Nature as Text: Reflections on Wordsworth's The Tables Turned: An Evening Scene on the same Subject

I found this piece extremely interesting for a couple of reasons. The first is that Wordsworth moves this poem to the second position in the 1800 edition signifying its great importance within the overall work. I am also extremely interested in the idea that we should read nature as a text. In the poem, the poet urges the reader to "quit your books" (line 3).  He then goes on to assert that the reader should instead learn wisdom and morality from nature. Near the end of the poem, he states, "Enough of science and of art; / Close up these barren leaves" (lines 29-30). The idea that manuscript leaves are barren compared to natural leaves proves especially interesting in the context of science and especially geology at the time.
 
In scientist Georges Cuvier's Discourse on the Revolutionary Upheavals on the Surface of the Globe and On the Changes Which They Have Produced in the Animal Kingdom (1825), Cuvier explains that the difference between he and other scientists is in the way he views fossils.  He states,
 
"[Other scholars'] works will be valuable collections of materials. But more occupied with animals or with plants, considered in themselves, than with the theory of the earth, or looking upon these petrified remains or fossils as curiosities rather than as historical documents or, finally, contenting themselves with partial explanations for the deposit of each piece, they have almost always neglected to seek out general laws concerning the position or the relationship of the fossils with the strata." (emphasis mine)

This statement is fascinating, because Cuvier is claiming that his extraordinary knowledge results from his perception of fossils as text. Cuvier, like Wordsworth, is arguing that we should not merely look on the natural world with curiosity, but read it as a text.  It is also interesting that while Wordsworth is looking at nature as a text in the present, Cuvier looks at it historically, and Mary Shelley (The Last Man) will suggest that nature can be read to tell both the past and the future.

However, the poet in Wordsworth's poem does not seem comfortable with the role of science. Even before line 29, he states, "Our meddling intellect / Mishapes the beauteous forms of things; / --We murder to dissect" (lines 26-28).  The poet seems to already distrust human nature in the ability to read the natural world without wanting to manipulate it in a murderous way.