The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur

December 17District of Nature

As plants convert the minerals into food for animals, so each person converts some raw material in nature to human use. The inventors of fire, electricity, magnetism, iron, lead, glass, linen, silk, cotton; the makers of tools; the inventor of decimal notation; the geometer; the engineer; the musician, severally make an easy way for all through unknown and impossible confusions. Each person is, by secret liking, connected with some district of nature, whose agent and interpreter they are, as Linnæus, of plants; Huber, of bees; Dalton, of atomic forms; Euclid, of lines; Newton, of fluxions.

Ralph Waldo Emerson—Uses of Great Men (1849)

In this reading Emerson seems to describe something akin to “entrepreneurial photosynthesis.”

Physiologically speaking, humans are not capable of harnessing the sun to activate the chemical reactions needed to sustain our bodies as plants do, but converting some raw material, even thought, into something useful is the burden of every business.

Emerson's belief that we are all here for our singular purpose is fortified by his thought that “[e]ach person is, by secret liking, connected with some district of nature.”

At the time, he was referring to human nature rather than entrepreneurial nature, but is there much difference?

A distinctive element of Emerson's self-reliance (as long as we're staying in the science theme) is symbiosis. That we are self-reliant, we have our own path, but not self-subsistent, we rely ...