of a nation which is something I think we sometimes forget today when you everybody seems to be crawling behind their kind of national boundaries Hey everyone, it's Cal Penn. I'm the host of EarsSay Audible and IHart Audioobook Cub. This week on the podcast, I amm sitting down with Ray Porter, the narrator of Andy Weir's audiobobook project Hail Mary, Massive sci fi adventure about survival and science. And what happens when you wake up alone very far from Eth? I really had to make the decision because I caught myself getting that frog in my throat and starting to get teary as I'm narrating some of these sections and it's like, okay, yo, yeo, yo is this indulgent? And I really thought about it. I was like, No, at this point, it would kind of be betraying the trust the author and the listener have in telling this story if I don't Go through it. There's places in this book that deeply emotionally affected me And I left it on the mic. That's great 'cause it served the story. People will say like, oh my Godd, I cried at the end. It's like, yeah, dude me too. Listen to EarsSay, the Audible and I Heart Audioobook Cub the IrHart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts Beachbum's June Jackpot is dealing out winners all week long. sccore seven dollars Sun or spray tans, seven dollarars Red light or sauna, seven dollars lotions, and more. Feeling lucky? G buy one, get one seventy percent off packages. No gamble, just glow. The odds are in your favor, and these seven dollar deals are your ticket to a golden summer. Beach Bum's June Jackpot sale is live through june seventh. Don't miss it at Beachbum Tanning. Your glow up starts now. Head to beachbum dot com and stay tan and tasty all summer long And so it was George Forster and his father, who were both on this second voyage of Captain Cook. So how old was the younger one? How old was George He was seventeen se He seventeen when he joined and he was twenty when they came back. So at the age of twenty, he has seen more of the world than most people will ever do. So they they sailed seventy five thousand miles, roughly the same amount as if they'd gone three times around the equator They spent a lot of time in the icy polar seas of Antarctica because they were looking for the fabled southern continent, which Many scientists back then believed had to exist to counterbalance the landmass in the Northern hemisphere So I mean just imagine, you know, on a being on a sailing boat And you know, a sailbird which can't reverse being in a kind of, you know amongst iceberg. not a great thing. It's freezing cold, so cold that the ropes are kind of frozen stiff, the sils are like metal plates. They wear woolen clothes, which is Always Wet. Yeah, never dry. I mean It must have been absolutely horrendous But then they go New Zealand Tahiti, Tonga, Vanuatu Achipelago the Macesas, Eter Island, they go back and forth. So they they go three times back to Antarctica. So they're really zigzagging through the South Pacific and they go to several places several times. So they get to know the people who live there. So for example, they go three times to Queen Charlotte Sound, which is at the northern tip of the south island of New Zealand U So they they And they spent weeks and weeks there. So it's not just a quick stop because they have to repair the ship and so they really get to know the people and because George is so linguistically talented. he kind of picks up words and languages, although he always says like, you know, I don't understand everything. I don't understand their kind of form of government, for example, you because I don't understand enough But there's a Yeah, sir Great open mindedness Um which I think allows him to approach This differently and then because you like ideas Um He is this Pressian scientist who Ls A by comparing the different languages across the South Pacific and the distribution of breadfit trees He works out roughly you know, the route of Polynesian migration two hundred years before DNA analysis and archaeological studies. prove it and And you know, I think it's just extraordinary. So the bread frruit tree, for example, which he loves eating because that's one of the kind of the food staples in Haiti, for example. But he notices that They don't have any seeds Now because they don't have seeds He knows that they can only be cultivated by Humans But he wonders You know, where does Where do they originally come from? Yeah. So when he returns He u He kind of looks through botanical books in libraries and he finds that there were that there was some breadfit trees with seeds in Indonesia So he what he so he comes to get to two conclusions. One is They must have been transported. by someone across the ocean U to the South Pacific Islands. And the sophistication of the agricultural methods of the Polynesians is extraordinary there because through selective breeding They basically turned the kind of original smaller breadfruit, which has seeds into this kind of larger, nutritious kind of Bigger breadfruit tree So he, you know, and then he and then he looks at the languages and he sees, well, they're kind of u connected. sometometimes it's just one letter that is different so you have like which is the Kanu and Tahishal of Baka in Tongen or Waka in Maori. So he works that out U And then so where others, where other explorers see this empty South Pacific Ocean with like a few islands. He sees threats of migration. So he sees how everything is connected. So Just as Hombalold sees that nature is connected, he sees that really more as an ethnocrapher, how everything, how humans are all connected And tell me more about the expedition itself. Is it just one ship? How many people are on it So there's two ships. It's the Rolution, which is the bigger ship and the adventure. Al togetherether it's two