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agassizcontextlibrary · 4 years

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Origins of the Agassiz Neighborhood Name

by Charles Sullivan, Cambridge Historical Commission

The Agassiz neighborhood was named after the Agassiz School, which is now the Baldwin School.

The School Committee named the first Agassiz School after Prof. Louis Agassiz (1807-1873), a Swiss naturalist who was appointed head of Harvard’s Lawrence Scientific School in 1847. This was one of the first public schools built after Agassiz’s death in 1873; the chair of the School Committee, Rev. Dr. Andrew Preston Peabody, had been Agassiz’s friend and had preached at his funeral. The School Committee named the new Peabody School after Dr. Peabody in 1888.

On his arrival in Cambridge Agassiz first lived in a rented house on the lower end of Oxford Street, but after he married Elizabeth Cabot Cary in 1850 the couple moved into a new house on Quincy Street on the site of the present Fogg Museum. For some years Prof. Agassiz and his wife conducted a school for girls that emphasized scientific education; Elizabeth Agassiz was a founder of Radcliffe College in 1879. Meanwhile, Prof. Agassiz founded the Harvard’s Museum of Com-parative Zoology in 1859 and became one of the best-known scientists in America. Agassiz’s entry in Wikipedia discusses his career and racial views.

While Oxford Street was laid out beginning in the 1850s, the Agassiz neighborhood did not really begin to take shape until the 1870s. The first Agassiz School was built on the corner of Oxford and Sacramento streets in 1875. The second followed it in 1916, and the third (and present) school in 1995. Susan Maycock and Charles Sullivan described that history in Building Old Cambridge: Architecture and Development (MIT Press, 2016):

The city built the first Agassiz School in 1875 to serve the children of Harvard faculty living on Professors Row and suburban families settling along Oxford Street. The brick primary school was one of the first in Cambridge designed for classroom-based instruction; each room was about 25 feet square and seated forty-two students. Architect Joseph H. Littlefield incorporated advances in ventilation and central heating previously seen in the 1871 Harvard School on Broadway. The building was named for Professor Louis Agassiz, who founded the Museum of Comparative Zoology on Oxford Street in 1859.

Maria Baldwin, the principal for many years, was born in Cambridge of Haitian descent in 1856 and attended the Cambridge High School and the city’s teacher training course. Refused a position in Massachusetts, she taught in Maryland until she was hired to teach at the Agassiz in 1882. After seven years she became the first principal of her race in the state. When the second Agassiz School opened in 1916, she was designated “master,” a position held by few women, let alone African Americans. Miss Baldwin served until her death in 1922 and was remembered with great respect by President Eliot, E.E. Cummings, and other former students.

The second Agassiz School, designed by Edward McGirr in “West Point Gothic” style, had twelve classrooms, an auditorium/ gymnasium, and a deck for open-air sessions on the roof (Cambridge Chronicle, Jan. 2, 1915). Buttresses allowed window openings that were 25 percent larger than usual, reflecting contemporary educational theory and health concerns. The third Agassiz School was completed in 1995 on the same site. While intended to recall the scale of the older school, the new building was much larger and decidedly contemporary. The interior incorporates elements of the old building, including a Gothic doorway and beams from the ceiling of the auditorium. Pro-fessor Agassiz’s 19th-century racial views became objectionable to the school community, and the building was renamed in 2002 to honor Miss Baldwin.

Until fairly recently Cambridge neighborhoods were often named after their neighborhood schools and students always attended the school in their district. (The Agassiz elementary school district was bounded by Kirkland Street, Massachusetts Avenue, and the Somerville line, and included the Shady Hill neighborhood.) The strong association of schools with their neighborhoods began to loosen after Cambridge adopted a school choice program in 1981. In 2003 the Cambridge School Committee unilaterally scrambled the system, so that, for example, the Peabody School students and faculty, which for over a century had occupied the same site on Linnaean Street, moved into the Fitzgerald School on Rindge Avenue and the Peabody neighborhood lost its anchor. The Agas-siz School escaped this fate, and the neighborhood has remained associated with the former name of the school, which became the Baldwin in 2002.

