Volume 44, Number 18 · November 20, 1997
Points of Order
By Richard Jenkyns
The Platypus and the Mermaid and Other Figments of the Classifying Imagination
by Harriet Ritvo
Harvard University Press, 288 pp., $29.95
'Measurement began our might,' said Yeats; and naming the animals was Adam's first task in the Garden of Eden. To name, sort, label, classify, and categorize—these are among man's earliest instincts; but as Harriet Ritvo observes in The Platypus and the Mermaid, naming and categorizing are so closely related that to distinguish between them can be difficult. Yet the distinction is important. 'What's in a name?' asked Juliet; 'that which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet.' But the infatuated girl was confused. When she demanded, 'Wherefore art thou Romeo?' she meant, 'Wherefore art thou Montague?' and indeed she soon recognizes her mistake:
Review, 3926 words
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