hundred men under Captain Cook And they set sail in july seventeen seventy two And as I said earlier, they're trying to find this kind of southern continent and they end up doing a full circuit around Antarctica because Cook wants to work, you know, wants things if to one proper circuit and I can't find land then you know If there is a southern continent, it's covered in ice and that's no good for the British. There's nothing they can exploit. So It is so It's a three year voyage. They kind of zigzag across the South Pacific. And as they encounter islanders U the Cw uses firearms to kind of exert power. And u with time. George Fster kind of gets more and more. dismayed by this. So it's quite interesting to see this so the very first time they land in New Zealand He still is very much an enlightenment thinker who believes in the you know, the Europeans are superior. So they arrive there, the ship is pretty battered from the kind of icebergs and they kind of set up all these workshops and the forest kind of echoes with hammers and saws and he says, look at all the art and industry we bring the savages and their life is going to be just so much better. And then within six weeks done a complete turnaround. So within six weeks He starts criticizing the European influence. And he says By the end of the voyage, he says Europeans Just bring death and disease It would have been much better for the inhabitants of the South Seas if they had never encountered the English. because he sees again and again how they're wounded and murdered. and he's you just shocked by it And just as a footnote, I understand that this was Cook's second voyage. He never had any scientists on his voyages after that, right? He didn't want any more scientists He really didn't. I think there were It did not help that George Foster's father, Weinhalold, was ever a terrible person. that he had quite a temper he I mean, he managed to a fight with everybody on the resolution, even with the quite unflappable cook. So cook is really quite well known for his kind of Come U character and personality and he managed to kind of upset him like once he he asked a food jewel. I mean, he gets chucked out of the kind of great cabin a few times. So he's not an easy man. And I think after that, Cook was just like, I am not haaving that ever again, this man is just unbearable And is this kind of expedition something that is paid for by the government by the British government. I mean, that's it seems like a long journey with uncertain results. I mean, I'm happy that they made it back, but it just seems kindind of wonderfully quirky from our modern point of view, the idea you would go off for years and just Poke around and try to learn things and come back with what you've learned Well, I wish it would just be learning things. You know this is very much an kind of imperial endeavor U So too set the scene. so this, you know so there's the seeven years Wall in Europe. which is from seventeen fifty six to seventeen sixty three. And it's been described as the very first global conflict because it was fought in North America, Europe, India. I mean, it's not just Europe It is really Europe and its colonial possessions U After the war Britain really emerges as the kind of dominant global power France not particularly pleased about that So Fr begin France and England begin to look at the South Pacific at something getting you know, maybe they can kind of find a few more colonies there. So Even even expeditions such as Cook's first voyage, the Endavor Voyage, which had a very scientific purpose, which was to observe the transit of Venus. and Cook Sals. to Tahiti U in in seventeen sixty nine to observe the transit of venus there, which is the first really the first global international scientific collaborations where scientists all over the world observe this one moment when Venus crosses the kind of burning disk of the sun and they measuure the distance or they measure the entry and the exit time of Venus. And through that they can kind of measure the distance between Eth and sun But that only works if you have lots of scientists doing that together. So that was the original reason for the Endeavor Voyage. however They also landed in Australia. And we all know what came from that so that becomes the kind of a colony for Britain It is you know even with a scientific purpose like finding the southern continent It is an imperial endeavor. So it is not it is not like, o well, you know, we just want to find out a few things. So yes, it is very much financed by the British government by the British admiralty. And Cook has very precise inststructions to to write reports about The soils they find, the plants they find, the temperament, the temper and the temperament of the indigenous people, the local people, just to see, you know, what you know, couldn' we kind of go in there and just turn them into slaves or something like that? Will they fight us? So this is this is very much an imperial endeavor And nominally, Forster's job was as naturalist. He was trying to learn about plants and animals. He branched out into human beings very obviously. But I mean, what what did he learn about the plants and the animals So he's so he's the assistant naturalist and the draftsman. and u He, you know, he has not a lot of choice in going on the endeavor because his father decides it. He's not a very talented draftsman when he starts. So look at his early birds from New Zealand, they will kind of like cling to the branches and look at they're about to fall off but he becomes very, very, you know Very, very good So they could collect a lot of plants. They shoot birds, they kind of dissect fish. And They don't really ome back with any discoveries as such because Joseph Banks who was a botanist and Daniel Soolander, they were on the Endeavour