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archivesofcreation · 5 years

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A YALE SCIENTIST GIVES UP DARWIN

“The origin of species is exactly what Darwin cannot explain.” —Professor David Gelernter, Professor of Computer Science at Yale University I recently had the privilege of being a guest teacher at a Christian academy in the Chicago Suburbs. I was invited to spend three days teaching on Creation, Evolution, Genesis, and the science involved in this debate. During this time, several of the teachers told me that they recently heard news of a Yale professor declaring publicly that evolution was not true. I did a little digging and discovered this apostate former evolutionist. “I grew up with Darwin’s theory, and had always believed it was true.” —Professor David Gelernter

His name is David Gelernter, and he is a professor of computer science at Yale University, chief scientist at Mirror Worlds Technologies, and a member of the National Council of the Arts. His article, published by the Claremont Institute, is partially a general review of the books by Intelligent Design proponents, and also an examination of the journey of ideas which took this man from faith in Darwin to intellectual doubt in the ability of evolution to explain the world in which we live. “Like so many others,” he says in this article, “I grew up with Darwin’s theory, and had always believed it was true.” Professor Gelernter credits Darwin’s Doubt by Stephen Meyer for opening his eyes. “Darwin’s Doubt is one of the most important books in a generation,” he says in his article. “Few open-minded people will finish it with their faith in Darwin intact.” He summarizes the book this way: “Meyer doesn’t only demolish Darwin; he defends a replacement theory, intelligent design (I.D.).” Professor Gelernter’s article is no brag piece about his own intelligence, nor even a joyful dismissing of a failed scientific model. And before the skeptics can level the accusation, this is not the result of some conversion to Christianity wherein he felt compelled by a new religious position to turn his back on the popular science of the day. Professor Gelernter describes Darwin’s theory of evolution as “a brilliant and beautiful scientific theory.” It is with seeming reluctance that he explains the great failings of his former faith. This is merely one more example of an educated man discovering that the Darwinian paradigm he had lived with all of his life simply does not stand up under scientific scrutiny, even when it saddens him to admit it. “Darwinism is no longer just a scientific theory…but an emergency replacement religion for the many troubled souls who need one.” —Professor David Gelernter Echoing what we in creation ministries understand all too well, Professor Gelernter says, “Intelligent design as Meyer explains it, never uses religious arguments… The religion is all on the other side. Meyer and other proponents of I.D. are the dispassionate intellectuals making orderly scientific arguments. Some I.D.–Haters have shown themselves willing to use any argument—fair or not, true or not, ad hominem or not—to keep this dangerous idea locked in a box forever. They remind us of the extent to which Darwinism is no longer just a scientific theory but the basis of a worldview, and an emergency replacement religion for the many troubled souls who need one.” This statement echoed a quote from Evolutionist Professor of Philosophy and Zoology, Michael Ruse, which I had shared with those academy students the day before I discovered this article. Professor Ruse had said, “I am an ardent evolutionist…Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today.” Many skeptics intending to attack biblical creation claim that the conflict over origins is one of religion vs science. What they often fail to understand is that they are right, but that the conflict is between science and the religion of Darwinism. Observational science studied with an open mind and intellectual honesty has never conflicted with the Bible, but rather has led many to abandon atheism and put their trust in the Word of God. “The fossil record showed that Darwin’s theory was wrong.” —Professor David Gelernter

The article written by Professor Gelernter goes on to discuss some of the core failings of evolutionary dogma and the ways in which observational science shows that Darwin’s theory, beautiful or not, MUST fail. The fossil record is discussed as it relates to the predicted plethora of transitional forms that MUST have existed, if Darwinian evolution were truly a fact of history. “But those predecessors of the Cambrian creatures,” says Professor Gelernter, “are missing. Darwin himself was disturbed by their absence from the fossil record. He believed they would turn up eventually. Some of his contemporaries (such as the eminent Harvard biologist Louis Agassiz) held that the fossil record was clear enough already, and showed that Darwin’s theory was wrong.” “…the ever-expanding fossil archives don’t look good for Darwin, who made clear and concrete predictions that have (so far) been falsified—according to many reputable paleontologists, anyway.” “Darwin’s main problem, however, is molecular biology.” —Professor David Gelernter Once again echoing what I had explained to my students just the day before I discovered his article, Professor Gelernter takes aim at the heart of the Darwinian religion when he discusses the modern scientific field of genetics. He explains in detail the modern understanding of genes, their relationship to the construction of proteins, and the ways in which mutations affect the information contained in existing, functional genes. “If you tinker with a valid gene,” he explains, “you will almost certainly make it worse—to the point where its protein misfires and endangers (or kills) its organism—long before you start making it better.”

To explain why mutations are not capable of salvaging the Darwinian hypothesis, he gives us a mental experiment to show the collection of vast improbabilities that evolution has to overcome in order to move up the Darwinian tree of life and explain how worms can give rise to fish, and then fish to lizards. He explains how we can calculate the odds of random chance processes creating a functional protein which can be of benefit to the organism and contribute to this imagined evolutionary path. Imagining we wish to create a chain of 150 amino acids that can be folded into a functional protein (a protein far smaller than the average protein in the human body), he demonstrates that “The total count of possible 150-link chains, where each link is chosen separately from 20 amino acids, 20150. … and there are only 1080 atoms in the universe.”

