What do you think?
Rate this book
Principles of zoölogy touching the structure development, distribution, and natural arrangement
Principles of zoo logy touching the structure, development, distribution, and natural arrangement of the races of animals, living and extinct. Pt. I Comparative physiology. For the use of schools and colleges. This book, "Principles of zoo logy touching the structure development, distribution, and natural arrangement," by Louis Agassiz, is a replication of a book originally published before 1856. It has been restored by human beings, page by page, so that you may enjoy it in a form as close to the original as possible.
260 pages, Paperback
First published December 20, 2005
3 people want to read
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).
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
September 29, 2024
TWO FAMED 19TH CENTURY SCIENTISTS EXPLAIN THE PRINCIPLES OF THE 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 'Essay on Classification.' Co-author Augustus Addison Gould (1805-1866, Boston) was an American conchologist and malacologist. [NOTE: page numbers below refer to a 250-page hardcover edition.]
They wrote in the Preface to this 1848 book, “The design of this work is to furnish an epitome of the leading principles of the science of Zoölogy, as deduced from the present state of knowledge, so illustrated as to be intelligible to the beginner. No similar treatise now exists in this country, and, indeed, some of the topics have not been touched upon in the English language, unless in a strictly technical form, and in scattered articles… so essential have these subjects now become to a correct interpretation of philosophical zoology, that the study of them will hereafter be indispensable. They furnish a key to many phenomena which have been heretofore locked in mystery.”
They suggest in the first chapter, “the Animal Kingdom, as a whole, has a still higher signification. It is the exhibition of divine thought, as carried out in one department of that grand whole which we call Nature; and considered as such, it teaches us most important lessons.” (Pg. 25)
He explains, “The keen eye of the bird, is found to be not only more perfect, but constructed on an entirely different plan… Affinity or homology is the relation between organs of parts of the body which are constructed on the same plan, however much they vary in form, or even serve for very different uses. Analogy, on the contrary, indicates the similarity of purposes or functions performed by organs of different structure… Thus, there is an analogy between the wing of a bird and that of a butterfly, since both of them serve for flight. But there is no affinity between them, since… they differ totally in their anatomical relations. On the other hand, there is an affinity between the bird’s wing and the hand of a monkey; since… they are both constructed on the same plan. Accordingly, the bird is more nearly allied to the monkey than to the butterfly, though they both have in common the faculty of flight.” (Pg. 30)
He asserts, “He who beholds in Nature nothing besides organs and their functions, may persuade himself that the animal is merely a combination of chemical and mechanical actions and reactions, and thus becomes a materialist. On the contrary, he who considers only the manifestations of intelligence and of creative will, without taking into account the means by which they are executed… will be very likely to confound the Creator with the creature… It is only as it contemplates, at the same time, matter and mind, that Natural History rises to its true character and dignity, and leads to its worthiest end, by indicating to us, in Creation, the execution of a plan fully matured in the beginning, and undeviatingly pursued; the work of a God infinitely wise, regulating Nature according to immutable laws, which He Himself has imposed on her.” (Pg. 34)
He observes, “These different faculties, taken together, constitute intelligence. In man, this superior principle, which is an emanation of the divine nature, manifests itself in all its splendor… It is man’s prerogative, and his alone, to regulate his conduct by the deductions of reason; he has the faculty of exercising his judgment not only upon the objects which surround him, and of apprehending the many relations which exist between himself and the external world; he may also apply his reason to immaterial things, observe the operations of his own intellect, and, by the analysis of his faculties, may arrive at the consciousness of his own nature, and even conceive of that Infinite Spirit…” (Pg. 68)
He states, “The account we have above given of the development, the metamorphoses, and the alternate reproduction of the lower animals, is sufficient to undermine the old theory of Spontaneous Generation, which was proposed to account for the presence of worms in the bodies of animals, for the sudden appearance of myriads of animalcules in stagnant water, and under other circumstances rendering their occurrence mysterious.” (Pg. 171)
He concludes, “There is only one way to account for the distribution of animals as we find them; namely, to suppose that they … originated like plants, on the soil where they are found. In order to explain the particular distribution of many animals, we are even led to admit that they must have been created at several points of the same zone… We shall hereafter see that the same laws of distribution are not limited to the actual creation only, but that they also have ruled the creations of former geological epochs, and that the fossil species have lived and died, most of them, at the place where their remains are found.” (Pg. 211-212)
He points out, “It was once believed that animals were successively created in the order of their relative perfection; so that the most ancient formations contained only animals of the lowest grade, such as the Polyps… to which succeeded the Mollusks, then the Articulated Animals, and, last of all, the Vertebrates. This theory, however, is now untenable; since fossils belonging to each of the four departments have been found in the fossiliferous deposits of every age.” (Pg. 221)
He argues, “The Fishes of the Paleozoic age are in no respect the ancestors of the Reptiles of the Secondary age, nor does Man descend from the Mammals which preceded him in the Tertiary age… their connection is to be sought in the view of the Creator himself, whose aim, in forming the earth, in allowing it to undergo the successive changes which Geology has pointed out, and in creating successively all the different types of animals which have passed away, was to introduce Man upon the surface of our globe. Man is the end towards which all the animal creation had tended, from the first appearance of the first Paleozoic Fishes.” (Pg. 238)
This book will be of great interest to students of the development 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 'Essay on Classification.' Co-author Augustus Addison Gould (1805-1866, Boston) was an American conchologist and malacologist. [NOTE: page numbers below refer to a 250-page hardcover edition.]
