Title of the project
Imaginaries of power - forces of nature
Management
Prof Dr Matthias Glaubrecht as part of the DFG Collaborative Research Centre "Imaginaries of Power", 2018 - 2022
Org. categorisation
Department of Animal Biodiversity
Description of the
Alexander von Humboldt - a mastermind and pioneer
Alexander von Humboldt was one of the most famous natural scientists and a colourful personality. His scientific work is unique. He attempted to survey the world, climbing the highest mountains in the Andes and traversing remote primeval forests on the Orinoco.
He is regarded as the founder of plant geography and a pioneer of ecology - and viewed nature as a complex, interconnected system. However, Humboldt did not discover a universal law of nature. As a researcher who was already a legend during his lifetime, posterity has often heroically exaggerated him.
Natural forces and the cosmos, harmony and balance, aesthetics and beauty were a central element of his thinking. In this context, we ask:
What forces underlie ecology?
Notions of force - understood as a cause that brings about change - pervade more than just physics in the natural sciences. They have gradually taken shape in natural history as determining factors or evolutionary factors that determine form, diversity and distribution.
Biology as an autonomous science - a science that cannot be reduced in its foundations to physics, for example - has been underpinned by arguments on several occasions. Under the premise of presenting consistent guidelines, forces essential to biology can be characterised in several ways.
The ideas about the effect of natural forces in the context of biodiversity are changing. In order to clarify this process, a synergistic view of ecology in particular from the perspective of evolution is recommended.
Forces of nature lead to dynamic equilibrium
Classically understood as the study of the household of nature, ecology is indeed a central biological discipline. However, the basic conceptual idea of effective environmental forces that create equilibrium needs to be examined in more detail.
Ideas of a dynamic equilibrium run through natural history research in the field of what was only much later called ecology. Here, equilibrium is understood as a state that is constantly being re-established as if by itself.
To date, however, no systematic study has probed and analysed the respective perceptions of the natural forces that could underlie the creation of such an equilibrium.
Ideas about the cause of biodiversity in transition
The aim of this project is to approach an evaluation of ideas on the changing answer to the question of the forces, factors and mechanisms of biological diversity (biodiversity).
