Talk:Louis Agassiz

Pauline Agassiz Shaw
@User:SNUGGUMS Why did you revert my redlink of Pauline Agassiz Shaw? She founded a school for immigrants in the North End of Boston, she introduced kindergarten to Boston schools, she's mentioned in many articles on Jstor, and she's included in the Boston Women's Heritage Trail. She is clearly a notable person who needs to be included in Wikipedia. I'll put her on my To Do list, but it may be a while, and it would be nice if someone else could get to it sooner. That's the purpose of redlinks, to call attention to such omissions. If I've got the wrong Pauline, please explain. Rosekelleher (talk) 08:42, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
 * There were no obvious signs she met WP:Notability (people) as far as I could tell when reverting. Redlinks shouldn't be placed when unlikely to warrant a standalone article anytime soon. This particularly applies if an article has previously been deleted due to lack of notability. It's better to wait until one knows for certain she meets notability criteria before linking. Snuggums (talk / edits) 19:22, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Update: I see she has a separate article since my previous comment. Fine to link now. Snuggums (talk / edits) 19:25, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Please clarify statement in regards to below post
In the fifth paragraph of the Polygenism section it states that the proof that white people were the descendants of Adam was because they could blush. It may have been a common belief in the 19th century that people of African descent can't blush but it simply is not true. The way the passage reads is, that this blush belief is a contemporary fact. The redness shows or not because of the skin tone. The surface temperature of all humans skin in their face increases as blood rushes to the surface when they blush. I can't edit this passage but someone should, to clarify that this statement is false and only an ignorant notion of 19th century thought. If one of my students read today this I am sure they would think this implied that people of African descent don't blush. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.169.182.249 (talk) 04:57, 3 October 2016 (UTC)
 * ✅ I clarified that it was one of Agassiz's beliefs. Snuggums (talk / <b style="color:#454545">edits</b>) 05:04, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Citation needed for the listing of races
The article writes that Agassiz believed in twelve races:

"The provinces that the different races were created in included Western American Temperate (the indigenous peoples west of the Rockies), Eastern American Temperate (east of the Rockies), Tropical Asiatic (south of the Himalayas), Temperate Asiatic (east of the Urals and north of the Himalayas), South American Temperate (South America), New Holland (Australia), Arctic (Alaska and Arctic Canada). Cape of Good Hope (South Africa), and American Tropical (Central America and the West Indies)."

I have been unable to find any reference to this racial typology. Assistance please? FuzzyCatPotato (talk) 17:17, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

Proposed removal of paragraph in Polygenism section
I recently removed a paragraph:


 * "Agassiz, like other polygenists, believed the Book of Genesis recounted the origin of the white race only and that the animals and plants in the Bible refer only to those species proximate and familiar to Adam and Eve. Agassiz believed that the writers of the Bible only knew of local events, for example Noah's flood was a local event only known to the regions that were populated by ancient Hebrews. Agassiz also believed that the writers of the Bible did not know about any events other than what was going on in their own region and their intermediate neighbors."

with these two edits and. This paragraph amounts to a detailed (and possibly speculative) idea about what, specifically, Agassiz might have thought. I removed it because I felt it didn't add much concrete substance to what was already presented in the first two paragraphs of this section. Then, editor reverted my edits and restored the paragraph with this edit:.

I don't have lots of emotion about any of this. I'm just trying to clean up the article. Thoughts? Attic Salt (talk) 17:02, 3 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Your edit summary didn't say why you wanted to remove a sourced paragraph. Did you check the source?  Dicklyon (talk) 15:14, 4 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Here I found the relevant book and page. The ref is identified with the wrong volume name and should be fixed. Dicklyon (talk) 15:24, 4 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Very good, that looks like a reliable source. I now don't doubt the accuracy of the paragraph, though, as you note, the citation needs to be fixed. My question to you is whether or not you think this specific material needs to be in the article given the material already in the first two paragraphs of the section. It seems like you want it to stay in, then? Thanks, Attic Salt (talk) 15:33, 4 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't see a reason to remove it. Other opinions welcome. Dicklyon (talk) 16:16, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

