Word: essayed
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Dates: during 1990-1990
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...sparked by his reading the German explorer and naturalist Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), who had traveled in Central and South America at the turn of the century. Humboldt was not only a scientist but a great popularizer. As Stephen Jay Gould points out in an excellent catalog essay, the first two volumes of his work Cosmos were seen by their 19th century public as the last word on nature and its origins. Humboldt's ideas were what Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species overthrew. For Humboldt, like Linnaeus before him, saw the natural world as a pyramid...
...himself not to be the author of his works. Although he ultimately says no, he wavers for a moment, and that is enough to satisfy the state. In Temptation, Havel retells the Faust myth in terms of the ego-driven distortions of truth committed by his compatriots. In the essay The Power of the Powerless, he lambastes an archetypal grocer who places a poster saying WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE in his shopwindow to prove himself orthodox and ensure his comfort. Dissecting the web of hypocrisies and self-deceptions that formed the social fabric of communist life, Havel argues...