Whole Earth: Discovery One lovely aspect of discovery is that the required human talents defy rankings, formal education, and professions. This next section will tell a few discoverer tales: of tour guide Ted Parker, a man who held 4,000 bird songs in his head; of novelist Vladimir Nabokov's contribution to butterfly naturalist history; of parataxonomists changing from their lives as farmers to become sharp-eyed field collectors; of painter Audubon's tricks on the true maniac, Rafinesque. Add to these every sort of "amateur" and "professional" naturalist, as well as the academic specialist (Miriam Rothschild and her love of fleas; E.O. Wilson on ants) and you cook up quite a wonderful dialog, tinged with competition, possessiveness, ego and cross-checking, but fundamentally honoring the pursuit of mysteries in life.



I'm always interested in amateur (read: untainted by petty disciplinary politics) scholarship and people following their scholary bliss.