The ice-auger caption
I modified to "The man-length-plus -sized augur", lest future readers infer that the typical height of an adult male human is significantly more than what i think is the current average, namely damn close to the First World -conventional (6-foot) casual estimate. Otherwise they might go forward believing that "There were giants in the earth in those days.", and that a yard of ale is today an insignificant challenge... We can't let WP be responsible for such a misunderstanding, now, can we??? ... tho of course all bets are off, if our Vile Leader has his way... sigh. --(ex-Jerzy/ex-JerzyA), --2601:199:C201:FD70:5D2:91BE:2686:A665 (talk) 15:55, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

Louis Agassiz
Was Louis Agassiz a Republican? Srb4271 (talk) 23:27, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

Is there a reason that Agassiz's "The Diversity of Origin of the Human Races" (1850) is not mentioned at all?
Hello, I was just wondering why "Diversity of Origin" from 1850 is not mentioned at all in this article? As far as I can tell, it's not unimportant for Agassiz's contemporary writings, as well as modern research. E.g. Josiah Clark Nott and George R. Gliddons Types of Mankind (1854), p. 78. And (much) more recently Jackson & Weidman, Race, racism, and science, social impact and interaction (2004), p. 51.

This is my first time participating on Wiki, so apologies if I missed something :) Thanks! Pazul42 (talk) 14:12, 22 February 2022 (UTC)


 * I find the pedantic 'disfellowship' of Agassiz kind of fascinating. "Racism" is the sin (of noticing differences) inside an undefined cult and whoever commits it, will be ostracized, defrocked and declared a non-person by its adherents. Any studies done on this? But given the control this cult got over academia, this is rather unlikely. 105.12.3.186 (talk) 12:53, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
 * I don't understand what type of "cult" you're speaking of here. I don't think racism has ever been defined as noticing differences; it's rather the judging a person based on those outward differences that becomes racist, as for example Agassiz did. Pazul42 (talk) 15:24, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Science and colonialism
— Assignment last updated by Earth sci kid (talk) 00:27, 24 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Wow. You sure took a chainsaw to the section on polygenism. I sympathize with your edit-description's statement that most of it "would confuse the average reader". I really, really sympathize. But I think you misdiagnosed the cause, and radical amputation wasn't the right solution.
 * The problem with the earlier version was that some previous editor had gone through and, after every simple statement of what Agassiz said, added ridiculously POV fantasy-world whitewashing, trying to convince readers that Agassiz was the greatest genius who ever lived, and totally not racist, or else racist but right, or else using his genius-level intellect to invent groundbreaking ideas from 20th-century biology, which you can see a vague resemblance to what he actually said as long as you take the right drugs and bang your head against a wall long enough.
 * So, where the section should have said, "Agassiz believed X, Y, and Z," instead it went more like: "Agassiz believed X, which might seem racist, but is only stating the simple scientific fact that some people are better than others. He believed Y, which might seem ridiculous, but was really prophesying the following 17 ideas from the next century... Agassiz believed Z, which even I have to admit is factually wrong. But that's not his fault. If he'd known about plate tectonics, he surely would have offered better arguments for why we white people are superior." Obviously I'm paraphrasing, but not as much as you'd hope.
 * The best solution would have been to take your chainsaw to the whitewashing and leave behind the "Agassiz believed X, Y, and Z."
 * There were indeed several citation problems with the earlier version. My impression is that at least half of the problems were with claims in the whitewashing parts. Almost all the "X, Y, and Z" come straight from Agassiz's 1850 paper (cited repeatedly in Gould and other secondary sources). Incidentally, the previous talk-page section asks why the article never mentioned the 1850 paper — possibly the single most influential work by Agassiz on polygenism. By the time you started your revisions, the article actually did cite it. Then you killed it again.
 * You also managed to kill several citations for material that remains in the section, such as for the various recent responses to Agassiz that are listed in the final paragraph. At the very least, those citations should go back in.
 * A more minor point: The paragraph you added that begins "Morton relied on other scientists..." has no place here. It's enough to mention that Morton's methodology was problematic. Any reader who wants more information on why can go to the article on Morton, assuming that that article manages to avoid similar whitewashing attempts. Talking about it here results in 20% of the text in our section on Agassiz's racist ideas being about some other guy's racist ideas. 2604:3D09:A984:A600:85C4:D795:9C8:9490 (talk) 14:27, 9 June 2023 (UTC)