7/7/2023 0 Comments Henry thoreau![]() ![]() On 3 December 1860, he caught a cold, which exacerbated a dormant case of tuberculosis. Nor can we know what insights he might have extracted by applying the principles of variation and natural selection to his beloved woods and fields. That's why we need to tap into the caustic. We will never know how far Thoreau might have extended these ideas. We are taught to think of modern civilization as inherently 'better' than the pre-industrial age. Thoreau's essay on forest succession was an early response to a world Darwin had introduced, made wonderful by science. ![]() And there is a wondrousness in a natural world that is blindly self-directing, driven by struggle and contingency, authored by itself. ![]() The countless complex interactions necessary to produce a single maple, he discovered, need involve nothing intelligent, omniscient or all-seeing. ![]() 3 A leading transcendentalist, 4 he is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay 'Civil Disobedience' (originally published as 'Resistance to Civil Government'), an. Millions of seeds and spores are produced and broadcast by wind and animals only a few plants find their niche. Henry David Thoreau (J May 6, 1862) was an American naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher. Thoreau's point - like Darwin's - was that nature's fecundity had produced a world of wondrous scope and intricacy. That passage has much in common with the final paragraph of Origin, describing an “entangled bank, clothed with plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes”. ![]()
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