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An epic, extraordinary account of scientific rivalry and obsession in the quest to survey all of life on Earth—a competition whose consequences still reverberate today—from the bestselling author ofA Sense of the World. In the eighteenth century, two men—exact contemporaries and polar opposites—dedicated their lives to the same daunting task: identifying and describing all life on Earth.
Introduction Savants
Prelude The Mask and the Veil
The Great Chain of Being
Of the Linden Tree
A Course in Starvation
The Salt-Keeper’s Son
Vegetable Lambs and Barnacle Trees
Several Bridegrooms, Several Brides
The Greater Gift of Patience
Now in Blame, Now in Honor
The Seven-Headed Hydra of Hamburg
An Abridgment of the World Entire
Loathsome Harlotry
The Quarrel of the Universals
This Prodigious Multitude
Goldfish for the Queen
Covering Myself in Dust and Ashes
The Only Prize Available
Durable and Even Eternal
Baobab-zu-zu
So Many New and Unknown Parts
Governed by Laws, Governed by Whim
A General Prototype
Breaking the Lens
My Cold Years
The Price of Time
God’s Registrar
Germinal, Floreal, Thermidor, Messidor
Transformism and Catastrophism
Platypus
Laughably Like Mine
The Rhymes of the Universe
Most Human of Humans
A Large Web or Rather a Network
Notes and Sources