"Science points always to the present hour, he [Ralph Waldo Emerson] said: 'An everlasting Now reigns in nature that produces on our bushes the selfsame rose which charmed the Roman and the Chaldean.' The lecture echoed Carlyle and quotes Goethe. After listing the obvious utilitarian advantage of the study of nature, Emerson moved to consider its effect on our thinking. 'Natural science sharpens the discrimination,' he claimed. There is no false logic in nature. All its properties are permanent: the acids and metals never lie, their yea is yea, their nay, nay. They are newly discovered but not new.' He thought that we might also resort to nature to guard against certain possible evils of science, such as the kind of technological advances that make our senses useless to us: 'The clock and compass do us harm by hindering us from astronomy.'"
P.170, EMERSON, THE MIND ON FIRE, by Robert D. Richardson, Jr. (1995)
Sunday, December 8, 2013
A THEORY OF ANIMATED NATURE
"A Theory of Animated Nature"
"Science points always to the present hour, he [Ralph Waldo Emerson] said: 'An everlasting Now reigns in nature that produces on our bushes the selfsame rose which charmed the Roman and the Chaldean.' The lecture echoed Carlyle and quotes Goethe. After listing the obvious utilitarian advantage of the study of nature, Emerson moved to consider its effect on our thinking. 'Natural science sharpens the discrimination,' he claimed. There is no false logic in nature. All its properties are permanent: the acids and metals never lie, their yea is yea, their nay, nay. They are newly discovered but not new.' He thought that we might also resort to nature to guard against certain possible evils of science, such as the kind of technological advances that make our senses useless to us: 'The clock and compass do us harm by hindering us from astronomy.'"
P.170, EMERSON, THE MIND ON FIRE, by Robert D. Richardson, Jr. (1995)
"Science points always to the present hour, he [Ralph Waldo Emerson] said: 'An everlasting Now reigns in nature that produces on our bushes the selfsame rose which charmed the Roman and the Chaldean.' The lecture echoed Carlyle and quotes Goethe. After listing the obvious utilitarian advantage of the study of nature, Emerson moved to consider its effect on our thinking. 'Natural science sharpens the discrimination,' he claimed. There is no false logic in nature. All its properties are permanent: the acids and metals never lie, their yea is yea, their nay, nay. They are newly discovered but not new.' He thought that we might also resort to nature to guard against certain possible evils of science, such as the kind of technological advances that make our senses useless to us: 'The clock and compass do us harm by hindering us from astronomy.'"
P.170, EMERSON, THE MIND ON FIRE, by Robert D. Richardson, Jr. (1995)