Voyage and they had brought back quite a lot of plants already. so Lyonald Foster, George Foster, is constantly complaining that they spend too much time in Antarctica. Obviously there's not much to in terms of plants. So he's really annoyed about that. and he just writes these very angry long entries in his in his journal like how, you know, how can we find anything here? How am I going to be famous when I come back So they don't come back with enough really to make a kind of splash in the scientific world And what George Foster then does is he writes a travel account this of this voyage which is very different to earlier travel accounts. So He's he's I mean, he's a born storyteller. his descriptions really sing off the page, but he's also a very intuitive ethnographer So where Christopher Columbus, for example, described struggle to describe South America as anything but green. I mean literally the landscape is green. The trees are green And the indigenous people are naked, which for Columbus means not civilized Faster is it even turned the icy world of Antarctica into shades of kind of purple, green and blue So he he writes this book, which makes him famous because he brings Th different worlds, but also these different people into the kind of parlors of European houses And that is actually, I think what they bring what they come home with. It's not their actual collections except in terms. They bring back a lot of ethnographical. collections. So they come back with These extraordinary kind of morning costumes from Tahiti, basks from Tonga weapons from Tana something which are, and I think that's quite important, which are because they're early ethnographers, they are actually traded. so they're not stolen And they give us a really good idea of Polynesian culture before European contact. So I think that his contribution to science in that respect is more on the kind of in ethnography than as a naturalist. And what were the societies of the South Seas like back in the day? What kind of government did they have So very different. and he kind of he approached every island to kind of trying to understand, which was difficult, but he, you know, he you know he thought and he was mostly right. He thought that there were more egalitarian than European societies or if they had a kind of class system, like they had, for example, in Tahiti, The kind of boundaries were much more flluid So he was very much interested in that and it shaped his political thinking, which then later made him a revolutionary in in Europe not by reading French philosophers, but by what he had seen in the South Pacific Hey everyone, it's Cal Penn. I'm the host of EarsSay The Audible and IHart Audioobook Club. This week on the podcast, I amm sitting down with Ray Porter, the narrator of Andy Weir's audiobook project Hail Mary. Massive sci fi adventure about survival and science. And what happens when you wake up alone very far from Eth? I really had to make the decision because I caught myself getting that frog in my throat and starting to get teary as I'm narrating some of these sections and it's like, okay, yo, yeo, yo is this indulgent? And I really thought about it. I was like, No, at this point, it would kind of be betraying the trust the author and the listener have in telling this story if I don't G through it. There's places in this book that that deeply emotionally affected me And I left it on the mic. That's great 'cause it served the story. People will say like, oh my Godd, I cried at the end. It's like, yeah, dude me too. Listen to Earsay, the Audible and I heart audioobook Cub the R Heart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts Beachbum's June Jackpot is dealing out winners all week long. sccore seven dollars Sun or spray tans, seven dollarars Red light or sauna, seven dollarars lotions and more. Feeling lucky? G buy one, get one seventy percent off packages. No gamble, just glow. The odds are in your favor, and these seven dollar deals are your ticket to a golden summer. Beach Bum's June Jackpot sale is live through june seventh. Don't miss it at Beachbum Tanning. Your glow up starts now. Head to beachbum dot com and stay tan and tasty all summer long And let's I mean, there's just too many other things I would to talk about. So let's kind of wrap that up. I mean you mentioned that Forster gets involved in the revolution in France. I mean he died relatively young, but he managed to pack a lot of living into the period between coming home from the Coke expedition and when he finally died I mean he he comes back and he becomes really for a few years you know, he becomes so famous. he becomes a public intellectual, He picks a very public fight with Imano Kant to wrote this essay about the human racis in which Kant wrote that therefore differentifferent human races all defined by the color of their skin with, you know Europeans as the kind of pinnacle of creation. And Foster says like Hold on a second. All the people I've seen or my voice don't fit into your ne categories because nature is really connected by nuances and by shades, not by these kind of sharply divided kind of categories Kant is not very pleased about that So Kant then writes another article attacking faster and it ends up beinging a really a fight about methodology. Yeah, you know How do we How do we gain knowledge? So there' Immanu Kant, who's never left Kunigberg. Famously not a traveler, yeah. Yeah, notot a traveler at all. who and then you have Faser who's this traveler. So faser accuses Kant and says like How can you make these statements, if you have never traveled and you've never seen any of these people. And Cunra Pieson says Can you come up with these things if you don't travel with a theory in mind. So it's all about you do you start with an idea? And then you find your proofs. Or