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Exploring God's Creation in Nature and Science
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Subject Topic: should we study Ralph Waldo Emerson? Post ReplyPost New Topic
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Tina P.
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Posted: Aug 08 2011 at 2:14pm | IP Logged Quote Tina P.
I have a 9th grader. In 10th, he'll be studying natural science and I wanted to introduce some naturalists to include Audobon, Thoreau, and ... Emerson? I don't know. I was checking Amazon for some books on him and noticed things like Emerson's Spirituality and I don't know about you, but I get suspicious when I see titles like that. Does anyone know what he was all about?

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SallyT
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Posted: Aug 08 2011 at 4:51pm | IP Logged Quote SallyT
Emerson was part of the Transcendentalist movement of early-mid 19th century America. His thought is important to be aware of, insofar as it's shaped the American culture we've inherited; he and his confrere, Henry David Thoreau, are standards in high-school American Lit textbooks and I have had my high-schooler (eleventh grade) read them as an exercise in knowing where ideas come from, good and bad, in the context of both American literature and the whole Western tradition.

I wouldn't appropriate either of those authors as nature reading, because they -- especially Emerson -- believed that nature was divine, and their observations were a vehicle for a philosophy that really has nothing to do with the kind of good healthy nature study that someone like Charlotte Mason espoused. Read them, sure, but in the context of examining and critiquing their ideas.

My $.02, anyway.

Sally, who does have a residual fondness for ol' Henry D., but thinks Emerson was a total blowhard . . . there's a really good essay by a writer named Wilfred McClay on his tombstone here.

You might look at excerpts from Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek for nature writing -- it's been ages since I read it, and she's probably more than a little influenced by Emerson and Thoreau, but she's really writing about *nature,* and she observes things beautifully.



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