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Huxley: From Devil's Disciple To High Priest
Huxley: From Devil's Disciple To Evolution's High Priest
T. H. Huxley (1825–1895) was Darwin’s bloody-fanged bulldog. His giant scything intellect shook a prim Victorian society; his “Devil’s gospel” of evolution outraged. He put “agnostic” into the vocabulary and cave men into the public consciousness. Adrian Desmond’s fiery biography with its panoramic view of Dickensian life explains how this agent provocateur rose to become the century’s greatest prophet.Synoptic in its sweep and evocative in its details, Desmond’s biography reveals the poverty and opium-hazed tragedies of young Tom Huxley’s life as well as the accolades and triumphs of his later years. The drug-grinder’s apprentice knew sots and scandals and breakdowns that signaled a genius close to madness. As surgeon’s mate on the cockroach-infested frigate Rattlesnake, he descended into hell on the Barrier Reef, but was saved by a golden-haired girl in the penal colony.Huxley pulled himself up to fight Darwin’s battles in the 1860s, but left Darwin behind on the most inflammatory issues. He devasted angst-ridden Victorian society with his talk of ape ancestors, and tantalized and tormented thousands-from laborers to ladies of society, cardinals to Karl Marx—with his scintillating lectures. Out of his provocations came our image of science warring with theology. And out of them, too, came the West’s new faith-agnosticism (he coined the new word).Champion of modern education, creator of an intellectually dominant profession, and president of the Royal Society, in Desmond’s hands Huxley epitomizes the rise of the middle classes as the clawed power from the Anglican elite. His modern godless universe, intriguing and terrifying, millions of years in the making, was explored in his laboratory at South Kensington; his last pupil, H. G. Wells, made it the foundation of twentieth-century science fiction.Touching the crowning achievements and the crushing depths of both the man and his times, this is the epic story of a courageous genius whose life summed up the social changes from the Victorian to the modern age. Written with enormous zest and passion, Huxley is about the making of our modern Darwinian world.
848 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1995
4 people are currently reading
130 people want to read
About the author
Adrian J. Desmond
18 books15 followersAdrian John Desmond (born 1947) is an English writer on the history of science.
He studied physiology at University College, London, and went on to study history of science and vertebrate palaeontology at University College London before researching the history of vertebrate palaeontology at Harvard University, under Stephen Jay Gould. He was awarded a PhD in the area of the Victorian-period context of Darwinian evolution.
Desmond is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Biology Department at University College London.
He studied physiology at University College, London, and went on to study history of science and vertebrate palaeontology at University College London before researching the history of vertebrate palaeontology at Harvard University, under Stephen Jay Gould. He was awarded a PhD in the area of the Victorian-period context of Darwinian evolution.
Desmond is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Biology Department at University College London.
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December 6, 2009
Darwin said of Thomas Huxley: “My good and kind agent for the propagation of the Gospels, i.e. the Devil’s gospel.” Huxley was known for lunging (figuratively) at his opponents. He was Darwin’s Rottweiler. No one stirred passions like Thomas Henry Huxley. Adrian Desmond (Darwin’s biographer) has written an absolutely fascinating biography of this man. “Huxley was one of the founders of the skeptical scientific twentieth century. We owe to him that enduring military metaphor, the ‘war’ of science against theology. He coined the word ‘agnostic’ and contributed to the West’s existential crisis.” Desmond’s biography is a contextual history of the man and his ideas. “How did England’s vicarage view of a designed, happy world of 1830 become the cold, causal, and Calvinistic evolutionary vista of 1870. . . . This is a story of Class, Power and Propaganda.” Huxley virtually created the profession of scientist. Much of his antagonism to the established church arose with the general “industrial Dissent,” a backlash of the underprivileged against the upper social strata typified by the Anglican hierarchy.
“Huxley boosted the ‘Scientists’ ‘ profile by trenching on the clergyman’s domain, raising the territorial tension by equating authority with technical expertise.” The English schools of 1870 rejected science as “useless and dehumanizing.” Their world was constructed around the classics and theology. The universities were “finishing schools” for prosperous Anglicans.” Huxley’s great feat was persuading society that science was essential to an industrial nation.
Huxley did not begin hating religion, but the experience of his youth as an apprentice drug-grinder who wandered through the poverty-stricken, rat infested, sewage-laden London of 1841 where children were literally starving in front of him made him question the validity of a religion that had failed to help these people. Huxley spent several years studying at Charing Cross Hospital on scholarship. The honor came from successful competition on a very hard exam sponsored by the Apothecaries Guild. He was the ultimate academic and could often be found dissecting corpses past normal hours. Corpses were plentiful: the squalid poor who could not be allowed in the front door for treatment of mere starvation, arrived often by the back door for the morgue. At the end of his studies he was considerably in debt, having had to pay for food and lodging, so he went to sea as surgeon's mate on the recommendation of a friend. The ship was the Rattlesnake, whose captain was as interested as Huxley in scientific observation.
