HUMBOLDT AND GAUẞ: SCIENTIFIC METHODS & COMPLEMENTARY NARRATIVES

by Anna Khoo

15/01/2014

MEASURING THE WORLD: HUMBOLDT’S METHOD

Aim: ‘das Leben erforschen’ (S.31) Living matter. Where and how life exists.

Physical exploration (bodily journey)

Empirical methodology

Naming/Cataloguing

Mapping = complete, coherent knowledge of the world

MEASURING THE WORLD:GAUẞ’S METHOD

• Aim: “eine Formel…die alle diese [Stern] Bewegungen beschrieb” (S. 82) Mathematical truths and proofs

• Mental exploration: “Ein Mann allein am Schreibtisch”(S.312)

• Inductive reasoning

• Differentiation is mathematical rather than categorical

• Theoretical unity of forces (Grand Unified Theory)

COMPARISON: CONTRASTS

Humboldt

Empirical, physical evidence

Living matter: what the Earth is made of, where and how things live.

E.g. Galvinism, bones, life forms found in extreme conditions

Patient, careful readings and measurements. Everywhere.

Gauß

• Inductive, rigorous reasoning

• Formulae: how the universe is held together by mathematical rules.

• E.g. Geometry, statistics, gravitational and magnetic forces

• Paper, pen, hours of thinking, flashes of inspiration.

Telescope vs Sextant

Measure movements of celestial objects, as seen from Earth.

Measure fixed heights, positions of geographical landmarks/own location relative to the horizon.

COMPARISON: SIMILARITIES

Motif of elevation: mountains/hot-air balloon

(Near) solitary work: expeditions/working in hut

Impulse to keep exploring unknown areas

Both dependant on funding from patrons and politicians

Acknowledgment that discovery is not creation

Frustration with being locked in time and space

CONVERGENCEFutility: Humboldt and the Lama’s dead dog (S.361) Knowledge is not the key to life.

Gauß: “Die kurze Formel, die all ihre Bewegungen in einer Zeile zusammenfasste. Zum erstenmal wußte er, daß er sie nicht finden würde.” (S.204)

Overlap: Humboldt’s outburst, “Tatschen…Fakten und Zahlen” (S.370)

Gauß’s experiment - empirical observation of a needle. (Needs Humboldt)

Humboldt needs Gauß’s formula on magnetism.

Concept of journey: “Aber während…Humboldt sich vorstellte, wie Gauß eben jetzt auch sein Teleskop auf Himmelskörper sah…hätte er auf einmal nicht mehr sagen können, wer von ihnen weit herumgekommen war und wer immer zu Hause geblieben.” (S.370)

Novel’s structure reflects the convergence of parallel narratives.

PARALLEL AND METAPOETIC NARRATIVESSelf-reflective novel

=> References to other character in travel writing within novel.

=> Horizon as ideological reference point: straight/curved?

=> Collaborative work is on magnetism…

=> Misson impossible?

Taberner: “The novel’s alternative chapters on Humboldt’s travels to South America and Gauß’s work on ‘curved space’ generates…an interesting dialectic between Enlightenment universalism and cultural relativism…” (p.257)

Kreitinger: “[Kehlmann constructs]…a metapoetic, in that the formal structure of parallel life stories enacts those particular theories of space that Humboldt and Gauss put forward in their work” (p.59)

REFERENCESPrimary sources:

Kehlmann, Daniel. Die Vermessung der Welt. 2005. Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag. 2008, Sonderausgabe 2009.

Secondary Sources:

Kreitinger, Brooke D. The spatial imagination of accelerated globalization in contemporary German-language novels. Georgetown University, 2012.

Taberner, Stuart, ed. The Novel in German Since 1990. Cambridge University Press, 2011.