“SCREW HUMBOLDT ”
“Screw Humboldt. How could the Prussian claim any authority on geo-distribution on the Chimborazo if Humboldt half-climbed once the volcano for a few hours and then left? Humboldt’s maps are cute but wrong. In fact, empirically they are crap. Let me tell you how to really do and map biodistribution.”
For the lovers of Humboldtiana, I am appending a few images. These images were produced at about the same time (ca 1803–04) by Alexander von Humboldt (image 1)
and the son of Popayan, Francisco Jose de Caldas (the rest), when both lived in Carlos Montufar’s hacienda near Quito for 8 months.
When Humboldt left Quito for Lima-Mexico-Cuba-Philadelphia-Paris, he took the Marquess Carlos Montufar, not Caldas. Caldas was no Marquess. He was a struggling letrado (intellectual) of very modest means, completely dependent on the charity of well-off friends to get books: the scion of a family constantly struggling with illegitimacy as his sisters had shacked up with priests.
Caldas was furious.
Caldas then wrote to Celestino Mutis a series of letters: In these letters and reports, Caldas summarized his findings and research program. To paraphrase: “Screw Humboldt. How could the Prussian claim any authority on geo-distribution on the Chimborazo if Humboldt half-climbed once the Chimborazo for a few hours and then left? Humboldt’s maps are cute but wrong. In fact, empirically they are crap. Let me tell you how to really do and map biodistribution. Here are some maps of the biodistribution for several plants (in different colors) in the northern Andes. They include several parallel measurements of temperature, barometric pressure, heights, and other variables. Bye. Don’t let bed-bugs bite you, great man!”
Humboldt KNEW about all these maps and of Caldas’s innovations. Humboldt was pissed by Caldas’s much better command of accuracy in measurement and empirical mastery (Caldas irritated Humboldt by recalibrating the German’s instruments and pointing out his inaccuracies — Warning: Don’t try this on a Prussian).
What did the great Prussian, anticolonialist, lover of birds do? Humboldt did not cite Caldas in his “groundbreaking” 1806 Geography of Plants.
It took Humboldt 23 years to introduce the name of Caldas once, in passing. Caldas appears buried in a footnote in the 1826 edition of Geography of Plants, along with a list of some 20 other scholars building on Humboldt’s “original” insights. Humboldt buried Caldas in neglect. Humboldt was unable to concede Caldas any epistemological authority in 1803 and less so after 1809, the year Caldas took Humboldt publicly to task in the pages of Semanario del Nuevo Reino de Granada.
In 1809, Caldas published an annotated translation of Humboldt’s original manuscript of Geography of Plants that the Prussian left as a gift to Mutis. It was not nice. Caldas turned his edition into a vehicle to criticize the Prussian sage: Humbodlt was a bird of passage whose many empirical flaws stemmed from lack of acquaintance with local realities.
Caldas shreds the original to pieces, relentlessly showing every empirical mistake. A typical note by Caldas would read “Baron von Humboldt visited Popayan at time of storms. He stayed for 20 days. He left/vanished (desaparecio) holding ideas about [Popayan’s] atmosphere that are very different from those held by those who have [actually] grown under the influence of this sky”(note 21). In another passage on Humboldt’s generalizations about herds of sheep and goats in the Venezuelan frontiers, Caldas would forcefully call the Prussian out: “I believe Humboldt is wrong; there are no herds of goats in the countries where the boundaries of agriculture end. Actually, goat herds inhabit temperate countries and tropical valleys.”(note 25).
The annotated translation probably annoyed the Prussian sage. It is no wonder that Humboldt obfuscated his debt to Caldas and Mutis at every turn. In short, he acted like a dishonest prick.
Screw Humboldt and all he represents: Epistemological colonialism and the cult of saints.
These series of Caldas’ maps are taken from Mauricio Nieto Olarte’s La obra cartografica de Caldas (2006), an amazing research in archives in Spain and Colombia. My references to the Caldas-Humboldt-Mutis relationship are based on the scholarship of Alberto Gomez (Humboldtiana neogranadina- 5v) and Jose Antonio Amaya (Ojos en el cielo pies en la tierra: mapas, libros e instrumentos en la vida del sabio Caldas)
