Trying Leviathan

The Nineteenth-Century New York Court Case That Put the Whale on Trial and Challenged the Order of Nature

Nonfiction, Science & Nature, Science, Other Sciences, History, Americas, United States
Cover of the book Trying Leviathan by D. Graham Burnett, Princeton University Press
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: D. Graham Burnett ISBN: 9781400833986
Publisher: Princeton University Press Publication: January 4, 2010
Imprint: Princeton University Press Language: English
Author: D. Graham Burnett
ISBN: 9781400833986
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Publication: January 4, 2010
Imprint: Princeton University Press
Language: English

In Moby-Dick, 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 Trying Leviathan, 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 recreates 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.

When leviathan breached in New York in 1818, this strange beast churned both the natural and social orders--and not everyone would survive.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

In Moby-Dick, 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 Trying Leviathan, 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 recreates 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.

When leviathan breached in New York in 1818, this strange beast churned both the natural and social orders--and not everyone would survive.

More books from Princeton University Press

Cover of the book Analytical Psychology in Exile by D. Graham Burnett
Cover of the book Awakening Giants, Feet of Clay: Assessing the Economic Rise of China and India by D. Graham Burnett
Cover of the book Heaven's Door by D. Graham Burnett
Cover of the book Some Problems of Unlikely Intersections in Arithmetic and Geometry (AM-181) by D. Graham Burnett
Cover of the book Wittgenstein Reads Freud by D. Graham Burnett
Cover of the book The Paradox of Vulnerability by D. Graham Burnett
Cover of the book Birds of Peru by D. Graham Burnett
Cover of the book I Hear My People Singing by D. Graham Burnett
Cover of the book The Expanding Circle by D. Graham Burnett
Cover of the book Thucydides by D. Graham Burnett
Cover of the book America in Italy by D. Graham Burnett
Cover of the book The Elements of Library Research by D. Graham Burnett
Cover of the book A New History of Classical Rhetoric by D. Graham Burnett
Cover of the book Epistemology by D. Graham Burnett
Cover of the book Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry by D. Graham Burnett
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy