Asa Gray
![Asa Gray](/assets/img/authors/asa-gray.jpg)
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
calling members profession
I am sufficiently convinced already that the members of a profession know their own calling better than anyone else can know it.
extinction causes may
I accept extinction as best explaining disjoined species. I see that the same cause must have reduced many species of great range to small, and that it may have reduced large genera to so small, and of families.
winning wish may
Indeed upon much that may have to say, I expect rather the charitable judgment than the full assent of those whose approbation I could most wish to win.
causes theory refreshing
Your candor is worth everything to your cause. It is refreshing to find a person with a new theory who frankly confesses that he finds difficulties, insurmountable, at least for the present.
book order ideas
We may take it to be the accepted idea that the Mosaic books were not handed down to us for our instruction in scientific knowledge, and that it is our duty to ground our scientific beliefs upon observation and inference, unmixed with considerations of a different order.