Talk:Frederick A. P. Barnard

Comments on science and the soul

There's an interesting comment from Barnard at the end of this review of a book about spontaneous generation[1]:

To my mind, the most remarkable discovery of all is an 1873 essay by the American college president Frederick Barnard. He made exactly the connections between evolution, spontaneous generation, the germ theory of disease and the correlation of forces that Stride prepares his readers to appreciate. Barnard went on to argue that an honest person who accepted this cluster of ideas could not believe in an immortal soul - and that was a terrible, desolating price. If, he wrote (p. 114),

the final outcome of all the boasted discoveries of modern science is to disclose to men that they are more evanescent than the shadow of the swallow's wing upon the lake, ... give me then, I pray, no more science. Let me live on, in my simple ignorance, as my fathers lived before me, and when I shall at length be summoned to my final repose, let me still be able to fold the drapery of my couch about me, and lie down to pleasant, even though they be deceitful dreams.

This seems like an important insight into this man, though I have no idea of how influential his opinion was in this respect. 71.182.244.126 (talk) 16:09, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Needs to address his history re: slavery

Found this article while working on Slavery at American colleges and universities#Columbia University. It's unfortunate that the only mention of slaves with regard to Barnard was his move north "as he believed in anti-slavery". This is not entirely true as he had a history of owning and abusing slaves while he worked in the south. I will probably amend this once I'm done with that article Contrawwftw (talk) 02:25, 17 July 2021 (UTC)