Review : Liberating ideas

“The whole world is an America—a New World.” What jolted Henry David
Thoreau awake to this joyous realisation? In Seeing New Worlds—Henry David
Thoreau and Nineteenth-Century Natural Science (University of Wisconsin Press,
$22.95, ISBN 0 299 14744 4) Laura Dassow Walls claims that it was the
liberating force of science. Her Thoreau is far more than the pawky loner who
transformed a glacial lake into a cosmic symbol. Naturalist, proto-ecologist,
pioneer of succession theory, dedicated student of Alexander von Humboldt and
Darwin—he was, she contends, as much scientist as poet, driven by a
passion for observing, measuring, recording and finding patterns in the minutiae
of his world. A scholarly but readable book, this is a welcome footbridge across
the “two cultures” chasm.