Click image to visit Amazon.com book pageAlong with the origin of species, the "coral reef problem" — How did these great shallow-water structures come to rise from the ocean's deepest parts? — posed one of the nineteenth century's most vexing scientific puzzles, luring investigators into excruciating technical difficulties and epistemological dilemmas. For oceanographer Alexander Agassiz, solving the mystery of coral reef genesis also meant revisiting the struggle between Charles Darwin, who had posited the prevailing theory of coral reef genesis when Alexander was just a boy, and Alexander's father, the naturalist Louis Agassiz, who had lost his dominance of American science by opposing Darwin's theory of evolution. Though Alex had good reason to question Darwin's coral reef theory, he could not foresee the labyrinth of familial conflict and scientific mystery he would enter in his search for coral reef origins. The story of his 30-year quest illuminates much about a complex and overlooked scientific master and our most elemental questions of knowledge.
Praise for Reef Madness
"Brilliantly written, sometimes almost unbearably poignant, Reef Madness provides an enthralling picture of three grand scientific minds: the stormy relationship of Louis and Alexander Agassiz and their fateful enmeshment with Charles Darwin. The coral reef story becomes a micorcosm of the conflicts -- between idealism and empiricism, God and evolution -- which were to split science and culture in the nineteenth century and which still split them today." - Oliver Sacks
"David Dobbs gives life to a debate that should simply have given insights into our past. But, surprisingly, the debate has remained very much with us, giving this book enormous contemporary relevance. " - Mark Kurlansky, author of Salt: A World History
"Engaging, tantalizing, the best kind of intellectual history. Like Louis Menand's The Metaphysical Club, Reef Madness brilliantly sets a small group of passionate thinkers into a living context, deftly illuminating the people, their place and time, and their vigorous, world-changing arguments." - Andrea Barrett, author of The Voyage of the Narwhal
"A wonderful book! A masterful and thrilling account of the origins of coral reefs and the men who debated those origins. David Dobbs tells the complex tale of how brilliant scientists, such as Alexander Agassiz and Charles Darwin, often bitterly disagree in the search for truth and the remarkable power of scientific inquiry as it unfolds over time." - Howard Markel, author of When Germs Travel
"The long, tortured and often sad history of how the 'coral reef problem' was finally solved is laid bare in this eloquent and thoughtful book." - Rachel Wood, Nature
"A splendid new book [that is] much more than a book about coral reefs and their formation.... Dobbs has done an excellent job of weaving together ... numerous threads into a fabric that is both informative and entertaining.... This is fun science. " - James Harken, review in Harvard magazine
"This tale, which Dobbs compellingly re-creates, personifies Western science’s slow coming of age in the 19th century, from a descriptive branch of theology that glorified God’s creation to an empirical method that hatches and tests its own creation stories. The great leap, Dobss recognizes, began not with Darwin’s famous evolutionary theory but with his coral reef history." - Dan Ferber, Audubon