They wrote in the Preface to this 1848 book, “The design of this work is to furnish an epitome of the leading principles of the science of Zoölogy, as deduced from the present state of knowledge, so illustrated as to be intelligible to the beginner. No similar treatise now exists in this country, and, indeed, some of the topics have not been touched upon in the English language, unless in a strictly technical form, and in scattered articles… so essential have these subjects now become to a correct interpretation of philosophical zoology, that the study of them will hereafter be indispensable. They furnish a key to many phenomena which have been heretofore locked in mystery.”
They suggest in the first chapter, “the Animal Kingdom, as a whole, has a still higher signification. It is the exhibition of divine thought, as carried out in one department of that grand whole which we call Nature; and considered as such, it teaches us most important lessons.” (Pg. 25)
He explains, “The keen eye of the bird, is found to be not only more perfect, but constructed on an entirely different plan… Affinity or homology is the relation between organs of parts of the body which are constructed on the same plan, however much they vary in form, or even serve for very different uses. Analogy, on the contrary, indicates the similarity of purposes or functions performed by organs of different structure… Thus, there is an analogy between the wing of a bird and that of a butterfly, since both of them serve for flight. But there is no affinity between them, since… they differ totally in their anatomical relations. On the other hand, there is an affinity between the bird’s wing and the hand of a monkey; since… they are both constructed on the same plan. Accordingly, the bird is more nearly allied to the monkey than to the butterfly, though they both have in common the faculty of flight.” (Pg. 30)
He asserts, “He who beholds in Nature nothing besides organs and their functions, may persuade himself that the animal is merely a combination of chemical and mechanical actions and reactions, and thus becomes a materialist. On the contrary, he who considers only the manifestations of intelligence and of creative will, without taking into account the means by which they are executed… will be very likely to confound the Creator with the creature… It is only as it contemplates, at the same time, matter and mind, that Natural History rises to its true character and dignity, and leads to its worthiest end, by indicating to us, in Creation, the execution of a plan fully matured in the beginning, and undeviatingly pursued; the work of a God infinitely wise, regulating Nature according to immutable laws, which He Himself has imposed on her.” (Pg. 34)
He observes, “These different faculties, taken together, constitute intelligence. In man, this superior principle, which is an emanation of the divine nature, manifests itself in all its splendor… It is man’s prerogative, and his alone, to regulate his conduct by the deductions of reason; he has the faculty of exercising his judgment not only upon the objects which surround him, and of apprehending the many relations which exist between himself and the external world; he may also apply his reason to immaterial things, observe the operations of his own intellect, and, by the analysis of his faculties, may arrive at the consciousness of his own nature, and even conceive of that Infinite Spirit…” (Pg. 68)
He states, “The account we have above given of the development, the metamorphoses, and the alternate reproduction of the lower animals, is sufficient to undermine the old theory of Spontaneous Generation, which was proposed to account for the presence of worms in the bodies of animals, for the sudden appearance of myriads of animalcules in stagnant water, and under other circumstances rendering their occurrence mysterious.” (Pg. 171)
He concludes, “There is only one way to account for the distribution of animals as we find them; namely, to suppose that they … originated like plants, on the soil where they are found. In order to explain the particular distribution of many animals, we are even led to admit that they must have been created at several points of the same zone… We shall hereafter see that the same laws of distribution are not limited to the actual creation only, but that they also have ruled the creations of former geological epochs, and that the fossil species have lived and died, most of them, at the place where their remains are found.” (Pg. 211-212)
He points out, “It was once believed that animals were successively created in the order of their relative perfection; so that the most ancient formations contained only animals of the lowest grade, such as the Polyps… to which succeeded the Mollusks, then the Articulated Animals, and, last of all, the Vertebrates. This theory, however, is now untenable; since fossils belonging to each of the four departments have been found in the fossiliferous deposits of every age.” (Pg. 221)
He argues, “The Fishes of the Paleozoic age are in no respect the ancestors of the Reptiles of the Secondary age, nor does Man descend from the Mammals which preceded him in the Tertiary age… their connection is to be sought in the view of the Creator himself, whose aim, in forming the earth, in allowing it to undergo the successive changes which Geology has pointed out, and in creating successively all the different types of animals which have passed away, was to introduce Man upon the surface of our globe. Man is the end towards which all the animal creation had tended, from the first appearance of the first Paleozoic Fishes.” (Pg. 238)
This book will be of great interest to students of the development of science.
Displaying 1 of 1 review