"I have devoted my whole life to the study of Nature, and yet a single sentence may express all that I have done. I have shown that there is a correspondence between the succession of Fishes in geological times and the different stages of their growth in the egg, -- that is all. It chanced to be a result that was found to apply to other groups and has led to other conclusions of a like nature. "
-Louis Agassiz, 1869
So begins this biographical account of the life work of paleontologist Louis Agassiz(1807-1873). Born in Switzerland, Agassiz came to America in the mid-1800s where he was a professor at Harvard University. He was a revolutionary persona in the world of intellectual thought because he tried to find a middleground between scientific inquiry and religion. For these reasons Agassiz was a lifelong opponent of Charles Darwin's thepory of evolution. In the world of paleontology, Agassiz stayed loyal to Cuvier's classification, which divided the animal kingdom into four branches: Vertebrata, Insecta, Vermes (worms) and Radiata (radially symmetrical animals). However, he claimed to see the work of God in nature, and refused to accept a theory that did not invoke design. Agassiz continued Cuvier's catastrophism theory which stated that the Earth had been periodically wracked by global catastrophes, after each of which new species of animals and plants had appeared. Instead of using the Flood model, Agassiz tied this catastrophe to the existance of glaciers; he felt that God created the ice age to eliminate the weakest mammals and tried devoted much of his career to attempting to prove the presence of glaciation in Brazil.
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/agassiz.html
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
As Menand points out in "The Metaphysical Club," Agassiz's approach to science was contradictory. By refusing to view science without the light of religious thought, he compromised all of his research. Since Agassiz developed his theories of evolution before finding suitable evidence, his research - including his trip to Brazil to find evidence of glaciers - did not explore biology through the scientific method; he spent his career looking for evidence that would back his theories.
ReplyDelete