Carl Zimmer talks about his influences (among other subjects) in a two-part series on Scientific American's Primate Diaries blog and Moby Dick tops his list. "Melville’s novel is probably a quarter to a third science writing," Zimmer says. "It’s the story of an obsessed captain going after a whale interspersed with long passages about marine biology, paleontology, even consciousness. It’s all science. But he writes about it in a style that can be quite humbling."
