Sublime

From Venezuela, Humboldt and Bonpland sailed for Cuba, arriving at Havana and the comforts of civilization in November of 1800. Humboldt wandered about Havana’s botanical garden, made more maps (the first accurate maps of Cuba), and observed with sinking heart the institution of slavery (“no doubt the greatest of all evils that afflict humanity”).

English Victorian version of a Renaissance man, Francis Galton. Galton wore many hats. He was an anthropologist, tropical explorer (Southwest Africa), geographer, sociologist, geneticist, statistician, inventor, meteorologist, and was also considered the father of psychometry,

For during these millennia Homo sapiens became the single most important agent of change in the global ecology.5

A force of nature is obviously just the opposite of an inert actor,” Latour wrote

He reflected on the magnificent union of atoms, which give visible forms to Nature, revealing forces by recognizing them, creating individualities in unity, proportions in extension, the innumerable in the infinite, and through light producing beauty.

In Paris later, at the Museum of Natural History (the Jardin des Plantes), with the blessing and counsel of the great Georges Cuvier, he undertook his vast, illustrated Recherches sur les Poissons Fossiles, at a time when fewer than a dozen generic types of fossil fish had been named and he was all of twenty-four.