David Lowenthal’s archipelagic landscape of learning

This article discusses David Lowenthal's last book, Quest for the Unity of Knowledge, which was published posthumously by Routledge in 2019 (available print from November 2018). The book is based on a series lectures that he gave while visiting fellow with KTH Royal Institute Technology’s Environmental Humanities Laboratory Stockholm 2012. Aimed at general academic audience, it an erudite and passionate overview showing how ingrained bias towards unity or diversity shapes major issues education, religion, genetics, race relations, heritage governance, environmental policy. Knowledge explores Two Cultures debate, initiated C.P. Snow, concerning gulf between sciences humanities. It covers areas such as conservation, ecology, history ideas, museology, landscape, studies, aligning career-long research interests, serving well meta-comment to emerging Humanities.