{"id":61609,"date":"2021-09-23T02:12:52","date_gmt":"2021-09-23T02:12:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=61609"},"modified":"2021-09-30T04:07:11","modified_gmt":"2021-09-30T04:07:11","slug":"retrospection-agassizs-expeditions-in-brazil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=61609","title":{"rendered":"Retrospection: Agassiz’s Expeditions in Brazil"},"content":{"rendered":"

Retrospection: Agassiz’s Expeditions in Brazil<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Harvard Crimson<\/a>
\n2016-04-21<\/p>\n

Michelle Y. Raji<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a>
\nLouis Rodolphe Agassiz<\/small><\/a><\/p>\n

But for Agassiz, the trip to Brazil<\/a> was about more than science. Not only was evolution<\/a>\u2014a process not immediately observable to the human eye\u2014deeply antithetical to Agassiz\u2019s staunch empiricism<\/a>, evolution was profoundly at odds with his perceived world order.<\/em><\/p>\n

Three decades after the then-obscure scientist Charles Darwin<\/a> quietly sketched his now-famous finches aboard the HMS Beagle<\/a> in the Galapagos<\/a>, influential Harvard professor Louis Rodolphe Agassiz<\/a> set out with much greater fanfare on a lesser-known expedition. In 1865, Agassiz and his wife, accompanied by a small group of Harvard scientists and students, set sail from New York<\/a> to Rio de Janeiro<\/a> on The Colorado<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In a lecture en route to Brazil<\/a>, Agassiz challenged Darwin\u2019s revolutionary theory of evolution<\/a> on the grounds that the theory relied too much on argument and too little on fact. Agassiz posited that evolution was not plausible according to the geologic record. The trip to Brazil was an attempt to disprove Darwin once and for all. Agassiz saw in the unique biodiversity of Brazil a perfect laboratory to test his counter-theories of phylogenetic<\/a> embryology<\/a> and glacial catastrophe in the tropics.<\/p>\n

But for Agassiz, the trip to Brazil was about more than science. Not only was evolution\u2014a process not immediately observable to the human eye\u2014deeply antithetical to Agassiz\u2019s staunch empiricism, evolution was profoundly at odds with his perceived world order. Though only moderately religious, Agassiz believed in the existence of a creator in all his work. Fortunately for Agassiz, this belief fit well with comparative zoology<\/a>, which at the time focused heavily on hierarchal classification…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Retrospection: Agassiz’s Expeditions in Brazil The Harvard Crimson 2016-04-21 Michelle Y. Raji Louis Rodolphe Agassiz But for Agassiz, the trip to Brazil was about more than science. Not only was evolution\u2014a process not immediately observable to the human eye\u2014deeply antithetical to Agassiz\u2019s staunch empiricism, evolution was profoundly at odds with his perceived world order. Three […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,83,21,2039,459,8],"tags":[1406,31966,634,11216,3479,31965,4645,31964,31963,4717],"class_list":["post-61609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-brazil","category-latincarib","category-health-medicine","category-history","category-media-archive","tag-charles-darwin","tag-comparative-zoology","tag-evolution","tag-harvard-crimson","tag-henry-james","tag-jean-louis-rodolphe-agassiz","tag-louis-agassiz","tag-louis-rodolphe-agassiz","tag-michelle-y-raji","tag-the-harvard-crimson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61609"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61684,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61609\/revisions\/61684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}