Carl Zimmer, a science writer, expresses his fascination with Herman Melville's chapter in Moby-Dick on the anatomy of whales, "Cetology," which frequently is ignored or considered irrelevant when the novel is taught in literature classes. What Zimmer gleans from Melville's minute descriptions of whales:
"Cetology" reminds the reader that Melville came before Darwin. Ishmael tries to make sense of the diversity of whales, and he can only rely on the work of naturalists who lacked a theory of evolution to make sense of the mammalian features on what looked like fish. You couldn’t ask for a better subject for a writer looking for some absurd feature of the natural world that could serve as a wall against which Western science could bang its head.
The people I know who don’t like the "whale stuff" in Moby Dick probably hate this chapter. It seems to do nothing but grind the Ahab-centered story line to a halt. (No movie version of Moby Dick has put "Cetology" on film.) But do you really think that a writer like Melville would just randomly wedge a chapter like "Cetology" into a novel for no reason–not to mention the dozens of other chapters just like it? Or perhaps it would be worth trying to find out what Melville had in mind, even if you might have to do a bit of outside reading about Carl Linnaeus or Richard Owen? It would be quite something if students could be co-taught Moby Dick by English professors and biologists.
(Image of a sperm whale via Wikimedia Commons)
The Dish 