Following the Traces of the Whale

A media and knowledge history of biology and oceanography in the wake of whalers.

Again and again, the whale escapes scientific classification and representability. Whales are literally impossible to grasp – when the new biological sciences began to explain »life« in the 19th century, whales remained a problem. However, whalers traversed the oceans of the world in the 19th century, on a mission to track them down. Cartographers followed in the wake of the whalers, discovering the Northwest Passage and the Pacific Ocean, while natural historians and zoologists accompanied them into the habitats of the whales.
Felix Lüttge tells the story of the whalers who followed the whales, and of the scientists who followed the whalers respectively. It is a media and science history of the whale as well as the oceans that were crossed and surveyed in its pursuit. Lüttge describes the complex exchange processes involved as the whalers and scientists gathered economic, oceanographic, zoological and geographical knowledge.