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Reef Madness: Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral

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This book is fascinating on many fronts. First, it is a quite readable and informative biography of Louis Agassiz and his son Alexander. Second, it is an account of one of the longest-running controversies in the history of science. And, finally, it gives great insights to the current debate in the US over the teaching of "intelligent design."

Louis Agassiz was considered one of the world's greatest scientists (or natural philosophers as they were called at the time), and, after his migration to the United States from his native Switzerland, was viewed as America's greatest naturalist. He was a shrewd self-promoter who parlayed his explanation of glaciation and ice ages, and his encyclopedic knowledge of animal taxonomy, into a position of power and influence. However, he was a follower of Cuvier, and believed that species were created immutably by God. The fossil record was explained by a series of catastrophic annihilations (floods, ice ages) followed by divine creation of completely new species. Needless to say, he did not accept the theory of the origin of species by natural selection as propounded by Darwin. He and Darwin's followers engaged in heated, personal exchanges and attacks. In the end, however, Agassiz was nearly destroyed by the ensuing controversy, and his reputation and influence suffered severely.

Alexander, on the other hand was more mild-mannered and consciously avoided being drawn into his father's fights. He was a widely respected naturalist and an expert on marine zoology, and privately accepted the truth of evolution. He had his own disagreement with Darwin, however, over Darwin's widely-accepted theory of the formation of coral reefs. While not nearly as destructive as his father's evolution dispute, the disagreement involved much publishing, many attacks, and the accumulation of reams of data supporting each side. The fact that this controversy was not settled authoritatively until core samples were taken on Eniwetok atoll before the nuclear tests of the 1950's, long after the protagonists were dead and buried, makes for an almost mystery novel-like tale.

At times, the book reads like today's newspaper accounts of groups trying promote the teaching of creationism and intelligent design in our children's classrooms. Even though this debate was seemingly settled nearly 150 years ago, some ideas die hard.

This is quite an enjoyable read.

This is a very good book about Louis and Alexander Agassiz. The former a brilliant young, narcissistic naturalist whose expository skills catapulted him to scientific prominence but he met his comeuppance by arrogantly misusing his assistants and then fighting the theory of evolution with faulty data. He self-destructively discredits his earlier real contributions. He is a tragic figure. He wanted nature to speak for itself rather than theories, but was committed to a creative god making order. The picture of Darwin that the book gives is much less useful repeating in incomplete ways what is in other much better histories.

The great contribution of the book is the laying out of the bio's of Louis and Alexander and sketching, almost as a scientific mystery unfolding a step at a time, the contesting ideas of how coral reefs form. Darwin's theory of subsistence dominates despite mounting evidence to the contrary. And then Alexander never publishes his comprehensive refutation of the theory for reasons that are never known. The book ends with the irony that when drill holes are made for the atomic test in the Pacific in the 1960s it turns out that what was taken to be sandstone underlayment of reefs thrust up like the sandstones of Dover, are really old reef detritus and hence, along with plate tectonics atolls are really piled up reef growth on top of subsistent subterranean mountains. So, in the end Darwin was correct although not because of anything other than having made an appealing guess, i.e. he had no evidence.

The book ends with a Popperian criteria for science, falsification, which the author takes to have been the razor of what is truly scientific which could have been used to parse through the contesting claims. Darwin's theory was not falsifiable and Alexander made observational mistakes based of his theoretical commitments despite his claim of letting nature speak. But the book is really an example of a more complex scientific process where there is a great mix of scientific authority, i.e. the Darwinians' assumption that the master must be right and much anomalous data, like were the lagoons formed by dissolving coral and contesting claims for the role of erosion. With the understanding of ice ages, it became clearer that reefs rose out of the water as water levels changed, so there was relative subsiding. Earlier anti-Darwinians rejected subsistence because there was no evidence for it. The author says that science always works by imaginative (hypothesis) leaps and then the winnowing of evidence. Yes and no. Certainly as with Kepler and other instances, the vast accumulations of inductive evidence lays the foundation for many explanations. And like reefs, the evidence over time can preclude clear explanations even though explanations are offered. Feyerabend's or Rorty a la Kuhn's picture of science, as a combination of verification, falsification, inductions, etc is much better that either pure Kuhn or Popper.
Charlie Fisher, author of Dismantling Discontent: Buddha's Way Through Darwin's World

_Reef Madness: Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral_, David Dobbs

One gets the impression that the author didn't have enough material to fill a book adhering strictly to the title topic, and so padded it with fully 150 pages of material on Louis Agassiz's (Alexander's father) life and work.