But despite the amazingly large possibilities for random outcomes, the odds of getting one that can function is amazingly small. Referencing the work of a scientist named Douglas Axe, Professor Gelernter explains that “of all 150-link amino acid sequences,1 in 1074 will be capable of folding into a stable protein. To say that your chances are 1 in 1074 is no different, in practice, from saying that they are zero. It’s not surprising that your chances of hitting a stable protein that performs some useful function, and might therefore play a part in evolution, are even smaller. Axe puts them at 1 in 1077.” “Neo-Darwinian Evolution is—so far—a dead loss.” —Professor David Gelernter “In other words: immense is so big, and tiny is so small, that neo-Darwinian evolution is—so far—a dead loss. Try to mutate your way from 150 links of gibberish to a working, useful protein and you are guaranteed to fail. Try it with ten mutations, a thousand, a million—you fail. The odds bury you. It can’t be done.” Professor Gelernter is not professing a faith in the six day creation, 6,000 years ago as Genesis describes, and we don’t wish to overstate his position. His words merely illustrate the fact that scientists of every field and professors in every avenue of academic study have come to the same conclusion once they have been moved to consider Darwinian evolution with an open mind: Darwinian Evolution is “a dead loss.” It asks the impossible. It is a religion which demands countless miracles, while at the same time rejecting the existence of a miracle worker. At the end of my last talk, a student asked me why, if evolution is so obviously false, do people still believe it? I replied that, most people simply don’t know the facts. Many fail to define “Evolution” so that it means what Darwin meant. Instead they come to think it is simply any change over time, thus making it not only easy to accept, but easy to find evidence for. Many, such as Professor Gelernter, do not take the time and effort to examine it until challenged to do so.

“You cannot add by subtracting.” —Professor David Gelernter What I taught those students, and what Professor Gelernter discovered through the writings of Intelligent Design proponents is nothing the common person cannot comprehend. It boils down to ideas as simple as, “You cannot add by subtracting.” But the reason why many are capable of facing the facts and still embracing evolution comes down to an unwelcome conclusion. As I explained to the students, when you realize that evolution is impossible, then you have to ask where we came from. And when you realize that the natural processes cannot account for all life, then you must conclude that something above nature—something SUPERnatural must be the explanation. And when you understand the information in the cell, the fine tuning of the universe, and a host of other observable facts of science, you must conclude that we have a brilliant, intelligent, supernatural designer. “I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God…” —Thomas Nagel, Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University But that means… God. And that means WE cannot be our own gods, and make our own rules, and live as if there is no authority over us. And to some, this is a conclusion which is unacceptable, and they would prefer to embrace a lie than accept this truth. Professor Richard Lewontin once admitted this when he said, “…we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism…Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”

Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University, Thomas Nagel, once admitted, “I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God…” He went on to admit, “My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time. One of the tendencies it supports is the ludicrous overuse of evolutionary biology to explain everything about human life, including everything about the human mind…” For those who are capable of considering these matters with an open mind, we are dedicated to assisting others to “Always be prepared to give an answer” (1 Peter 3:15). For those who are not, we pray that God would do a work in their hearts and their minds to receive the truth, that HE can set them free. This is why I spent three days teaching those students what Genesis says, and why they can trust it. Original article from Creation Today Read the full article

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williaaamjamesss · 5 years

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William James (January 11, 1842 – August 27, 1910) was an American philosopher and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States. James was a leading thinker of the late nineteenth century, one of the most influential U.S. philosophers, and has been labelled the "Father of American psychology".

William James was born at the Astor House in New York City on January 11, 1842. He was the son of Henry James Sr., a noted and independently wealthy Swedenborgian theologian well acquainted with the literary and intellectual elites of his day. The intellectual brilliance of the James family milieu and the remarkable epistolary talents of several of its members have made them a subject of continuing interest to historians, biographers, and critics.

William James received an eclectic trans-Atlantic education, developing fluency in both German and French. Education in the James household encouraged cosmopolitanism. The family made two trips to Europe while William James was still a child, setting a pattern that resulted in thirteen more European journeys during his life. His early artistic bent led to an apprenticeship in the studio of William Morris Hunt in Newport, Rhode Island, but he switched in 1861 to scientific studies at the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard University.

