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Tribute to Horace Barlow:

Dr Rebecca Lawson @beckyneuro

Oh my! I’ve been working on visual adaptation as cortical gain control since the beginning of my PhD and Horace Barlow wrote the seminal papers in this area in the 60’s – he’s one of my science heroes.

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August 2, 2019

August 2, 2019

Dr. Horace Barlow, Cambridge CB3 9AX, England

Dear Dr. Barlow,

The previous time I visited Harvard I got to go to the Museum of Comparative Zoology that was founded by Louis Agassiz, and headed today by Edward O. Wilson who have had the privilege of corresponding with in the past. In fact, I have read many of Dr. Wilson’s books.

Wikipedia noted concerning Agassiz:

Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz (/ˈæɡəsi/; French: [aɡasi]; May 28, 1807 – December 14, 1873) was a Swiss-American biologist and geologist recognized as an innovative and prodigious scholar of Earth’s natural history. Agassiz grew up in Switzerland. He received doctor of philosophy and medical degrees at Erlangen and Munich, respectively. After studying with Cuvier and Humboldt in Paris, Agassiz was appointed professor of natural history at the University of Neuchâtel. He emigrated to the United States in 1847 after visiting Harvard University. He went on to become professor of zoology and geology at Harvard, to head its Lawrence Scientific School, and to found its Museum of Comparative Zoology.

I have enclosed an article from Dr. Jerry Bergman that I thought you would find thought provoking since it talks about Charles Darwin’s interaction with Agassiz in the 19th century.

Thanks for your time.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher, everettehatcher@gmail.com, http://www.thedailyhatch.org, cell ph 501-920-5733,13900 cottontail lane, Alexander, AR 72002

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Louis Agassiz: Anti-Darwinist Harvard Paleontology Professor BY JERRY BERGMAN, PH.D. *  | MONDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2011ShareEmailFacebookTwitterPinterest

Introduction

Jean Louis Agassiz (1807-1873) is regarded as one of the greatest scientists of the 19th century. A founding father of the modern American scientific establishment, Agassiz was also a lifelong opponent of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Agassiz “ruled in professorial majesty at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology.”

[He] was a brilliant….man, an essentialist who detested evolutionism—Darwin’s brand in particular—and clung to a vision of well-ordered nature assembled by special creations. The zoology of Agassiz was consonant with the natural theology of William Paley.¹

Agassiz wrote that “evidence of the existence of a Creator, constantly and thoughtfully working among the complicated structures that He has made” is found throughout the natural world.² He concluded that in the living world “is clearly seen the intervention of an intelligent Creator” and that when we evaluate the living world we can see “the mental operations of the Creator at every step.”³

Education

Agassiz was born in the village of Montier in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Like many naturalists of the time, Agassiz was educated as a physician. He studied with several prominent German biologists, including zoologist Lorenz Oken and embryologist Ignatius Döllinger. After receiving his medical degree from the University of Erlangen in 1830, he traveled to Paris to study comparative anatomy under the most renowned comparative anatomist in all Europe, Baron Georges Cuvier.⁴

Cuvier, the founder of the field of paleontology, was so impressed with Agassiz’s work on fossil fish that he turned his own notes and drawings, gathered in the course of years of study, over to Agassiz to complete his opus on fossil fish. This research documented that no evidence existed for the evolution of fish from non-fish worm-like creatures as hypothesized by Darwin. When published, Agassiz’s work was “hailed for its accuracy and originality in describing…fishes in the ancient fossiliferous bed of red sandstone.”⁵

Agassiz concluded from his lifelong study of nature that purpose and design were manifested everywhere in nature.⁶ He noted that if it required an intelligent mind just to study the facts of biology, “it must have required an intelligent mind to establish them.”⁷ Following his famous teacher Cuvier, he asserted that the major groups of animals do not represent ancestral branches of a hypothetical evolutionary tree but, instead, document a great plan that was used by the Creator to design the many different species in existence today.

Already an eminent scientist while still a young man, Agassiz came to the United States in 1848 to accept a professorship at Harvard. In 1860, Agassiz founded the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard, later to be headed byStephen Jay Gould. His studies of “fishes, both living and fossil, were definitive, and have never been equaled.”⁸ Agassiz and his colleagues also founded The National Academy of Sciences in 1863.