Regretfully, the numbers of books he purchased for the voyage added to his debt. On any long voyage, one has a great deal of time to speculate about things, and Huxley began moving away from the orthodox. “It is not what we believe, but why we believe it. Moral responsibility lies in diligently weighing the evidence. We must actively doubt; we have to scrutinize our views, not take them on trust. No virtue attached to blindly accepting orthodoxy, however ‘venerable’ . . . .”
Huxley remained a devotee of reason and intellect, but he was not anti-religion. “My screed,” he wrote, “was meant as a protest against Theology & Parsondom . . . both of which are in my mind the natural and irreconcilable enemies of Science. Few see it but I believe we are on the Eve of a new Reformation and if I have a wish to live thirty years, it is that I may see the foot of Science on the necks of her Enemies. But the new religion will not be a worship of the intellect alone.” He meant to retain the moral core, the ethics of love and duty, but stripping Christian mythic excrescences. “In his own pugilistic way, he was proving that evolutionary heterodoxy did not equal moral delinquency.”
Huxley was a brilliant lecturer whose perorations became famous. It was common practice for experts in shorthand to take down the words of a speaker and rush them into print, a sort of piracy, as Huxley received no royalties, but the fabulously successful little books did much to popularize Darwin’s ideas. Perhaps Desmond overstates Huxley’s triumph of rationalism over darkness for, as reviewer James Kincaid said in his review in The New York Times, the “contemporary United States seems to me about as skeptical, scientific and agnostic as a 10th century tribe of frogworshipers.”
“Huxley boosted the ‘Scientists’ ‘ profile by trenching on the clergyman’s domain, raising the territorial tension by equating authority with technical expertise.” The English schools of 1870 rejected science as “useless and dehumanizing.” Their world was constructed around the classics and theology. The universities were “finishing schools” for prosperous Anglicans.” Huxley’s great feat was persuading society that science was essential to an industrial nation.
Huxley did not begin hating religion, but the experience of his youth as an apprentice drug-grinder who wandered through the poverty-stricken, rat infested, sewage-laden London of 1841 where children were literally starving in front of him made him question the validity of a religion that had failed to help these people. Huxley spent several years studying at Charing Cross Hospital on scholarship. The honor came from successful competition on a very hard exam sponsored by the Apothecaries Guild. He was the ultimate academic and could often be found dissecting corpses past normal hours. Corpses were plentiful: the squalid poor who could not be allowed in the front door for treatment of mere starvation, arrived often by the back door for the morgue. At the end of his studies he was considerably in debt, having had to pay for food and lodging, so he went to sea as surgeon's mate on the recommendation of a friend. The ship was the Rattlesnake, whose captain was as interested as Huxley in scientific observation.
Regretfully, the numbers of books he purchased for the voyage added to his debt. On any long voyage, one has a great deal of time to speculate about things, and Huxley began moving away from the orthodox. “It is not what we believe, but why we believe it. Moral responsibility lies in diligently weighing the evidence. We must actively doubt; we have to scrutinize our views, not take them on trust. No virtue attached to blindly accepting orthodoxy, however ‘venerable’ . . . .”
Huxley remained a devotee of reason and intellect, but he was not anti-religion. “My screed,” he wrote, “was meant as a protest against Theology & Parsondom . . . both of which are in my mind the natural and irreconcilable enemies of Science. Few see it but I believe we are on the Eve of a new Reformation and if I have a wish to live thirty years, it is that I may see the foot of Science on the necks of her Enemies. But the new religion will not be a worship of the intellect alone.” He meant to retain the moral core, the ethics of love and duty, but stripping Christian mythic excrescences. “In his own pugilistic way, he was proving that evolutionary heterodoxy did not equal moral delinquency.”
Huxley was a brilliant lecturer whose perorations became famous. It was common practice for experts in shorthand to take down the words of a speaker and rush them into print, a sort of piracy, as Huxley received no royalties, but the fabulously successful little books did much to popularize Darwin’s ideas. Perhaps Desmond overstates Huxley’s triumph of rationalism over darkness for, as reviewer James Kincaid said in his review in The New York Times, the “contemporary United States seems to me about as skeptical, scientific and agnostic as a 10th century tribe of frogworshipers.”
April 10, 2023
A remarkably thorough and fine-grained account not just of biography but of sociology, bringing to vivid life the lost world of proto-evolutionary Victorian society which produced the heroic scientific popularizer at its core. Like Desmond's other biography of Charles Darwin this is an account which leaves no stone unturned both in the life of the central figure and in the minutae of social and institutional contexts they navigated and helped to construct. In his afterword Desmon writes that this approach is the natural end product of a sociological view of the history of science in which the individual contexts of knowledge production are studied in their social setting, ultimately requiring an almost microscopic analysis of the life and times of individual figures. As such this isn't a scientific account of how our understanding of evolution emerged but first and foremost an account of how knowledge was produced within and in response to the social, cultural and viciously political fabric of the day.
