Alexander von Humboldt’s Cosmos: Image? Concept? Conception!

The key term for the scientific discourse of Alexander von Humboldt is “Kosmos”. The paper interprets the term in connection with an idea, which is widespread in modern Russian philosophy, that conception as a special epistemic object is an alternative to the logical concept. This study substantiates the statement according to which Alexander von Humboldt in his widely known work Cosmos: A Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe combines scientific and aesthetic perception of reality. The author makes an assumption that the term “Kosmos” encodes an epistemic object that combines the properties of concept and image and is a conception. For its investigation, the author discusses a few interpretations of the conception as a phenomenon: 1) the equivocalist interpretation, which sees conception as an ambiguous semantic formation, combining transcendent and immanent meanings; 2) the imaginistic interpretation, which considers conception as a semantic entity that has not evolved to an abstract concept; 3) the emotive interpretation, which interprets conception as an emotional semantic entity; this entity is object of thinking and object of emotional experience; 4) the linguo-philosophical interpretation, which considers conception as an element of the conceptual framework of language and thinking. The paper demonstrates that each of indicated interpretations of the conception corresponds to the sense of Humboldt’s term “Kosmos”.