Essays in Popular Science

by Julian Huxley

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Genres: Science

Paperback

First published January 1, 1926

About the author

In 1887, Julian Huxley, the brother of novelist Aldous Huxley and the grandson of agnostic biologist Thomas Henry Huxley, was born in Great Britain. Educated as a biologist at Oxford, he taught at Rice Institute, Houston (1912-1916), Oxford (1919-25) and Kings College (1925-1935). An ant specialist (he wrote a book called Ants in 1930), Huxley became Secretary of the Zoological Society of London (1935-1942), and UNESCO's first general director (1946-1948). A strong secular humanist, Huxley called himself "not merely agnostic . . . I disbelieve in a personal God in any sense in which that phrase is ordinarily used. . . I disbelieve in the existence of Heaven or Hell in any conventional Christian sense." (Religion Without Revelation, 1927, revised 1956.) Huxley was an early evolutionary theorist, with versatile academic interests. Some of his many other books include: Essays of a Biologist (1923), Animal Biology (with J.B.S. Haldane, 1927), The Science of Life (with H.G. Wells, 1931), Thomas Huxley's Diary of the Voyage of the HMS Rattlesnake (editor, 1935), The Living Thoughts of Darwin (1939), Heredity, East & West (1949), Biological Aspects of Cancer (1957), Towards a New Humanism (1957), and Memories, a two-volume autobiography in the early 1970s. Huxley was knighted in 1958 and was also a founder of the World Wildlife Fund.

Huxley was well known for his presentation of science in books and articles, and on radio and television. He directed an Oscar-winning wildlife film. He was awarded UNESCO's Kalinga Prize for the popularisation of science in 1953, the Darwin Medal of the Royal Society in 1956, and the Darwin–Wallace Medal of the Linnaean Society in 1958. He was also knighted in that same year, 1958, a hundred years after Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace announced the theory of evolution by natural selection. In 1959 he received a Special Award of the Lasker Foundation in the category Planned Parenthood – World Population.

Huxley came from the distinguished Huxley family. His brother was the writer Aldous Huxley, and his half-brother a fellow biologist and Nobel laureate, Andrew Huxley; his father was writer and editor Leonard Huxley; and his paternal grandfather was Thomas Henry Huxley, a friend and supporter of Charles Darwin and proponent of evolution. His maternal grandfather was the academic Tom Arnold, his great-uncle was poet Matthew Arnold and his great-grandfather was Thomas Arnold of Rugby School.

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Reviews

[Liedzeit Liedzeit · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book with articles on science that was first published in 1926, nearly a hundred years ago. And what is strange is that whenever Huxley says something about Modern Science is does not sound funny. Because basically modern Science is still what it was a hundred years ago. We had Gallileo and Newton and Einstein. And the practice of doing science (defined by him as “the power of profiting by experience”) and the scientific methods have not changed a lot. There was no Big Bang then and no String theory but that is not really (or not at all) established today.

Of course some of the stuff is dated. So when he says that people need to learn the term chromosom like they had learned the term atom one can see that things have progressed ... a little.

The most intersting essay for me were on Biology in Utopia (a review of a book by Wells) and the one about his famous grandfather: Thomas Huxley and Religion. Which he starts with this quote:

‘I have never had much sympathy with the a priori reasons against orthodoxy, and I have by nature and disposition the greatest possible antipathy to all the atheistic and infidel school.’

Huxley was, the younger Huxley says, essentially and deeply religious. This might be somewhat surprising since Huxley, after all, invented agnosticism.

Also great the essay on Evolution and Purpose. Still worth reading for people who have not understood what evolution means.

And finally I learned a lot from The frog and biology but have to admit that the next (and longest) essay on the Tadpole was too detailed/boring for me.

I had this book on my shelf for many years and am glad that I finally took the time to read it.

7/10