Summer Light Reading #2: Moby-Dick as a history of sciece

This summer, I read Moby Dick for the first time.  While I knew the novel dealt with whales (spoiler alert!), I did not realize how much great history of science material Melville's novel contains.  Moby-Dick is obviously worth studying as a work of literature, but is also worth reading to get a glimpse a popular natural history circa 1850.  Of course, the internet is a great check on one's ego; a quick Wikipedia search brings up an entire article on the "Cetology of Moby-Dick".   The wikipedia article refers to chapter XXXII (which you can read here), in which Melville proposes his own taxonomy of whales.  I will not try and analyze this chapter in-depth without first brushing up on my 19th century natural history and knowledge of whale taxonomy.  Instead, what I find striking is the fact that such a technical digression was included in a novel.  I am curious how the average reader in 1851 reacted to this chapter; from what I can remember from a history of modern biology course I took, natural history in Victorian England became a past-time for a newly minted middle-class with too much time on its hands.  Just as many science literate laypeople today know the basics of evolutionary biology, I'm assuming that a science literate reader then would have known something about Linnean taxonomy.  These are interesting questions to pursue, and despite the wikipedia article, it seems to be an area open for exploration (though a search of an EBSCOhost HSMT database does yield a dissertation on "Melville in the Age of Darwin and Paley").  While this chapter is the most striking example of natural history working its way into the novel, other examples abound.  For historians of technology, the book offers lots as well-- Melville provides rich descriptions of naval technology and everyday life on a whaling vessel.  Given Moby Dick's length, the whole text would not fit into a college course, but long excerpts, such as chapter XXXII might fit nicely into a history of biology course.  Incorporating fiction into history of science seems to be an increasingly hot idea; Romantic literature (think Mary Shelley's Frankenstein) abounds with descriptions and discussions of science.  Moby Dick seems to fit nicely into these studies.