Cosmos: A Sketch of a Physical Description of The Universe: Introduction: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Cosmos: A Sketch of a Physical Description of The Universe: Introduction, credited to Alexander von Humboldt, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of Cosmos: A Sketch of a Physical Description of The Universe: Introduction by Alexander von Humboldt. (Translated by Elise Otte.) Read in English by David Wales Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt was a Prussian geographer, naturalist, explorer, and influential proponent of romantic philosophy. Many consider him to be the last of the great polymaths. After his death in 1859, the scientific world began to divide into separate disciplines, each with its own knowledgeable but narrowly defined experts. Humboldt’s mind encompassed all that was then known of nature in one great whole. He could well be considered the father of modern ecology and earth studies. His great scientific and literary achievement was the multi-volume Cosmos, twenty years in the writing, in which he attempted to describe the known physical world. Humboldt’s lyrical style of writing influenced the subsequent genre of nature writing as well as many of the towering figures of the Romantic movement. This Librivox recording is of the Introduction to Cosmos. The Introduction gives a good measure of breadth of Humboldt’s mind and is a pleasure to read or hear because of its literary felicity. This reading omits the copious footnotes in favor of maintaining the flow of thought of the body of the text. Also included are the translator’s preface which contains a short biography of Humboldt as well as the author’s own preface. - Summary by Wikipedia and david wales

Recording facts

• Recording title: Cosmos: A Sketch of a Physical Description of The Universe: Introduction
• Author credits: Alexander von Humboldt
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 7
• Listed recording duration: 2:40:12

Catalogue topics

• philosophy
• biology
• botany
• zoology
• geology
• universe
• cosmos

Track guide

1. 00 - Translator's Preface Including Biography — 8:55
2. 01 - Part 1 Author's Preface — 13:32
3. 02 - Part 2 — 24:14
4. 03 - Part 3 — 25:44
5. 04 - Part 4 — 26:41
6. 05 - Part 5 — 27:06
7. 06 - Part 6 — 34:00

Listen to this recording

Open the complete recording and player on Internet Archive. The player includes the full track list and available download formats.

Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.