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An Essay on Classification
388 pages, Hardcover
Published July 18, 2023
About the author
Louis Agassiz
527 books8 followersNited Swiss-born American naturalist Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz studied fossil fish and from geologic evidence recognized that ice ages occurred in the Northern Hemisphere.
He married Elizabeth Cabot Cary Agassiz in 1850.
This biologist, geologist, physician, and a prominent innovator in the study of history of Earth served as a professor at University of Neuchâtel. Later, he accepted a professorship at Harvard University in the United States.
Educated first at home, then spending four years of secondary school in Bienne, he completed his elementary studies in Lausanne. He adopted medicine as his profession and studied successively at the universities of Zürich, Heidelberg and Munich, where he extended his knowledge of natural history, especially botany. He received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Erlangen in 1829 and that of doctor of medicine at Munich in 1830. Moving to Paris, he fell under the tutelage of Alexander von Humboldt and Georges Cuvier, who launched him on his careers of geology and zoology, respectively. Previously, he paid no special attention to the study of ichthyology, quickly the great focus of work of his life.
From his first marriage to Cecilie Bruan, Agassiz had two daughters in addition to son Alexander. In 1863, Agassiz's daughter Ida married Henry Lee Higginson, later to be founder of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and benefactor to Harvard University and other schools. On November 30, 1860, Agassiz's daughter Pauline was married to Quincy Adams Shaw (1825–1908), a wealthy Boston merchant and later benefactor to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
In the last years of his life, Agassiz worked to establish a permanent school where zoological science could be pursued amid the living subjects of its study. In 1873, a private philanthropist (John Anderson) gave Agassiz the island of Penikese, in Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts (south of New Bedford), and presented him with $50,000 to permanently endow it as a practical school of natural science, especially devoted to the study of marine zoology. The John Anderson school collapsed soon after Agassiz's death, but is considered a precursor of the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, which is nearby.
Within his lifetime, Agassiz had developed a reputation for a particularly demanding teaching style. He would allegedly "lock a student up in a room full of turtle-shells, or lobster-shells, or oyster-shells, without a book or a word to help him, and not let him out till he had discovered all the truths which the objects contained." Two of Agassiz's most prominent students detailed their personal experiences under his tutelage, Samuel Hubbard Scudder in a short magazine article for Every Saturday and Nathaniel Southgate Shaler in his Autobiography. These and other recollections were collected and published by Lane Cooper in 1917, which Ezra Pound was to draw on for his anecdote of Agassiz and the sunfish.
An ancient glacial lake that formed in the Great Lakes region of North America, Lake Agassiz, is named after him, as are Mount Agassiz in California's Palisades, Mount Agassiz, in the Uinta Mountains, Agassiz Peak in Arizona and in his native Switzerland, the Agassizhorn in the Bernese Alps. Agassiz Glacier and Agassiz Creek in Glacier National Park and Mount Agassiz in Bethlehem, New Hampshire in the White Mountains also bear his name. A crater on Mars and a promontorium on the Moon are also named in his honour. A headland situated in Palmer Land, Antarctica is named in his honor, Cape Agassiz. A main-belt asteroid named 2267 Agassiz is also named in association with Louis Agassiz. In addition, several animal species are so named, including Apistogramma agassizi Steindachner, 1875 (Agassiz's dwarf cichlid); Isocapnia agassizi Ricker, 1943 (a stonefly); Publius agassizi (Kaup), 1871 (a passalid beetle); Xylocrius agassizi (LeConte), 1861 (a longhorn beetle).
He married Elizabeth Cabot Cary Agassiz in 1850.
This biologist, geologist, physician, and a prominent innovator in the study of history of Earth served as a professor at University of Neuchâtel. Later, he accepted a professorship at Harvard University in the United States.
Educated first at home, then spending four years of secondary school in Bienne, he completed his elementary studies in Lausanne. He adopted medicine as his profession and studied successively at the universities of Zürich, Heidelberg and Munich, where he extended his knowledge of natural history, especially botany. He received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Erlangen in 1829 and that of doctor of medicine at Munich in 1830. Moving to Paris, he fell under the tutelage of Alexander von Humboldt and Georges Cuvier, who launched him on his careers of geology and zoology, respectively. Previously, he paid no special attention to the study of ichthyology, quickly the great focus of work of his life.
