Nathaniel Shaler
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Nathaniel Southgate Shaler (1841-1906) was an American paleontologist and geologist who wrote extensively on the theological and scientific implications of the theory of evolution. Shaler studied at Harvard under the legendary Louis Agassiz and would go on to become a Harvard fixture in his own right, as lecturer and professor of paleontology for two decades (1869-1888) and as professor of geology for nearly two more (1888-1906).
In his later career, Shaler served as Harvard's Dean of Sciences and was one of the university's most popular teachers. He published scores of long and short treatises in his lifetime, with subjects ranging from topographical surveys to moral philosophy.
Early in his professional career Shaler was broadly a creationist and anti-Darwin. This was largely out of deference to the brilliant, but old-fashioned, Agassiz, whose patronage served Shaler well in ascending the Harvard ladder. When his own position at Harvard was secure, Shaler gradually accepted Darwinism in principle, but viewed it through a Neo-Lamarckian lens: basic tenets of natural selection—chance, contingency, opportunism—were rejected for a picture of order, purpose and progress which saw characteristics inherited through the efforts of individual organisms. Shaler also continued to support Agassiz's polygenism, an essentially racist theory, given a genteel, academic gloss.
Thus, to the extent Shaler is remembered today, it is as a conservative on the wrong side of scientific history, grudgingly accepting evolution on the one hand, but fighting a rear-guard action against it on the other.
Shaler also served as a Union officer in the U.S. Civil War.
