The platypus and the mermaid, and other figments of the classifying imagination
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Author
Publication
1997 - Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass, Massachusetts
Language
English
Word Count
72,000 words, Guess
Page Count
288 pages
Identifiers
- Open LibraryOL655371M
- ISBN-100674673573
- OCLC Control Number36186375
- Internet Archiveplatypusmerm00ritv
- Library of Congress Control Number97000405
and 2 more
- LibraryThing548217
- Goodreads1054107
Classifications
- DDC590/.1/2
- LCCQL351 .R57 1997
- LCCQL351.R57 1997
Description
This book captures the fervor of the Victorian age for classifying and categorizing every new specimen, plant or animal, that British explorers and soldiers and sailors brought home. As she depicts a whole complex of competing groups deploying rival schemes and nomenclatures, Harriet Ritvo shows us a society drawing and redrawing its own boundaries and ultimately identifying itself. A thoroughly absorbing account of taxonomy - as zoological classification and as anthropological study - The Platypus and the Mermaid offers a new perspective on the constantly shifting, ever suggestive interactions of scientific lore, cultural ideas, and the popular imagination.
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