seminar paper plans
I plan to write a seminar paper in some way involving Humboldt, Emerson, Thoreau, and Muir. Duh, right?
But seriously. Humboldt was fundamentally influential on many 19thC philosophers, scientists, writers, people who fancied themselves somewhere in-between. By "fundamentally influential" I mean something between "I have studied extensively under him" and "if you look hard enough, you'll see that a lot of principles are similar." Vague, I know.
In one position you have Emerson, who was all about Nature and its uses and how it's emblematic and we must experience it, and yadda yadda yadda—good Transcendentalist/philosopher, not so good scientist. In another position you have Thoreau, who was all about walking around in nature and cataloging and being a good scientist—good conservationist/preservationist philosopher, good scientist, bad Transcendentalist. In a third position you have Muir, who was all about walking around in nature in a big way, not the huckleberry excursions in the local park but in an "I'm going to walk from Wisconsin to Florida and hopefully hop a boat to South America but I got sick so I went to California instead and boy howdy look at these glacial creations and let me give you my theories on glaciation and while I'm at it I'll discover and name a whole passel of plants" sort of way; influenced by Emerson, by Thoreau, by Humboldt. Decent enough Transcendental philosopher, great conservationist/preservationist philosopher, good scientist. More than Thoreau, he met the criteria for what Emerson was looking for in a premier Transcendentalist naturalist.
It's common to place these fellows on a continuum: Emerson! Then Thoreau of course, influenced by Emerson. By the numbers, there's Muir next in line, surely influenced by both. But it's actually trickier than that due to publication and accessibility of texts, which I won't go into here. What I'm getting at is that the better thread that runs through them all is a Humboldtian one. If Humboldtian science can be reduced to this simple definition (which I will use here in this blog post without any more thought given to it)—moving toward an understanding of the interconnectedness of nature through precise and accurate measurement—then anyone who has spent any time with Emerson will realize that thought runs through a great deal of Nature. Same thing for Thoreau and for Muir.
This isn't exactly groundbreaking information. For general, big picture connections between Humboldt and Thoreau, I have Laura Dassow Walls and Seeing New Worlds. Henry David Thoreau and Nineteenth-Century Natural Science; for Humboldt and Muir there's Aaron Sachs and The Humboldt Current (chapter on Muir).
But what I plan to do is to look at the influence from the inside out—what, specifically did Emerson, Thoreau, and Muir say about Humboldt in their published works or in their journals. How and why did they invoke him, and what sort of cultural import did that bring to their own work? The list of references is rich without being an overwhelming amount of work. I remain hopeful.
But seriously. Humboldt was fundamentally influential on many 19thC philosophers, scientists, writers, people who fancied themselves somewhere in-between. By "fundamentally influential" I mean something between "I have studied extensively under him" and "if you look hard enough, you'll see that a lot of principles are similar." Vague, I know.
In one position you have Emerson, who was all about Nature and its uses and how it's emblematic and we must experience it, and yadda yadda yadda—good Transcendentalist/philosopher, not so good scientist. In another position you have Thoreau, who was all about walking around in nature and cataloging and being a good scientist—good conservationist/preservationist philosopher, good scientist, bad Transcendentalist. In a third position you have Muir, who was all about walking around in nature in a big way, not the huckleberry excursions in the local park but in an "I'm going to walk from Wisconsin to Florida and hopefully hop a boat to South America but I got sick so I went to California instead and boy howdy look at these glacial creations and let me give you my theories on glaciation and while I'm at it I'll discover and name a whole passel of plants" sort of way; influenced by Emerson, by Thoreau, by Humboldt. Decent enough Transcendental philosopher, great conservationist/preservationist philosopher, good scientist. More than Thoreau, he met the criteria for what Emerson was looking for in a premier Transcendentalist naturalist.
It's common to place these fellows on a continuum: Emerson! Then Thoreau of course, influenced by Emerson. By the numbers, there's Muir next in line, surely influenced by both. But it's actually trickier than that due to publication and accessibility of texts, which I won't go into here. What I'm getting at is that the better thread that runs through them all is a Humboldtian one. If Humboldtian science can be reduced to this simple definition (which I will use here in this blog post without any more thought given to it)—moving toward an understanding of the interconnectedness of nature through precise and accurate measurement—then anyone who has spent any time with Emerson will realize that thought runs through a great deal of Nature. Same thing for Thoreau and for Muir.
This isn't exactly groundbreaking information. For general, big picture connections between Humboldt and Thoreau, I have Laura Dassow Walls and Seeing New Worlds. Henry David Thoreau and Nineteenth-Century Natural Science; for Humboldt and Muir there's Aaron Sachs and The Humboldt Current (chapter on Muir).
But what I plan to do is to look at the influence from the inside out—what, specifically did Emerson, Thoreau, and Muir say about Humboldt in their published works or in their journals. How and why did they invoke him, and what sort of cultural import did that bring to their own work? The list of references is rich without being an overwhelming amount of work. I remain hopeful.
3 Comments:
Julie,
You should be hopeful. I have to admit, when reading the first few paragraphs of this, I was thinking "this sounds like a book, not a 20-page paper," but in the last two paragraphs, you narrow down and come to a nice-sized topic for the paper/course. I love the idea of looking up all the direct references to H in the journals, letters, and works of E,T, and M, and working with those quotations and ideas as the basis for your paper. I'm a big advocate of working from the specific and tangible (ie, local) and seeing where that takes you in terms of themes, concepts, and over-arching "theories." It's an exciting way to work and I look forward to seeing what you come up with. You might think about ordering Nigel Leask's book (which I got off Summit, but had to return), as he does a nice job of summarizing H's ideas. I remember when Nigel was working on the book--he was reading the entire H oeuvre, and it seemed to burst out of him every time you'd run into him at a pub or a conference. He's the kind of scholar who also works from an intimate knowledge of primary sources.
Julie,
The idea for your seminar paper sounds interesting. The contrasts of Thoreau and Muir to Emerson in terms of science are important. I wonder whether part of the contrast lies in their experiences in/commitment to the natural world. Both Thoreau and Muir spent considerable parts of their lives in nature, where they compiled data, experimented, and made inferences to explain phenomena that they observed. Emerson’s nature (and “Nature”) was more a philosophical Fantasia. Emerson looked out the window of his study or took a daily walk as he thought about how one should live; whereas, Thoreau and Muir lived in the natural world and used those experiences to explain how the world worked.
Thoreau’s relationship to science was complex. He appeared to show particular initiatives in response to the scientists he read. For example, he had a distinctive response to Linnaeus and later a strong response to Darwin. Throughout his life, Thoreau was concerned about the role of science in his life—concerned, that is, that science required a different kind of commitment than did writing, and he clearly wanted first to be a writer. In the last years of his life those commitment may have been changing--Thoreau became much more systematic in his collection of data, and his emphasis (his sense of self?) might be seen as shifting from writing to science.
Larry
Larry, I completely agree with everything you have said. In fact, I wrote a MA thesis on those very things. :)
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