July 25, 2008

Life as We Know It

By RANDY MALAMUD

Does classifying nature heighten, or substitute for, our appreciation of it?

Last year the Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson, one of our great naturalists, presented the visionary challenge to create what he called an Encyclopedia of Life, a massive online project that would catalog every living plant and animal: 1.8 million species, each with an infinitely expandable page.

This encyclopedia, generated by thousands of scientists around the world as well as amateurs, and financed by

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