CHRISTOPH IRMSCHER 

Author and Critic

Jun 15, 2013 7:51 PM EDT

While this post is itself lyrical, I'm not sure that its conclusion rings true with what we've read of Agassiz's argument with the Psalmist or perhaps the simple fact that if we set him next to Thoreau, or Gilbert White, or Henry Salt, or perhaps Rachel Carson (who would return her specimens to the place she found them), we do not see a humble man of true reverence, but one who seems to me, in his aggressively acquisitive nature, the very example of the affront against creation inherent in the practice of human dominion. I'll give WCW the last word here in illuminating opposition to what seems characteristic of Agassiz: "...because I early recognized the futility of acquisitive understanding and at the same time rejected religious dogmatism."

- Doug Storm

Jun 18, 2013 9:20 AM EDT

You are right about Agassiz's acquisitiveness. Any number of negative traits could be added, and my book offers plenty of those. But there are many sides to him, and one reason that there is a whole book of interviews of scientists invoking his influence on them ( Agassiz's Legacy, edited by Elizabeth Gladfelter) is the fact that he was genuinely fascinated with living things, so much so that he took his students out to the beach and into the water to see for themselves, thus inaugurating a tradition of fieldwork in American science. Agassiz was a poet as well as a predator, and while this latest essay foregrounds the former, other entries on this site delve into the latter. I wanted to write about Agassiz partly because he does not offer us (as Darwin certainly would) the opportunity to feel good about our own more enlightened views. He was a predator as well as a poet. As a historian, I try to understand what made him so popular in his own time, which to us should be more than just an embarrassing fact. And I try to understand why some people--including Jim Traver--still find him fascinating today.

- Christoph Irmscher