Why Fish Don't Exist: A story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life by Lulu Miller
Why Fish Don't Exist tells a story about what it means to live in a world dictated by chaos when all you want to do is put things in order. I consumed this book in its audiobook form, which I highly recommend.
Lulu Miller set out to answer what might seem to be a very simple question: Who was David Starr Jordan? A quick google search will tell you that he was an ichthyologist, and another quick google search will tell you that an ichthyologist is someone that studies fish. But there is more to this old, dead, white man. Just like me, and just like Lulu Miller, David Starr Jordan was obsessed with finding order in chaos.
Through retelling David Starr Jordan's story, Lulu Miller tells her own story of trying to make sense of the Universe. It's as beautiful as it is messy. It's full of emotion yet perfectly logical. And the title! I mean, come on! If you're not intrigued by a title like that, then I sure hope I can convince you!
David Starr Jordan built a career on naming fish, because once something is named, it can be ordered, and order is the enemy of chaos. What he didn't know is that the Universe literally runs on chaos. The mere act of trying to find order in the Universe increases the level of chaos. If you are lucky enough to be the child of a scientist, or if you can think back to your high school physics class, you're probably familiar with the word "entropy." For the sake of this review, entropy is just a fancy term for chaos. Ever since I learned the word, entropy has been the security blanket under which I hide my deepest fears and greatest dreams. Someday, in a truly unfathomable amount of time, the Universe will stop expanding and there will be no usable energy left. And then, when there physically cannot be more chaos, nothing will matter. Yikes. If only I didn't learn the three laws of thermodynamics at age six.
In a way, I feel bad for David Starr Jordan. But not so bad, because he had more interest than the average bear in eugenics, which is pretty evil (and if you want to learn about that, you should definitely read this book). He spent his life ordering the natural world only to die and become part of the chaos, his whole life having increased the entropy of the universe. But Lulu Miller tells us a different story. She tells us about love, in its many chaotic but beautiful forms, and about the way there might just be some hidden order in this world after all.
