ABSTRACT
Henry David Thoreau was hardly born a naturalist. His education at Harvard turned him into an accomplished scholar of Greek and Latin, well prepared for his intended profession of schoolteaching. As Thoreau increasingly turned to nature, he also turned to writings about nature, especially to works of natural history. Thoreau came to the writings of Louis Agassiz's mentor, Alexander von Humboldt, as well as Charles Darwin and Charles Lyell, also deeply influenced by Humboldt. Thoreau's discovery of proto-ecological science was of tremendous importance to his development, for it gave him tools and models for conducting his own 'ecological' studies of Concord environment. Though he was active in educating his townspeople about better ways to live with land, Thoreau resisted joining a 'movement', in environmental activism. He presents his reasoning in 'Civil Disobedience', where he argues that political change emerges from convergent actions of all persons with a conscience who, based on their independent moral reasoning, resist participation in social injustice.
