PHIL V 2100y Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Chemical Abstracts Service, Phi Beta Kappa Society, Eval
4 Nov 2015
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
We"ve moved from european thinkers to american thinkers. 1803 in boston, really poor, father was minister, lots of siblings, father died when he was 8, mother turned house into boarding house to make ends meet. Emerson went to harvard at age 14 and taught his first class at age 15 (but going to college early was common); graduated from harvard middle of his class; wasn"t considered a prodigy; he really moved up. He spent a lot of time percolating, thinking about things; he read a lot; took notes on what he read; he also wrote in his journal every day about everything. He got married to ellen at a young age, he became a minister, ellen got tuberculosis and died at 21; he went back and opened her coffin; he lived through direct experience. He was reading about science at the time of ellen"s death; these two things combined led him to break from the church.
