801
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. C. Tobias, J. G. Morrison, On the Nature of Ecological Paradox,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_92
Chapter 92
A Lost Species
92.1 A Romantically Neglected Dualism
Between 1810 and 1813, Alexander von Humboldt commissioned numerous
European artists to illustrate his book Views of the Cordilleras and Monuments of
the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas. The aesthetic component satisfied crucial
elements of the inveterate explorer’s attempt to “fathom a natural landscape,” as
Alicia Lubowski-Jahn has written: a means toward conveying “total impression
(Totaleindruck), vitality (Lebenskraft), and ordering (la géographie physique).”
1
That fathoming, however relentless, hagiographic, and widespread throughout the
humanities, hits up against a global incongruity that is not easily resolved. Earlier,
we have likened it to an Isbell Duality (named after mathematician, and pioneering
category theorist, John Rolfe Isbell, 1930–2005). Artists such as Caspar David
Friedrich (1774–1840) were, like Humboldt, still seeking to actuate a zoomorphic
connectivity between the inner Soul and biological metamorphosis. Nina Amstutz,
in her monograph on the artist, denominated “the core principles of vitalism and
Naturphilosphie,”
2
post-Marxist societies, certainly in the rapidly industrializing
nations which were producing a framework of scientific principles. These, in adherence predominately to Darwin over Lamarck, sought a unity of variation within
evolution. In other words, multiple categories inflecting that simultaneity that transcends duality—a scaffolding, in other words, upon which genetics and molecular
1 See Alicia Lubowski-Jahn’s essay, “The Picturesque Atlas: The Landscape Illustrations in
Alexander von Humboldt’s Views of the Cordilleras and Monuments of the Indigenous Peoples of
the Americas,” in Unity of Nature – Alexander von Humboldt and the Americas, accompanying the
exhibition of the same title, curated by Georgia de Havenon and Alicia Lubowski-Jahn, Americas
Society Art Gallery, April 29–July 26, 2014, New York; the book published by Americas Society,
New York, Editors Georgia de Havenon, Christina De León, Alicia Lubowsk-Jahn and Gabriela
Rangel, Kerber Verlag, Bielefeld, Germany, 2014, p.71.
2 See Caspar David Friedrich – Nature and the Self, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT., 2020,
p. 210.
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. C. Tobias, J. G. Morrison, On the Nature of Ecological Paradox,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_92
Chapter 92
A Lost Species
92.1 A Romantically Neglected Dualism
Between 1810 and 1813, Alexander von Humboldt commissioned numerous
European artists to illustrate his book Views of the Cordilleras and Monuments of
the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas. The aesthetic component satisfied crucial
elements of the inveterate explorer’s attempt to “fathom a natural landscape,” as
Alicia Lubowski-Jahn has written: a means toward conveying “total impression
(Totaleindruck), vitality (Lebenskraft), and ordering (la géographie physique).”
1
That fathoming, however relentless, hagiographic, and widespread throughout the
humanities, hits up against a global incongruity that is not easily resolved. Earlier,
we have likened it to an Isbell Duality (named after mathematician, and pioneering
category theorist, John Rolfe Isbell, 1930–2005). Artists such as Caspar David
Friedrich (1774–1840) were, like Humboldt, still seeking to actuate a zoomorphic
connectivity between the inner Soul and biological metamorphosis. Nina Amstutz,
in her monograph on the artist, denominated “the core principles of vitalism and
Naturphilosphie,”
2
post-Marxist societies, certainly in the rapidly industrializing
nations which were producing a framework of scientific principles. These, in adherence predominately to Darwin over Lamarck, sought a unity of variation within
evolution. In other words, multiple categories inflecting that simultaneity that transcends duality—a scaffolding, in other words, upon which genetics and molecular
1 See Alicia Lubowski-Jahn’s essay, “The Picturesque Atlas: The Landscape Illustrations in
Alexander von Humboldt’s Views of the Cordilleras and Monuments of the Indigenous Peoples of
the Americas,” in Unity of Nature – Alexander von Humboldt and the Americas, accompanying the
exhibition of the same title, curated by Georgia de Havenon and Alicia Lubowski-Jahn, Americas
Society Art Gallery, April 29–July 26, 2014, New York; the book published by Americas Society,
New York, Editors Georgia de Havenon, Christina De León, Alicia Lubowsk-Jahn and Gabriela
Rangel, Kerber Verlag, Bielefeld, Germany, 2014, p.71.
2 See Caspar David Friedrich – Nature and the Self, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT., 2020,
p. 210.