Huxley's life, unlike the upper class Whig laxity of Darwins, spanned the full gamut of Victorian society and is in many ways the perfect vector to understand it. He was raised in the Cockney slums of London where he saw 'From Hell'-like scenes on a daily basis, fought tooth and nail to establish himself in the lowest-tier of public medical schools in an age when only the aristocratic class was allowed entry into the proper institutions of science, and spent a years-long voyage touring the British colonies during which he got his foot in the door by publishing his first papers on marine polyps he discovered on the voyage and by securing the union of his future high-society wife, Nettie, who he met on leave in Sydney. From there he would return to London forging a career as a scientist-for-pay (then unheard of) who bit by bit conquered the upper echelons of naturalist and political high society for his fierce public rallies advocating the new theory of Evolution, that paradigm-shifting theoretical triumph of his lifelong friend Charles Darwin.
We are treated to a blow-by-blow account of the intricacies which informed Huxleys science. His polyp papers were produced in the lower decks of a creaky ship inhabited by rough-housing sailors, and between bouts of debilitating depression which plagued Huxley his entire life. Desmond doesn't attempt to diagnose the clear mental illness that Huxley and others in his family suffered from, although he seems to have been plagued by Bipolar Disorder. The precarity of his mental health haunted Huxley. His father died young hallucinating and gibbering to himself in an asylum, as did his favourite daughter the talented artist Mady Huxley, while his sister and brother also succumbed to early deaths in states of "hysteria" and drunkenness. It is almost impossible for us to imagine today in a more democratic society how impassable this familial degeneracy must have seemed to a Victorian gentleman. If word of any of his family's mental illnesses or decrepitude had reached the public he could have been swiftly delegitimised by his scientific peers. This fact haunted him his entire life and it's hard not to read his contradictory personality in this light. The vicious combatant in print and in speech who relished destroying his theological opponents was at home an incredibly gentle father and husband who despite a lifetime of financial insecurity generously supported various friends and relatives who had fallen into the poverty of the slums. The man who did more than anyone to promote Darwinian evolution to an aghast public was privately tormented by the indifferent nihilism of natural selection and largely excised it from his actual writing until the end of his life. The man who had climbed the social ranks of grotesque class segregation, who built a career delivering scientific speeches to the working masses and who was a vocal abolitionist of slavery nonetheless was a hardened anti-socialist who ended his life hobnobbing with Tories. The man who publicly toed the party line regarding women's "natural inferiority" privately secured the passage through university for talented women who ended up becoming prominent doctors, and who spent his private life in the company of such outer women friends as the lesbian novelist George Eliot.
Huxley is best known today for his "sermonizing" to the masses on the subjects of natural history and evolution. It is hard to overstate how radical this was in his time. Going in direct opposition to the theodicy of the time and against the institutional king of natural history Richard Owen, Huxley gave infamous speeches and took part in public debates with bishops before the rank masses of London's east end. He spoke at backwater factories and in a language which was accessible to those outside of the scientific elite. While his speeches remain most famous he also popularised up-to-date geological history and evolutionary science for children with a set of print works that were made cheaply and available to all classes. He received letters from Unionists and freed slaves thanking him as an invaluable source of education to the hungry masses.
In this vein Desmond charts Huxley's life as the focal point of a sea change in the structure of the academies and of science itself. With Huxley's rise to power, Desmond shows how the old hierarchies of the aristocrat-naturalist were being dissolved before the democratic potential of career scientists receiving open access to the institutions, a movement toward meritocracy. In fact, Desmond claims that Huxley basically invented Science with a capital S, formalizing what had previously been the disparate and eccentric curiosities of an upper class into a rigorous study of select fields all grounded on the paradigm of evolutionary theory and Agnosticism (a word Huxley himself coined).
Some readers may be disappointed to find that this isn't a book on the history of ideas. For example, key debates such as Huxley's brutal public demolishments of Bishop Wilberforces anti-evolutionism and of Richard Owens's parthenogenesis are relegated to brief overviews and even then the focus is on how these dialogues were conducted not the content of their ideas. This is definitely not a positivist book about the "progress" of science in any way. It is strictly about the materials, cultures and inter-personal relationships which shaped the production of scientific knowledge and institutions. It isn't a book for learning about the history of evolutionary thought without a basic background, and the reader who approaches this without a pre-existing understanding of the difference between Uniformitarianism and Catastrophism or of Owens Archetypes versus Darwins Ancestors, form v function etc. will probably be a little lost. To an extent, I would have preferred if the abstract theoretical work of science were included a little more outside of its material-cultural production. Some of the discontinuities in Huxley's thought can only be murkily understood without this, like his longstanding "anti-progressionist" and "anti-creative" belief that all animal forms existed from the outset, including humans (he speculated after the discovery of Jurassic-era mammals that scientists would soon find "palaeozoic pottery" and depicted dinosaurs and humans side by side, a singular position even at this early stage of geological theory. He even proposed a faux scientific name for this dinosaur-hunting humanoid; 'homo oolithicus'!). In his Introduction Desmond indicates that he covers the theoretical history of ideas in his earlier work 'Archetypes and Ancestors; Palaeontology in Victorian London', which I haven't read yet but am keenly looking forward to.
