Seeing New Worlds – Henry David Thoreau and Nineteenth–century Natural Science

Seeing New WorldsHenry David Thoreau and Nineteenth-century Natural Science\nAuthor(s): Laura Dassow Walls\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: University of Wisconsin Press, United States\nImprint: University of Wisconsin Press\nISBN-13: 9780299147440, 978-0299147440\nSynopsis\nThoreau was a poet, a naturalist, a major American writer. Was he also a scientist? He was, Laura Dassow Walls suggests. Her book, the first to consider Thoreau as a serious and committed scientist, will change the way we understand his accomplishment and the place of science in American culture.\n\nWalls reveals that the scientific texts of Thoreaus day deeply influenced his best work, from Walden to the Journal to the late natural history essays. Here we see how, just when literature and science were splitting into the two cultures we know now, Thoreau attempted to heal the growing rift. Walls shows how his commitment to Alexander von Humboldts scientific approach resulted in not only his marriage of poetry and s.