I got to talk with Brian D. Farrell, a professor of Biology and Curator in Entomology at Harvard the other day. For my book, I wanted to see the chain of authority that lets us know that this particular beetle is a member of that particular species. Here are some photos:

One of the thousand cabinets housing Harvard’s 7+ million specimens. About half are beetles.

One of the drawers

The red labels indicate that the insect is “type specimen,” i.e., the reference to which all species identifications point. It’s the argument settler. Some of the insects in the collection are almost 150 years.

This drawer has no red-tagged beetles because it was assembled for an exhibit. This drawer, in other words, was assembled based not on taxonomy but interest. But, because of the metadata, the specimens can of course still be found.

More socially useful than Paris Hilton. Prettier, too.

This ledger – one of six – lists what the numbers on the red tags refer to. Without this, the collection is just a pile of dead bugs.

No one part of this system — ranging from pins and red labels to an institutional commitment that’s spanned generations — is knowledge. All of it together is.

[Tags: everything_is_miscellaneous knowledge entomology harvard ]

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