Andrea Nye is Professor Emerita of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. She is the author of many books, including Socrates and Diotima: Sexuality, Religion, and the Nature of Divinity.

Follows Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland as they travel together in South America and then go their separate ways, in the process illustrating two very different ways of understanding humanity's place in the natural world.