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List of Figures xi
Chapter One: Introduction 1
The Peace Offering That Stank 1
Maurice v. Judd and the History of Science 5
From Dock to Docket 14
Chapter Two: Common Sense 19
Manhattan and Its Whales 19
Chapter Three: The Philosophical Whale 44
Samuel Latham Mitchill and Natural History in New York City 44
"No More a Fish than a Man" 61
Taxonomy at the Bar 72
Chapter Four: Naturalists in the Crow's Nest 95
What the Whalemen Knew 95
Chapter Five: Men of Affairs 145
The Whale in the Swamp ?145
Chapter Six: The Jury Steps Out 166
The Knickerbockers Slay a Yankee Whale 166
Who Decides Who Decides? 167
Picking Up the Pisces 178
Chapter Seven: Conclusion 190
New Science, New York, New Nation 190
Epilogue:Whales and Fish, Philosophers and Historians, Science and Society 210
Acknowledgments 223
Bibliography 225
Index 247
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Kathy Sassa
reviewed Trying Leviathan: The Nineteenth-Century New York Court Case That Put the Whale on Trial and Challenged the Order of Nature on February 03, 2021
Trying Leviathan: The Nineteenth-Century New York Court Case That Put the Whale on Trial and Challenged the Order of Nature
My main issue with this book is that the title seems misleading, and the author claims that this is putting science on trial, when really it isn't. This is a case of one man who used to be a whaler getting a job of inspecting fish oil. Instead of doing his job normally, he gets a little power hungry and annoys formal rivals by claiming whale oil is fish oil. And after some back and forth situations the whalers get together and file a suit, because he's hurting their profits.
It's really just a case about a poorly defined law (specifying fish oil but apparently not defining it) and a man using that to his advantage. The attorneys really turned it into a spectacle of trying to prove that scientifically a whale isn't a fish, but that was more of a red herring than anything.
It was an okay read. I would have liked it to be a little bit tighter in the scope. For instance, we had to learn about one single witness, his history in the tanning industry, and why he was mad as he testified. I don't really care, you could tell me in a sentence that he was notable in the tanning industry and I'd be happy. But I am sure more scholarly readers would argue that they needed to show their research, which they did.
So a well researched book with a slightly disappointing delivery for me. Still worth the read if you want to know what people in the general populace thought about whales, tons of information on that. It just doesn't really have a lot to do with the actual trial.
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