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90-480: Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, as published in 1859, provided a selection mechanism for evolution, but not a trait transfer mechanism. Lamarckism was still a very popular candidate for this. August Weismann and Alfred Russel Wallace rejected the Lamarckian idea of inheritance of acquired characteristics that Darwin had accepted and later expanded upon in his writings on heredity . The basis for

180-409: A detailed account for Darwin, a letter which does not survive; however, a letter to his friend Frederick Daniel Dyster does survive with an account just three months after the event. One effect of the debate was to hugely increase Huxley's visibility amongst educated people, through the accounts in newspapers and periodicals. Another consequence was to alert him to the importance of public debate:

270-606: A dogmatic, atheistic ideology akin to Marxism ." However, Darwinism is also used neutrally within the scientific community to distinguish the modern evolutionary synthesis , which is sometimes called " neo-Darwinism ", from those first proposed by Darwin. Darwinism also is used neutrally by historians to differentiate his theory from other evolutionary theories current around the same period. For example, Darwinism may refer to Darwin's proposed mechanism of natural selection, in comparison to more recent mechanisms such as genetic drift and gene flow . It may also refer specifically to

360-474: A hypothesis which was a good working basis. Logically speaking, the prior question was whether evolution had taken place at all. It is to this question that much of Darwin's On the Origin of Species was devoted. Its publication in 1859 completely convinced Huxley of evolution and it was this and no doubt his admiration of Darwin's way of amassing and using evidence that formed the basis of his support for Darwin in

450-526: A kind of faith, like ' Maoism [...] Scientists don't call it 'Darwinism'." In the United Kingdom , the term often retains its positive sense as a reference to natural selection, and for example British ethologist and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins wrote in his collection of essays A Devil's Chaplain , published in 2003, that as a scientist he is a Darwinist. In his 1995 book Darwinian Fairytales , Australian philosopher David Stove used

540-548: A lecture tour across the United States, starting in New York and going via Boston, Washington, Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska to California, lecturing on what he called "Darwinism" without any problems. In his book Darwinism (1889), Wallace had used the term pure-Darwinism which proposed a "greater efficacy" for natural selection . George Romanes dubbed this view as "Wallaceism", noting that in contrast to Darwin, this position

630-416: A lesson he never forgot. A third effect was to serve notice that Darwinian ideas could not be easily dismissed: on the contrary, they would be vigorously defended against orthodox authority. A fourth effect was to promote professionalism in science, with its implied need for scientific education. A fifth consequence was indirect: as Wilberforce had feared, a defence of evolution did undermine literal belief in

720-513: A nominal assistant-surgeon, so he might work on the specimens he collected and the observations he made during the voyage of the Rattlesnake . He solved the problem of Appendicularia , whose place in the animal kingdom Johannes Peter Müller had found himself wholly unable to assign. It and the Ascidians are both, as Huxley showed, tunicates , today regarded as a sister group to the vertebrates in

810-645: A palaeontologist is marked by a rather strange predilection for 'persistent types', in which he seemed to argue that evolutionary advancement (in the sense of major new groups of animals and plants) was rare or absent in the Phanerozoic . In the same vein, he tended to push the origin of major groups such as birds and mammals back into the Palaeozoic era, and to claim that no order of plants had ever gone extinct. Much paper has been consumed by historians of science ruminating on this strange and somewhat unclear idea. Huxley

900-491: A silver medal prize in the Apothecaries' yearly competition, Huxley was admitted to study at Charing Cross Hospital , where he obtained a small scholarship. At Charing Cross, he was taught by Thomas Wharton Jones , Professor of Ophthalmic Medicine and Surgery at University College London . Jones had been Robert Knox 's assistant when Knox bought cadavers from Burke and Hare . The young Wharton Jones, who acted as go-between,

990-634: A street in the Bronx , New York was named in his honor (Huxley Avenue). As recognition of his many public services, he was appointed Privy Councillor in 1892. Despite his many achievements, he was given no award by the British state until late in life. In this, he did better than Darwin, who got no award of any kind from the state. (Darwin's proposed knighthood was vetoed by ecclesiastical advisers, including Wilberforce.) Perhaps Huxley had commented too often on his dislike of honours, or perhaps his many assaults on

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1080-590: A track record against evolution as far back as the previous Oxford B.A. meeting in 1847 when he attacked Chambers' Vestiges . For the more challenging task of opposing the Origin , and the implication that man descended from apes, he had been assiduously coached by Richard Owen —Owen stayed with him the night before the debate. On the day, Wilberforce repeated some of the arguments from his Quarterly Review article (written but not yet published), then ventured onto slippery ground. His famous jibe at Huxley (as to whether Huxley

