Ester Nelly Abuter Ananías - Fachbereich Philosophie und ...

Frank Baron ( University of Kansas, German Department, Lawrence, usa )
Conducting Research in the Comprehensive Environments of the Humboldt
Digital Library
Th e focus of this paper is the examination of innovative strategies to access the
data of Humboldt’s travels in the Americas. Humboldt’s profound grasp of a broad
spectrum of existing knowledge and his insistence on precision put him in a unique
position to advance science. At the same time, he held the strong conviction that
disciplines were artifi cial divisions of knowledge. For him everything in nature was
interconnected. Th is concept, according to Susan Fay Cannon, was at the crux of
what she defi ned as the basis of professional science in the fi rst half of the nineteenth
century, Humboldtian Science : “… the accurate, measured study of widespread
but interconnected real phenomena in order to fi nd a defi nite law and a dynamic
cause.” With the Humboldt digital library, we have developed a tool to access the
environments of Humboldt’s works in new ways. Our Web site makes fourteen
volumes searchable in the English language and seven volumes, which contain data
about 700 plants of the Nova genera plantarum. Th e digital library allows users
to navigate in Humboldt’s graphic display of plant geography and locate texts in
diff erent ways ; Humboldt’s travel route, plott ed on Google Earth, for example. A
further innovative feature is to be able to search texts, images or data by Panel Date
or location. Th is approach is the primary aim of our current eff orts : to show in a
comprehensive manner what Humboldt observed from the perspective of various
disciplines at any particular place or on any specifi c day during his extraordinary
exploration of Latin America. Looking at Humboldt’s data from this perspective
could be extremely helpful in understanding how environments changed in the last
two hundred years.
Email fb aron@ku.edu
Section Alexander von Humboldt
Panel 26
Date July 29
Time 9 :00
Location l 115