Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeart Radio, Hey brain
Speaker 1: Stuff Lauren boge obam Here. In December of eighteen o two,
Speaker 1: a small sailing ship called the Casino Set sail from Cajal,
Speaker 1: Peru northward along the South American coastline towards guaya Quill
Speaker 1: in present day Ecuador, a trip of about seven hundred
Speaker 1: miles or about one thousand, one hundred kilometers. One of
Speaker 1: the ship's passengers was a thirty three year old Prussian aristocrat,
Speaker 1: Alexander von Humboldt. A mining engineer by training, Humboldt had
Speaker 1: an instatiable curiosity about nature that led him to roam
Speaker 1: the planet, studying plants and animals, as well as phenomena
Speaker 1: ranging from magnetic rocks to river systems and ocean currents.
Speaker 1: Fresh from studying the value of backguando as manure in Cajao,
Speaker 1: Humboldt used the sailing trip to investigate a powerful cold
Speaker 1: current that flowed from the tip of Chile to northern Peru,
Speaker 1: ranging from just off shore to about six hundred miles
Speaker 1: off the coast that's just under a thousand kilometers. The
Speaker 1: currents existence had been known for centuries to sailors and fishermen,
Speaker 1: but no scientists had ever systematically studied the flow. Humbolt
Speaker 1: carefully measured the water temperature and the speed, and continued
Speaker 1: on his journey, which eventually would lead him to Mexico.
Speaker 1: Humboldt's work was the beginning of scientific understanding of what's
Speaker 1: now known as the Humboldt Current or the Peru Current.
Speaker 1: The current helps hold warm, moist air off the coast,
Speaker 1: keeping the climate cool. It also pulls plankton rich water
Speaker 1: from deep in the Pacific to the surface, feeding a
Speaker 1: vast number and variety of fish and birds, and creating
Speaker 1: the richest marine ecosystem on the planet. Its fishing grounds
Speaker 1: provide about six percent of the world's catch, and the
Speaker 1: Humboldt currents nutrients support the marine food chain of the
Speaker 1: Galapagos Islands and influence its climate as well. It has
Speaker 1: helped to make possible the archipelagos incredible biodiversity. In that sense,
Speaker 1: the Humbolt Current also helped shape the development of evolutionary theory.
Speaker 1: The Galapagos provided the living laboratory for another nineteenth century scientist,
Speaker 1: Charles Darwin, whose paradigm shifting work on the origin of
Speaker 1: the species was published in eighteen fifty nine, the year
Speaker 1: of Humboldt's death. Darwin himself was inspired by the work
Speaker 1: of Humboldt, who might be the most important scientist that
Speaker 1: we don't hear much about in the early tobid eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: though he might have been the most renowned researcher on
Speaker 1: the planet. Humboldt was the first to investigate the relationship
Speaker 1: between mean temperature and elevation, and came up with the
Speaker 1: concept of maps with isothermal lines that delineate areas with
Speaker 1: the same temperature at a given time. He did important
Speaker 1: early work on the origin of tropical storms. Most importantly,
Speaker 1: Humboldt altered the way that scientists see the natural world
Speaker 1: by finding interconnections. The scientist invented the concept of a
Speaker 1: web of life, what he called this great chain of
Speaker 1: causes and effects. Some consider him to be the first ecologist.
Speaker 1: He was ahead of the curve on understanding environmental problems
Speaker 1: such as deforestation and its effect upon climate, which he
Speaker 1: first observed around Lake Valencia and Venezuela back in eighteen hundred.
Speaker 1: Humboldt was also a predecessor to Albert Einstein as a
Speaker 1: scientist with a strong interest in social justice. He was
Speaker 1: a critic of colonialism and supported revolutionary movements in South America,
Speaker 1: and also criticized the US, a country he otherwise admired
Speaker 1: for its institution of slavery. We spoke via email with
Speaker 1: Aaron Sachs, a history professor at Cornell University and author
Speaker 1: of The Humboldt Current nineteenth Century Exploration and the Roots
Speaker 1: of American Environmentalism. He thinks that rather than focusing on
Speaker 1: Humboldt scientific discoveries, it's more important to look at the
Speaker 1: insights and approaches to the work that were based upon
Speaker 1: his research and observations. He said to me his version
Speaker 1: of ecology was significant not just because he stressed interconnection,
Speaker 1: but because he combined it with a social and ethical perspective.
Speaker 1: The fact of interconnection had certain implications with regard to
Speaker 1: human responsibilities towards each other and the environment. It was
Speaker 1: a cosmopolitan, open minded ecology. Today's episode was written by
Speaker 1: Patrick J. Kaiger and produced by Tyler Clain. Brain Stuff
Speaker 1: is production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For
Speaker 1: more on this and lots of other interconnected topics, visit
Speaker 1: our home planet, how stuff Works dot com and for
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