274 THE STRUCTURE OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORY
ideal connection in the mind of the Creator, that this plan of creation, which
so commends itself to our highest wisdom, has not grown out of the
necessary action of physical laws, but was the free conception of the
Almighty Intellect, matured in his thought, before it was manifested in
tangible external forms,—if, in short, we can prove premeditation prior to
the act of creation, we have done, once and forever, with the desolate
theory which refers us to the laws of matter as accounting for all the
wonders of the universe, and leaves us with no guard but the monotonous,
unvarying action of physical forces, binding all things to their inevitable
destiny (1857, p. 9).By setting up his argument in this manner, Agassiz immerses himself directly
into the formalist-functionalist debate—with his own version of natural theology as
a strictly, almost excessively, formalist proposal: taxonomic order at all levels, not
the behavior and function of individual creatures, records God's nature and intent.
But by characterizing (or caricaturing) his opposition as a claim for the direct
production of form by physical forces, he places the chief category of putative
evidence against his vision—correlation between morphology and physical
conditions of life—into the functionalist camp. (One might object in principle that
such a functionalist conclusion need not follow from Agassiz's version of
"materialism." After all, morphology might be fashioned by laws of nature, but
without functional excellence. Still, Agassiz's chosen definition should not be
dismissed as self-serving because theorists who have espoused direct production of
form by physical laws—D'Arcy Thompson (1917, 1942) in particular (see pp.
1179 - 1208)— have indeed used mechanical optimality as the criterion for their
claim).
Thus, Agassiz commits himself to a "two-fisted" argument within the
formalist-functionalist dichotomy: to demonstrate that taxonomic structure is a
product of divine thought, he must show that classification records an anatomical
order independent of external conditions of life (the positive argument for
formalism), and also that a fit of form to immediate function cannot represent the
generating principle of organic order (the negative argument against
functionalism).
Agassiz, of course, does not deny that organisms tend to be well adapted; no
formalist has ever made so strong a claim against the Paleyan alternative. He
argues, rather—as formalists have done throughout history, no less so today than in
Agassiz's time—that adaptation only expresses a secondary tinkering and minor
adjustment of prior and fundamental Bauplan built by formalist principles. In its
strongest version, Agassiz's brand of formalism labels adaptation as a delusion
because good fit only confuses our search for a deeper order by imposing a
superficial overlay of specific and immediate adaptation upon a Bauplan, thereby
obscuring the more important underlying structure.
Agassiz's chief positive argument rests upon his unswerving allegiance to
Cuvier's establishment of four anatomical ground plans as the foci of animal