1. But Muir would not allow Sargent to get away with this. "Who cares where you wear your little heart, man," Muir countered, "there you stand in the face of all Heaven come down to Earth, like a critic of the universe, as if to say, "Come, Nature, bring on the best you have: I'm from BOSTON!
The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World
2. Nature is a living whole,' he later said, not a 'dead aggregate'. One single life had been poured over stones, plants, animals and humankind. It was this 'universal profusion with which life is everywhere distributed' that most impressed Humboldt. Even the atmosphere carried the kernels of future life - pollen, insect eggs and seeds. Life was everywhere and those 'organic powers are incessantly at work', he wrote. Humboldt was not so much interested in finding new isolated facts but in connecting them. Individual phenomena were only important 'in their relation to the whole', he explained.
The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World
