D. Graham Burnett

Recounts the 1818 trial Maurice v. Judd in which the new science of taxonomy was pitted against a dispute over the regulation of whale oil and the then-popular view that the whale was a fish.

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

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.

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

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