In his early adulthood, James suffered from a variety of physical ailments, including those of the eyes, back, stomach, and skin. He was also tone deaf. He was subject to a variety of psychological symptoms which were diagnosed at the time as neurasthenia, and which included periods of depression during which he contemplated suicide for months on end. Two younger brothers, Garth Wilkinson (Wilky) and Robertson (Bob), fought in the Civil War. The other three siblings (William, Henry, and Alice James) all suffered from periods of invalidism.

He took up medical studies at Harvard Medical School in 1864 (according to his brother Henry James, the author). He took a break in the spring of 1865 to join naturalist Louis Agassiz on a scientific expedition up the Amazon River, but aborted his trip after eight months, as he suffered bouts of severe seasickness and mild smallpox. His studies were interrupted once again due to illness in April 1867. He traveled to Germany in search of a cure and remained there until November 1868; at that time he was 26 years old. During this period, he began to publish; reviews of his works appeared in literary periodicals such as the North American Review.

James finally earned his M.D. degree in June 1869 but he never practiced medicine. What he called his "soul-sickness" would only be resolved in 1872, after an extended period of philosophical searching. He married Alice Gibbens in 1878. In 1882 he joined the Theosophical Society.

James's time in Germany proved intellectually fertile, helping him find that his true interests lay not in medicine but in philosophy and psychology. Later, in 1902 he would write: "I originally studied medicine in order to be a physiologist, but I drifted into psychology and philosophy from a sort of fatality. I never had any philosophic instruction, the first lecture on psychology I ever heard being the first I ever gave".

In 1875–1876, James, Henry Pickering Bowditch (1840–1911), Charles Pickering Putnam (1844–1914), and James Jackson Putnam (1846–1918) founded the Putnam Camp at St. Huberts, Essex County, New York.

CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY

James's book, Principles of Psychology, has had far reaching impacts on the field of psychology. The massive 1200 page book was published in two separate volumes, and took more than a decade to complete. Two years after its publication, an abridged version, Psychology: The Briefer Course, was released. In these books, James defined beliefs as those ideals that serve a purpose to the believer. He developed a theory of truth that states that a truth is legitimate if the statements are in line with theories or things, but the truth must also fit cohesively together in order to be considered verifiable.

In collaboration with Carle Lange, James developed the James-Lange theory of emotion. This theory argues that emotions are physiological reactions. When people experience an event, the event causes physiological changes, and these changes act as cues for emotion. For example, the body of a person in danger initiates the fight or flight reaction, which elevates heart rate and blood pressure. The person then feels afraid based upon these physiological experiences.

James remains a widely read philosopher, and his theories on pragmatism have contributed both to the field of psychology and philosophy. According to James's pragmatism, the value of an idea is dependent upon its usefulness in the practical world rather than its absolute truth. Some of James's other contributions to philosophy include:

The epistemological theory that a belief is true if it is useful. The truthfulness of an idea can be verified based upon its correspondence with the real world. He argued that this theory could be used to investigate the truthfulness of religious beliefs by assessing whether these beliefs worked well for everyone in the world.

His assertion that the will is free. James asserted that the will is free and “proved” this fact by stating that he chose to believe that the will is free. He argued that existence of something can, in some ways, be brought to life by fervently believing it. The debate over free will continues to rage in philosophical communities.

A philosophy of history that compared extraordinary individuals to mutations in the gene pool. Drawing upon the theory of evolution, he argued that these geniuses drive the evolution of societies just as mutation drives the evolution of species.

James held firmly to his belief in functionalism in psychology, and his work in this area has made him one of the most influential and eminent psychologists of his time. He was open to alternative medicine and was a founding member of the American Society for Psychical Research, an organization dedicated to parapsychology.

BOOKS BY WILLIAM JAMES

The Principles of Psychology (1890)

Psychology (Briefer Course) (1892)

Talks to Teachers on Psychology: and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals (1899)

The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (1902)

Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907)

A Pluralistic Universe (1909)

The Meaning of Truth: A Sequel to "Pragmatism" (1909)

Some Problems of Philosophy: A Beginning of an Introduction to Philosophy (1911)

Memories and Studies (1911)

Essays in Radical Empiricism (1912)

Letters of William James (1920)

Collected Essays and Reviews (1920)

The Thought and Character of William James (1935)

The Will to Believe, Human Immortality (1956)

William James on Psychical Research (1960)

The Correspondence of William James (1992–2002)

Most and foremost, William James was also known for his education theory and also the idea of empirical analysis and learning which was a great contribution in the modern day educational system in the world.

