Trying Leviathan

Description:

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. - Publisher.

subjects: Trials, litigation,  Classification,  Whales,  Speciesism,  Animal rights,  Whaling,  Zoology, united states,  Animals, social aspects,  Animal industry, law and legislation,  Trials (Tax evasion),  History,  Whale oil,  Taxation,  Law and legislation,  Zoology,  Fischöl,  Natur,  Ordnung,  Prozess,  Walfang,  Wala,  Systematik,  Walvissen,  Taxonomie,  Controversen,  Processen (rechtspraak),  United States of America,  New York State,  Natural science,  Trials,  Cases,  Legal history,  Valar,  Historia,  Valfångst,  Zoologi,  Sociala aspekter,  Rättegångar,  Wale,  Steuer,  Social aspects

People: James Maurice (fl. 1818),  Samuel Judd (fl. 1818)

Places: New York,  New York (State)