false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1181339669m/1140080.jpg 1140080 1 <p>In <i>Moby-Dick</i>, Ishmael declares, "Be it known that, waiving all argument, I take the good old fashioned ground that a whale is a fish, and call upon holy Jonah to back me." Few readers today know just how much argument Ishmael is waiving aside. In fact, Melville's antihero here takes sides in one of the great controversies of the early nineteenth century--one that ultimately had to be resolved in the courts of New York City. In <i>Trying Leviathan</i>, D. Graham Burnett recovers the strange story of Maurice v. Judd, an 1818 trial that pitted the new sciences of taxonomy against the then-popular--and biblically sanctioned--view that the whale was a fish. The immediate dispute was mundane: whether whale oil was fish oil and therefore subject to state inspection. But the trial fueled a sensational public debate in which nothing less than the order of nature--and how we know it--was at stake. Burnett vividly re-creates the trial, during which a parade of experts--pea-coated whalemen, pompous philosophers, Jacobin lawyers--took the witness stand, brandishing books, drawings, and anatomical reports, and telling tall tales from whaling voyages. Falling in the middle of the century between Linnaeus and Darwin, the trial dramatized a revolutionary period that saw radical transformations in the understanding of the natural world. Out went comfortable biblical categories, and in came new sorting methods based on the minutiae of interior anatomy--and louche details about the sexual behaviors of God's creatures.</p><p> When leviathan breached in New York in 1818, this strange beast churned both the natural and social orders--and not everyone would survive.</p> 1127365 22 10 2007 Trying Leviathan: The Nineteenth-Century New York Court Case That Put the Whale on Trial and Challenged the Order of Nature total:8|5:1|4:3|3:2|2:1|1:1| 8 26 41 5 2 0 false false Thu Nov 19 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Thu Nov 19 18:10:58 -0800 2009 Thu Nov 19 18:25:21 -0800 2009 Moby Dick, but not quite as long. It is the story of how the legal system in 1818 takes on the new science of taxonomy to challenge the view of the whale as fish. Burnett looks upon the trial in great detail, examining the views of whalers...more...]]> 3 0 false false Fri Jan 02 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Fri Nov 07 05:25:46 -0800 2008 Fri Jan 02 07:02:44 -0800 2009 1 0 false false Sat May 24 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sat Oct 24 01:14:41 -0700 2009 Sat Oct 24 01:14:41 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Thu Apr 10 07:27:45 -0700 2008 Thu Sep 13 11:28:27 -0700 2007 Thu Sep 13 11:28:49 -0700 2007 0 0 false false Sun May 11 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sun Feb 24 09:00:45 -0800 2008 Sun May 11 09:12:39 -0700 2008 0 0 false false Fri Nov 06 17:20:44 -0800 2009 Fri Nov 06 17:20:44 -0800 2009 4 0 false false Sat Jul 25 18:21:16 -0700 2009 Sat Jul 25 18:21:16 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Wed Jul 08 08:16:33 -0700 2009 Wed Jul 08 08:16:33 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Sat Jun 20 00:26:42 -0700 2009 Sat Jun 20 00:26:48 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Wed May 20 23:13:32 -0700 2009 Wed May 20 23:13:36 -0700 2009 3 0 false false Sun Jun 14 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Apr 07 07:46:29 -0700 2009 Sun Jun 14 22:56:44 -0700 2009 1 4 0 false false Mon Mar 09 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Mar 05 19:49:03 -0800 2009 Tue Mar 10 05:55:19 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Wed Feb 18 05:51:17 -0800 2009 Wed Feb 18 05:51:17 -0800 2009 0 0 false false Thu Feb 12 15:10:10 -0800 2009 Thu Feb 12 15:10:10 -0800 2009 0 0 false false Wed Feb 11 13:57:32 -0800 2009 Wed Feb 11 13:57:35 -0800 2009 0 0 false false Thu Jan 08 10:17:12 -0800 2009 Thu Jan 08 10:17:15 -0800 2009 0 0 false false Sat Jan 03 13:54:06 -0800 2009 Sat Jan 03 13:54:09 -0800 2009 0 0 false false Sun Nov 16 06:50:53 -0800 2008 Sun Nov 16 06:51:01 -0800 2008 0 0 false false Thu Nov 13 09:46:29 -0800 2008 Thu Nov 13 09:46:33 -0800 2008 0 0 false false Sat Oct 11 13:29:08 -0700 2008 Sat Oct 11 13:29:08 -0700 2008 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=1140080