Argument

Thomas Henry Huxley

Overview

Thomas Henry Huxley (4 May 1825 – 29 June 1895) was an English biologist and anthropologist who specialised in comparative anatomy. He has become known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

The stories regarding Huxley's famous 1860 Oxford evolution debate with Samuel Wilberforce were a key moment in the wider acceptance of evolution and in his own career, although some historians think that aspects of the surviving story of the debate are a later fabrication. Huxley had been planning to leave Oxford on the previous day, but, after an encounter with Robert Chambers, the author of Vestiges, he changed his mind and decided to join the debate. Wilberforce was coached by Richard Owen, against whom Huxley also debated about whether humans were closely related to apes.

Huxley was slow to accept some of Darwin's ideas, such as gradualism, and was undecided about natural selection, but despite this, he was wholehearted in his public support of Darwin. Instrumental in developing scientific education in Britain, he fought against the more extreme versions of religious tradition. Huxley coined the term agnosticism in 1869 and elaborated on it in 1889 to frame the nature of claims in terms of what is knowable and what is not.

Huxley had little formal schooling and was virtually self-taught. According to Edward Poulton, he became perhaps the finest comparative anatomist of the later 19th century. He worked on invertebrates, clarifying relationships between groups previously little understood. Later, he worked on vertebrates, especially on the relationship between apes and humans. After comparing Archaeopteryx with Compsognathus, he correctly concluded that birds evolved from small carnivorous dinosaurs.

Huxley was best known for his controversial and energetic advocacy of evolution, which had significant effects on society in Britain and elsewhere. Huxley's 1893 Romanes Lecture, "Evolution and Ethics", is influential in China; the Chinese translation of Huxley's lecture transformed the Chinese translation of Darwin's On the Origin of Species.

Huxley was a member of the Huxley family, a prominent British family of scientists, writers, and public figures. He married Henrietta Anne Heathorn in 1855, and the couple had eight children.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.

Though comparisons of ancient and modern organic forms, prove that many types have persisted through enormous periods of time, without undergoing great changes; it was shown that such comparisons do not disprove the occurrence in other organic forms, of changes great enough to produce what are called different types. The result of inductive inquiry we saw to be, that while a few modern higher types yield signs of…
Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Biology, Volume 1
States what Thomas Henry Huxley is; the author is tied to Thomas Henry Huxley in the knowledge graph.
Read the chapter · Open in the reader
One other point has to be noted--the relative importance of this factor. If additional developments of muscles and bones may be transmitted--if, as Mr. Darwin held, there are various other structural modifications caused by use and disuse which imply inheritance of this kind--if acquired characters are hereditary, as the Duke of Argyll believes; then the area over which this factor of organic evolution operates is…
Herbert Spencer, Essays
The author is tied to Thomas Henry Huxley in the knowledge graph.
Read the chapter · Open in the reader
On this subject. I could form none but vague and almost imaginary conjectures. Comparative anatomy has as yet made too little progress, and the observations of naturalists are too uncertain, to afford an adequate basis for any solid reasoning. So that, without having recourse to the supernatural information given us on this head, or paying any regard to the changes which must have taken place in the internal, as…
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The social contract & discourses
The author is tied to Thomas Henry Huxley in the knowledge graph.
Read the chapter · Open in the reader

Thomas Henry Huxley

Overview

Possible passages

Philosophers who discussed Thomas Henry Huxley

Related ideas

Place in the tradition