Trying Leviathan - Burnett, D. Graham

In "Moby-Dick", Ishmael declares, 'Be it known that, waiving all argument, I take the good old fashioned ground that a whale is a fish, and call upon holy Jonah to back me'. This book recovers the story of Maurice versus Judd, an 1818 trial that pitted the new sciences of taxonomy against the biblically sanctioned-view that the whale was a fish.