His many students influenced science for decades after his death. Stanford professor-scientist David Starr Jordan noted that “of the older teachers in America—the men who were born between 1830 and 1850—nearly all who have reached eminence have been at one time or another pupils of Agassiz.”⁹

Henry Morris wrote that Agassiz was “also a great teacher, in both Europe and America, where his Harvard classes in natural history were said to have produced all the notable teachers of that subject in America during the last half of the 19th century.”¹⁰ Noted author-naturalist Donald Peattie asserted that “no American scientist ever had as much influence on scientific education as Agassiz.”¹¹ A man of erudition, Agassiz’s close friends included not only famous scientists such as Darwin, but also Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson,and other literary notables.¹²

A Scientific Creationist

Agassiz saw the divine plan of God omnipresent in nature, and could not accept a theory that denied the intelligent design he saw everywhere in the natural world. Agassiz even once defined a species as “a thought of God.” As Agassiz wrote in his Essay on Classification, his lifelong study of the natural world eloquently documented the “premeditation, power, wisdom, greatness, prescience, omniscience, providence” of God. He declared that “all these facts in their natural connection proclaim aloud the One God, whom man may know, adore, and love; and Natural History must in good time become the analysis of the thoughts of the Creator of the Universe.”¹³

Henry Morris called Agassiz not only “a great Christian paleontologist” but “the father of glacial geology and the science of glaciology.” Morris added:

He profoundly believed in God and His special creation of every kind of organism. Probably no man was more intimately acquainted with a greater variety of kinds of animals, living and extinct, and it is significant that he was an inveterate opponent of evolutionism to the very end of his life.¹⁴

Furthermore, Agassiz believed that science can lead to “recognition of the existence of God…from the study of His works” and “the importance of the study of the animal kingdom with reference to its manifestation of the power, wisdom, and goodness of God, is very great.”¹⁵

Macroevolution Falsified by Science

Long before the mutational theory of evolution was popularized, Agassiz foresaw the overwhelmingly harmful nature of mutations and the inability of “selection” to produce new life forms.¹⁶ He recognized that the problem with Darwinism was not the survival of the fittest, but rather the arrival of the fittest. Agassiz knew, as did most all animal and plant breeders both then and today, that clear limits exist to variation and no known way exists to go beyond these limits in spite of 4,000 years of trying. Creationists today refer to this fact as variation in life limited to that existing within the Genesis kinds. The fact is, all mutations known to us cannot even begin to produce the variety required for molecules to mankind evolution, but rather they create

monstrosities, and the occurrence of these, under disturbing influences, are…only additional evidence of the fixity of species. The extreme deviations obtained in domesticity are secured…at the expense of the typical characters and end usually in the production of sterile individuals. All such facts seem to show that the so-called varieties or breeds, far from indicating the beginning of new types, or the initiating of incipient species, only point out the range of flexibility in types which in their essence are invariable.¹⁷

Darwin sent Agassiz a copy of his now-famous Origin of Species published in 1859. Although very “familiar with the factual evidence advanced by Darwin,” Agassiz carefully examined his ideas and the evidence on which they were based. As Agassiz studied the Origin, “mounting annoyance” resulted as he continued to read because he recognized that the “ideas it contained were plainly no different from the notions…he had long since rejected.”¹⁸

Two years after Origin was published, Agassiz wrote that Darwin’s theory was scientifically wrong and was “propounded by some very learned but…rather fanciful scientific men” who taught that the forms of life presently inhabiting our earth “had grown out of a comparative simple and small beginning.”¹⁹ Agassiz concluded that a great variety of evidence discovered in times past has refuted evolutionary theory. He considered this fact based on his paleontological research “a most powerful blow at that theory which would make us believe that all the animals have been derived from a few original beings, which have become diversified and varied in [the] course of time.”²⁰

The man whom Professor Vander Weyde called an “eminent savant”²¹ excelled in several science fields. Agassiz also correctly recognized that in his writings on evolution “Darwin had departed from the methods of scientific inquiry so well exemplified in his earlier studies.” Furthermore, his famous 1859 Origin of Speciesbook “had contributed nothing new to the understanding of nature.”²² Bolton Davidheiser added:

Louis Agassiz not only did not accept Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, he actively opposed it. He attacked it at a vital point, namely, its inability to show evidence of the transformation of one kind of living or fossil animal or plant into another. This is still a basic problem.²³

