It’s all there but the thrill

Originally published 15 September 1986

Not long ago the British jour­nal Nature pub­lished a report titled “A new class of Echin­o­der­ma­ta from New Zealand.” In it the authors describe an ani­mal pre­vi­ous­ly unknown to sci­ence, nine of which were dis­cov­ered on water­logged wood dredged up from the ocean off the New Zealand coast.

Echin­o­der­ma­ta are a phy­lum, a cat­e­go­ry, of spiny marine ani­mals that includes starfish, sand dol­lars, and sea urchins. No new class of liv­ing echin­o­derms has been described since 1821. This new ani­mal from New Zealand dif­fers from all oth­er liv­ing echin­o­derms in sev­er­al anatom­i­cal details. The tiny crea­tures (they are not much big­ger than this let­ter O) have been infor­mal­ly dubbed “sea-daisies.” The offi­cial des­ig­na­tion of the new class is Con­cen­tri­cy­cloidea. The genus and species are Xylo­plax medusi­formis.

In sci­ence, liv­ing crea­tures are clas­si­fied accord­ing to a sys­tem that looks like a fam­i­ly tree. As one moves inward along a branch of the tree from twig to trunk — species, genus, fam­i­ly, order, class, phy­lum — the like­li­hood of find­ing a new mem­ber grows more and more remote, so the New Zealand find was no small thing.

The report in Nature fol­lows the stan­dard for­mat for announc­ing such a dis­cov­ery. First, the names for class, order, fam­i­ly, genus, and species, with ety­mol­o­gy (but not the evoca­tive nick­name). Next, a pre­cise account­ing of the cir­cum­stances of dis­cov­ery. Final­ly, a detailed descrip­tion of the animal.

Emotions not recorded

Miss­ing, as from all such reports, are the thoughts and emo­tions of the dis­cov­er­ers. Of them, we know only their names and their place of employment.

By a self-imposed pro­hi­bi­tion, sci­en­tif­ic report­ing allows lit­tle room for human emo­tion. We must rely on the imag­i­na­tion to sup­ply the feel­ings that were present at that mag­i­cal moment when the two New Zealan­ders and one Aus­tralian rec­og­nized that they had found some­thing sig­nif­i­cant­ly new — ela­tion, laugh­ter, amaze­ment, relief, joy in the suc­cess­ful hunt, sur­prise, grat­i­tude, the elec­tri­fy­ing tin­gle in the spine.

The nov­el­ist Vladimir Nabokov, who was also an accom­plished lep­i­dopter­ist, described the thrill of dis­cov­ery of a new but­ter­fly as being like that of a child who has learned to ride a bicy­cle. The dream at the back of every lep­i­dopter­ist’s mind, he wrote, whether climb­ing a moun­tain in New Guinea or cross­ing a bog in Maine, is of cap­tur­ing the first spec­i­men of a species unknown to science.

Nabokov had the good for­tune and intense plea­sure of describ­ing sev­er­al new species and sub­species of but­ter­flies. But­ter­flies belong to the phy­lum Arthro­po­da, a phy­lum that includes the insects, spi­ders, and crabs. Half a mil­lion species of insects alone have been described, and some zool­o­gists believe there are ten mil­lion more wait­ing to be dis­cov­ered. The echin­o­derms are a more restrict­ed phy­lum; only some 6000 liv­ing species are known. To dis­cov­er an echin­o­derm so dif­fer­ent as to require the cre­ation of a new class — such as Con­cen­tri­cy­loidea — must be a very great thrill indeed.

The thrill of discovery

Lit­er­ary reports such as Nabokov’s, that con­vey the thrill of dis­cov­ery, are rare. Let me recount one more, from Edmund Gosse’s auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Father and Son. Gosse’s father was a zool­o­gist and a writer of books on nat­ur­al his­to­ry. On June 29, 1859, before Edmund Gosse was the age of ten, he accom­pa­nied his father on a col­lect­ing expe­di­tion along the Devon shore. He found a crea­ture with which he was unac­quaint­ed, and ran with over­brim­ming plea­sure to announce the dis­cov­ery to his father.

It turned out to be not only a new species but a new genus to be added to the British fau­na, a sea-anemone known ever since as Phel­lia murocinc­ta, or walled corklet. Gosse’s rec­ol­lec­tions of “those deli­cious agi­ta­tions by the edge of the salt sea wave” vivid­ly sug­gest the excite­ment of adding a new twig to the tree of life.

It is not hard to guess that Alan Bak­er, Helen Clark, and Frank Rowe, the three echin­o­derm spe­cial­ists from Down Under, looked upon their nine lit­tle daisy-like spec­i­mens with some­thing akin to “deli­cious agi­ta­tion.” But there is noth­ing deli­cious or agi­tat­ed about their report in Nature. The report is devoid of passion.

The pro­sa­ic for­mu­las of sci­en­tif­ic report­ing serve an impor­tant pur­pose. They help main­tain sci­ence as a com­mu­nal enter­prise, free of the prej­u­dices of nation­al­i­ty, race, reli­gion, pol­i­tics, and per­son­al­i­ty that have plagued so many human enter­pris­es. It is the ide­al of sci­ence (unhap­pi­ly, not always achieved) that facts and the­o­ries stand unem­bell­ished, to be judged in inde­pen­dence of the quirks and agi­ta­tions of their dis­cov­ery or creation.

Mean­while, as we read the mat­ter-of-fact account of the dis­cov­ery of Xylo­plax medusi­formis (or “sea-daisy”), we must sup­ply for our­selves the miss­ing human dimen­sion, the heady kick of dis­cov­ery, what Nabokov called the “ardent and ardu­ous quest end­ing in the silky tri­an­gle of a fold­ed but­ter­fly lying on the palm of one’s hand.”