Student Question
What is the best way to understand nature according to the speaker in "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer"?
Quick answer:
According to the speaker in "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer," the best way to understand nature is through direct, personal experience and contemplation rather than through scientific lectures and data. The speaker finds the lecture unsettling and leaves to immerse himself in the quiet, mystical night, suggesting that true understanding comes from solitary reflection under the stars.
The subject of understanding nature plays a key role in Walt Whitman’s poem “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer.” The speaker sits obediently and apparently appreciates the scientific facts that the lecturer is presenting. The mathematical information and its mode of presentation in charts is convincing, but he starts having trouble paying full attention. In fact, he finds that the lecture makes him feel “troubled and sick.” This motivates him to leave the lecture room and wander off alone. The speaker’s words and the poem’s tone shift markedly at this point. It is then we see how the speaker feels about understanding nature, in direct contact and through spiritually minded contemplation. Rather than listen to someone else speak in a crowded room, the speaker needs to be alone in the quiet outdoors.
I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
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