do you start with your observation and then you form your theory, which I think was, you know, that was a kind of fascinating, which is it's really the kind of It's the it's the battle of the methodologies which are, you know, at the nexus of the Elightenment, you know, how do we How do we gain knowledge? How do we form our theories so then After a while, or he ends up in mines, which is onlyar about eighty miles from the French border about twenty miles west of Frankfurt, which Most people maybe know. as a German town. So But he ends up in mines and then A few months later in seventeen eighty nine The French revolution happens just across the border And he watches this as if he's watching a kind of gripping drama unfold because suddenly when the You know, when the French revolutionaries declare All men course, or men equal. they promise At least the possibility of a new society. society which is built on the power of ideas and freedom And So Foster sees that there is the real possibility of a new reality. just across the border. So he's absolutely gripped by this. and In seventeen ninety two The French, so there's a war. so a lot of European nations are fighting against the French and they're kind of dangerous ideas of revolutions. so the French take minds And instead of being worried about the invaders Foster welcomes them and he wants to establish a German republic because he he's from the age of ten when he traveled through Russia, he's seen the kind of harsh reality of desparatism and inequality. and it's These are really the themes that obsess them all in life So and he when he returns from the resolution voy, he fights for the rest of his life, he fights for freedom equality and against racism and white supremacy So he becomes a revolutionary And he becomes the co founder O The so called Minz Republic, which is Germany's first repepublic, very short lived, only a few months He then travels to Revolutionary Paris to ask the French government, if the Mines Republic can become part of the French Republic By the time he's doing that, the Prussians have taken mines back. So he's declared an outlaw basically. I mean, he's a traitor. He cannot go back to Germany So he is in Paris during the brutal reign of Terror desespite seeing this bloodshed, He still supports the revolution, which makes him very unpopular in Germany. It's one thing to support what happened at the beginning Another thing to kind of initiate a German revolution and then to support the kind of bloodshed in France, you know, It's not going to make him popular in Germany, but he thinks that I mean he's He's Dismayed by it. He really does not like violence, but he thinks that The return to despotism. B. Wus So he supports the French Revolutionaries. And then and I'm not going to give away how he dies, but he then dies in seventeen ninety four at the age of thirty nine. So it's a short life But it's really life which for biographer is just fabulous because you, you know, because his his his adventures start when he's ten. so you don't have like twenty years of like he went to school now this school and this teacher thought he was clever. You know, youd go straight into like a wild expedition and then you don't have this you know, I mean, even revolutionaries, even u, you know explorers, they most of them end up with a quite Boring last few decades if they, you know, if they get Hboard most of them. So for biographer, this kind of short tight life is great because you have all the ideas without the kind of the tedious boredom of You know daily life of your Maine And I guess I have a mixed feeling about the whole story. I mean, there's a kind of inspirational aspect of He was someone who apparently truly held best kind of enlightenment ideals, right? He was for equality, but for real, like for people of other races also But at the same time, like that was a very tiny minority view and he, you know had to swim upstream a lot and it took quite a while for it to catch on Yes. I mean, he's, you know, it's not mainstream thinking what he's doing at all. I mean, he's he's one of the very first to use the term humuman rights, for example and unlike the American and the French revolutionaries who very firmly excluded women slaves and non Europeans, he includes that. he talks about the general rights of mankind and it means all people every single part of this world and every gender. So he's way ahead of his contemporaries. I mean, he's a, you know, he's also you know, today he would be called a feminist because he's He believes in the equality between men and women He marries. I mean, he admires independent and strong minded women. He's married to one. he's He believes in the education of girls. He's a proud father of daughters So here's some It's very unusual in that respect and the society he lives in does not approve at all. And there are, I mean, he has these not just public fights with Imanu Uhant but also with other other thinkers where You anyone who writes that slavery is good or that you, there are inferior Nations he criticizes and he uses I mean he He uses quite cleverly. he writes a lot of reviews And the beauty aboutar, I mean, I really enjoy writing reviews because it's a kind of little it's like a jewel of writing, you know it's just the It's short But you can all, you know, you obviously describe the book you are reviewing, but you can also bring in your own opinions. so He uses he Purpose flee. chooses books that are either pro or anti slavery and then uses those to kind of you know collaborate his own opinion. So they're kind of these sharp short forms of text which he which he uses kind of in a very I think tailored way And then you also have a book, Magnificent Rebels about the Yenna Circle, which you can tell us about. But as a segue, is there a connection between