Henry David Thoreau's Walden is a classic of American literature. It is about a young Thoreau who decided to go and live in the woods in 1844 and his subsequent stay there for the next two years (p. vii). It's chock-full of good, simple, concrete advice on how to live your life and language eloquent enough to keep the reader thinking for years; however, the novel can be viewed in a rather unusual way: through the lens of the world of biology. This way of viewing the novel presents a window into the past for today's biologists and allows new knowledge to be gained through Thoreau's writings, but what qualified him to provide accurate information on the subject? Henry David Thoreau, even before attending Harvard, was a naturalist at heart. As a young man, he read Ralph Waldo Emerson's Nature and was later filled with wandering thoughts of trees and animals. After finishing school, Thoreau worked for some time as a surveyor in Massachusetts (“Henry David Thoreau”). This type of work certainly influenced the young man's view on nature simply because he was out and about every day observing natural scenes and phenomena firsthand and analyzing what he saw. Thoreau may well have witnessed some natural process occurring right before his eyes and asked the most common questions like “Why?” or "How?" in an attempt to understand what was happening. While it is unclear what Thoreau may have seen or experienced as a surveyor to make him even more acute with his naturalist senses, it is known that after this period he became a very firm (and perhaps second most famous) Transcendentalist. Transcendentalism, led by Thoreau's friend Ralph Waldo Emerson, focused on the ability to see beyond what… middle of paper… write a compendium for the ages that people would read to learn about his time alone; Thoreau understood what it meant to isolate the spirit to let it rise to new heights, but he did not realize what a scientific and biological marvel he was simultaneously drawing in the same work. Because Walden isn't just a prize for the literary community, it's also a prize for the scientific community who can use the words Thoreau wrote nearly two centuries ago to understand our modern world in new ways that could change it forever. Works Cited"Henry David Thoreau". American Transcendentalism Web. Np, nd Web. April 30, 2014.Thoreau, Henry D. Walden. Ed. Walter Harding. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1995. Print. "Transcendentalism, an American philosophy". Ushistory.org. Independence Hall Association, n.d. Web. April 30. 2014.