Seeing New Worlds: Henry David Thoreau and Nineteenth-Centry Science

Northeastern Naturalist, 2000 by McAninch, Anna

Seeing New Worlds: Henry David Thoreau and Nineteenth-Century Science. Laura Dassow Walls. 1995. University of Wisconsin Press. 300 pp. Paperback. ISBN 0299147444. An elegant scholarly work that considerably broadens our traditional understanding of Thoreau. Places him squarely within the world of science during his time.

Emphasizes how important scientific works, such as those of Alexander von Humboldt, had a formative effect on Thoreau and how he used scientific and Darwinian modes of reasoning in his writings. An intriguing glimpse of an important period in American history when science and literature were becoming markedly more distinct. Appropriately nostalgic in its emphasis on how much we have lost as human beings because of this still-growing distinction and how our fascination with Thoreau gives evidence that we are painfully aware of it.