272 THE STRUCTURE OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORY
continental formalism, published in the most English of American cities. Agassiz
never mentions Paley by name, but his volume presents an almost perfect
counterpoise to Paley's Natural Theology from the other pole of the great
dichotomy in approaches to form—particularly, in this case, to the question of how
an omnipotent God would manifest his glory in nature.
Modern supporters of systematics, in a world increasingly dominated by
trendier forms of biological research, often feel beleaguered, and therefore
impelled to provide a wider rationale for pursuing classification, an enterprise
unfairly burdened with such epithets as "stamp collecting" by a miscomprehending
public. Today, the rationale for systematics tends to be given—quite legitimately
of course—in terms of our current crises in environmental deterioration and
declining biodiversity. Yet if any systematist ever yearned for a maximally grand
rationale for his chosen profession, he could not find, or even imagine, a more
audacious document than Agassiz's Essay on Classification. (Unfortunately,
changing philosophies and increasing knowledge have rendered Agassiz's
argument obsolete, but we may still sense, and should still admire, the style and
grandeur of his claim.)
In baldest terms, and from a Platonic perspective (with organisms construed
as temporary, material incarnations, representing the permanent and transcendent
mental structures of an overarching creative force), Agassiz argues that taxonomy
should be regarded, in principle, as the highest of the sciences. For species embody
ideas in God's mind; and actual organisms then became transient configurations
that represent, or incarnate, these ideas. Relationships among species, as expressed
in classification, therefore reveal the structure of God's thought, for if each species
denotes a divine idea, then their interconnections in taxonomy display the order of
God's mentality.
Agassiz poses the key question: "Are these divisions artificial or natural? Are
they the devices of the human mind to classify and arrange our knowledge in such
a manner as to bring it more readily within our grasp and facilitate further
investigations, or have they been instituted by the Divine Intelligence as the
categories of his mode of thinking?" (1857, pp. 7-8). He then provides his firm
answer: "To me it appears indisputable, that this order and arrangement of our
studies are based upon the natural primitive relations of animal life, —those
systems [of classification]... being in truth but translations, into human language,
of the thoughts of the Creator."
With this vision, Agassiz cuts through an old argument about the differential
"reality" of categories in a Linnaean hierarchy: Are species real and higher levels
artificial? Are all categories real or do they only express the practical needs of
human convenience? If, as Agassiz argues, the entire taxonomic system, when
properly "discovered," records the structure of God's thoughts, then all categories
must be objective segments of this divine totality. Only organisms have material
existence, but taxonomic categories embody higher reality as direct expressions of
the divine mind:
Is not this in itself evidence enough that genera, families, orders, classes, and
types have the same foundation in nature as species, and that individuals