As I spend the day setting up my new aquarium, I cannot help but ponder Lulu Miller's book 'Why Fish Don't Exist'. Am I delusional for thinking that what I have in my aquarium isn't really there? No. Her argument is not that 'fish' aren't real. Her argument is that the category 'fish' does not exist due to the massive diversity of biological features amongst fish. For instance, what we classify as a fish is a vertebrate that lives in water its entire life. Most fish have scales, fins and use gills to absorb oxygen from the water around them. However, not all aquatic species that appear intuitively to be fish are fish. For instance, whales, dolphins and porpoises are mammals.
While the science tells us one thing, our intuition tells us another. Our intuition tells us fish are fish. That when you see a fish you know it is a fish and that is all there is to it. One could justifiably argue from intuition that to dismiss fish as a category is simply pedanticism which does nothing to assist us in ordering or understanding our relations to 'fish'. For instance, imagine working as a fisherman and trying to explain what you just caught. Someone asks you 'what have you been doing all day' and you respond 'catching object 1, 2 and 3. What sort of response do you think you would get from the person asking? They haven't been given anything descriptive. Just a label that could be applied to anything. Talk about frustrating! Not surprisingly, the general population has not absorbed the fact that 'fish' do not exist as a category into their vocabulary.
So why does it matter? What value is there in accepting that the category fish does not exist as a scientific fact? Through her investigation of David Star Jordan, Lulu Miller discovers a history within the scientific community that sought to understand the natural order of the world and who set about classifying and naming all its components (creatures, minerals etc) and placing them into a hierarchical order. One of the great failures of this system was that it ultimately put humans at the top and overlooked many of the evolutionary relationships between different species.
Lulu Miller points out that when Charles Darwin wrote the origin of species he challenged this hierarchical thinking. He demonstrated a way to order the world according to the evolutionary relationships between different species. However, while this approach led to the realization that 'fish' as a self-contained category of species do not exist, it was not without its own issues. Mostly, the issues were political.
The taxonomic hierarchy which put humans at the top would see all the creatures below as a moral lesson for humanity as to what could happen to them should they follow their baser instincts. When Darwin's theories started to take hold the moral order of nature was thrown out and replaced with chaos and evolution of species based on the survival of the fittest. This change in thinking came about while David Starr Jordan was busy classifying the various species of fish in the sea. He willingly abandoned his prior teaching in the natural moral order of nature and adopted the Darwinian approach. However, in doing so he never quite made it to the realization that fish do not exist in such a system.
Instead, after classifying a 5th of all the 'fish' we know of today, David Starr Jordan took his classification skills and applied them to the human species. Declaring some to be 'unfit' for the production of progeny. He campaigned for a eugenics program that would sterilize those deemed to be 'unfit' for human society. His ideas gained much support. People feared that society would degenerate into imbeciles if sterilization of the 'unfit' did not take place. However, such thinking fails to take into account that survival of the fittest also requires genetic diversity.
How does this relate to fish not existing? The classification of 'unfit' likewise does not exist as a scientific fact. By playing god, eugenics thwarts the evolutionary process by limiting the gene pool and therefore the ability for species to survive in the countless environmental situations they find themselves in. What the fish reminds us of is the value of diversity and the individual. That each individual, regardless of their characteristics, matters. That you and me and them or they matter. That we are not 'unfit' to breed. That we have a right to life.
In this sense, the fish is a symbol of rebellion against those who would tell you that you are not worth anything. That you are insignificant. That you don't matter! What Lulu Miller uncovered, was that within the relationships between those that survived incarceration and forced sterilization for being deemed 'unfit', was love, joy, and life. These categorically 'unfit' people were having significant relationships with one another. Brightening each others day as they came to terms with the fact that their dreams of having children of their own had been forcibly taken away by those who thought they knew better. The fish reminds us to be humble. That not everything fits neatly into our systems of classification and that hierarchical thinking is doomed to turn against us. In short, you matter!
