Joseph Leidy: The Last Man Who Knew Everything by Leonard Warren, Yale
University Press, 拢25, ISBN 0300073593
Information Ecologies by Bonnie Nardi and Vicki O鈥橠ay, MIT Press,
拢19.50, ISBN 0262140667
Lasting fame is a rare beast. Out of the billions born since history began,
only a handful of the great, the good and the celebrated are still alive to us.
What propels some into Who鈥檚 Who and others into obscurity?
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Joseph Leidy isn鈥檛 one of history鈥檚 darlings. Few, in fact, will have heard
of him. Yet according to biographer Leonard Warren, this 19th-century
Philadelphian was 鈥渢he last man who knew everything鈥�.
The further we delve into the facts, the odder it seems that this
extraordinary polymath has sunk from sight. In his concise, lucid biography
Warren credits Leidy with being, among other things, the founder of American
vertebrate palaeontology; an international authority on anthropology,
entomology, botany, zoology, mineralogy, anatomy; the greatest authority on
microscopes in his country, one of the first to pioneer experimental cancer
research methods and an expert on gems consulted by the British Museum.
So why was Leidy edited out of history? Warren suggests several reasons, but
they all boil down to this: Leidy was not connected to the right networks. In
his lifetime, American scientific endeavour was all but ignored by Europeans.
Worse, Leidy鈥檚 approach鈥攄etailed naturalistic observation鈥攚as
鈥渙ld-fashioned鈥� compared with the experimental clinical investigation taking
over. It wasn鈥檛 timidity that kept him from the cutting-edge theoretical debates
of his time, but, sadly, his working-class roots: he felt ill at ease with the
wealthy gentleman-scientists of Philadelphia, argues Warren. Yet while the man
disappeared, his knowledge wasn鈥檛 lost. It is as if Leidy鈥檚 mass of data was a
remote, fertile island, and the papers he wrote seeds that drifted to distant
shores, where they generated disciplines whose roots have since been
forgotten.
A fanciful metaphor? Not at all: in Information Ecologies, Bonnie
Nardi and Vicki O鈥橠ay argue that the most productive way to look at people,
organisations and technologies is indeed as 鈥渋nformation ecologies鈥�. As in
natural ecologies its elements have complex interrelationships and exhibit
diversity, evolve and co-evolve, and have their own keystone species.
Nardi and O鈥橠ay would argue that metaphors don鈥檛 just describe, but actually
shape, our relationship with technology. If we view technology as a tool we see
ourselves as controlling it. If we treat it as a 鈥渢ext鈥濃�攁s do critical
theorists like Bruno Latour鈥攚e see technology as embodying aspects of our
culture which can be 鈥渞ead鈥� in different ways at different times. If we view
technology as a system, say Nardi and O鈥橠ay, we see ourselves as caught up
inside it.
Their prescriptions for evolving a thriving information ecology鈥斺�漺ork
from core values鈥�, 鈥減ay attention鈥� and 鈥渁sk strategic questions鈥濃�攎ay be
redolent of management manuals. But they are surely right to say that the
ecological view has value in encouraging us to play an active part in our
information ecologies rather than simply passively using whatever is provided
for us鈥攅specially on the Internet.
The latter, of course, replaces 鈥渒nowing everything鈥� with 鈥渒nowing how to
connect鈥�. Nardi and O鈥橠ay argue that the openness of the Internet is threatened
by powerful commercial interests. And openness seems vital for thriving
information ecologies. But when they call for people to 鈥渘urture and defend
local ecologies鈥�, Nardi and O鈥橠ay sound like internetworked environmentalists
railing against the tide of 鈥渃rass commercialism鈥�. Commerce and the creation of
wealth are vital in motivating all human activity, including the Internet. Are
Nardi and O鈥橠ay reluctant, one wonders, to stray from their own comfortable
information ecology? And if so, might their fate be similar to Leidy鈥檚?