The Alpine Enlightenment

Download or read book The Alpine Enlightenment written by Kathleen Kete and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2024-11-15 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of the experience of nature in the eighteenth century based on the life of Horace-Bénédict de Saussure (1740!--StartFragment --–!--EndFragment --99). In The Alpine Enlightenment, historian Kathleen Kete takes us into the world of the Genevan geologist, physicist, inventor, and mountaineer Horace-Bénédict de Saussure. During his prodigious climbs into the upper ranges of the Alps, Saussure focused intensely on the natural phenomena he encountered—glaciers, crevasses, changes in the weather, and shifts in the color of the sky—and he described with great precision what he saw, heard, and touched. Kete uses Saussure’s evocative writings, which emphasized above all physical engagement with the earth, to uncover not just how people during the Enlightenment thought about nature, but how they experienced it. As Kete shows, Saussure thought with and through his body: he harnessed his senses to understand the forces that shaped the world around him. In so doing, he offered a vision of nature as worthy of respect independent of human needs, anticipating present-day concerns about the environment and our shared place within it.