Emerson’s Life in Science by Laura Dassow Walls, Cornell University Press, $35, ISBN 0801440440 Reviewed by Ray Percival
ON HIS first tour of Europe, Ralph Waldo Emerson had a revelation in the Paris Museum of Natural History. “I will be a naturalist,” he declared. This insight was the basis for his lifelong fascination and commitment to science, and its mark is discernible throughout his writings. On returning to the US, Emerson gave a series of lectures on science, which formed the material for his first book, Nature (1836). Laura Dassow Walls argues in Emerson’s Life in Science that, far from…
