Species

134 Species

All the observations relative to domestic animals, among which there are so many

and so numerous variations, again did not succeed in demonstrating a sufficiently

large amplitude in these variations; never did they [the Darwinists] have as a

result anything which manifests the indefinite tendency to a changeability without

limit...^88

In short, Agassiz rejected the Darwinian view of species on the grounds that the
requisite variation had not been observed. Agassiz, however, has been accused of
being unable to see that there could possibly be more than a certain amount of varia-
tion in his own specimens, as Lurie asserted:

When he had hundreds of fishes spread before him on a work table, these convictions

(of the fixity of species) were of such force that even his keen powers of observation

and his excellent ability to compare diverse types failed him. He insisted on identify-

ing specimens that seemed even the slightest degree different from one another as sep-

arate species rather than as variants. In one analysis alone, for example, he described

nine separate “species” of fishes that were in actual fact reducible to four schools of

single species.^89

If true, Agassiz, merciless on taxonomic splitters, was in practice himself a split-
ter because of his tendency to classify on form alone despite his stated convictions
about species in theory. However, Winsor has investigated these fishes and argued
that he was not so much of a splitter as Mayr had said, and when he was, he was not
unusual for the time in that respect.^90
In another, more sinister, respect though, his views did lead him to exces-
sive splitting. He claimed that Negroes were not of the same species as whites,
because, it seems, of the feelings of revulsion he had for them that led him to
deny they could be conspecific to whites. This famously meant that he became the
leading proponent of multigenism and hence a popular figure in the South before
the Civil War.^91
Amundson argues that Mayr’s access to Agassiz’s works at the Museum of
Comparative Zoology at Harvard, which Agassiz had founded and Mayr was a later
director, led Mayr to overgeneralize that all taxonomists before Darwin were essen-
tialists, typologists, and fixists.^92 Agassiz was indeed a Platonist who considered
species thoughts in the mind of God, and he was also undoubtedly a species fixist,
particularly after Darwin. Moreover, he was both a taxonomic essentialist and a
material essentialist. Possibly he was the first such essentialist fixist Platonist. But he
was not, so to speak, typical of the time or the profession, apart from his students,
and they only for a limited time.

(^88) Agassiz 1869, 378. I have amended the translation slightly for grammar’s sake. The original version
was accessed on 23/9/02 at http://www.athro.com/general/atrans.html.
(^89) Lurie 1960, 194f according to Mayr, in Lurie’s footnote.
(^90) Winsor 1979, 104ff. It would be interesting to see how those species have fared in the molecular
period of systematics. Thanks to the author for pointing out my earlier mistake.
(^91) Hunter Dupree 1968, 228f.
(^92) Amundson 2005, 79.