"I have the crazy idea to represent in one work the entire material universe, everything we know today of the phenomena in the celestial spaces and of life on earth, from the stars in the nebulae to the geography of mosses and gigantic rocks, in a vivid language that will stimulate the imagination."--from Humboldt's 1834 letter to Karl Varnhagen

The first volume of Cosmos, Alexander von Humboldt's five-volume description of the physical universe, was published in 1845. In it Humboldt presents a critical survey of the state of scientific thinking in fields as diverse as astronomy, geology, geography, paleontology, biology, botany, and zoology. This paperback edition reprints the Harper & Brothers edition, published in New York in 1858.