From a young age, Alexander von Humboldt came into contact with the scientific and political eminences of his time. Traveling and exploring the world, especially the New World, was his life plan.
He was a scientist, explorer and humanist who bequeathed an extensive work: among his books Political essay on the kingdom of New Spain and Journey to the equinoctial regions of the New Continent until the late Cosmos, observations and theories on nature are condensed, the which seemed to him a living and interactive organism of great intensity. In his studies he went ahead with detail to his time; For example, given his obsession with measurements and precision instruments, he detected how the deforestation that humanity generates is the cause of climate change with disastrous consequences.
Humboldt believed in the free flow of ideas and information, a communication without borders. Thus, his research methodology extended within an international network made up of the best scientists, a very modern network, by correspondence and 200 years before the internet. He was a scientist who knew how to interrelate things and places and apply new methods, such as comparative geography.
Currently, we know his most important works, but there are hundreds of writings that he published or documented in magazines, newsletters, notebooks, and they were scattered, practically unknown. Editorial Herder presents in Spanish, in this first volume, a selection of 50 texts of that unpublished work. This is an edition in collaboration with the international project Alexander von Humboldt - Complete writings from Bern, Switzerland.

Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) grew up in a family of the small nobility, which was affected by the Enlightenment in the empire of Frederick the Great. His education and training developed in the context of the empires of Prussia, France and Spain. He achieved a universal scholarship from his youth, an erudition that would procure a great scientific work over seven decades and that set the standards in various fields of science until the twentieth century. His research work was especially relevant in America. During the years 1799-1804 he made expeditions in Venezuela, Cuba, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Mexico, trips from which the writings that make up this volume are derived.