De följande 26 – 31, ss 120-137 berättar om hur fartyget ger sig ut på sin resa från Nantucket. Inledningsvis är det styrmännen som har befälet – det dröjer åtskilliga dagar innan Kapten Ahab dyker upp på kommandobryggan.
När jag så tänker;”Nu börjar det”, blir det plötsligt tvärstopp igen:
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Cetology (from Greek κῆτος, kētos, ”whale”; and -λογία, -logia) is the branch of marine mammal science that studies the approximately eighty species of whales, dolphins, and porpoise* in the scientific order Cetacea. Cetologists, or those who practice cetology, seek to understand and explain cetacean evolution, distribution, morphology, behavior, community dynamics, and other topics.
*porpoise=tumlare
I ett Wikipedaavsnitt betitlat:” Cetology och Moby Dick kan vi läsa”:
The cetology of Moby-Dick is the zoological classification and study of the properties of whales (i.e. cetology) introduced by United States author Herman Melville in his 1851 novel Moby-Dick. Although the novel is a work of fiction, Melville included sequences of chapters concerned largely with an objective discussion of the properties of whales. The observations, voiced through the narrator Ishmael, were largely drawn from Melville’s own first-hand experiences in whaling in the 1840s and include observations of various species from the order of Cetacea. The chapters in which Melville discusses whales in a scientific manner, though connected with the story of Captain Ahab and the Pequod, are often omitted in abridged versions of the novel.
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”Cetology” reminds the reader that Melville came before Darwin. Ishmael tries to make sense of the diversity of whales, and he can only rely on the work of naturalists who lacked a theory of evolution to make sense of the mammalian features on what looked like fish.
Plötsligt faller poletten ner…
dvs varför Melville beskriver valarna, särskilt THE Sperm Whale (Kaskelot) som
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