BOOK REVIEW
Drawing Out Leviathan,
A Review
by Peter Escalante
Drawing Out Leviathan: Dinosaurs and
the Science Wars
by Keith M. Parsons
Indiana University Press, 2001
T
HIS BOOK DEALS largely with
the question of dinosaurs in the
human past. But it is not a cre-
ationist treatise; Dr Parsons holds the main-
stream evolutionary account. It is rather a
study in how fossil remains were, and are,
imaginatively reconstructed, and thus a case
study in scientific research and the role of
interpretation. The titular theme of “draw-
ing out Leviathan” is a reference to both the
artist’s pencil and to the original textual les-
son of the limits of human knowledge.
As recently as the 70s and 80s, one
could see clunky, grey-green tyranno-
saurs lumbering upright through swampy
jungles with peculiarly tiny arms outstre-
ched, but now, due to the imaginative
revolution of Robert Bakker, we now see
depictions of brilliantly colored, birdlike-
sometimes even feathered- beasts speed-
ing through ancient forests. The change is
10 THE COMMONS
dramatic, nearly as dramatic as the recent
academic promotion of Neanderthals to
fully human status.
This might suggest that natural science
is a more a matter of inventive speculation
than sober discovery of fact.
But Parsons argues that in and through-
out all the paradigm shifts of the disci-
pline’s vision of its objects, palaeontolo-
gists continued to essentially have real and
stable objects in view. However fragmen-
tary the conditions of animal relics- and
even if the whole skeleton were found, this
is nevertheless a fragment of what was once
a whole animal- the goal was to configure
the traces such that the best guess would
be arrived at. In doing so, Parsons says, the
rules of reason were normally in force, such
that however much imaginative recon-
struction might be required to tentatively
recreate the whole animal, arguments had
to made for such reconstruction and good
reasons given, and guesswork was not nor-
mally allowed to go beyond what the data
themselves suggested.
The “science wars” between what might
be called positivism and constructivism
are waged, according to Parsons, between
two extremes, both of whom have some-
thing of the truth about natural science:
that it is a method of investigation of given
objects following rational rules, but which
is also inseparable from imagination and
skillful interpretation. The conclusions he
draws for philosophy of science are of in-
terest to anyone concerned with the topic,
regardless of one’s view of origins.
PETER ESCALANTE is the Director of
Wenden House and teaches freshman Rhetoric as
well as classes on the history of art and architecture.