Forster and the Yenna circle There is very much so. he is So For so the the u D Thank The young romantics who come together in Yenna the magnificent rebels There is one extraordinary woman there called Cawalin Schgel and she is or was a very good friend. with fer. So she lived in Mes during the kind of you know the establishment of the Mines Republic. So when she afterwards moves to Yenna, she kind of brings his ideas with her. So they kind of they talk about him, they read his writings and he's very much admired because also he's He is really the he's a stepping stone from the enlightenment. to the romantist to the romantics. So he because on the one hand, he really I mean, he very much values observation and rational thought But he also underlines the importance of subjectivity, feelings, art and imagination, which are of course subjects that become very, very important for the for the young romantics. So he's he's he's almost this kind of Fast stepping stone away from pure enlightenment thinking to something slightly different, you know, which then becomes kind of full blown romanticism So who is in the Yena circle? There's some recognizable names in there Yes. so it's a so it's a it's a group of rebellious thinkers, philosophers and writers, including Got U Silla who's the kind of famous playwright who wrote the robbers. Then we have shelling who was freereelling a lot of them are called freeet tree. So freeree shelling. He's this young philosopher who really comes up with a philosophy of Oeness where you know, we as humans are part of nature thenen you have the Schlidel brothers who are Literary critics really, very unconventional who who'd kind of take on the literary establishment Aga Schieigl the older one is also a very famous Shakespeare translator And And then we have In the periphery, we have later on we have Hegel. He pops up there We have the poet Novalis. And and then we have an extraordinary woman who was called to give her her kind of full name. Carolina, Misha Eiles, Boomer. little shelling. So she she has the name she carries the name of her father but also of her three husbands which shows you a little bit what kind of character she might have been. So she was a She was the daughter of a famous German Gonor. and she was Ver open minded and quild and free spirited. And so she married young, she was widowed. She then goes to mind. she gets imprisoned for being a sympathizer withith the French revolutionaries in prison, she discovers that she's pregnant after a wild Ball night with it. nineteen year old French soldier, you know, all pretty outrageous behavior And So when she leaves prison She is really treated as an outlaw and then The older Schliegel brother, Agust Schliegel, he marries her. He comes to her rescue. He marries her, gives her a new name and new beginning and they moved to Yenna. and this is really the beginning of the yearna set. I forgot one very important one, which is Fiship who is a philosopher who kind of puts the self in the center of his of his philosophy. So they all come together. In the mid seventeen nineties, in this kind of small town in Germany, which you knew. Most people outside Germany have never heard of four thousand people and it becomes the kind of the nexus of a new philosophy of romanticism And in one day with some luck in Yena, you would have seen more famous people than in a whole century in another town. I mean it's quite extraordinary. So they They believe that working together N not everybody in their kind of little study, but working together will create a kind of greater philosophy, you know, it's about the kind of the group. So they become U They kind of sit together and comein's house and they work together and And they are the very first to use the word romanticism in its kind of new meaning. in its kind of literary meaning. So they and they, you know, today I mean, if you I mean, and I've tried this a lot of times. if you ask people, what's romanticism? you get so many different answer. So many people will say you know think of the paintings of Kaspper David Friedrich kind of these kind of lone figures and moonlit forests and others think o, the romantics they were all against reason and celebrate ational irrational thinking and others think of, you know, passionate declarations of love or candlelight dinners. But for them Romanticism was something much more complex and unwieldy and dynamic And they D face They basically said that everything is romantic poetry. So from a piece of music to a painting even a scientific Eiment is romantic poetry, because they said it's to romanticize means to unite humankind with nature and to unite Ats and science. And for me, that was always the kind of the thing that I did find so fascinating about them. this kind of bringing together the arts and sciences which at that point, we're beginning to kind of really separate. So if you look Maj earli is to someone like Leonardo Da Vinci, for example They in it. this is someone who's interested in engineering and botany and sculpture and mathematics. So This in the with the enlightenment and with the kind of you know, with the science is becoming more and more specialized, you have that kind of separation between the arts and the sciences more and more. And the romantics are really trying to kind of fight against this dischantment of the world, this kind of more more materialistic while today They u they believe that Romantic poetry can kind of bring together these kind of very different disciplines and create something completely newew with it. Hey everyone, it's Cal Penn. I'm the host of EarsSay The Audible and IHart Audioobook Club. This week on the podcast, I amm sitting down with Ray Porter, the narrator of Andy Weir's audiobook project Hail Mary, Massive sci fi adventure about survival and science. And