From his first marriage to Cecilie Bruan, Agassiz had two daughters in addition to son Alexander. In 1863, Agassiz's daughter Ida married Henry Lee Higginson, later to be founder of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and benefactor to Harvard University and other schools. On November 30, 1860, Agassiz's daughter Pauline was married to Quincy Adams Shaw (1825–1908), a wealthy Boston merchant and later benefactor to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
In the last years of his life, Agassiz worked to establish a permanent school where zoological science could be pursued amid the living subjects of its study. In 1873, a private philanthropist (John Anderson) gave Agassiz the island of Penikese, in Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts (south of New Bedford), and presented him with $50,000 to permanently endow it as a practical school of natural science, especially devoted to the study of marine zoology. The John Anderson school collapsed soon after Agassiz's death, but is considered a precursor of the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, which is nearby.
Within his lifetime, Agassiz had developed a reputation for a particularly demanding teaching style. He would allegedly "lock a student up in a room full of turtle-shells, or lobster-shells, or oyster-shells, without a book or a word to help him, and not let him out till he had discovered all the truths which the objects contained." Two of Agassiz's most prominent students detailed their personal experiences under his tutelage, Samuel Hubbard Scudder in a short magazine article for Every Saturday and Nathaniel Southgate Shaler in his Autobiography. These and other recollections were collected and published by Lane Cooper in 1917, which Ezra Pound was to draw on for his anecdote of Agassiz and the sunfish.
An ancient glacial lake that formed in the Great Lakes region of North America, Lake Agassiz, is named after him, as are Mount Agassiz in California's Palisades, Mount Agassiz, in the Uinta Mountains, Agassiz Peak in Arizona and in his native Switzerland, the Agassizhorn in the Bernese Alps. Agassiz Glacier and Agassiz Creek in Glacier National Park and Mount Agassiz in Bethlehem, New Hampshire in the White Mountains also bear his name. A crater on Mars and a promontorium on the Moon are also named in his honour. A headland situated in Palmer Land, Antarctica is named in his honor, Cape Agassiz. A main-belt asteroid named 2267 Agassiz is also named in association with Louis Agassiz. In addition, several animal species are so named, including Apistogramma agassizi Steindachner, 1875 (Agassiz's dwarf cichlid); Isocapnia agassizi Ricker, 1943 (a stonefly); Publius agassizi (Kaup), 1871 (a passalid beetle); Xylocrius agassizi (LeConte), 1861 (a longhorn beetle).
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September 29, 2024
Louis Agassiz: Essay on Classification
A TRUE "CLASSSIC" IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE
Louis Agassiz (1807-1873), was a Swiss-born and European-trained biologist and geologist, who became a professor of zoology and geology at Harvard, and founded its Museum of Comparative Zoology. He was an opponent of Darwinian evolution, and his late writings supporting “polygenism” have diminished his reputation in the modern world. He also wrote Principles of Zoology.
