Lulu Miller

A wondrous debut from an extraordinary new voice in nonfiction, Why Fish Don’t Exist is a dark and astonishing tale of love, chaos, scientific obsession, and—possibly—even murder. David Starr Jordan was a taxonomist, a man possessed with bringing order to the natural world. In time, he would be credited with discovering nearly a fifth of the fish known to humans in his day. But the more of the hidden blueprint of life he uncovered, the harder the universe seemed to try to thwart him. His specimen collections were demolished by lightning, by fire, and eventually by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake—which sent more than a thousand of his discoveries, housed in fragile glass jars, plummeting to the floor. In an instant, his life’s work was shattered. Many might have given up, given in to despair. But Jordan? He surveyed the wreckage at his feet, found the first fish he recognized, and confidently began to rebuild his collection. And this time, he introduced one clever innovation that he believed would at last protect his work against the chaos of the world. When NPR reporter Lulu Miller first heard this anecdote in passing, she took Jordan for a fool—a cautionary tale in hubris, or denial. But as her own life slowly unraveled, she began to wonder about him. Perhaps instead he was a model for how to go on when all seemed lost. What she would unearth about his life would transform her understanding of history, morality, and the world beneath her feet. Part biography, part memoir, part scientific adventure, Why Fish Don’t Exist reads like a fable about how to persevere in a world where chaos will always prevail.

A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life

Why Fish Don't Exist

Syrina

Maybe Cape Cod is fertile ground for existential transformation

I made a ceremony of popping each pill out of its little plastic bubble. One pill per minute. Even atheists like ritual.

Perhaps he had cracked something essential about how to have hope in a world of no promises, about how to carry forward on the darkest days. About how to have faith without Faith.

I went over to the evolutionists with the grace of a cat the boy “leads” by its tail across the carpet!

Is there any downside to living life behind rose-colored lenses?

The power of the rosy lens seems to have a limit. And when it runs out, the fact of your impotence will really sting.

When you give up the stars you get a universe.

Scientists, de Waal points out, can be some of the worst offenders -employing technical language to distance ourselves from the rest of the animals. They call “kissing” in chimps “mouth-to-mouth contact”; they call “friends” between partners"; they interpret primates favorite affiliation showing that crows and chimps can make tools as being somehow evidence qualitatively different from the kind of toolmaking said to define humanity. If an animal can beat us at a cognitive task ike certain bird species can remember the precise locations of thousands of seeds--they write it off as instinct, not intelligence. This and so many more tricks of language are what de Waal has termed "linguistic castration." The way we use our tongues to disempower animals, the way we invent words to maintain our spot at the top.

taylor miles hopkins

"Ignorance is the most delightful science in the world because it is acquired without labor or pains and keeps the mind from melancholy.”

She said she had sympathy for the fish, then. Sympathy for the idea that once you name something, you tend to stop looking at it.

Why Fish Don't Exist quotes

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