This is a really entertaining and informative read which transports you to the era just through its incredible detail of texture and depth. It feels like no stone goes unturned although Desmond is open in his afterword about the lacking materials from the working class who made up the bulk of Huxley's audience outside of his personal correspondences with some of them and the overviews of audience reactions in the daily papers. Huxley as a man is the perfect figure to encapsulate the changing landscape of his times, being in so many ways so modern yet in others positively Victorian. He was a radical dissenter whose contradictory, larger-than-life character defined an age moving from religious authoritarianism to an agnostic democracy. This is a wonderful book.
Huxley's life, unlike the upper class Whig laxity of Darwins, spanned the full gamut of Victorian society and is in many ways the perfect vector to understand it. He was raised in the Cockney slums of London where he saw 'From Hell'-like scenes on a daily basis, fought tooth and nail to establish himself in the lowest-tier of public medical schools in an age when only the aristocratic class was allowed entry into the proper institutions of science, and spent a years-long voyage touring the British colonies during which he got his foot in the door by publishing his first papers on marine polyps he discovered on the voyage and by securing the union of his future high-society wife, Nettie, who he met on leave in Sydney. From there he would return to London forging a career as a scientist-for-pay (then unheard of) who bit by bit conquered the upper echelons of naturalist and political high society for his fierce public rallies advocating the new theory of Evolution, that paradigm-shifting theoretical triumph of his lifelong friend Charles Darwin.
We are treated to a blow-by-blow account of the intricacies which informed Huxleys science. His polyp papers were produced in the lower decks of a creaky ship inhabited by rough-housing sailors, and between bouts of debilitating depression which plagued Huxley his entire life. Desmond doesn't attempt to diagnose the clear mental illness that Huxley and others in his family suffered from, although he seems to have been plagued by Bipolar Disorder. The precarity of his mental health haunted Huxley. His father died young hallucinating and gibbering to himself in an asylum, as did his favourite daughter the talented artist Mady Huxley, while his sister and brother also succumbed to early deaths in states of "hysteria" and drunkenness. It is almost impossible for us to imagine today in a more democratic society how impassable this familial degeneracy must have seemed to a Victorian gentleman. If word of any of his family's mental illnesses or decrepitude had reached the public he could have been swiftly delegitimised by his scientific peers. This fact haunted him his entire life and it's hard not to read his contradictory personality in this light. The vicious combatant in print and in speech who relished destroying his theological opponents was at home an incredibly gentle father and husband who despite a lifetime of financial insecurity generously supported various friends and relatives who had fallen into the poverty of the slums. The man who did more than anyone to promote Darwinian evolution to an aghast public was privately tormented by the indifferent nihilism of natural selection and largely excised it from his actual writing until the end of his life. The man who had climbed the social ranks of grotesque class segregation, who built a career delivering scientific speeches to the working masses and who was a vocal abolitionist of slavery nonetheless was a hardened anti-socialist who ended his life hobnobbing with Tories. The man who publicly toed the party line regarding women's "natural inferiority" privately secured the passage through university for talented women who ended up becoming prominent doctors, and who spent his private life in the company of such outer women friends as the lesbian novelist George Eliot.
Huxley is best known today for his "sermonizing" to the masses on the subjects of natural history and evolution. It is hard to overstate how radical this was in his time. Going in direct opposition to the theodicy of the time and against the institutional king of natural history Richard Owen, Huxley gave infamous speeches and took part in public debates with bishops before the rank masses of London's east end. He spoke at backwater factories and in a language which was accessible to those outside of the scientific elite. While his speeches remain most famous he also popularised up-to-date geological history and evolutionary science for children with a set of print works that were made cheaply and available to all classes. He received letters from Unionists and freed slaves thanking him as an invaluable source of education to the hungry masses.
In this vein Desmond charts Huxley's life as the focal point of a sea change in the structure of the academies and of science itself. With Huxley's rise to power, Desmond shows how the old hierarchies of the aristocrat-naturalist were being dissolved before the democratic potential of career scientists receiving open access to the institutions, a movement toward meritocracy. In fact, Desmond claims that Huxley basically invented Science with a capital S, formalizing what had previously been the disparate and eccentric curiosities of an upper class into a rigorous study of select fields all grounded on the paradigm of evolutionary theory and Agnosticism (a word Huxley himself coined).
Some readers may be disappointed to find that this isn't a book on the history of ideas. For example, key debates such as Huxley's brutal public demolishments of Bishop Wilberforces anti-evolutionism and of Richard Owens's parthenogenesis are relegated to brief overviews and even then the focus is on how these dialogues were conducted not the content of their ideas. This is definitely not a positivist book about the "progress" of science in any way. It is strictly about the materials, cultures and inter-personal relationships which shaped the production of scientific knowledge and institutions. It isn't a book for learning about the history of evolutionary thought without a basic background, and the reader who approaches this without a pre-existing understanding of the difference between Uniformitarianism and Catastrophism or of Owens Archetypes versus Darwins Ancestors, form v function etc. will probably be a little lost. To an extent, I would have preferred if the abstract theoretical work of science were included a little more outside of its material-cultural production. Some of the discontinuities in Huxley's thought can only be murkily understood without this, like his longstanding "anti-progressionist" and "anti-creative" belief that all animal forms existed from the outset, including humans (he speculated after the discovery of Jurassic-era mammals that scientists would soon find "palaeozoic pottery" and depicted dinosaurs and humans side by side, a singular position even at this early stage of geological theory. He even proposed a faux scientific name for this dinosaur-hunting humanoid; 'homo oolithicus'!). In his Introduction Desmond indicates that he covers the theoretical history of ideas in his earlier work 'Archetypes and Ancestors; Palaeontology in Victorian London', which I haven't read yet but am keenly looking forward to.
