{
"item_title" : "The Platypus and the Mermaid",
"item_author" : [" Harriet Ritvo "],
"item_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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The Platypus and the Mermaid : And Other Figments of the Classifying Imagination
Overview
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.
This item is Non-Returnable
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Details
- ISBN-13: 9780674673588
- ISBN-10: 0674673581
- Publisher: Harvard University Press
- Publish Date: October 1998
- Dimensions: 9.22 x 6.13 x 0.82 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.04 pounds
- Page Count: 308
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