276 THE STRUCTURE OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORY
of the most diversified types under identical circumstances exhibits thought, the
ability to adapt a great variety of structures to the most uniform conditions. The
repetition of similar types, under the most diversified circumstances, shows an
immaterial connection between them; it exhibits thought, proving directly how
completely the Creative Mind is independent of the influence of a material world"
(p. 132).
Agassiz claimed even stronger support from the geological record.
Environmental change exhibits no directional pattern through time, but life's
history features progressive change (via successive creations, not by evolution)
within each of the four immutable types. How could unaltered physical laws and
nondirectional physical change fashion a progressive history of life?
Who could, in the presence of such facts, assume any causal connection
between two series of phenomena, the one of which is ever obeying the
same laws, while the other presents at every successive period new
relations, an ever changing gradation of new combinations, leading to a
final climax with the appearance of Man? Who does not see, on the
contrary, that this identity of the products of physical agents in all ages,
totally disproves any influence on their part in the production of these ever-
changing beings, which constitute the organic world, and which exhibit, as
a whole, such striking evidence of connected thoughts! (p. 101).I do not claim that the refutation of Paleyan natural theology motivated this
line of argument. As his major aim, Agassiz tried to debunk his caricatured version
of "materialism" by showing that organisms cannot be directly constructed by
physical laws. Agassiz advances his argument primarily by invoking numerous
variations on the same theme: organisms do not "match" the physical world in the
way that ice forms as the predictable and appropriate state for water at certain
temperatures and pressures; thus, we see "how completely the Creative Mind is
independent of the influence of a material world" (p. 132 as quoted above).
Agassiz begins his explicit attack on functionalism by acknowledging Paley's
style of natural theology as the more common argument for God's existence and
benevolence (Agassiz cites the Bridgewater Treatises, the primary Paleyan
documents of his generation), but then holding that adaptation cannot represent
God's primary mark upon natural history for two reasons: (1) Good correlation of
function to environment would not illustrate God's care in any case, for such a
relation may only record the production of form by physical causes. (2)
Adaptationism fails as a generality because too many constraints, imposed by unity
of type, limit any organic approach to optimality:
The argument for the existence of an Intelligent Creator is generally drawn
from the adaptation of means to ends, upon which the Bridge-water
Treatises, for example, have been based. But... beyond certain limits, it is
not even true. We find organs without functions, as, for instance, the teeth
of the whale, which never cut through the gum, the