ABSTRACT
John Herschel's plan to survey the southern heavens arose in part from his desire to complete the astronomical work begun by his father. The elder Herschel, Sir William, had been the brightest star in the astronomical sky during the final decades of the eighteenth century. In John's own day, this was a common conception. The Duke of Sussex, Augustus Frederick, who remained as President of the Royal Society while Herschel was at the Cape, may have first linked his Cape voyage with the phrase "filial duty." In the person of Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859), John Herschel can be linked to the German romantic movement, and, more significantly, to a new conception of the natural world. Humboldt's new conception of nature was what was so sensational about his travels, and was why his description of nature—dynamic, organic—beguiled so many Europeans. Like Humboldt, Herschel's private scientific vision was comprehensive as well as communal.
