Internalism and Laws of Form 273
living at the same time have alone a material existence, they being the
bearers, not only of all these different categories of structure upon which
the natural system of animals is founded, but also of all the relations which
animals sustain to the surrounding world,—thus showing that species do
not exist in nature in a different way from the higher groups, as is so
generally believed? (1857, p. 7).Agassiz shares Paley's primary goal, the fundamental "research program" of
"natural theology"—to infer, from the organic works of nature, not only God's
existence, but as much as possible about his intellect and goodness. Yet, despite
this common aim, Paley and Agassiz could not have advocated more disparate
constructions of divine presence in nature.
Every good debater, following the principle of dichotomy, knows that
arguments fare best by contrast with alternatives. Moreover, the more caricatured
and cardboard the alternative, the better for your side (so long as you don't depict
your opponent as so much of a straw man that he becomes unbelievable). Agassiz
presents his vision of classification by contrast with a "materialist" alternative of
his own construction. He defines a materialist as a naturalist who attributes the
forms and properties of organisms to the shaping power of constant physical laws
(secondary, efficient causes), and not to direct decisions of divine will. A
materialist may escape the charge of godless-ness by arguing for divine
establishment of natural laws at the beginning of time. But if God then absconds
forevermore, and lets nature work in such an automatic and heartless mode, what
practical difference could we discern between outright materialism and such a
divine clock winder? "I allude here," Agassiz writes (p. 9) in defining his
opponents, "only to the doctrines of materialists." The issue reduces to a simple
dichotomy (given the inconceivability of other alternatives, including randomness):
are taxa fashioned by laws of nature (and therefore in harmony with physical
order), or by God as incarnations of His categories of thought? Agassiz states the
contrast, and announces his own allegiance: "Others believe that there exist laws in
nature which were established by the Deity in the beginning, to the action of which
the origin of organized beings may be ascribed; while according to others, they
owe their existence to the immediate intervention of an Intelligent Creator. It is the
object of the following paragraphs to show that there are neither agents nor laws in
nature known to physicists under the influence and by the action of which these
beings could have originated" (1857, p. 13).
In a grand verbal flourish, Agassiz then upholds taxonomy as the highest
science, while branding the materialist alternative both dreary and soul destroying
(as well as wrong). Taxonomic order records divine mentality:
I confess that this question as to the nature and foundation of our scientific
classifications appears to me to have the deepest importance, an importance
far greater indeed than is usually attached to it. If it can be proved that man
has not invented, but only traced the systematic arrangement in nature, that
these relations and proportions which exist throughout the animal and
vegetable world have an intellectual, and