About this episode

Andrea Wulf discusses the historical context of Enlightenment ideas and their impact on nature and humanity through her works.

All ideas have a history, no matter how inevitable and well-entrenched they may seem to us today. The later Enlightenment was a heady time when people were exploring new conceptions of nature, humanity, and the self. Andrea Wulf is a writer of narrative histories, examining the origins of ideas through the lives of the people who explored them. In this episode we discuss three of her books: The Invention of Nature , about Alexander von Humboldt and environmentalism; Magnificent Rebels , about the Jena circle of Romantics including Goethe, Schiller, Schlegel, and others; and most recently The Traveller , about George Forster, an early naturalist, ethnographer, and champion of human equality. Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/06/08/356-andrea-wulf-on-enlightenment-nature-romanticism-and-modernity/ Support Mindscape on Patreon . Andrea Wulf was born in India, raised in Germany, and studied design history at the Royal College of Art, London. She is the author of seven books. She is a Miller Scholar at the Santa Fe Institute and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. The Invention of Nature won multiple prizes, including the Royal…

People in this episode

Host: Sean Carroll

Guest: Andrea Wulf

Topics covered

• Enlightenment
• Nature
• Romanticism
• Modernity
• Environmentalism
• Narrative History

Keywords

• Enlightenment
• nature
• Romanticism
• environmentalism
• narrative history
• George Forster
• Alexander von Humboldt

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Santa Fe Institute, Royal Society of Literature

Books & works: The Invention of Nature, Magnificent Rebels, The Traveller

More episodes of Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas

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• 353 | Alvin Roth on the Economics of Morally Contested Markets · May 11, 2026 · 1h 12m

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