(*) Refers to spiritual observance - conscientious awareness - the higher imperative of conscience. The question of objectivity in a scientist's viewpoint is very closely related to the spiritual aspects of Thoreau's philosophy and his life close to nature. As Thoreau wrote, "Our whole life is startlingly moral."

Introduction:
Thoreau as a Scientific Originator. Thoreau dedicated his life to the exploration of nature - not as a backdrop to human activity but as a living, integrated system of which you and I are simply a part.

• He was a skilled engineer, surveyor and inventor.
• He created the modern pencil by introducing clay into the manufacture of graphite (pencil "lead").
• He became an expert on wildlife and an experienced botanist.
• His "nature writing" progressed from the poetic symbolism of Walden to the scientific method in his later journals: First, observation and information-gathering; second, stating a hypothesis; third, verifying the hypothesis with testing.
• He kept up with the works of Charles Darwin, the great evolutionist. Thoreau copied passages from the "Voyage of the Beagle" into his journal in 1851, and was introduced to "The Origin of Species" not long after its 1857 publication.
• Thoreau contributed an original confirmation of the theory of natural selection with his botanical studies, "The Dispersion of Seeds" and The Succession of Forest Trees.

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Nature, Science, and Higher Laws

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Today, Thoreau's lifelong, evolving study of natural history has become more important than ever. Consider this list of themes and titles...

• Thoreau as a scientist. Far from being a scenic "nature writer," Thoreau made observations and formed conclusions using the scientific method (data, hypothesis, conclusion). He was an early reader of Charles Darwin. Among today's scholars, Laura Dassow Walls, Michael Benjamin Berger, Michael Frederick and others have examined Thoreau as a man of science.
   
  • Start with:

Laura D. Walls' introduction to Material Faith: Henry David Thoreau on Science (Houghton Mifflin paperback, 1999).

You will also be interested in Prof. Walls's refutation of E. O. Wilson's theory of science, "Consilience Revisited," discussed below.

Also read two important essays (described below) on the Thoreau Reader web site.

• "The Development of Thoreau's View of Science" by Nina Baym
• "Thoreau as a Mirror of Ourselves" by Alfred I. Tauber

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• Thoreau's Journal as a scientific notebook. Thoreau's two-million-word diary was once viewed merely as the sketchbook for more accomplished works. Today it is appreciated for many reasons, particularly perhaps Thoreau's use of it for exhaustive information-gathering during his daily excursions through Concord's woodlands and wetlands for more than ten years, beginning in 1851. These pages are also filled with sketches:

  Fish Hawk	Ice Cake	Rainbow over Sun

  
   

  • Start with: A Year in Thoreau's Journal: 1851, Penguin Classics, 1993.
  • The Thoreau Project (this web site) always offers a passage or two from the Journal.
  • Conservation activist Stephen Ells's Thoreau Research Site includes superb natural history bibliographies and profiles of many locations in "Thoreau country."

• NEW: Thoreau's Journal and Global Warming. Read how Thoreau’s seasonal charts and nature writings prove that some common plants are flowering at least three weeks earlier than in Thoreau’s time – with consequences for wildlife.
  • Articles from Smithsonian Magazine and National Wildlife.

• Thoreau's practical skills. Thoreau exercised many practical skills as a contributor to engineering and technology - surveyor, engineer, and inventor.  
   
  • Start with: Henry Petroski, The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance (Knopf paperback, 1999). Chapter 9: "An American Pencil-Making Family."
  • Read about a seven-foot-tall Thoreau invention that radically improved the design of the common pencil for generations to come.

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• Thoreau and the observer's viewpoint. The question of objectivity in the scientific viewpoint is inseparable from the spiritual aspects of Thoreau's philosophy and life close to nature.
   
  • Alfred I. Tauber (Henry David Thoreau and the Moral Agency of Knowing, 2001) views Thoreau as not only longing for union with nature (life in the infinite present) but even trying to move "from an observer to an actor" while united spiritually with the universe.
    • Read Tauber's "Thoreau as a Mirror of Ourselves" on the Thoreau Reader web site.
       
  • Nina Baym's analysis ("Thoreau's View of Science," 1963) examines the paradox that Thoreau's late journals are "more scientific in content," but "more opposed to science in comment."
     
  • Alan D. Hodder (Thoreau's Ecstatic Witness, 2001) explores Thoreau's writings as reflecting irreplaceable and indescribable moments of oneness with the world.
     
  • Laura Dassow Walls, in "Consilience Revisited" (published online, 2000), says that "restoring history to language and metaphor can reconnect science with literature and humanity in a consilience that sacrifices neither complexity nor truth."
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• Thoreau and nature's cycles. According to psychiatrist Michael Sperber, around 1860-61 Thoreau became "completely persuaded, after years of intimacy with the cycles and rhythms of his natural environment, that these cycles were identical to those he sensed within himself. ... As he wrote in his journal, he wished to anticipate his moods by correlating them with natural happenings."
   
  • Start with: Michael Sperber, H. D. Thoreau: Cycles and Psyche (Higganum Hill paperback, 2004). Chapter 14: "The Kalendar Project."
     

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• Thoreau's late natural history writings. These are now considered among Thoreau's most important contributions to literature, science, and nature writing. They include "Walking," "Autumnal Tints," "The Dispersion of Seeds," and other lectures and essays.
   
• Start with: Thoreau, Faith in a Seed, Island Press paperback, 1996.
   

• Teachers! More books at Reading Thoreau & Teaching Thoreau.

More Thoreau & Science:

Recommended Beginning Reading

 

Thoreau's Inventions