A main reason he rejected evolution was based on paleontology, the area of Agassiz’s expertise. Agassiz knew that the fossil record did not support Darwin’s theory and strongly argued against it. He also concluded, in contrast to Darwinism, that “the crowning act of the Creator, man, was placed on the earth at the head of creation.”²⁴

Agassiz was also active in debating and defending his anti-Darwin views. Among those he debated included Harvard professor Asa Gray, considered the leading American botanist of the 19th century, and Professor William Barton Rogers, President of MIT.²⁵ Unfortunately, in one area Agassiz made a major mistake—he accepted the racist conclusion in that certain groups of men were inferior to others in contradiction to the clear teaching of both biblical and historic Christianity that all humans descended from one couple, Adam and Eve. Instead, Agassiz accepted the then-popular unbiblical preAdamite theory that taught only Caucasians were descended from Adam and that other, supposedly inferior, races of men, such as Negroes, were created before Adam.²⁶ Unfortunately, this idea still has many adherents today as part of a futile attempt to harmonize biblical teachings with Darwinism.

Conclusions

Harvard professor Louis Agassiz, one of the 19th century’s leading paleontologists, was able to effectively articulate the many major scientific objections to Darwinism that remain unanswered. After a lifetime of scientific work and numerous science awards and honors, Agassiz never could accept Darwinism—he concluded, from his study of paleontology, that the scientific evidence was strongly against it—and never swerved from his creationist worldview.²⁷

Agassiz also concluded, in contrast to Darwinism, that “there is order in nature; that the animal kingdom especially has been constructed upon a plan which presupposes the existence of an intelligent being as its Author.”²⁸ Most of his arguments against Darwin have not been refuted even today but, instead, the research, especially in cell biology, has eloquently supported the many lethal problems with macroevolution that Agassiz recognized over a century ago.²⁹

References

1. Quammen, D. 2007. The Kiwi’s Egg: Charles Darwin & Natural Selection. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 218.
2. Agassiz, L. 1874. The Structure of Animal Life, 3rd ed. New York: Scribner, Armstrong and Co., 122.
3. Ibid, 111, 118.
4. Lurie, E. 1988. Louis Agassiz: A Life in Science. Baltimore, MD: John’s Hopkins University Press.
5. Forsee, A. 1958. Louis Agassiz: Pied Piper of Science. New York: Viking Press, 109.
6. Mackie, G. O. 1989. Louis Agassiz and the discovery of the coelenterate nervous system. History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences. 11 (1): 71-81.
7. Agassiz, L. 1866. Geological Sketches, vol. 1. Boston : Ticknor and Fields, 22.
8. Morris, H. M. 1988. Men of Science Men of God: Great Scientists Who Believed the Bible. Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 56.
9. Kasper, J. 1973. Gists from Agassiz. Hawthorne, CA: Omni Publications, 117.
10. Morris, Men of Science Men of God, 56.
11. Kasper, Gists from Agassiz, 117.
12. Lurie, Louis Agassiz: A Life in Science, 252-253.
13. Agassiz, L. 1962. Essay on Classification. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 205.
14. Morris, Men of Science Men of God, 55-56.
15. Agassiz, The Structure of Animal Life, 2-3.
16. Dexter, R. W. 1979. The impact of Evolutionary Theories on the Salem Group of Agassiz zoologists (Morse, Hyatt, Packard, Putnam). Essex Institute historical collections. 115 (3): 144-171; Winsor, M. P. 1979. Louis Agassiz and the Species Question. Studies in History of Biology. 3: 89-138.
17. Agassiz, L. 1896. A Journey in Brazil. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, and Company, 42.
18. Lurie, Louis Agassiz: A Life in Science, 254-255.
19. Agassiz, The Structure of Animal Life, 92.
20. Ibid, 95.
21. Weyde, V. Personal Reminiscences of Eminent Men. Scientific American, September 10, 1892, 168.
22. Lurie, Louis Agassiz: A Life in Science, 255.
23. Davidheiser, B. 1977. Louis Agassiz. In A Symposium on Creation, vol. VI. Seattle: Pacific Meridian Publishing Co., 131.
24. Agassiz, The Structure of Animal Life, 6.
25. Dupree, A. H. 1959. The First Darwinian Debate in America: Gray versus Agassiz. Daedalus. 88 (3):560-569; Smallwood, W. M. 1941. The Agassiz-Rogers Debate on Evolution. The Quarterly Review of Biology. 16 (1):1-12.
26. Lurie, E. 1954. Louis Agassiz and the Races of Man. Isis. 45 (141): 227-242.
27. Lurie, Louis Agassiz: A Life in Science, 255.
28. Agassiz, The Structure of Animal Life, 90.
29. Peare, C. O. 1958. A Scientist of Two Worlds: Louis Agassiz. Philidelphia: J. B. Lippincott; Tharp, L. H. 1959. Adventurous Alliance, The Story of the Agassiz Family of Boston. Boston: Little Brown & Co.

