Document Type
Book Review
Publication Date
2023
Journal / Book Title
Thinking in Stories: Reviewing Philosophy in Children's Literature
Abstract
As a young boy, Alexander Von Humboldt came up with divergent questions about the birds and mountains and animals he saw, and brought all those questions together under two big questions that stayed important for him over a long life: “How are these things different?” and “How are they nevertheless connected?” As the reader watches Humboldt looking at a hawk and a mouse, volcanoes and farmland, palm trees and pine trees, Europe and Ecuador, Europeans and Indigenous people, one comes to expect what he will say: “They are different, and yet they are connected.” This idea is much bigger than “ecology”. For Humboldt, it was a key to making sense of experience generally. It’s is a way of thinking worth exploring in discussion: acknowledge difference, then find connection.
Book Publisher
Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children
MSU Digital Commons Citation
Shea, Peter, "(2023) Alexander Von Humboldt: Explorer, Naturalist, and Environmental Pioneer (2019) by Danica Novgorodoff" (2023). Collected Papers of Peter Shea. 12.
https://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/iapc_pshea/12