Louis Agassiz on Scientific Method, Polygenism, and Transmutation: A Reassessment

Historians have frequently charged Louis Agassiz, the most eminent naturalist in the United States during the mid-19th century, with being a victim of his own hubris and a philosophical idealist oblivious or at least indifferent to data of natural history that challenged his views. This article, which focuses on Agassiz’s conception of the nature of science and the scientific method, the inferences that he drew from natural history, and the reasons why he refused to abandon his commitment to the doctrine of special creation, seeks to show that Agassiz’s views were grounded just as rigorously as those of his opponents on a careful examination of natural phenomena.