No matter, the result is a fascinating study of the change in scientific methodology over the course of the 19th century, using the specific controversy over formation of coral reefs to illustrate opposing conceptions of what it means to "conduct science". What constitutes a scientific theory, and what is the acceptable way to formulate one? Is it necessary to gather a mountain of evidence until an explanatory theory emerges -- as Baconian inductivists would hold -- or is it ok to make a speculative deduction based on a handful of facts, and challenge others to disprove it?

Alexander was very much in the inductivist camp, having observed the downfall of his bombastic father and thereby moved to the opposite conservative pole, in his later years visited more coral reefs than any man before or since in his attempt to falsify Darwin's coral formation theory. He knew that Darwin had been proved spectacularly wrong at Glen Roy by his father, and saw that his coral reef theory was based on circular reasoning: coral reefs were to be attributed to widespread subsidence (which was only a speculative occurrence), while the proof of subsidence was....coral reefs. As a confirmed plodder, I found myself rooting for Alexander, that he would be proved triumphant over his brilliant competitor after so many years of hard work.

Darwin on the other hand (the author argues) was much more in the mold of today's scientists in his approach. More willing to make leaps of the imagination in formulating an hypothesis, to "tell a story", and "focus on dynamic natural processes of change rather than fixed descriptions of static things", before following it up with detailed experimentation and data gathering. Glen Roy taught him "a vital lesson: Productive observation actually rises from sound theory -- not the opposite, as Louis would assert". But his coral reef theory belonged to his early years as well, and was vulnerable to criticism of being too speculative by conservative scientists with Alexander's cast of mind.

The coral reef debate also included aspects familiar to those following the current breuhaha over Intelligent Design. Proponents of Murray's alternative reef theory argued aggressively that those championing Darwin's coral reef theory were "atheistic churchmen and closet idealists, pseudoempiricists who would adore a theory because....they worshipped not thoughts of God but those of man -- and particularly of the man named Darwin." Sound familiar?

Anyway, not to drag on too much, this is a very enjoyable and informative choice for the popular science reader. Islands, island formation and island ecology, are all wonderful topics in themselves, and this book provides insight into those topics, while opening a window onto how science itself works, and how men of science have struggled to define their profession; not at all an easy task when the seemingly contradictory requirements of imagination and rigorous adherence to -- often spotty and incomplete -- fact are called for. Highly recommended.

This is a superb work of historical science, a gripping story, well-told. And it has everything... Father-son dynamics, the history of science, and the rise of Darwinism, as the story is played out through a profile of Alexander Agassiz and his dad, Louis, one of the last Lamarckians. The main reason I liked the book was the quality, drive, and consistent voice of the insightful prose. The writing is simply lyric! If you liked books like Dava Sobel's book "Longitude" or Mark Kurlansky's "Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World" -- you'll LOVE this book.

Reef Madness is a fascinating look at the transformation of scientific thought in the 19th century, and the intrigues, controversies, and plain old trash-talking between the major players in one of the era's biggest mysteries. Although the book concentrates on the theories of coral reef formation, it necessarily also covers the fights over natural selection (evolutionary theory) and geologic history.
Dobbs writes like a novelist, so a potentially dry narrative comes alive with the life of Alexander Agassiz, an intelligent, cautious explorer caught up in the ironies of his birthright, and in the ideological struggles of his famous father and his father's nemesis, Charles Darwin. There's even a surprise ending! It's a brilliant bit of scientific reporting, and also nicely illustrates why the scientific method, despite being messy and contentious, ultimately advances our understanding of our universe (sorry, religious dogmatists!). An excellent book. Also recommended for scuba divers and others interested in coral reefs.

"Reef Madness" is multiple biographies packaged with a mystery
and a description of how science is done and scientific societies
and institutions are run. I recommend it highly. There are
important lessons for those who have made up their mind, pro or
con, about an analogous current controversy, the impact of CO2
on climate.

I have only two minor complaints. As a mystery, the clue to the
solution is not available to the reader until the solution is
revealed. As a biography, there are frequent incidents of the
mind reading sin.