On a blustery March morning in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, UConn Department of Earth Sciences professor Robert Thorson was out on the trails near his home, meditating on his morning reading of Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden.” Specifically, he was pondering a passage about science being a process of questioning and proof, the notion that evidence means everything. While admiring the perfect snowflakes that had landed on his glove, he had an epiphany.

Though Thoreau’s “Walden” started as a social critique, it took an unexpected scientific turn that culminated in the foundation text for America’s environmental movement. Thorson realized that “Walden,” regarded as a literary classic, became complete only when fueled by Thoreau’s scientific curiosity.

Thorson’s idea grew into the recently published “The Walden Experiments,” a book where he brings out the science of “Walden” as he reintroduces, contextualizes, and at times translates Thoreau for modern audiences.

Thorson makes a powerful case, adding momentum to the growing chorus of voices emphasizing the need for a holistic understanding of our world, joining STEM and the humanities, to guide us in how we approach the environmental, climate, and sustainability challenges of today. Thorson met with UConn Today to discuss The Walden Experiments project.

Can you talk about your goal of introducing or reintroducing readers to “Walden” through “The Walden Experiments,” and how your new book can also help bridge the gap between STEM and the humanities?

I wanted to write a book that you could give to people who had given up on reading “Walden” to encourage them to read it. “Walden” is a challenging read. The first chapter is bloated and scathing about the way we live our lives.

Yet, “Walden” is the founding, anchoring text for the environmental movement. Even if you have never read it, you should know about it. If you don’t go on to read “Walden,” that’s fine. If you read “The Walden Experiments,” you should know enough to know about the tone, pleas, humanity, and Thoreau’s humor.

This project is about sharing Thoreau’s prophetic ideas about nearly every environmental issue going on right now.

“Walden,” a salient feature of America’s literary canon was resuscitated by science. There is a message there. The image on the cover of “The Walden Experiments” shows one of Thoreau’s experiments that is neither literature nor philosophy. Graphically, he’s trying to find the limit – that’s what calculus does, finding the inflection point – of Walden Pond’s maximum depth. He did this in 1846, as a math geek with a piece of equipment and time on his hands. Thoreau’s conversion from a pie-in-the-sky, neoclassical, idealistic, transcendentalist, happens when he’s reading Darwin and Humbolt, and he makes a change with what he wants to do with his life. He found his thing and he was a happy camper up to the end.

It seems that within “The Walden Experiments” you are also working to set the record straight about misunderstood aspects of Thoreau to almost interpret the book for a modern audience. Can you talk about some of those aspects you try to address?

Thoreau comes across sometimes as arrogant. He is definitely sarcastic and hard to take at times. One of the funniest passages in “Walden” is where he describes the ties under the railroad. He calls them sleepers, and he says society is asleep while the tracks run over us.  Most people won’t get it, but it is a really funny passage. Read that and it will reinforce for the reader how witty and sarcastic he is.

“There is nothing inorganic” is your candidate for the most important line in “Walden,” can you expand on your reasoning why?

Basically, life comes from nonlife. What is life? There are philosophers that argue we should not even try to answer the question. But, scientifically, if you want to define it, you have to do so quantitatively. So, I included the Gibbs equation in the book.

We all know life came from nonlife because we are made of concentrations of sulfur, phosphorus, iron, carbon, and oxygen, that ultimately came from rock; whatever you need to make tissue out of, usually in volcanic situations. That was one of Thoreau’s fundamental understandings.

You include details about the relentless increase in carbon pumped into the atmosphere over the course of your writing of the book. Those details serve as an impactful demonstration of the pace of atmospheric carbon increase. Thoreau also detailed great changes to Walden and its surroundings 200 years ago, yet you and Thoreau both come across as hopeful in your writings. Can you talk about what gives you hope?

I’m worried about my grandkids and the world they are inheriting. There are students, colleagues, and others working to change the world. I refuse to become negative, it doesn’t serve any purpose. If you are too bummed out that you can’t do what you can to change the world, that won’t help others.

One line I included as an epigraph is “Enchantment is no delusion.” What Thoreau means is there is a cognitive, scientific, empirical understanding behind it and to my mind that magnifies the enchantment. Enchantment can come from a comprehensive understanding.