Free I Have Landed by Stephen Jay Gould Page A

writer of fiction and the naturalist drew on a profound delight in precise comparative observation. For Nabokov, a work of nature was like a work of art. Or rather it
was
a profound work of art, by the greatest of all living artists, evolution, and as much a joy to the mind and a challenge to the intellect as a Shakespeare sonnet. Hence it deserved to be studied like it, with never ending attention to detail and patience.
    But perhaps the best summary of Nabokov’s convictions about the ultimate value of accurate detail can be found in “A Discovery,” a short poem written in 1943:
    Dark pictures, thrones, the stones that pilgrims kiss
Poems that take a thousand years to die
But ape the immortality of this
Red label on a little butterfly.
    (Again, some taxonomic exegesis must be provided to wrest general understanding from the somewhat elitist—scarcely surprising given his social background—and not always user-friendly Nabokov. Museum curators traditionally affix red labels only to “holotype” specimens—that is, to individuals chosen as official recipients of the name given to a new species. The necessity for such a rule arises from a common situation in taxonomic research. A later scientist may discover that the original namer of a species defined the group too broadly by including specimens from more than one genuine species. Which specimens shall then keep the original name, and which shall be separated out to receive a different designation for the newly recognized species? By official rules, the species of the designated holotype specimen keeps the original name, and members of the newly recognized species must receive a new name. Thus, Nabokov tells us that no product of human cultural construction can match the immortality of the permanent name-bearer for a genuine species in nature. The species may become extinct, of course, but the name continues forever to designate a genuine natural population that once inhabited the earth. The holotype specimen therefore becomes our best example of an immortal physical object. And the holotype specimen bears a red label in standard museum practice.)
    Nabokov’s two apparently disparate careers therefore find their common ground on the most distinctive feature of his unusual intellect and uncanny skill—the almost obsessive attention to meticulous and accurate detail that served both his literary productions and his taxonomic descriptions so well, andthat defined his uncompromising commitment to factuality as both a principle of morality and a guarantor and primary guide to aesthetic quality. Science and literature therefore gain their union on the most palpable territory of concrete things, and on the value we attribute to accuracy, even in smallest details, as a guide and an anchor for our lives, our loves, and our senses of worth.
    This attitude expresses a general belief and practice in science (at least as an ideal, admittedly not always achieved due to human frailty). Of all scientific subfields, none raises the importance of intricate detail to such a plateau of importance as Nabokov’s chosen profession of taxonomic description for small and complex organisms. To function as a competent professional in the systematics of Lepidoptera, Nabokov really had no choice but to embrace such attention to detail, and to develop such respect for nature’s endless variety.
    But this attitude to detail and accuracy carries no ineluctable status in literature—so Nabokov’s unaltered skills and temperament, now applied to his second profession, conferred distinction, if not uniqueness, upon him. The universal and defining excellence of a professional taxonomist built a substrate for the uncommon, and (in Nabokov’s case) transcendent, excellence of a writer. After all, the sheer glory of voluminous detail does not ignite everyone’s muse in literature. Some folks can’t stand to read every meandering and choppy mental