This is a really entertaining and informative read which transports you to the era just through its incredible detail of texture and depth. It feels like no stone goes unturned although Desmond is open in his afterword about the lacking materials from the working class who made up the bulk of Huxley's audience outside of his personal correspondences with some of them and the overviews of audience reactions in the daily papers. Huxley as a man is the perfect figure to encapsulate the changing landscape of his times, being in so many ways so modern yet in others positively Victorian. He was a radical dissenter whose contradictory, larger-than-life character defined an age moving from religious authoritarianism to an agnostic democracy. This is a wonderful book.
December 5, 2018
This book is beyond awesome: it is also entertaining and educational. The hardships suffered by Huxley in pursuit of increasing human knowledge made a good story, and Desmond made that story great.
September 17, 2012
Years ago, I thought reading the two-volume biography of Darwin by Janet Browne was riveting. Huxley by Adrian Desmond was more so.
August 4, 2024
AN ENGAGING, DETAILED AND AUTHORITATIVE BIOGRAPHY OF "DARWIN'S BULLDOG"
Adrian Desmond is an excellent science writer (e.g., 'Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist' and 'The Ape's Reflexion'). He wrote in the Introduction to this 1994 book, "'Huxley' is a contextual biography, for want of a better word: as often as not it looks up from street level to provide a fresh perspective on the people's scientist. At the outset my goal was to write it in a way that would humanize science and its history in order to make it accessible and interesting... it looks at evolution's use in order to understand the class, religious or political interests involved. It raises questions about new practices and new workplaces." (Pg. xiv)
He records, "Huxley sat in the pews of the cathedral. On Christmas Eve he watched the Catholic festivities, less with a sense of anthropological mission than with evangelical anger... The rationalist scorned this prostitution of human reason. To the young sailor priests and prostitutes were all of a piece, only standing on opposite sides of the sacred divide. At Mass the 'chanting' was 'of a most vile description.'" (Pg. 55)
Later, he adds, "For Huxley, the only way forward was a competitive, technocratic society, with the science professionals at the helm." (Pg. 211) He states, "Huxley's cadre was moving into power, but everywhere they met [Richard] Owen's imperious presence. What the scientific parvenus lacked in social strength they made up in moral posturing: hence Huxley's hallelujah, that finally 'the Lord hath given this Amalekite unto mine hands.'" (Pg. 231) He notes, "Huxley rallied Darwin... he sharpened his 'claws & beak' to tear at 'the curs which will bark and yelp'... Now Darwin was glad of it. Never one to enter the public fray, he needed a champion as Huxley needed a cause." (Pg. 260)
Of Huxley's famous encounter with bishop Wilberforce, Desmond records, "[Huxley] waited, stage-managing the event just as much. And when the shouts for him climaxed, he rose... [and said] 'If then, said I the question is put to me would I rather have a miserable ape for a grandfather or a man highly endowed by nature and possessed of great means of influence & yet who employs these faculties & that influence for the mere purpose of introducing ridicule into a grave scientific discussion, I unhesitatingly affirm my preference for the ape.' ... There followed inextinguishable laughter among the people, and they listened to the rest of my argument with the greatest attention." (Pg. 279) However, he admits, "Perceptions of the event differed so wildly that talk of a 'victor' is ridiculous... even Hooker thought that he had not managed to 'command the audience'..." (Pg. 280)
As far as Huxley's religious position was concerned, he wondered "What could he call himself? He was shifting power to an elite whose authority rested in right reasoning, not mythical realities... a cacophony of voices proclaimed that they 'had attained a certain 'gnosis"'; like the second-century gnostics who professed sparks of divine knowledge. That night he came up with 'Agnostic.'" (Pg. 374) He adds, "Agnosticism helped Huxley elude his detractors. It presented the man of science as non-aligned; it deflected any inquest from his own axiomatic beliefs... And it allowed Huxley to take the offensive." (Pg. 389-390)
This excellent book will be of immense interest to anyone studying the origins of the evolutionary theory, and the debate concerning it.
