The impact of the ‘Origin’ began to exceed that of Agassiz’s en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Agassiz own masterwork, the ‘Essay on Classification” in volumes of ‘Contributions to the Natural History of the United States.” The American zoologist had promoted his own theory of the origin of species: they are creations in the mind of God, brought to life when the creator thinks of them and extinguished when he ceases to think of them. It seemed a perfect conception, uniting science and religion in a form of consistent with the transcendentalist belief then ruling America’s intellectual scene. Its rejection by the Darwinians was something that Agassiz could not understand, no matter how hard he tried. . . . . Page 43
Darwin wrote to Asa Gray: “Agassiz’s name, no doubt, is a heavy weight against us.” But not his logic and evidence, which in letters of friends Darwin dismissed as wild, paradoxical, and religiously inspired. When Agassiz composed an article on the geology of the Amazon with argument against evolution, Darwin told Charles Lyell he was glad to read it but “chiefly as a psychological curiosity.”
. . . The historian Loren Graham has given names to the two camps: restrictionists and expansionists. The first believe that science can go only so far, after which new forms of explanation and understanding have to be devised. The second acknowledged no intrinsic limits. They favor Bertrand Russell’s definition of science as the things we know, distinct from philosophy as the things we do not know. ~ Page 44
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Dinesh said:
Darwin wrote to Asa Gray: “Agassiz’s name, no doubt, is a heavy weight against us.” But not his logic and evidence, which in letters of friends Darwin dismissed as wild, paradoxical, and religiously inspired. When Agassiz composed an article on the geology of the Amazon with argument against evolution, Darwin told Charles Lyell he was glad to read it but “chiefly as a psychological curiosity.”
. . . The historian Loren Graham has given names to the two camps: restrictionists and expansionists. The first believe that science can go only so far, after which new forms of explanation and understanding have to be devised. The second acknowledged no intrinsic limits. They favor Bertrand Russell’s definition of science as the things we know, distinct from philosophy as the things we do not know. ~ Page 44