PMarione Site Admin
Joined: 26 Mar 2007 Posts: 883
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Posted: Tue Nov 20, 2007 7:56 pm Post subject: Trying Leviathan |
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From another list:
Trying Leviathan: The Nineteenth-Century New York Court Case That Put the Whale on Trial and Challenged the Order of Nature by D. Graham Burnett, Princeton University Press, 2007, ISBN 978-0691129501
Quote: | The book examines a legal case in 1818 which pitted the new science of taxonomy against the then-popular – and biblically sanctioned – view that the whale was a fish.” The court case arose out of the question whether whale oil was fish oil for state regulatory purposes, but of course the issue became a cultural one, much like the Scopes trial later in the century.
The author explores not only the legal and scientific parameters of his subject, he also delves into the intellectual culture of whaler society. |
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