Refutation on Agassiz - Essay Example

Although Agassiz started his work while still at the University, he won his reputation in the United States between the years 1807 and 1873 during his final studies of fossil fishes. This essay seeks to discuss the Agassiz theory and some of its refutation. The paper refutes the theory due to its insistence on the inclusion of glaciers, ‘threefold parallelism’ concept and its racist attitudes. That is because Darwin and other scientists argue that glacier is not the only force that has shaped geology worldwide and also all beings are equal.

In the 1840’s Agassiz immigrated to America where he become a professor of comparative zoology at Harvard University (Wendel 162). It has been recorded that Agassiz was the first man to challenge and oppose Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. According to him, the theory is scientifically wrong since it is unable to show evidence of transformation of a fossil animal or plant to another or one kind of living to the other. Agassiz main reason for rejecting the Darwin’s theory was based on paleontology since the fossil records did not prop up the evolution.

Though Agassiz has been closely associated with the development of the glacial theory, it has been identified that he did not develop it. According to Gould and Morey, the hypothesis was developed by Jens Esmark, Jean de Charpentier, and other natural scientists in the early 1800’s. He only made a little original contribution of expanding the concept of an ice age to a global catastrophe using analytical evidence. Besides, he also developed the idea of uniformitarianism to explain the development of the earth.

Moreover, Agassiz borrowed some of the ideas from his theory of mass extinction so as to improve the glacial theory. These plans included the great ice age, climate change, and evolution, and the biblical flood. As a result, the glacial theory becomes widely accepted by most