He wrote in the first chapter of this 1857 book (published two years before Darwin's The Origin of Species), "In considering these various topics... I shall, however, avoid controversy as much as possible and only try to render the results of my own studies and meditations in as clear a manner as I possibly can..." (Pg. 4) He adds, "The division of animals according to branch, class, order, family, genus, species, by which we express the results of our investigations into the relations of the animal kingdom... seem to me to deserve the consideration of all thoughtful minds. Are these divisions artificial or natural? Are they devices of the human mind to classify and arrange our knowledge… to bring it more readily within our grasp… or have they been instituted by the Divine Intelligence as the categories of his mode of thinking? Have we perhaps thus far been only the unconscious interpreters of a Divine conception in our attempts to expound nature?... do we not find in this adaptability of the human intellect to the facts of creation… by which we become … unconsciously, translators of the thoughts of God, the most conclusive proof of our affinity with the Divine Mind?” (Pg. 8-9)
He continues, “If it can be proved that man has not invented, but only traced this systematic arrangement in nature, that these relations and proportions which exist throughout the animal and vegetable world have an intellectual, and ideal connection in the mind of the Creator… that this plan of creation, which so commends itself to our highest wisdom, has not grown out of the necessary action of physical laws, but was the free conception of the Almighty Intellect… before it was manifested in tangible external forms---if, in short, we can prove premeditation prior to the act of creation, we have done once and for ever with the desolate theory which refers us to the laws of matter as accounting for all the wonders of the universe and leaves us with no God but the monotonous, unvarying action of physical forces, binding all things to their inevitable destiny.” (Pg. 10) He concludes, “without a consideration of all the facts furnished by the study of the habits of animals, by their anatomy, their embryology, and the history of the past ages of our globe, we shall never arrive at the knowledge of the natural system of animals.” (Pg. 13)
He admits, however, about creatures, that “the manner in which they were called into existence remains for the present a mystery.” (Pg. 15) But he asserts that “the elements in which the plants and animals live (and under this expression I mean to include all that is commonly called physical agents, physical causes, etc.) cannot in any way be considered as the cause of their existence.” (Pg. 36) He states, “It is therefore quite possible that the different races of domesticated animals were originally distinct species, more or less mixed now, as the different races of men are. Moreover, neither domesticated animals nor cultivated plants, nor the races of men, are the proper subjects for an investigation respecting the fixity or mutability of species, as all involve already the question at issue in the premises which are assumed in introducing them as evidence in the case.” (Pg. 63) He proposes that “the order of their succession and their immutability during such cosmic periods show no causal connection with physical agents… but argue in favor of repeated interventions on the part of the Creator.” (Pg. 64)
He also concedes, “I confess I could not say in what the mental faculties of a child differ from those of a young Chimpanzee.” (Pg. 68) However, he adds, “[individuality] argues strongly in favor of the existence in every animal of an immaterial principle similar to that which, by its excellence and superior endowments, places man so much above animals. Yet the principle exists unquestionably, and whether it be called soul, reason, or instinct, it presents in the whole range of organized beings a series of phenomena closely linked together; and upon it are based not only the higher manifestations of the mind, but the very permanence of the specific differences which characterize every organism. Most of the arguments of philosophy in favor of the immortality of man apply equally to the permanency of this principle in other living beings… may we not look to a spiritual concert of the combined worlds and all their inhabitants in presence of their Creator as the highest conception of Paradise?” (Pg. 74-76)
He summarizes, “All organized beings exhibit in themselves all those categories of structure and existence upon which a natural system may be founded, in such a manner that, in tracing it, the human mind is only translating into human language the Divine thoughts expressed in nature in living realities… all these facts in their natural connection proclaim aloud the one God, whom man may know, adore, and love; and Natural History must in good time become the analysis of the thoughts of the Creator of the Universe, as manifested in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, as well as in the inorganic world.” (Pg. 136-137)
He outlines, “I find that these divisions cover all categories of relationship which exist among animals, as far as their structure is concerned. BRANCHES or TYPES are characterized by the plan of their structure; CLASSES, by the manner in which that plan is executed, as far as ways and means are concerned; ORDERS, by the degrees of complication of that structure; FAMILIES, by their form, as far as determined by structure; GENERA, by the details of the execution in special parts; and SPECIES, by the relations of individuals to one another and to the world in which they live, as well as by the proportions of their parts, their ornamentation, etc.” (Pg. 179)
This book will be of great interest to anyone studying the historical development of Natural History.
A TRUE "CLASSSIC" IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE
Louis Agassiz (1807-1873), was a Swiss-born and European-trained biologist and geologist, who became a professor of zoology and geology at Harvard, and founded its Museum of Comparative Zoology. He was an opponent of Darwinian evolution, and his late writings supporting “polygenism” have diminished his reputation in the modern world. He also wrote Principles of Zoology.
