One can understand very well Emerson’s view of ‘evolution’ and how it is more truthful to life and experience than Darwin’s, if and only if one trains one’s ‘mind’ to suspend acculturated ‘perception framing habits’.

Without suspending these habits, it is pointless to ‘debate’ an Emersonian ‘worldview’ with others.  Emerson realized this and would not accept invitations to debate his views with those who were clearly coming from a different set of basic ‘framing’ assumptions than he.  There would be no point since, by coming from different foundations, the two would be talking at crossed purposes, unless they preceded their debate with a debate on those different foundations.

Emerson declared what his were, but many people didn’t listen, so in spite of Emerson’s readings and writings being extraordinarily inspirational, the logicians working them over concluded that they boiled down to nothing tangible and usable, that they were all ‘smoke and mirrors’ e.g;

“Dr. Burnap of Baltimore described Transcendentalism as “a new philosophy which has risen, maintaining that nothing is everything in general, and everything is nothing in particular.”” (more…)