Asa Gray
Asa Gray
Asa Grayis considered the most important American botanist of the 19th century. His Darwiniana was also considered an important explanation of how religion and science were not necessarily mutually exclusive...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth18 November 1810
CountryUnited States of America
animal plant form
It was always understood that plants and animals, though completely contrasted in their higher representatives, approached each other very closely in their lower and simpler forms. But they were believed not to blend.
animal vegetables lines
In short, the animal and vegetable lines, diverging widely above, join below in a loop.
philosophical animal views
We have really, that I know of, no philosophical basis for high and low. Moreover, the vegetable kingdom does not culminate, as the animal kingdom does. It is not a kingdom, but a common-wealth; a democracy, and therefore puzzling and unaccountable from the former point of view.
animal shapes plant
We have spoken of beings so low in the scale that the individuals throughout their whole existence are not sufficiently specialized to be distinctively plant or animal: yet these are definite life in simpler shape.
animal definitions laying-down
The best opinion now is, that there are multitudinous forms which are not sufficiently differentiated to be distinctively either plant or animal, while, as respects ordinary plants and animals, the difficulty of laying down a definition has become far greater than ever before.
animal oxygen years
Many years ago it was taught that plants and animals were composed of different materials: plants, of a chemical substance of three elements,- carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen; animals of one of four elements, nitrogen being added to the other three.
real animal two
It was implicitly supposed that every living thing was distinctively plant or animal; that there were real and profound differences between the two, if only they could be seized.
animal vegetables next
Next it was found that it was physiologically and structurally the same in the plant, that it was the living part of the plant, that which manifested the life and did the work in vegetable as well as in animal organisms.
wonder moments ifs
Yes, it is true that there are times when you do wonder if things are worth it but usually those moments pass as soon as they have come.
faith order bases
Faith in order, which is the basis of science, cannot reasonably be separated from faith in an Ordainer, which is the basis of religion.
science views elements
This view, as a rounded whole and in all its essential elements, has very recently disappeared from science. It died a royal death with Agassiz.
two different kingdoms
The former conviction that these two kingdoms were wholly different in structure, in function, and in kind of life, was not seriously disturbed by the difficulties which the naturalist encountered when he undertook to define them.
wind shapes sides
Natural selection is not the wind which propels the vessel, but the rudder which, by friction, now on this side and now on that, shapes the course.
annoyed lasts saws
Agassiz, when I saw him last, had read but a part of Origin of Species. He says it is POOR-VERY POOR!!. The fact is, he is very much annoyed by it.