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Asa Gray Biography

Botanist

Asa Gray was a prominent American botanist born on November 18, 1810, and died on January 30, 1888. He made significant contributions to the fields of plant taxonomy, plant geography, and plant morphology.

Ifs Moments Wonder Worth It

Author:Asa Gray

“It remains to consider what attitude thoughtful men and Christian believers should take respecting them, and how they stand related to beliefs of another order.”

Men Should Christian Order Belief Attitude Remains Believer Related Thoughtful

Book:Natural Science and Religion

Source: Natural Science and Religion

“We have really, that I know of, no philosophical basis for high and low. Moreover, the vegetable kingdom does not culminate, as the animal kingdom does. It is not a kingdom, but a common-wealth; a democracy, and therefore puzzling and unaccountable from the former point of view.”

Knows Doe Science Wealth Animal Views Common Democracy Evolution Lows Bases Philosophical Point Of View Kingdoms Former Vegetables Highs And Lows Puzzling Animal Kingdom

Book:Letters of Asa Gray

Source: Letters of Asa Gray

“Agassiz, when I saw him last, had read but a part of Origin of Species. He says it is POOR-VERY POOR!!. The fact is, he is very much annoyed by it.”

Facts Lasts Poor Saws Evolution Species Annoyed Origin Of Species

Author:Asa Gray

“Natural selection is not the wind which propels the vessel, but the rudder which, by friction, now on this side and now on that, shapes the course.”

Courses Sides Natural Wind Shapes Selection Vessel Natural Selection Friction Rudders

Book:Darwinia: Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism

Source: Darwinia: Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism

“In short, the animal and vegetable lines, diverging widely above, join below in a loop.”

Lines Animal Vegetables Loops

Book:Natural Science and Religion

Source: Natural Science and Religion

“It was always understood that plants and animals, though completely contrasted in their higher representatives, approached each other very closely in their lower and simpler forms. But they were believed not to blend.”

Form Animal Higher Understood Plant Representatives Taxi Plants And Animals

Author:Asa Gray

“The former conviction that these two kingdoms were wholly different in structure, in function, and in kind of life, was not seriously disturbed by the difficulties which the naturalist encountered when he undertook to define them.”

Kind Two Different Function Difficulty Structure Conviction Kingdoms Former Disturbed Naturalist

Book:Natural Science and Religion: Two Lectures Delivered to the Theological School of Yale College

Source: Natural Science and Religion: Two Lectures Delivered to the Theological School of Yale College

“This view, as a rounded whole and in all its essential elements, has very recently disappeared from science. It died a royal death with Agassiz.”

Whole Science Views Evolution Essentials Elements Died Species Royal

Book:Natural Science and Religion

Source: Natural Science and Religion

“Faith in order, which is the basis of science, cannot reasonably be separated from faith in an Ordainer, which is the basis of religion.”

Faith Order Bases

Author:Asa Gray

“I am sufficiently convinced already that the members of a profession know their own calling better than anyone else can know it.”

Knows Calling Members Convinced Profession

Author:Asa Gray

“I accept extinction as best explaining disjoined species. I see that the same cause must have reduced many species of great range to small, and that it may have reduced large genera to so small, and of families.”

May Causes Accepting Species Range Extinction Explaining

Author:Asa Gray

“Indeed upon much that may have to say, I expect rather the charitable judgment than the full assent of those whose approbation I could most wish to win.”

May Winning Wish Judgment Charitable

Book:Natural science and religion, 2 lectures

Source: Natural science and religion, 2 lectures

“It was implicitly supposed that every living thing was distinctively plant or animal; that there were real and profound differences between the two, if only they could be seized.”

Ifs Two Real Differences Animal Plant Profound Living Things

Book:Natural science and religion, 2 lectures

Source: Natural science and religion, 2 lectures

“Many years ago it was taught that plants and animals were composed of different materials: plants, of a chemical substance of three elements,- carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen; animals of one of four elements, nitrogen being added to the other three.”

Years Different Three Animal Four Taught Materials Elements Years Ago Plant Substance Chemicals Carbon Oxygen Hydrogen Plants And Animals Nitrogen Four Elements

Book:Natural Science and Religion: Two Lectures Delivered to the Theological School of Yale College

Source: Natural Science and Religion: Two Lectures Delivered to the Theological School of Yale College

“Next it was found that it was physiologically and structurally the same in the plant, that it was the living part of the plant, that which manifested the life and did the work in vegetable as well as in animal organisms.”

Wells Next Found Animal Plant Vegetables Organisms

Book:Natural Science and Religion

Source: Natural Science and Religion

“The best opinion now is, that there are multitudinous forms which are not sufficiently differentiated to be distinctively either plant or animal, while, as respects ordinary plants and animals, the difficulty of laying down a definition has become far greater than ever before.”

Form Animal Opinion Greater Ordinary Difficulty Plant Definitions Plants And Animals Laying Down

Book:Natural Science and Religion

Source: Natural Science and Religion

“This substance, which is manifold in its forms and protean in its transformations, has, in its state of living matter, one physiological name which has become familiar, that of protoplasm.”

Matter States Form Names Transformation Familiar Substance Physiological Manifold

Book:Natural Science and Religion

Source: Natural Science and Religion

“We have spoken of beings so low in the scale that the individuals throughout their whole existence are not sufficiently specialized to be distinctively plant or animal: yet these are definite life in simpler shape.”

Whole Individual Animal Existence Shapes Lows Plant Scales Definite

Book:Natural Science and Religion

Source: Natural Science and Religion

“We may take it to be the accepted idea that the Mosaic books were not handed down to us for our instruction in scientific knowledge, and that it is our duty to ground our scientific beliefs upon observation and inference, unmixed with considerations of a different order.”

May Book Ideas Different Order Belief Duty Accepted Observation Consideration Instruction Inference Scientific Knowledge Mosaics

Book:Natural Science and Religion

Source: Natural Science and Religion

“Your candor is worth everything to your cause. It is refreshing to find a person with a new theory who frankly confesses that he finds difficulties, insurmountable, at least for the present.”

Persons Causes Theory Difficulty Refreshing Candor Insurmountable

Book:Letters of Asa Gray

Source: Letters of Asa Gray

About the Author

Born: November 18, 1810
Died: January 30, 1888
Known for: Botanist
Quotes: 21

Books & Sources

Natural Science and ReligionRelated source material

Letters of Asa GrayRelated source material

Natural Science and Religion: Two Lectures Delivered to the Theological School of Yale CollegeRelated source material

Natural science and religion, 2 lecturesRelated source material

Darwinia: Essays and Reviews Pertaining to DarwinismRelated source material

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