Time, Enlightenment and Romanticism Between Modernity and Divergence

World Machines learnings from recent book club readings

Time, Enlightenment and Romanticism Between Modernity and Divergence World Machines learnings from recent book club readings Venkatesh Rao May 30, 2026 18 1 2 Share Last month, in the book club , we read Inventing Nature by Andrea Wulf, about the life and work of Alexander von Humboldt. This month, I ended up also reading Wulf’s earlier book on the Jena set , Magnificent Rebels, which is on our side quests list. Alexander von Humboldt, along with his brother William, were both part of this set, though the former was arguably on the margins of it rather than the core, in part because he was gal

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• John Böllhoff

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