Thomas Henry Huxley, 1825 - 1895
From Popular Science Monthly Volume 4 (1874)
Born: 4 May 1825, Ealing, Middlesex, England
Died: 29 June 1895, Eastbourne, Sussex, England
Huxley had only two years of formal schooling but held short apprenticeships with three physicians before spending a year at a low-budget medical school at seventeen; at twenty he won the gold medals for anatomy and physiology in tests at the University of London. He didn't take the final exams that would have allowed him to practice medicine, but convinced the Royal Navy to make him ship's surgeon on a journey into the South Pacific during which he studied and classified marine micro-organisms. On his return he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society based on his research, the following year he was elected to the Council and later served as President. Despite his lack of formal education, he was regarded as the finest comparative anatomist of the age and he had a great influence on the establishment of scientific education. Although he never completely accepted Darwin's theory of natural selection, he was called "Darwin's Bulldog" for his active and effective destruction of all arguments for any other theories. The man who first pointed out the evolutionary relationship between dinosaurs and modern birds coined the word "agnostic" to describe his religious beliefs.
Biography from Wikipedia and Clark University
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Thomas Henry Huxley quotes:
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- A man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would rather be a man — a man of restless and versatile intellect — who ... plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions and skilled appeals to religious prejudice. permalink
Thomas Henry Huxley - debate with Bishop Wilberforce at the British Association, Oxford (30 June 1860) - A man's worst difficulties begin when he is able to do as he likes. permalink
Thomas Henry Huxley - A world of facts lies outside and beyond the world of words. permalink
Thomas Henry Huxley - Agnosticism simply means that a man shall not say he knows or believes that for which he has no grounds for professing to believe. permalink
Thomas Henry Huxley - Anyone who has studied the history of science knows that almost every great step therein has been made by the "anticipation of Nature," that is, by the invention of hypotheses, which, though verifiable, often had very little foundation to start with; and, not unfrequently, in spite of a long career of usefulness, turned out to be wholly erroneous in the long run. permalink
Thomas Henry Huxley - "The Progress of Science 1837-1887" (1887) - Anyone who is practically acquainted with scientific work is aware that those who refuse to go beyond fact, rarely get as far as fact. permalink
Thomas Henry Huxley - "The Progress of Science 1837-1887" (1887) - As for your doctrines I am prepared to go to the Stake if requisite.... I trust you will not allow yourself to be in any way disgusted or annoyed by the considerable abuse & misrepresentation which unless I greatly mistake is in store for you.... And as to the curs which will bark and yelp — you must recollect that some of your friends at any rate are endowed with an amount of combativeness which (though you have often & justly rebuked it) may stand you in good stead — I am sharpening up my claws and beak in readiness. permalink
Thomas Henry Huxley - letter to Charles Darwin (23 Nov 1859) - As I stood behind the coffin of my little son the other day, with my mind bent on anything but disputation, the officiating minister read, as part of his duty, the words, 'If the dead rise not again, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.' I cannot tell you how inexpressibly they shocked me. Paul had neither wife nor child, or he must have known that his alternative involved a blasphemy against all that well best and noblest in human nature. I could have laughed with scorn. What! Because I am face to face with irreparable loss, because I have given back to the source from whence it came, the cause of a great happiness, still retaining through all my life the blessings which have sprung and will spring from that cause, I am to renounce my manhood, and, howling, grovel in bestiality? Why, the very apes know better, and if you shoot their young, the poor brutes grieve their grief out and do not immediately seek distraction in a gorge. permalink
Thomas Henry Huxley - letter to Charles Kingsley (23 Sep 1860) - Books are the money of Literature, but only the counters of Science. permalink
Thomas Henry Huxley - Common sense is science exactly in so far as it fulfills the ideal of common sense; that is, sees facts as they are, or at any rate, without the distortion of prejudice, and reasons from them in accordance with the dictates of sound judgment. And science is simply common sense at its best, that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic. permalink
Thomas Henry Huxley - The Crayfish: an Introduction to the Study of Zo?logy (1880) - Cosmic evolution may teach us how the good and evil tendencies of man may have come about; but, in itself, it is incompetent to furnish any better reason why what we call good is preferable to what we call evil than we had before. Some day, I doubt not, we shall arrive at an understanding of the evolution of the aesthetic faculty; but all the understanding in the world will neither increase nor diminish the force of the intuition that this is beautiful and that is ugly. permalink
Thomas Henry Huxley - "Evolution and Ethics" (1893) - Deduction, which takes us from the general proposition to facts again — teaches us, if I may so say, to anticipate from the ticket what is inside the bundle. permalink
Thomas Henry Huxley - "On the Educational Value of the Natural History Sciences" (1854) - Ecclesiasticism in science is only unfaithfulness to truth. permalink
Thomas Henry Huxley - Economy does not lie in sparing money, but in spending it wisely. permalink
Thomas Henry Huxley - Education is the instruction of the intellect in the laws of Nature. permalink
Thomas Henry Huxley
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