Pfaueninsel

In 1828 a very learned group of people came to visit Pfaueninsel. The scientist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt revolutionized the sciences in 1828 with his conference in Berlin. He invited hundreds of scientists from all over Germany and Europe to exchange ideas. Nothing innovative, you would think, were it not for his approach. He didn't want scientists to talk to each other, but with each other. Andrea Wulf describes in her wonderful book "The Inventor of Nature" how at this conference people not only went to lectures but also attended concerts, made trips to the royal menagerie on Pfaueninsel in Potsdam, and disussed several topics in small groups with scientists from different areas. The message was not to deepen vertically, but to build bridges between different domains. He organized this conference for the Gesellschaft Deutscher Naturforscher und Ärzte.

Dromos