HUMBOLDT AND METABIOGRAPHY

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn the wake of contemporary anxieties about climate change and environmental degradation, biographers of Alexander von Humboldt have sought inspiration from his life as an explorer, a plant geographer and a scientific writer. A ‘green Humboldt’ has emerged, to many a key thinker on the environment, to some the founding father of modern environmentalism. During earlier times and in separate places, in the course of the nearly 200‐year tradition of Humboldt biography, different – even very different – biographical traits have been highlighted, different narratives have been produced, each related to contemporaneous predilections and preoccupations. Does this mean that in telling Humboldt's life – or in telling scientific lives more generally – ‘anything goes’? Are we ‘telling it as we like it’ or ‘telling it like it is’? Can we have ‘lives after death’, that is, a plurality of biographical Humboldts, suited to distinct times, places and concerns and yet, for each of them, lay claim to authenticity? The genre of metabiography systematically engages with questions such as these and recognises the possible historical validity of multiple appropriations and Humboldt reincarnations, aka avatars. This article traces the recent emergence of scientific metabiography, and discusses some of the points that are being made pro and con.