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youngwilliamjamesthinking-blog · 7 years

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Learning Biology and Living a Life of Gypsy-Hood in Brazil

Caption: One of James’s first career possibilities was work in natural history. Louis Agassiz taught at the Lawrence Scientific School and was a charismatic scientist with a worldwide reputation. His fellow teachers praised his “power of awakening popular enthusiasm and enlisting public sympathy.” That included a talent for fund raising that allowed both the Museum of Comparative Zoology to be opened in 1861, and supported his expedition to Brazil, where James explored the tropical landscape and seriously considered becoming a field naturalist.

James told his mother in 1863, “I may stick to science,” especially if he could “get into [Louis] Agassiz’ museum” as an assistant. He knew the salary would not be much, so his financial worries resurfaced because this career move would “drain away at your property for a few more years.” Despite these worries, from April 1865 to January 1866, he joined an expedition to explore the natural history of Brazil with Agassiz himself. The trip took him far from the orbit of his family and of American culture, immersing him in the polyglot world of Brazil on an exotic adventure. While he was happy to taste the “delightful savor of freedom and gypsy hood,” especially after a few years of sedentary study and vocational hand-wringing, young James mostly welcomed the trip for the “a chance of learning a good deal of Zoology and botany.” With first-hand field experience in the tropics to crown his range of scientific and medical training, he hoped to lay the groundwork for a career of teaching and research in the biological sciences.

#history #William James #Brazil #Amazon #natural history #biology

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viviendapropia · 4 years

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Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz (1807)

Agassiz was a Swiss-born naturalist and geologist. Noticing the presence of huge alpine boulders in areas of Switzerland where there are no glaciers, he hypothesized that glaciers had, at one time, been widespread in the area and had dragged the boulders there. This lent credence to his theory of a recent ice age. He was also a renowned teacher and did notable work with fossils. Agassiz was a lifelong opponent, on religious grounds, of what now-accepted scientific theory? Discuss Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz (1807)

#Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz (1807)

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viviendapropia · 7 years

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Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz (1807)

#Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz (1807)

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youngwilliamjamesthinking-blog · 7 years

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The Secret Alliance of Creationists and Atheists

Caption: Louis Agassiz was one of the most well-informed and respected scientists of the mid-nineteenth century, and he was avidly opposed to Darwinism. He took his stand with expectations for harmony of science and religion, and with his Ice Age theory. He thought that natural catastrophes, such as glacier, directed by God, could explain species distributions.

James’s own teacher Louis Agassiz helped to set the tone for advocates of religious certainty, in his own time and ever since. Agassiz was a great scientific investigator and teacher, but he could not abide the Darwinian turn; the same was true for most advocates of natural theology, who looked to science for empirical evidence supporting religious belief. For all their differences, the idealistic Agassiz and the followers of natural theology stood for an alternative science with fewer hypotheses, fewer probabilities, much shorter spans of earth history, and therefore much more certainty—in understanding of science and in support of religious belief. While many nineteenth-century Evangelical Protestant Christians accommodated to Darwinism, still more developed increasing antagonism for mainstream science and kindred secularities, especially because of their defiance of Biblical certainties, and the most stringent consolidated into early twentieth-century Fundamentalism. Despite the irony of their anti-modernism emerging in modern times, the very extremity of their position has contributed to the attention they attract. Current theories of creation science and intelligent design have drawn upon similar expectations for scientific and empirical sanctions for belief to support the case for biblical authority holding the line against less deterministic modern scientific theories and methods. Other traditional Western religions have perceived less challenge from modern science: Roman Catholicism has for the most part integrated scientific innovation into its understanding of unfolding revelation comprehended by human reason within history, and Judaism has generally embraced theistic evolutionism, with science as a way to learn about divine creation.

Advocates of scientific certainty, from the scientific naturalists of James’s time to current enthusiasts for secular science such as Richard Dawkins, hold similarly ardent views about the contrast between science and religion, even in their utter disagreement with advocates of religious certainty. Some supporters of science, however, have seen no need to leave religion aside, as long as the contrasts between science and religion can serve as lessons in themselves for keeping their ideas and beliefs strictly separate. In James’s circle, Harvard botanist Asa Gray, a committed Presbyterian Christian who avidly promoted Darwinism, was part of a sturdy tradition of keeping the realms in splendid isolation, for personal belief and social purposes. Religious belief would then remain as certain as the individual desired or as the church demanded because belief would stay segregated from science, with each blessedly untouched by the other. But curiosities would intrude, along with practical questions about boundaries in practices, policies, and personal orientations.

#history #William James #Creationism #atheism #fundamentalism #Richard Dawkins #Asa Gray

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