Alexander von Humboldt - Thought of nature as “a unity in diversity of phenomena; a harmony, blending together all created things, however dissimilar in form and attributes; one great who animated by the breath of life.” - Breath was a single unifying life-force inherent to the material Cosmos. - Earth was an organic whole, a living web of interrelated life, a “net-like intricate fabric”, a “wonderful web of organic life”. Source: [[Wild Mind Wild Earth]] --- Stephan Harding considers von Humboldt a hero of holistic science, someone who combined the thinking and feeling functions in his approach to nature. He has felt a strong connection to him from youth. > Humboldt was the first of our scientists to perceive the existence of a single fully integrated ecological community at the global planetary scale, which we now dare once again to call Gaia. > – Stephan Harding, [[Gaia Alchemy]] Born in 1769 into a wealthy Prussian family. Considered by his contemporaries the most famous man after Napoleon (they were born in the same year). He wrote about 50,000 letters and was considered the nexus of the scientific world. More places are named after him than anyone else in the world. On the centenary of his death, there were celebrations all over the world. He thought of the earth as “a natural whole animated and moved by inward forces”. 150 years before Lovelock, he wrote a book about it called Cosmos, but almost called it Gäia. He inspired Darwin, Wordsworth, Thoreau, Thomas Jefferson and many others.