Kosmos - Entwurf einer physischen Weltbeschreibung

Late in the evening of a very eventful life, I present to the German public a work whose image has hovered in vague outlines before my mind for almost half a century. In some moods I have considered this work unrealisable and, when I have given it up, I have returned to it. When external circumstances and an irresistible urge for knowledge of various kinds have caused me to devote several years, seemingly exclusively, to individual disciplines: descriptive botany, geognosy, chemistry, astronomical localisation and geomagnetism in preparation for a great travelling expedition, the real purpose of learning was always a higher one. What gave me the main impetus was the endeavour to understand the phenomena of physical things in their general context, i.e. in the context of the earth.