Section A20: The Complete Amateur Naturalist
This class collaborates with "The Rituals of Dinner" and "The Natural History of New England Forests" seminars.
"Study Nature, not Books."
-- Louis Agassiz
We will not entirely abandon books. They are actually quite useful in the field as aids to learning scientific names and classifications and for making identifications. Furthermore books are the source of some wonderful examples of nature writing, some of which we will read. However, this seminar will be somewhat less confined to a classroom than most. We will also be making collections, doing some microscopy and taking field trips. This may seem to be an old fashion approach to science--observing, collecting and cataloguing but does it still work? Are there discoveries still to be made by amateur naturalists who are versatile in their interests and curious enough to make detailed observations? That is one of the topics we will explore in this seminar by reading and discussing works of great naturalists like Charles Darwin. Students will be keeping note and sketchbooks, learning to "specialize" as amateurs and writing about nature.
