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| | Thoreau and Science |
 | | But even as he tracks science beck to the scientists, and recalls his earlier, Baconian belief that the "poet uses the results of science and philosophy, and generalizes their widest deductions," he goes on now to formulate his clearest understanding of the importance of method. |
 | | Whitehead observes, in Science and the Modern World, that idealism "has conspicuously failed to connect, in any organic fashion, the fact of nature with their idealist philosophies." This conflict was particularly severe for Thoreau during 1852 and 1853. |
 | | His attitude toward science is now quite complex, indeed two-sided, because he is, from this time in his life onward, both a person interested in science and scientific methods, interested in knowing nature, and a writer or artist whose main aim is to express, describe or tell nature. |
| www.wesleyan.edu /synthesis/Synthesis/Thoreau.html (5401 words) |
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