* Dr. Bergman is an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Toledo Medical School in Ohio.

Cite this article: Bergman, J. 2011. Louis Agassiz: Anti-Darwinist Harvard Paleontology Professor. Acts & Facts. 40 (3): 12-14.

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I found Dr. Barlow to be a true gentleman and he was very kind to take the time to answer the questions that I submitted to him. In the upcoming months I will take time once a week to pay tribute to his life and reveal our correspondence. In the first week I noted:

 Today I am posting my first letter to him in February of 2015 which discussed Charles Darwin lamenting his loss of aesthetic tastes which he blamed on Darwin’s own dedication to the study of evolution. In a later return letter, Dr. Barlow agreed that Darwin did in fact lose his aesthetic tastes at the end of his life.

In the second week I look at the views of Michael Polanyi and share the comments of Francis Schaeffer concerning Polanyi’s views.

In the third week, I look at the life of Brandon Burlsworth in the November 28, 2016 letter and the movie GREATER and the problem of evil which Charles Darwin definitely had a problem with once his daughter died.

On the 4th letter to Dr. Barlow looks at Darwin’s admission that he at times thinks that creation appears to look like the expression of a mind. Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words in 1968 sermon at this link.

My Fifth Letter concerning Charles Darwin’s views on MORAL MOTIONS Which was mailed on March 1, 2017. Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words concerning moral motions in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.

6th letter on May 1, 2017 in which Charles Darwin’s hopes are that someone would find in Pompeii an old manuscript by a distinguished Roman that would show that Christ existed! Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words concerning the possible manuscript finds in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link  

7th letter on Darwin discussing DETERMINISM  dated 7-1-17 . Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words concerning determinism in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.

8th letter responds to Dr. Barlow’s letter to me concerning  Francis Schaeffer discussing Darwin’s own words concerning chance in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.

9th letter in response to 11-22-17 letter I received from Professor Horace Barlow was mailed on 1-2-18 and included Charles Darwin’s comments on William Paley. Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words concerning William Paley in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.

In the 22nd letter I respond to Charles Darwin’s words, “I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe…will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.” Francis Schaeffer discusses Darwin’s own words about hell  in Schaeffer’s 1968 sermon at this link.

In 23rd postcard sent on 7-2-19 I asked Dr Barlow if he was a humanist. Sir Julian Huxley, founder of the American Humanist Association noted, “I use the word ‘humanist’ to mean someone who believes that man is just as much a natural phenomenon as an animal or plant; that his body, mind and soul were not supernaturally created but are products of evolution, and that he is not under the control or guidance of any supernatural being.”

In my 24th letter on 8-2-19 I quote Jerry  Bergman who noted Jean Louis Agassiz (1807-1873) is regarded as one of the greatest scientists of the 19th century. A founding father of the modern American scientific establishment, Agassiz was also a lifelong opponent of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Agassiz “ruled in professorial majesty at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology.”

Horace Barlow pictured below:

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On November 21, 2014 I received a letter from Nobel Laureate Harry Kroto and it said:

…Please click on this URL http://vimeo.com/26991975

and you will hear what far smarter people than I have to say on this matter. I agree with them.

Harry Kroto

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There are 3 videos in this series and they have statements by 150 academics and scientists and I hope to respond to all of them. Wikipedia notes Horace Basil Barlow FRS was a British visual neuroscientist.

Barlow was the son of the civil servant Sir Alan Barlow and his wife Lady Nora (née Darwin), and thus the great-grandson of Charles Darwin (see Darwin — Wedgwood family). He earned an M.D. at Harvard University in 1946.

In 1953 Barlow discovered that the frog brain has neurons which fire in response to specific visual stimuli. This was a precursor to the work of Hubel and Wiesel on visual receptive fields in the visual cortex. He has made a long study of visual inhibition, the process whereby a neuron firing in response to one group of retinal cells can inhibit the firing of another neuron; this allows perception of relative contrast.

