Die Signatur des Kosmos : Epistemische Poetik und die Genealogie der Esoterischen Moderne

This study is centred on the genealogy of the esoteric in modernism, demonstrated using the exemplar of 19th century cosmographic discourse. It analyses the whole of the Cosmos text by Alexander von Humboldt, who thus becomes identified as the founder of a philosophical-esoteric cosmology. Using Fechner's Zend-Avesta and Hörbiger's World Ice Theory, together with work by the classicist Paul Carus and the Darwinist Ernst Haeckel, the genesis is demonstrated of a world-view movement, the signature of which has coloured both the history of science and popular culture up to the present day.