Adrian Desmond is an excellent science writer (e.g., 'Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist' and 'The Ape's Reflexion'). He wrote in the Introduction to this 1994 book, "'Huxley' is a contextual biography, for want of a better word: as often as not it looks up from street level to provide a fresh perspective on the people's scientist. At the outset my goal was to write it in a way that would humanize science and its history in order to make it accessible and interesting... it looks at evolution's use in order to understand the class, religious or political interests involved. It raises questions about new practices and new workplaces." (Pg. xiv)
He records, "Huxley sat in the pews of the cathedral. On Christmas Eve he watched the Catholic festivities, less with a sense of anthropological mission than with evangelical anger... The rationalist scorned this prostitution of human reason. To the young sailor priests and prostitutes were all of a piece, only standing on opposite sides of the sacred divide. At Mass the 'chanting' was 'of a most vile description.'" (Pg. 55)
Later, he adds, "For Huxley, the only way forward was a competitive, technocratic society, with the science professionals at the helm." (Pg. 211) He states, "Huxley's cadre was moving into power, but everywhere they met [Richard] Owen's imperious presence. What the scientific parvenus lacked in social strength they made up in moral posturing: hence Huxley's hallelujah, that finally 'the Lord hath given this Amalekite unto mine hands.'" (Pg. 231) He notes, "Huxley rallied Darwin... he sharpened his 'claws & beak' to tear at 'the curs which will bark and yelp'... Now Darwin was glad of it. Never one to enter the public fray, he needed a champion as Huxley needed a cause." (Pg. 260)
Of Huxley's famous encounter with bishop Wilberforce, Desmond records, "[Huxley] waited, stage-managing the event just as much. And when the shouts for him climaxed, he rose... [and said] 'If then, said I the question is put to me would I rather have a miserable ape for a grandfather or a man highly endowed by nature and possessed of great means of influence & yet who employs these faculties & that influence for the mere purpose of introducing ridicule into a grave scientific discussion, I unhesitatingly affirm my preference for the ape.' ... There followed inextinguishable laughter among the people, and they listened to the rest of my argument with the greatest attention." (Pg. 279) However, he admits, "Perceptions of the event differed so wildly that talk of a 'victor' is ridiculous... even Hooker thought that he had not managed to 'command the audience'..." (Pg. 280)
As far as Huxley's religious position was concerned, he wondered "What could he call himself? He was shifting power to an elite whose authority rested in right reasoning, not mythical realities... a cacophony of voices proclaimed that they 'had attained a certain 'gnosis"'; like the second-century gnostics who professed sparks of divine knowledge. That night he came up with 'Agnostic.'" (Pg. 374) He adds, "Agnosticism helped Huxley elude his detractors. It presented the man of science as non-aligned; it deflected any inquest from his own axiomatic beliefs... And it allowed Huxley to take the offensive." (Pg. 389-390)
This excellent book will be of immense interest to anyone studying the origins of the evolutionary theory, and the debate concerning it.
February 18, 2023
“Huxley, Darwin’s bulldog.” That’s pretty much the sum of what I knew about the man when I picked up this book, so it was a great and wonderful surprise to learn that that was the least of what he was. Yes, he would fight for Darwin and his theory of evolution, but he would also push to open schools, not just for science, but for all people. He had clawed his way up from poverty, so knew that it was possible.
Perhaps his greatest achievement has again become the center of debate. That science, and its foundation of truth, was the ticket to a better society. He would rid the schools on their reliance on Greek and Latin, poetry and literature, to make them truly places of higher learning, a learning that would lead his country to new heights. It says so much about our society now, that, once again, we’re arguing about facts, and their worth. Once again, so many people prefer myths. That, once again, science is suspect by men of little minds.
But Huxley may have said it best when comparing how “The young waif Science eyed her old sisters, Theology and Philosophy: Cinderella…lights the fire, sweeps the house, and provides the dinner; and is rewarded by being told that she is a base creature, devoted to low and material interests. But in her garret she has fairy visions out of the ken of the pair of shrews who are quarreling downstairs. She sees the order which pervades the seeming disorder of the world; the great drama of evolution, with its full share of pity and terror, but also with abundant goodness and beauty…; and she learns… that the foundation of morality is to have done, once and for all, with lying; to give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence.”
The great Agnostic, clear, brave, true,
Taught more things may be, than he deemed he knew.
From Huxley’s obituary in Punch
Perhaps his greatest achievement has again become the center of debate. That science, and its foundation of truth, was the ticket to a better society. He would rid the schools on their reliance on Greek and Latin, poetry and literature, to make them truly places of higher learning, a learning that would lead his country to new heights. It says so much about our society now, that, once again, we’re arguing about facts, and their worth. Once again, so many people prefer myths. That, once again, science is suspect by men of little minds.
But Huxley may have said it best when comparing how “The young waif Science eyed her old sisters, Theology and Philosophy: Cinderella…lights the fire, sweeps the house, and provides the dinner; and is rewarded by being told that she is a base creature, devoted to low and material interests. But in her garret she has fairy visions out of the ken of the pair of shrews who are quarreling downstairs. She sees the order which pervades the seeming disorder of the world; the great drama of evolution, with its full share of pity and terror, but also with abundant goodness and beauty…; and she learns… that the foundation of morality is to have done, once and for all, with lying; to give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence.”
The great Agnostic, clear, brave, true,
Taught more things may be, than he deemed he knew.
From Huxley’s obituary in Punch
May 3, 2019
This is a very good biography, no doubt. But not for me. Huxley is an important man, and I wanted to learn about his life. But this book is just too detailed. I wanted to learn something, but 250 instead of 650 would have been enough for me. Also, and this is something that I will not hold against the book, the language is quite hard for a non-native speaker especially the first part with lots of nautical words that I did not know and was too lazy to look up.
