Humboldtian Science Defined
Humboldtian science includes both the extensive work of Alexander von Humboldt, as well as many of the works of 19th century scientists. Susan Cannon is attributed with coining the term Humboldtian science. According to Cannon, Humboldtian science is, "the accurate, measured study of widespread but interconnected real phenomena in order to find a definite law and a dynamical cause." Humboldtian science is used now in place of the traditional, "Baconianism," as a more appropriate and less vague term for the themes of 19th century science.
According to Malcom Nicholson, “ characterized as synthetic, empirical, quantitative and impossible to fit into any one of our twentieth century disciplinary boundaries.” A central element of Humboldtian science was its use of the latest advances in scientific instrumentation to observe and measure physical variables, while attending to all possible sources of error. Humboldtian science revolved around understanding the relationship between accurate measurement, sources of error and mathematical laws. Cannon identifies four distinctive features that marked Humboldtian science out from previous versions of science . :
- insistence on accuracy for all scientific instruments and observations
- a mental sophistication in which theoretical mechanisms and entities of past science were taken lightly
- a new set of conceptual tools, including isomaps, graphs, and a theory of errors
- the application of accuracy, mental sophistication and tools not to isolated science in laboratories, but to greatly variable real phenomena.
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