General Conclusion: Where Science Lives – Landscapes of the Soul

Carus was lucky. Over his long life, he could dedicate himself to scientific ideas as somebody whose livelihood did not depend on the immediate evaluation of his scholarly productivity by funding agencies or peer review schemes. He was supported by the network of the Saxon royal family whose appreciation of his role went far beyond the original role of the Royal physician. His art was noted and appreciated through that network, and his natural science gained its appreciative audiences among the many royal family members as well as their aristocratic visitors from all over Europe. Of course, there were peer scientists whose opinions and feedback he took seriously—Goethe and Alexander von Humboldt leading the group, to which his former teachers in Leipzig Karl Friedrich Burdach and Johann Heinroth belonged. These were personal and substantive—not institutional and formalized—feedbacks that helped Carus to develop his thoughts further, step by step, over his life course. And the constant input from his drawing and painting activities was the arena to externalize his feelings. The complexity of his paintings and drawings led to his generalized concepts. In some sense, the richness of these complex concepts in his many books parallels the delicate abundance of details in his art that expresses his personal Waldeinsamkeit—expressed most notably through recurrent moonlight scenes.