Title: The platypus and the mermaid, and other figments of the classifying imagination
First published: 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.
Subjects: History, Zoology, Natural history, Popular culture, Classification, Animals, classification, Natural history, great britain, Zoology, great britain, Animals, New York Times reviewed, Names, Biology, Terms and phrases
Places: Great Britain
Time periods: 19th century, 18th century
LC classification: QL351 .R57 1997