what happens when you wake up alone very far from Eth? I really had to make the decision because I caught myself getting that frog in my throat and starting to get teary As I'm narrating some of these sections and it's like, okay, yo, yeo, yo is this indulgent? And I really thought about it. I was like, No, at this point, it would kind of be betraying the trust the author and the listener have in telling this story if I don't Go through it. There's places in this book that that deeply emotionally affected me And I left it on the mic. That's great 'cause it served the story. People will say like, oh my Godd, I cried at the end. It's like, yeah, dude me too. Listen to EarsSay, the Audible and I heart audioobook club On the ArHartt Radio apppp or wherever youre getting your podcasts. Beachbum's June Jackpot is dealing out winners all week long. sccore seven dollarars Sn or sppray tans, seven dollars Red lightight or sauna, seven dollar lotions, and more. Feeling lucky? G buy one, get one seventy percent off packages. No gamble, just glow. The odds are in your favor, and these seven dollar deals are your ticket to a golden summer. Beachbum's June jackpot sale is live through june seventh. Don't miss it at Beachbum Tanning. Your glow up starts now. Head to beachbum dot com and stay tan and tasty all summer long They have themselves as opposing the Elightenment or kind of developing it in a different way I think developing it mostly. and They're also very young and contrary of course. So you know, it is also part of being young and contrary to kind of stand up against the kind of literary establishment and their scientific establishment. It was part of the fun also to kind of take those stuffy older kind of thinkers and say, like We are doing this very differently. And they I think one of the important aspects for them was also that It was quite ephemeral So it was not about coming up with a theory That was finished. you know, it's all about. So Fister for example, with his philosophy of the self. he would He would develop quite a lot of that in front of his students So his students instead of, you know, instead of listening to, I don't know, the philosophy of Aristotle or something like that they actually saw how in front of their eyes their professors were developing something very new and dynamic. And that was also incredibly thrilling for the students. So you suddenly have all these students really flocking to U Yina wanting to see these new Young professors who are really trying to change the world and who are shouting from their lacerms about their kind of new ideas My impression is that a big emphasis was put on sort of a changing conception of the self as, you know previously you would have thought of yourself in terms of what categories you belong to and you would try to be a good Catholic or Baker or whatever. and the romantics wanted you to sort of be yourself for yourself to express something more inward Yes, I think it was really, I mean I think we have to kind of paddle back a little bit and think about, you know what's the kind of world They were brought up So this is the world when most of Europe is kind of held in the ine fist of absolutism. when Your life is pretty much you know determined by place of birth the class you were born into You're the ruler of the nation you live in. You don't have lot of choice or freedom So And and it's a world where thinkers believe that there are absolute truths, that there' kind there are God given truths. U And then you have this kind of phhilosophers who come along and say, well, the only certainty we have is that the world is experienced by the self So there is a shift emphasis on the self, on the subjective kind of view of the world. So it's It's Fister twow He kind of takes ideas from Emmanuel Kant and he kind of puts them in another framework and he basically U says that The self determines how we see the world, the self is the source of all reality. And he says there's the self, the Ich. And then there's the Nichich, the non self. which is basically You know, the external world, the kind of animals, plants, nature. And he says that itself osits its own being And not only that through this kind of powerful initial kind of positing Also creates the non. So the external world, not in itself, but in our mind Everything We understand of the external world is shaped by our Self. And What it does is it gives us free will And that is an incredibly powerful thing. And this you know, and this happens just after the French Revolution. So with I think without the French Revolution, Fister would have not So it's his philosophy is sparked by the ideas of the French Revolution. But this happens at the same time. So So you have a bunch of Brilliant scientists thinkinkers, philosophers, poets all are given This idea of free will and self determination. And it's just the very empowering S, I mean, combined with the French Revolution, which is, you know explodes really into Europe and no one is unaffected by this by this moment It is, you know, it's a very, very powerful moment, I think in The in the history of who we are we understand us. It gives us a power that we didn't have before. and it pro and you know, the French Revolution really also proves that A revolution is a revolution of ideas. So ideas Ws Pilosoph is more powerful than weapons and swords and kings and queens. And I mean, you, I think it's almost impossible for us to Imagine that must have felt And I guess there, I don't be overly simplistic about it, but if we were to Come down on, you know Did they win or lose the romantics? Like this image of the self and free will and so forth incredibly powerful and influential and lasting The aspirations to a unity of art and science may be less successful in terms of the modern world Yes. I think, you know, that