He wrote in the first chapter of this 1857 book (published two years before Darwin's The Origin of Species), "In considering these various topics... I shall, however, avoid controversy as much as possible and only try to render the results of my own studies and meditations in as clear a manner as I possibly can..." (Pg. 4) He adds, "The division of animals according to branch, class, order, family, genus, species, by which we express the results of our investigations into the relations of the animal kingdom... seem to me to deserve the consideration of all thoughtful minds. Are these divisions artificial or natural? Are they devices of the human mind to classify and arrange our knowledge… to bring it more readily within our grasp… or have they been instituted by the Divine Intelligence as the categories of his mode of thinking? Have we perhaps thus far been only the unconscious interpreters of a Divine conception in our attempts to expound nature?... do we not find in this adaptability of the human intellect to the facts of creation… by which we become … unconsciously, translators of the thoughts of God, the most conclusive proof of our affinity with the Divine Mind?” (Pg. 8-9)
He continues, “If it can be proved that man has not invented, but only traced this systematic arrangement in nature, that these relations and proportions which exist throughout the animal and vegetable world have an intellectual, and ideal connection in the mind of the Creator… that this plan of creation, which so commends itself to our highest wisdom, has not grown out of the necessary action of physical laws, but was the free conception of the Almighty Intellect… before it was manifested in tangible external forms---if, in short, we can prove premeditation prior to the act of creation, we have done once and for ever with the desolate theory which refers us to the laws of matter as accounting for all the wonders of the universe and leaves us with no God but the monotonous, unvarying action of physical forces, binding all things to their inevitable destiny.” (Pg. 10) He concludes, “without a consideration of all the facts furnished by the study of the habits of animals, by their anatomy, their embryology, and the history of the past ages of our globe, we shall never arrive at the knowledge of the natural system of animals.” (Pg. 13)
He admits, however, about creatures, that “the manner in which they were called into existence remains for the present a mystery.” (Pg. 15) But he asserts that “the elements in which the plants and animals live (and under this expression I mean to include all that is commonly called physical agents, physical causes, etc.) cannot in any way be considered as the cause of their existence.” (Pg. 36) He states, “It is therefore quite possible that the different races of domesticated animals were originally distinct species, more or less mixed now, as the different races of men are. Moreover, neither domesticated animals nor cultivated plants, nor the races of men, are the proper subjects for an investigation respecting the fixity or mutability of species, as all involve already the question at issue in the premises which are assumed in introducing them as evidence in the case.” (Pg. 63) He proposes that “the order of their succession and their immutability during such cosmic periods show no causal connection with physical agents… but argue in favor of repeated interventions on the part of the Creator.” (Pg. 64)
He also concedes, “I confess I could not say in what the mental faculties of a child differ from those of a young Chimpanzee.” (Pg. 68) However, he adds, “[individuality] argues strongly in favor of the existence in every animal of an immaterial principle similar to that which, by its excellence and superior endowments, places man so much above animals. Yet the principle exists unquestionably, and whether it be called soul, reason, or instinct, it presents in the whole range of organized beings a series of phenomena closely linked together; and upon it are based not only the higher manifestations of the mind, but the very permanence of the specific differences which characterize every organism. Most of the arguments of philosophy in favor of the immortality of man apply equally to the permanency of this principle in other living beings… may we not look to a spiritual concert of the combined worlds and all their inhabitants in presence of their Creator as the highest conception of Paradise?” (Pg. 74-76)
He summarizes, “All organized beings exhibit in themselves all those categories of structure and existence upon which a natural system may be founded, in such a manner that, in tracing it, the human mind is only translating into human language the Divine thoughts expressed in nature in living realities… all these facts in their natural connection proclaim aloud the one God, whom man may know, adore, and love; and Natural History must in good time become the analysis of the thoughts of the Creator of the Universe, as manifested in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, as well as in the inorganic world.” (Pg. 136-137)
He outlines, “I find that these divisions cover all categories of relationship which exist among animals, as far as their structure is concerned. BRANCHES or TYPES are characterized by the plan of their structure; CLASSES, by the manner in which that plan is executed, as far as ways and means are concerned; ORDERS, by the degrees of complication of that structure; FAMILIES, by their form, as far as determined by structure; GENERA, by the details of the execution in special parts; and SPECIES, by the relations of individuals to one another and to the world in which they live, as well as by the proportions of their parts, their ornamentation, etc.” (Pg. 179)
This book will be of great interest to anyone studying the historical development of Natural History.
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