In 1961 Barlow wrote a seminal article where he asked what the computational aims of the visual system are. He concluded that one of the main aims of visual processing is the reduction of redundancy. While the brightnesses of neighbouring points in images are usually very similar, the retina reduces this redundancy. His work thus was central to the field of statistics of natural scenes that relates the statistics of images of real world scenes to the properties of the nervous system.

Barlow and his co-workers also did substantial work in the field of factorial codes. The goal was to encode images with statistically redundant components or pixels such that the code components are statistically independent. Such codes are hard to find but highly useful for purposes of image classification etc.

Barlow was a fellow of Trinity College, University of Cambridge. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1969 and was awarded their Royal Medal in 1993.^[1] He received the 1993 Australia Prize for his research into the mechanisms of visual perception and the 2009 Swartz Prize for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience from the Society for Neuroscience.

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His comments can be found on the 3rd video and the 128th clip in this series. Below the videos you will find his words.

50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 1)

Another 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 2)

A Further 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God (Part 3)

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Interview of Horace Barlow – part 1

Interview of Horace Barlow – part 2

Horace Barlow’s quote taken from interview with Alan Macfarlane:

HAS RELIGION EVER BEEN IMPORTANT TO YOU? IS IT IMPORTANT TO YOU? No, it is not important to me. Saying you don’t believe in God is a very foolish thing to say as it doesn’t explain why so many people talk about it, there has got to be more to it than that; also I think one has to respect what some godly people say and some of the things they do; I wish one could make more sense of it but I don’t think the godly people have done a very good job; I was never baptized or confirmed so have never been a practitioner, and I don’t miss it; DO YOU THINK THAT SCIENCE HAS DIS-PROVEN RELIGION AS DAWKINS ARGUES? I think it [science] provides some hope of acting rationally to handle the social and political problems we have to deal with on a personal level and one a worldwide level. Religion is a way of perpetuating a way of thought that might have otherwise been lost, and I imagine that is fine.   

Dr. Barlow’s only three solid claims in this response to Alan Macfarlane is that science is #1 the best help today with our social problems,(which is in the original clip), #2 Saying you don’t believe in God (position of atheism) is foolish, and #3 we need an explanation for why so many people talk about [God.]

My response to #1 is to look at how the secular humanists have messed up so many things in the past and I include Barlow’s personal family friend Margaret Mead in that. My responses to #2 and #3 were both covered in my earlier response to Roald Hoffmann. 

(Roald Hoffmann is a Nobel Prize winner who I have had the honor of corresponding with in the past. Pictured below)

(This July 1933 photo shows [left to right] anthropologist Gregory Bateson with Margaret Mead)

Horace Barlow’s words  from interview conducted by Alan Macfarlane:

I don’t ever remember going to Bateson’s house in Granchester as a child; William Bateson’s wife was a friend of my mother’s; when Gregory Bateson was out in Bali he met Margaret Mead; Beatrice Bateson, his mother, felt she was too old to go out and inspect her so she sent my mother instead; she flew off in an Imperial Airlines plane and we saw her off from Hendon; that must have been 1937-8; my mother got on very well with Margaret Mead – she was not altogether convinced by her, but very impressed by her breadth of knowledge and energy; she came and stayed with us many times; I was even more sceptical than my mother and thought she was a very impressive person; Gregory was born 1904 and my mother, in 1886, so there was quite a big age difference between them; I never got on close intellectual terms with Gregory even though we were to some extent interested in the same sort of thing, both in cybernetics and psychology, and his ideas were always interesting; however, my model of a scientist was taken from my mother and not from Gregory; my mother was interested in genetics and the paper for which she was famous was on the reproductive system in plants like cowslips; my mother reasoned like a scientist whereas Gregory was a guru – he liked to think things out for himself; he obviously influenced many others too; I saw him once or twice when I went to Berkeley

Postscript:

I was sad to see that Jon Stewart is stepping down from the DAILY SHOW so I wanted to include one of the best clips I have ever seen on his show and it is a short debate between the brilliant scientists  Edward J. Larson (an evolutionist), William A. Dembski (an Intelligent Design Proponent), and then he threw in a nutball in for laughs,  Ellie Crystal (a metaphysical theorist). Dembski gives several great examples of design and it reminded me of many of the words of Darwin show above in my letter to Horace Barlow.

William Dembski on The Jon Stewart Show

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Related posts:

FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 35 Robert M. Pirsig (Feature on artist Kerry James Marshall)

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