I've been talking about this, the arts and the science, this kind of very we division for a long time and I find it I find it quite hard to understand why it's still, you know. I mean When I look at education, like six year olds get put into these kind of box. Oh, you were kind of so mathematical and logical and you are so artistic and creative. And you know that's it, you're basically, you know, you're going to be a scientist and you're going to be an artist And you think that It really comes together and works work together, you know curiosity, imagination the ardts and sciences, I think So I think they experiment kind of pretty much failed. And But I think you know And if the self has remained for the better or the worse at center stage of our life It's definitely, you know, it's It's you know, we still have this kind of tension between free will and self determination on the one side end not being selfish and narcissistic on the other side. it's a balancing act, which began back then and which we are still Um walking and I think underpinning this are two crucial questions. One is Who am I as an individual and who am I as a member of a society? So how can I How can I live? a life in which I fulfill my dreams and my you know opportunities, possibilities, capabilities with the kind of, you know being a morally good person with the kind of restraints of society and it's a negotiation, which right still kind of do and, you know, and I think It's We undoubtedly live in a society that is obsessed with the self. I mean there's a whole generation called the me generation U And I think You know, we kind of circle around ourselves, but we've kind of forgotten where this comes came from and you know, when Fister put the se in the center of his philosophy. he never, you know, he never wanted this kind of narcissistic kind of celebration of the self because he always said that Freedom comes always with our moral duty. you know, ourur freedom is only as far as we are not impinging on someone else's duty. So it's know freedom gives us this You know, the power of the choice, how to be and how to act. It is not about being selfish. We've just kind of gone down this kind of selfish route little bit too much and you know, it's about finding the kind of balance. And in a way with the arts and the sciences, it's the same. know Almost like we've divided it and kind of decided theseese are two different paths. They're not going to overlap. This is it Um when I mean, you are a scientist All the scientists I know say that imagination is incredibly important in their work, that curiosity is incredibly important Most scientists will have You know, one of the reasons why they've become a scientist is because They, you know, they They felt this wonder of nature at some stage as a child or as a teenager And they want to understand this wonder But it's something we don't really talk about in the sciences. It's almost like peer reviewed out of you. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I like the word negotiation that you used. I mean, the enlightenment left us with this legacy that there are individuals and they are the sort of the locus of freedom and responsibility But then there's also society, right? that you know we do interact with other individuals. We have collective interests and responsibilities and we don't always negotiate fairly between those.ike you say, there's a bit of a tilt toward the selfishness and the egoism of the individual. Yes, exactly, exactly. So you know, we've, you know, how do we reconcile our personal liberties with the kind of demands of a society. And that is a negotiation that we have to deal with on a daily basis. And so the last person to talk about, although the first book in your belatedly realized trilogy, was the invvention of Nature talking about Alexander von Humboldt And was he connected to the Ya circle at all Yes, he was That's why it's a triogy He was. So he is actually part of the of the of the of the InA group No in the inner circle, but definitely the outer circle. So he comes to Yenna the first time in seventeen ninety four because his brother Wilhem von Hombag lives in Yenna And he visits him. and he then meets the kind of group here and in particular . So The friendship with Get between Get and Alexander von Homboldd is important for both of them actually. So when Hombalold arrives in seventeen ninety four, he's in his twenties, he's this young very bright scientist, very much an enlightenment scientist who believes in kind of Reason. Rational thought, observation Experiments his instruments and then you have Ga Who is Germany's most famous poet Wh he's also a scientist I mean Guta is a kind of great example the arts and the sciences coming together. So When he meets Hombald, he's Guters natural history U Thinking has been, as he said himself, in hibernation and Meeting Hborg is just like rain falling on a kind of a dry patch of earth and you know it's just sprouting all over. And these two men just really, really like each other and they experiment together and they kind of dissect frogs and mice and people and they go to lectures together and they do experiments with light and Ticks and botany and They watch kind of caterpillars hatch. So they you know, they really go into this scientific thinking At the same time, it is good who inspires Humbaldt to just move a little bit away from this very in quotation marks, objective science So he basically says, well, it is the eye through which you see the world, but it is your eye. So This will shape the way you see the world. So he gives Hombold you know, slightly stronger emphasis. on subjectivity. And Hombold himself says that good has given me new organs to see the world Because the YNna set has this greater emphasis on the self at Hbalt. when he sets off on