1 - Thoreau and the Emergence of the Social Sciences

Summary

IN MARCH OF 1853 HENRY DAVID THOREAU received a printed circular inviting him to become a member of the Association for the Advancement of Science. In filling in the blanks on the required reply form he described his “Branches of science in which especial interest is felt” not as the natural sciences but as “The Manners and Customs of the Indians of the Algonquin Group previous to contact with civilized man.” He adds his interest in the natural sciences second under “Remarks”: “I may add that I am an observer of nature generally, and the character of my observations, so far as they are scientific, may be inferred from the fact that I am especially attracted by such books of science as White's Selborne and Humboldt's ‘Aspects of Nature’” (Corr 310). The date of this reply is 19 December, eight months after having received the invitation.

Thoreau hesitated to reply because, it seems, he himself already recognized the “Thoreau problem” (see Solnit) of readers compartmentalizing his intellectual interests and not always seeing the connection between them. As a journal entry for 5 March 1853 suggests, he did not think the members of the association would understand the answer he really wanted to send:

Now though I could state to a select few that department of human inquiry which engages me—& should be rejoiced at an opportunity so to do—I felt that it would be to make myself the laughing stock of the scientific community—to describe or attempt to describe to them that branch of science which specially interests me—in as much as they do not believe in a science which deals with the higher law. So I was obliged to speak to their condition and describe to them that poor part of me which alone they can understand. (PJ 5: 469)

“The fact is,” he continues, “I am a mystic—a transcendentalist—&; a natural philosopher to boot. Now I think—of it—I should have told them at once that I was a transcendentalist—that would have been the shortest way of telling them that they would not understand my explanations” (PJ 5: 469–70). Unfortunately, today we still compartmentalize his holistic, transcendental natural philosophy, splitting it into his proto-ecological nature study and his seemingly antisocial individualism, and we continue to have trouble understanding the connection between them.