What did I learn? He was not Darwin’s Bulldog. At least not in quite the way I thought he was. He must have been a brilliant speaker and he was an "early adopter" but he did have some doubts at first (thought that crocodiles have not changed in evolution.)
Very sweet how he met his wife in Australia and had to wait for 10 years until he had enough money to let her come to England. Because he wanted to "make" it in science. And in London. (He could have gone to Canada e.g.). He was a member of the X-club. The rise from a poor teacher’s son to the most powerful scientist in England is quite amazing.
The Wilberforce debate is only a minor event it seems. More prominent his clashes with Owen and Gladstone.
It seems that in the 1880s nearly everybody believed in evolution. And that women should have a better role in science.
Reading the Wikipedia entry and some of his books is probably the better option.
What did I learn? He was not Darwin’s Bulldog. At least not in quite the way I thought he was. He must have been a brilliant speaker and he was an "early adopter" but he did have some doubts at first (thought that crocodiles have not changed in evolution.)
Very sweet how he met his wife in Australia and had to wait for 10 years until he had enough money to let her come to England. Because he wanted to "make" it in science. And in London. (He could have gone to Canada e.g.). He was a member of the X-club. The rise from a poor teacher’s son to the most powerful scientist in England is quite amazing.
The Wilberforce debate is only a minor event it seems. More prominent his clashes with Owen and Gladstone.
It seems that in the 1880s nearly everybody believed in evolution. And that women should have a better role in science.
Reading the Wikipedia entry and some of his books is probably the better option.
December 23, 2015
"Huxley: From Devil’s Disciple to Evolution’s Hight Priest" is a lengthy biography of Thomas Henry Huxley by Adrian Desmond. It might be more accurate to say it is a history of his time, 1825-1895, concentrating on the development of science in England, for which which he had to battle against the entrenched and incestuous counter-forces of class, politics, universities and state-sponsored religion.
It was Huxley who coined the word "agnostic" to characterize his views. Before that, there wasn’t any good word, "atheist" being mentioned but yet entirely wrong, so "agnostic" was born of self-defense, signifying nothing against religion other than accepting the facts of nature (science) irrespective of dogma or any other contradictory assertion. (Huxley learned on his own more theology than many clerics of his time possessed.) But as soon as developing science contradicted religious dogma, the forces of the Anglican Church opposed science, and its wealth and influence soon attracted the upper classes, educators, and politicians into its battle.
This opposition made it exceedingly difficult for talented men not of privileged birth, men of merit like Huxley, to advance or even get started against class, scholastic, and economic barriers. There was no money in science. Huxley had to incur onerous debts for books alone. Science was being done in England only by men who did not have to work for a living. Huxley, self-taught, devoted his life to changing this and was highly successful, also promoting women where possible. He was instrumental in introducing scientific education into Britain, where the universities had been finishing schools for the pampered. As scientist, publicist, lecturer, writer and lobbyist, he could hardly bear to turn down any position from which he could have a positive influence and so probably worked himself into an unnaturally early death.
Charles Darwin came out with "The Origin of Species" in 1859. He had put off publication for nearly 20 years because of foreseen troubles mostly with the Anglican Church. Oddly enough, although Huxley found abundant ammunition in the "Origin", he personally dismissed its central idea, natural selection, for about eight years and lectured widely in Darwin’s defense without mentioning the process. Darwin noticed this. But Huxley gradually came to tolerate it after carefully considering the abilities of British pigeon fanciers to produce in a few generations, by selective breeding, numerous extreme varieties of pigeons (human selection).
Huxley also had to do battle with the wholly inappropriate and dangerous attempts to apply evolutionary processes set out in the "Origin" to society, economics, ethics, race, politics, international competition and empire. Towards the end he was practically defending uncorrupted faith and intelligent conservatism against socialism, Communism and anarchism.
For a lengthy biography, there seems to be oddly little about Huxley. I never got much sense of the man. Also there is precious little science for a book featuring Huxley and Darwin. This is mostly a history book about science-impacted sectors of British society and institutions of the time, clearly not written by a scientist. I would greatly have preferred it the other way around. Huxley was a distinguished scientist, perhaps (for example) the finest comparative anatomist of his day. He concluded correctly, for example, that birds had evolved from small dinosaurs. His was a golden age of science, and he was its most powerful instrument.
It was Huxley who coined the word "agnostic" to characterize his views. Before that, there wasn’t any good word, "atheist" being mentioned but yet entirely wrong, so "agnostic" was born of self-defense, signifying nothing against religion other than accepting the facts of nature (science) irrespective of dogma or any other contradictory assertion. (Huxley learned on his own more theology than many clerics of his time possessed.) But as soon as developing science contradicted religious dogma, the forces of the Anglican Church opposed science, and its wealth and influence soon attracted the upper classes, educators, and politicians into its battle.
This opposition made it exceedingly difficult for talented men not of privileged birth, men of merit like Huxley, to advance or even get started against class, scholastic, and economic barriers. There was no money in science. Huxley had to incur onerous debts for books alone. Science was being done in England only by men who did not have to work for a living. Huxley, self-taught, devoted his life to changing this and was highly successful, also promoting women where possible. He was instrumental in introducing scientific education into Britain, where the universities had been finishing schools for the pampered. As scientist, publicist, lecturer, writer and lobbyist, he could hardly bear to turn down any position from which he could have a positive influence and so probably worked himself into an unnaturally early death.
