Collect The Sounding Of The Whale: Science And Cetaceans In The Twentieth Century Interpreted By D. Graham Burnett Issued As Textbook
of you may remember that I really enjoyed Trying Leviathan about antrial in NYC about whether a whale is fish or not, that book uses the trial lenses to explore how people at the time thought about whales.
So when I saw the same author had written a book aboutth century whale science I was excited.
But I didn't realize until I was given a copy of this book that it was giant, overpages.
Anyways this was amazingly meticulously researched book full of fascinating information, I would have liked a bit more focus on how ordinary people thought about whales and bit less committee process.
So part of this where a bit of a slog for me, However if you are interested in the nitty gritty of how science and policy interact this book is a treasure trove.
A tough readI rechecked from library twice, and gave up onof the chapters, Very dense half the text is footnotes, Definitely well researched and detailed, but I would have been satisfied with apage summary and a less erudite vocabulary.
I enjoyed the chapter on British and Norwegian whaling and "hipboot" whale science, and the chapter on America's interest
in whale conservation.
I'm writing a review of this for sitelinkwww, Palarch. nl but will briefly comment here:
As a paleontologist that studies whales, I found the accounts of Remington Kellogg to be my initial draw to the book.
But as a whole, I feel now much more connected to my science and the way in which it formed.
I can easily see how these people could think the way they did, and the author deserves a huge credit for carefully illuminating those patterns of thoughts and feelings.
I'm thoroughly impressed, it was well worth the length and time it took to read it.
I was expecting something along the lines of a study of whale behaviour not the history of whaling.
Upon picking this up, I thought it would focus more on the actual work done on whales than the political history behind the whaling industry and international regulation, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
This is an enormous book, and don't know if I'll get to every chapter, but I'll try because his prose is gorgeous! i will probably never finish this book, but god damn it is impressive/engaging A great brick of a book Professor Burnett has summarized the history of the science of whales elegantly, if in occasionally excruciating detail.
The original whale experts had to work closely with the whale industry, as it gave them access to the bodies and organs of these creatures, while later on in theth century, it was antisubmarine warfare that gave scientists insight into the whales' vocalizations and echolocations.
This is also the saga of the whales themselves, approaching extinction as sources of meat and oil, and then becoming the very symbols of the ecology movement.
There is much emphasis perhaps too much placed upon the lives of the scientists themselves, One should also be aware that almost half of the book is made up of footnotes, so it would seem, and even the author thinks that the footnotes themselves need footnotes.
I got through the book by ignoring them it made for a much smoother read, But there is much to learn and ponder here for the student of the history of science.
First rate. oh my, that was an ordeal! i was expecting something entirely different, basically a massive new textbook on Cetacea biology and environmental biology did i horribly misread the NYT review, or did the reviewer not read the book.
no, that was not at all what D, Graham Burnett was setting out to do in this doorstop of a tome, he's some kind of crazy hyperacademic historian, versed in disciplines i've never thought to differentiate, and certainly never contemplated by herodotus or gibbon.
i think it was around page:
that i loudly cried out TELL US ABOUT THE FUCKING WHALES for the first time.
i had no idea what he was talking about at moments like this, and eventually just rolled my eyes and skipped forward a few pages.
i have not been so bewildered by terminology "partisans of strongprogram SSK" since dating a "poststructuralist women's studies/queer theorist" a few weeks ago, which yeah good luck getting a job with that.
but! when not reveling in useless hieratics and frankly even they are kinda wryly amusing, because Prof.
Burnett is obviously quite brilliant, and you're just like wow dude, you really waste your brain thinking about this shit go do some semiconductor physics!, and he's an absolutely perfect technical writer at all times.
exhibit:
someone needs transfix this footnote upon a sharp stick before it becomes selfaware and destroys us all.
so whynicholas you ask, well friends,
there's still a whole hell of a lot of awesome whale stuff among thesepages
it is a technically flawless book
he's linguistically classical as a motherfucker, full of a deliciously eurocentric dead white man sprachgefühl that seems entirely out of character.
learned references abound, and he's not miserly with the actual Greek glyphs, the guy's clearly read five pages for every one of mine, and remembered twenty, great fun this past fortnight cursing and digging out the ol' OEDe,
absolutely encyclopedic regarding cetacean history
he's a total dick, lengthy footnotes just totally talking sweet smack about all the knownothing jabroni whatnots who've come before him and he totally deserves to do so.
some great character studies here, though highly dispassionate ones,
footnotes often give descriptions like "address of some hoary timeless Norwegian archivist who's lived off butter crisps, whitefish oil and Sterno foryears, BaldersgateA, N, Oslo, Back bedroom, under bed, red folder.
Previously unknown in the literature, " you can say many things but you can in no way say Prof, Burnett did not set out to write the book of, . . whatever exactly it is, and by God succeeded,
in a term Prof, Burnett might have used himself, this is a fine example of stormannsgalskap, if it weren't for all the bullshit, i'd even generally recommend it, unfortunately, i doubt anyone but another weird historian or fellow halfmad cetaceancrazy Samoans who ought be getting married instead of readingpage treatises on whale policing would read it, and it's expensive at.
leave this one on the Great Amazon Wish List in Heaven, my friends,
had to remove the "snapcracklepopscience" tag this book is absolutely not fucking around.
From the Bibles “Canst thou raise leviathan with a hook” to Captain Ahabs “From Hells heart I stab at thee!,” from the trials of Job to the legends of Sinbad, whales have breached in the human imagination as looming figures of terror, power, confusion, and mystery.
In the twentieth century, however, our understanding of and relationship to these superlatives of creation underwent some astonishing changes, and with The Sounding of the Whale, D.
Graham Burnett tells the fascinating story of the transformation of cetaceans from grotesque monsters, useful only as wallowing kegs of fat and fertilizer, to playful friends of humanity, bellwethers of environmental devastation, and, finally, totems of the counterculture in the Age of Aquarius.
When Burnett opens his story, ignorance reigns: even Nature was misclassifying whales at the turn of the century, and the only biological study of the species was happening in gruesome Arctic slaughterhouses.
But in the aftermath of World War I, an international effort to bring rational regulations to the whaling industry led to an explosion of global researchand regulations that, while wellmeaning, were quashed, or widely flouted, by whaling nations, the first shot in a battle that continues to this day.
The book closes with a look at the remarkable shift in public attitudes toward whales that began in thes, as environmental concerns and new discoveries about whale behavior combined to make whales an object of sentimental concern and public adulation.
A sweeping history, grounded in nearly a decade of research, The Sounding of the Whale tells a remarkable story of how science, politics, and simple human wonder intertwined to transform the way we see these behemoths from below.
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