Volume 25, Number 14 · September 28, 1978
Heroes in Nature
By Stephen Jay Gould
A Species of Eternity
by Joseph Kastner
Knopf, 350 pp., $15.00
Taxonomy, the science of classifying and ordering organisms, has an undeserved reputation as a harmless, and mindless, activity of listing, cataloguing, and describing—consider the common idea of a birdwatcher, up at 5:30 in the morning with his binoculars, short pants, and 'life list' of every bird he has seen. Even among fellow scientists, taxonomy is often treated as 'stamp collecting,' while its practitioners are viewed much as the Biblical hyraxes—'a feeble folk that dwelleth among the rocks.'
Review, 1933 words
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