Charles Darwin came out with "The Origin of Species" in 1859. He had put off publication for nearly 20 years because of foreseen troubles mostly with the Anglican Church. Oddly enough, although Huxley found abundant ammunition in the "Origin", he personally dismissed its central idea, natural selection, for about eight years and lectured widely in Darwin’s defense without mentioning the process. Darwin noticed this. But Huxley gradually came to tolerate it after carefully considering the abilities of British pigeon fanciers to produce in a few generations, by selective breeding, numerous extreme varieties of pigeons (human selection).
Huxley also had to do battle with the wholly inappropriate and dangerous attempts to apply evolutionary processes set out in the "Origin" to society, economics, ethics, race, politics, international competition and empire. Towards the end he was practically defending uncorrupted faith and intelligent conservatism against socialism, Communism and anarchism.
For a lengthy biography, there seems to be oddly little about Huxley. I never got much sense of the man. Also there is precious little science for a book featuring Huxley and Darwin. This is mostly a history book about science-impacted sectors of British society and institutions of the time, clearly not written by a scientist. I would greatly have preferred it the other way around. Huxley was a distinguished scientist, perhaps (for example) the finest comparative anatomist of his day. He concluded correctly, for example, that birds had evolved from small dinosaurs. His was a golden age of science, and he was its most powerful instrument.
January 31, 2010
Thomas H. Huxley, grandfather of Aldous and Julian, was not born into wealth like Darwin and other scientists of his day. He struggled through medical school but was financially unable to continue his studies to become a surgeon. He signed on as assitant surgeon on a ship which was to advance the scope of the British Empire in the fields of biology, charting unmapped areas the Empire wanted to grasp. The sea voyages were most interesting to me. Huxley studied all invertebrates he could discover and wrote papers on his dissections to be sent to London and published in scientific journals. He met is future wife in Australia. They spent 8 years apart before he could be settled in England. The mid-section of the book seemed bogged down in Huxley's endless attempts to earn money and status through his scientific papers and instruction. He rose steadily as an esteemed though controversial biologist. My interest picked up when he became associated with the very retiring Charles Darwin. Huxley was not at all retiring nor did he shy from a good fight. He took on the men like Owen who, like the religious of today, held back tried to hold back knowledge that threatened their ideas.
March 23, 2010
It would be very difficult to exaggerate the importance of this biography. As an example of a particular approach to the history of science, that is, the social origins of scientific ideas, the work is emminently successful. As an example of cultural history, specifically the intellectual and cultural history of Victorian England, the book is extraordinarily illuminating. As social history, an account of the formation and rise to influence and power in many domains of "scientists," the book has no equal that I know of. As an account of the development of "agnosticism" - a term that Huxley coined - and the stuggle of its adherents with establishment Anglicanism, none better or more fully documented. As a biography, the story of Huxley's life, quite complete and engaging. Despite its considerable length, 650 pages of very small type, it's definitely a read-again book.
I will also not that Mr, Desmond is quite a gifted writer and prose stylist. A delight to read.
I will also not that Mr, Desmond is quite a gifted writer and prose stylist. A delight to read.
July 24, 2011
Blimey what a book - 625 odd pages about the life (in context) of someone I had no idea existed. (Actually I found out in the book that he was Aldous Huxley's grandfather).
In a nutshell, TH Huxley was Darwin's bulldog and did more for the place of science in everyday life than anyone else before. The book starts well with the biography and the making of this popular scientist/agnostic (he coined the word) from the 19th century. The voyage to Australia is fascinating - the return to England and the politics of how Huxley fought his corner much less so. Too many characters involved, with a language which is sometimes hard to follow. It really was a struggle to finish the book - but I can genuinely say this was not lost time, as it gave a good insight on Victorian England and how Science played a role in the development of the nation.
In a nutshell, TH Huxley was Darwin's bulldog and did more for the place of science in everyday life than anyone else before. The book starts well with the biography and the making of this popular scientist/agnostic (he coined the word) from the 19th century. The voyage to Australia is fascinating - the return to England and the politics of how Huxley fought his corner much less so. Too many characters involved, with a language which is sometimes hard to follow. It really was a struggle to finish the book - but I can genuinely say this was not lost time, as it gave a good insight on Victorian England and how Science played a role in the development of the nation.
April 17, 2007
An incredibly gripping story of a fascinating man whose reputation hides behind that of his contemporary, Charles Darwin. The man who coined the term "agnostic," the story of the love of his life, and the revolutionary philosophical changes he brought to the world by means of his study of anatomy are absolutely worthy of the interested mind. A bit long in the end, but you will love the man behind the theories.
December 18, 2009
A fascinating biography that chronicles the era of Darwin's theoretical emergence and Huxley's role in the theory's promotion. The beginning shows the adventurous nature of the scientific ocean voyages and ends with the socio-political consequences of all this scientific work.
April 18, 2012
A great biography of an underappreciated thinker.
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