Zum Verhältnis Charles Darwins zu Alexander v. Humboldt und Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg

• Main Author: Petra Werner
• Format: Article
• Language: deu
• Published: Universität Potsdam 2009-05-01
• Series: HiN - Alexander von Humboldt im Netz. Internationale Zeitschrift für Humboldt-Studien
• Subjects: Alexander von Humboldt; Petra Werner; Charles Darwin; Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg; Cosmos; Personal Narrative; Heinrich Bronn
• Online Access: http://www.uni-potsdam.de/u/romanistik/humboldt/hin/hin18/werner.htm

Article in German, Abstracts in English and German.While it is well known that Charles Darwin and Alexander von Humboldt appreciated each other's work, Humboldt's influence on Darwin has not yet been thoroughly examined. The following paper shows to what extent Darwin was inspired by Humboldt's publications while writing his Origin of Species.Darwin paid special attention to Humboldt's observations on plant migration and throughout his whole scientific career he used Humboldt's books as a major source of information. In fact, Darwin's last annotations in his copy of the Personal Narrative of travels to the Equinoctial Regions of the New continent during the Years 1799-1804 date back to the last weeks of his life.On the other hand, Darwin rejected many of Humboldt's scientific conclusions. The two authors differed in their assessment of Heinrich Bronn's biological research. Finally, Darwin was dissatisfied with Humboldtís last work Cosmos because it did not contain the information he expected. Darwinís collaboration with Humboldt's travel companion Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg proved to be similarly disappointing. Darwin sent 183 samples of infusoria to Berlin, but the results of Ehrenberg's analysis did not support Darwin's theory on evolution.