Louis Agassiz
Louis Agassiz
Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassizwas a Swiss-American biologist and geologist recognized as an innovative and prodigious scholar of Earth's natural history, with later American writings that have received scrutiny because of particular racial themes. Agassiz grew up in Switzerland, and studied and received Doctor of Philosophy and medical degrees at Erlangen and Munich, respectively. After further studies with Cuvier and von Humboldt in Paris, Agassiz proceeded with research leading to his appointment as professor of natural history at University of Neuchâtel...
NationalitySwiss
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth28 May 1807
CountrySwitzerland
I have no time to make money, I am searching for the truth
The glacier was God's great plough set at work ages ago to grind, furrow, and knead over, as it were, the surface of the earth.
Every scientific truth goes through three states: first, people say it conflicts with the Bible; next, they say it has been discovered before; lastly, they say they always believed it.
I will frankly tell you that my experience in prolonged scientific investigations convinces me that a belief in God-a God who is behind and within the chaos of vanishing points of human knowledge-adds a wonderful stimulus to the man who attempts to penetrate into the regions of the unknown.
Study nature not books
The study of Nature is intercourse with the Highest Mind.
It is the job of prophets and scientists alike to proclaim the glories of God.
I sometimes hear preachers speak of the sad condition of men who live without God in the world, but a scientist who lives without God in the world seems to me worse off than ordinary men.
Today our duty is to destroy the myth of evolution, considered as a simple, understood, and explained phenomenon which keeps rapidly unfolding before us. Biologists must be encouraged to think about the weaknesses and extrapolations that theoreticians put forward or lay down as established truths. The deceit is sometimes unconscious, but not always, since some people, owing to their sectarianism, purposely overlook reality and refuse to acknowledge the inadequacies and falsity of their beliefs.
Select such subjects that your pupils cannot walk out without seeing them. Train your pupils to be observers, and have them provided with the specimens about which you speak. If you can find nothing better, take a house-fly or a cricket, and let each one hold a specimen and examine it as you talk.
A laboratory of natural history is a sanctuary where nothing profane should be tolerated. I feel less agony at improprieties in churches than in a scientific laboratory.
The possibilities of existence run so deeply into the extravagant that there is scarcely any conception too extraordinary for Nature to realise.
The theory [of evolution] is a scientific mistake.
I have devoted my whole life to the study of Nature, and yet a single sentence may express all that I have done. I have shown that there is a correspondence between the succession of Fishes in geological times and the different stages of their growth in the egg,-this is all. It chanced to be a result that was found to apply to other groups and has led to other conclusions of a like nature.