The Frontier

Andrea Wulf argues we must examine the people who invented foundational ideas and their historical context to understand why certain concepts - like liberty, free will, or the individual - emerged and became embedded in modernity.

George Forster, a 17-year-old on Captain Cook’s second voyage (1772-1775), returned with an unshakable belief in the equality of races, directly challenging the pervasive racism of Enlightenment thinkers like Kant and Hume.

Forster's open-mindedness stemmed from being a perpetual outsider; by age 17 he had lived in Russia, Prussia, and England, which Wulf argues fostered a perspective not bound by national prejudice.

The voyage covered 75,000 miles and made three forays into Antarctic waters searching for a southern continent, exposing the crew to extreme conditions. Forster used repeated contact with Polynesian communities to develop his ethnographic insights.

Forster pioneered the study of Polynesian migration by comparing language similarities and the distribution of seedless breadfruit trees, correctly inferring human transportation routes 200 years before DNA evidence confirmed it.

Captain Cook’s voyages were imperial endeavors funded by the British Admiralty, with instructions to report on soil, plants, and the 'temperament' of indigenous peoples for potential colonial exploitation, despite their scientific pretexts like observing the transit of Venus.

Forster publicly criticized Immanuel Kant’s racial theories, sparking a methodological debate: Kant argued for theory-first reasoning from his study, while Forster, the traveler, championed observation-first empiricism.

Inspired by Polynesian societies and the French Revolution, Forster co-founded the short-lived Mainz Republic in 1792, becoming a revolutionary who advocated for human rights inclusive of all races and genders, a stance that made him a traitor in Germany.

The Jena Circle of the 1790s, including Goethe, Schiller, Hegel, and the Schlegels, invented Romanticism, defining it not as irrational passion but as the unity of humankind with nature and the synthesis of art and science.

Romantic philosopher Fichte placed the self at the center of reality, arguing it posits both its own being and the external world, thereby granting individuals radical free will - a concept empowered by the political context of the French Revolution.

Alexander von Humboldt, bridging Enlightenment and Romanticism, carried 42 scientific instruments on his South American expedition but argued true understanding of nature required both empirical measurement and emotional feeling, inspired by Goethe's subjectivity.

Humboldt pioneered environmentalism by 1800, describing nature as an interconnected web and warning that deforestation, monoculture, and industrial gases could induce harmful climate change.

Wulf identifies a continuous negotiation since the Enlightenment between individual self-determination and collective moral duty, arguing modern society has tilted too far toward narcissism, losing the balance intended by figures like Fichte.