his five year exploration of South America after his visits to Yenna See sees this new world through these new eyes that Gete has given him, through a kind of greater emphasis on subjectivity. So you have Hbalt exxploring South America with I mean, he carries forty two scientific instruments, like all wrapped individually. He's obsessed with measurements. hundred percent. He climbs up, he climbs up, you know volcanoes and sets up his instruments every few hundred yards and measures everything And I think that's very important. He's not just interested in empirical data also always says in order to truly understand nature, you also have to feel it. So it's a bit like, I think it was Humphrey Davy, who his journals have on the one on the one page He describes his observations of an experiment, and on the other page he describes his feelings. And that' you know, and and that's what Hboldt is what Hbt does. He he really wants to Um also inspire the sense of wonder in nature. So for me, Homewald inspired by First, get up faster because at homebt Homberud always said throughout his long life that Gilk Foster inspired him to go on his own exploration and you know really guided his ways thinking about nature and politics and then also the the Yena set but Hombalk is Rich bridges the enlightenment and romanticism. He is the connection. I mean, he's the, you know, you have on the one hand, you have and know Isaac Mutton who says Rinbows are created by light refrlecting through raindrops and on the other side you have romantic poets such as John Keats who says Newton has destroyed the poetry of the rainbow by sending the kind of the light through a prison. So and Hombold does both. you know, he he gives us this kind of bond between the subjective and the objective between the emotional and the rational So he's that bridge between the arts and the sciences And it wasn't just u for his personal benefit. Like you can make the case that Humboldt was A or the founder of the idea of environmentalism Yes. So because Humbalold sees nature as an interconnected whole, he also sees the dangers of destroying it. So as he travels through South America, he warns about the Destruction of forests monoculture, irrigation because Although, you know you think he's always in the wilderness. He's not. I mean, this is, you know, these are the Spanish colonies. So he sees a lot of plantations, for example, and how that, you know, those plantations have entirely destroyed Um forest. and then As he travels, he sees these destructions and he is, for example, the very first to explain the fundamental functions of the forest for the ecosystem. So he talks about the forest ability to store water, to enrich the atmosphere with moisture, to protect against soil erosion and when he comes back He talks about harmful, human induced climate change. een hundred Pretty extraordinary And in eighteen thirty two, he writes a paragraph where he kind of says, you know, irrigation, deforestation, all really terrible. And then he says, what's really bad are the gases that come out of the industrial centers. I mean, he didn't understand CO two yet But he understood is that this is not good for the environment. So you know, I've always called him the kind of forgotten father of environmentalism. know he really understands There. threat to nature and he wantns about it. And then I mean, he then inspires people just you know, like John Muor or George Perkins Mars, who then take this and become more politically active in it. Humball does not do that, but he he because he sees nature as this web of life, this interconnected whole He understands I mean, it's simple things like he sees, for example at the Venezuelan cooast he sees how. ruthless pearl fishing has completely destroyed the oyster stock. So he kind of under so he, you know, he watches, he looks around and he kind of sees the consequences of the kind of devastating effects of humankind's intervention in nature And like Forster, he wasn' not just about Nature, he noticed things about human beings and racial hierarchies and things like that Yes. And I think, you know, because he says he was very much guided by Foster's ideas. I mean they were friends. So he, you know, Foster was his mentor, Foster was fifteen years old and they traveled together through Europe And u as Humbalold is traveling through South America. He sees again and again how, for example, the colonists and the missionaries treat the indigenous people You know, he sees slavery there. I mean one of the very first things that he sees when he arrives in South America is a slave market in a sense that made him a kind of a lifelong abolitionist. So he's He's very much influenced by Forster's way of kind of looking at humans. but I think, and that's the interesting thing about both of them, don't they don't ever just see nature and humans as separate things. know its all we're all part of one thing. So and home talks about how one breath of life poured over Plants, animals, rocks. humans, mountains, the whole planet is one breath of life, he calls it because we are all part of this of this one beautiful planet that is ours messed it up really badly I do wonder about what lessons we can learn about how these people had the strength of conviction to resist racism or environmental degradation or whatever. I mean, you mentioned before Foster was young at the time and he's a bit of an outsider, but I don't know about that. I think there's a lot of young outsidery types who are pretty darn racist and you know violent or whatever. So Can you say more about maybe like what are the the characteristics of these people that gave them what we would I hope most of us today consider to be these virtuous ways of thinking about the world I mean, I think it's always a combination. I mean, Hombald, for example