At a time when other scientists were searching for universal laws, Humboldt wrote that nature had to be experienced through feelings. — 13: 136-137
Whereas Blumenbach and other scientists applied the idea of forces to organisms, Humboldt applied them to nature on a much broader level – interpreting the natural world as a unified whole that is animated by interactive forces. This new way of thinking changed his approach. If everything was connected, then it was important to examine the differences and similarities without ever losing sight of the whole. Comparison became Humboldt’s primary means of understanding nature, not abstract mathematics or numbers. — 47: 593-597
The dualism between the external and the internal world had preoccupied philosophers for millennia. It was a question that asks: Is the tree that I’m seeing in my garden the idea of that tree or the real tree? For a scientist such as Humboldt who was trying to understand nature, this was the most important question. Humans were like citizens of two worlds, occupying both the world of the Ding an sich (the thing-in-itself) which was the external world, and the internal world of one’s perception (how things ‘appeared’ to individuals). According to Kant, the ‘thing-in-itself’ could never be truly known, while the internal world was always subjective. What Kant brought to the table was the so-called transcendental level: the concept that when we experience an object, it becomes a ‘thing-as-it-appears-to-us’. Our senses as much as our reason are like tinted spectacles through which we perceive the world. — 51: 639-646
Humboldt had long believed in the importance of close observation and of rigorous measurements – firmly embracing Enlightenment methods – but now he also began to appreciate individual perception and subjectivity. Only a few years previously, he had admitted that ‘vivid phantasy confuses me’, but now he came to believe that imagination was as necessary as rational thought in order to understand the natural world. ‘Nature must be experienced through feeling,’ Humboldt wrote to Goethe, insisting that those who wanted to describe the world by simply classifying plants, animals and rocks ‘will never get close to it’. — 53: 676-680
Mountains held a spell over Humboldt. It wasn’t just the physical demands or the promise of new knowledge. There was also something more transcendental. Whenever he stood on a summit or a high ridge, he felt so moved by the scenery that his imagination carried him even higher. This imagination, he said, soothed the ‘deep wounds’ that pure ‘reason’ sometimes created. — 116: 1508-1511