COVER -- TITLE -- COPYRIGHT -- CONTENTS -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- INTRODUCTION -- PROLOGUE: THE HUMBOLDT BROTHERS CONFRONT NATURE'S SUBLIMITY -- The Primordial Scene -- Nature's Ambiguity -- The Problem Posed -- 1. STORMING "THE TEMPLE OF ERROR": BUFFON, THE HISTOIRE NATURELLE, AND THE MIDCENTURY ORIGINS OF ENLIGHTENMENT VITALISM -- Natural Philosophy and the Mathematical Description of Nature -- Toward a Redefinition of Organic Matter -- System, Method, and Understanding -- Preformation, Epigenesis, and the Historization of Nature -- 2. LEARNING TO "READ THE BOOK OF NATURE": VITALIZING CHEMISTRY IN THE LATE ENLIGHTENMENT -- Creating a New Language of Chemistry -- The Grammar and Vocabulary of the New Language of Chemistry -- Chemistry, Heat, and Life -- Enlightenment Vitalism and the Chemical Revolution -- 3. "WITHIN THE CIRCLE OF ORGANIZED LIFE" -- Between Mechanism and Animism -- Organization, Conjunction, Sympathy, and Nature's Economy -- Elaborating the Vital Economy's Activities -- 4. THE METAMORPHOSES OF CHANGE -- Generation, Reproduction, and the Economy of Nature -- Death, Dying, and Resurrection -- Ontogeny and Phylogeny in Enlightenment Vitalism -- 5. FROM ENLIGHTENMENT VITALISM TO ROMANTIC NATURPHILOSOPHIE -- Romantic Naturphilosophie: A New "Daring Adventure of Reason" -- "Geometria est Historia": Toward a New Universal Mathesis -- "Nature Is Visible Mind, Mind Invisible Nature": From Harmony to Identity -- "Being Itself Is Activity": From Change to Process -- The Scientific Construction of Gender in the Late Enlightenment and Romantic Naturphilosophie -- EPILOGUE: FROM THE FOOT OF CHIMBORAZO TO THE FLATLANDS OF EUROPE -- Alexander von Humboldt's Dilemma -- Reprise: What Is Enlightenment? What Isn't Enlightenment? -- NOTES -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R.

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