Alexander Von Humboldt: the planet as a natural set moved by internal forces

Abstract

This article is a reflection based on the review of the book “La invention de la Naturaleza: El nuevo mundo de Alexander Von Humboldt'' by Andrea Wulf. The text shows that Humboldt was the first scientist to develop a new vision of the world and that his publication “El ensayo sobre la geografía de las plantas” was the first ecologist book. In 1800 he was the first scientist to mention human-caused climate change and that it could have unforeseeable consequences for future generations. His important influence on the greatest thinkers, artists and scientists of the time, such as: Thomas Jefferson, Charles Darwin, Henry David Thoreau, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, among others, shows the need to know the path of the scientist in the 19th century and reflect on the lack of interest, knowledge and firm sustainability actions in the 20th and 21st centuries in which the media shows year after year the action of nature through rains, landslides causing “destruction”. As a result, the article points out the errors in society's perception of the effects of human beings on the environmen.