In the following essay excerpt, Rowe examines how Thoreau likens human language to other natural phenomena in Walden.

To learn means: to become knowing. In Latin, knowing is qui vidit, one who has seen, has caught sight of something, and who never again loses sight of what he has caught sight of. To learn means: to attain to such seeing. To this belongs our reaching it; namely, on the way, on a journey. To put oneself on a journey, to experience, means to learn

- Heidegger, "Words," On the Way to Language

I have sought to re-name the things seen, now lost in chaos of borrowed titles, many of them inappropriate, under which the true character lies hid. In letters, in journals, in reports of happenings I have recognized new contours suggested by old words so that new names were constituted.

- William Carlos Williams, In the...