The Alpine Enlightenment

A study of the experience of nature in the eighteenth century based on the life of Horace-Bénédict de Saussure (1740 – 99). In The Alpine Enlightenment , historian Kathleen Kete takes us into the world of the Genevan geologist, physicist, inventor, and mountaineer Horace-Bénédict de Saussure. During his prodigious climbs into the upper ranges of the Alps, Saussure focused intensely on the natural phenomena he encountered—glaciers, crevasses, changes in the weather, and shifts in the color of the