If you want to learn anything, start with out-of-date science. You can read the latest reports of scientific journals, study advanced biology and chemistry and so forth, but that will only get you so far. You need disreputable texts, you need fanciful conjecture, old wives' tales, hasty assumption, poor observation, bias, faulty method.
Colin Dickey takes us through C. P. Idyll's Abyss, and in the process reminds us of the folly and beauty of taxonomic quests. All taxonomic quests seem beautiful and foolish, but so deep underwater, so far from sunlight--all of that work is under more pressure and a whole lot less light.
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