Romancing the Real

Abstract

Abstract Thoreau in our day would never be recognized as a “scientist”—indeed, use of the term would be anachronistic. Troulack of a word that might unify all the various workin the physical and natural sciences, William Whewell, the British polymath of science, coined it in 1834 by analogy with “artist.” The novel term caught on only slowly, however, and would not come into popular usage until much later in the century. So Thoreau wrote instead of “the man of science,” and in his early journal entries he envisions the “true man of science” as brave and vital, with “a deeper and finer experience” and possessed of “a more perfect Indian wisdom” (“Natural History,” 29)—someone who could unite earth and heaven under one higher law.