1170-505: A view now held by modern biologists. The tendency has been for this fine anatomical work to be overshadowed by his energetic and controversial activity in favour of evolution, and by his extensive public work on scientific education, both of which had significant effects on society in Britain and elsewhere. Huxley's 1893 Romanes Lecture , "Evolution and Ethics", is exceedingly influential in China;

1260-488: Is an inappropriate term for modern evolutionary theory. For example, Darwin was unfamiliar with the work of the Moravian scientist and Augustinian friar Gregor Mendel , and as a result had only a vague and inaccurate understanding of heredity . He naturally had no inkling of later theoretical developments and, like Mendel himself, knew nothing of genetic drift , for example. In the United States and to some extent in

1350-407: Is attached to the shoulder or pelvis by a single bone, the humerus or femur. His interest in these fish brought him close to the origin of tetrapods , one of the most important areas of vertebrate palaeontology. The study of fossil reptiles led to his demonstrating the fundamental affinity of birds and reptiles, which he united under the title of Sauropsida . His papers on Archaeopteryx and

1440-513: Is reprobated as "utterly dishonourable to Natural Science." If I confine my retrospect of the reception of the Origin of Species to a twelvemonth, or thereabouts, from the time of its publication, I do not recollect anything quite so foolish and unmannerly as the Quarterly Review article... Since his death, Huxley has become known as "Darwin's Bulldog", taken to refer to his pluck and courage in debate, and to his perceived role in protecting

1530-536: The Quarterly Review , running to 17,000 words. The authorship of this latter review was not known for sure until Wilberforce's son wrote his biography. So it can be said that, just as Darwin groomed Huxley, so Owen groomed Wilberforce; and both the proxies fought public battles on behalf of their principals as much as themselves. Though we do not know the exact words of the Oxford debate, we do know what Huxley thought of

1620-865: The Copley Medal in 1888 and the Darwin Medal in 1894; the Geological Society awarded him the Wollaston Medal in 1876; the Linnean Society awarded him the Linnean Medal in 1890. There were many other elections and appointments to eminent scientific bodies; these and his many academic awards are listed in the Life and Letters . He turned down many other appointments, notably the Linacre chair in zoology at Oxford and

1710-585: The University of London , winning the gold medal for anatomy and physiology . However, he did not present himself for the final (Second M.B.) exams and consequently did not qualify for a university degree. His apprenticeships and exam results formed a sufficient basis for his application to the Royal Navy . Aged 20, Huxley was too young to apply to the Royal College of Surgeons for a licence to practise, yet he

1800-542: The evolution of the horse has many other members, and the overall appearance of the tree of descent is more like a bush than a straight line. The horse series also strongly suggested that the process was gradual, and that the origin of the modern horse lay in North America, not in Eurasia. If so, then something must have happened to horses in North America, since none were there when Europeans arrived. The experience with Marsh

1890-406: The modern synthesis in the early 20th century, incorporating natural selection with population genetics and Mendelian genetics , revived Darwinism in an updated form. While the term Darwinism has remained in use amongst the public when referring to modern evolutionary theory, it has increasingly been argued by science writers such as Olivia Judson , Eugenie Scott , and Carl Safina that it

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1980-455: The natural selection of small, inherited variations that increase the individual's ability to compete, survive, and reproduce . Also called Darwinian theory , it originally included the broad concepts of transmutation of species or of evolution which gained general scientific acceptance after Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, including concepts which predated Darwin's theories. English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley coined

2070-453: The origin of birds were of great interest then and still are. Apart from his interest in persuading the world that man was a primate and had descended from the same stock as the apes, Huxley did little work on mammals, with one exception. On his tour of America Huxley was shown the remarkable series of fossil horses, discovered by O. C. Marsh , in Yale 's Peabody Museum . An Easterner, Marsh

2160-433: The sociobiological explanation of altruism as an evolutionary feature was presented in such a way that the argument was effectively immune to any criticism. English philosopher Simon Blackburn wrote a rejoinder to Stove, though a subsequent essay by Stove's protégé James Franklin suggested that Blackburn's response actually "confirms Stove's central thesis that Darwinism can 'explain' anything." In more recent times,

2250-564: The 2008 documentary film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed , which promotes intelligent design (ID), American writer and actor Ben Stein refers to scientists as Darwinists. Reviewing the film for Scientific American , John Rennie says "The term is a curious throwback, because in modern biology almost no one relies solely on Darwin's original ideas ... Yet the choice of terminology isn't random: Ben Stein wants you to stop thinking of evolution as an actual science supported by verifiable facts and logical arguments and to start thinking of it as

2340-869: The Advancement of Science 1869–1870; president of the Quekett Microscopical Club 1878; president of the Royal Society 1883–1885; Inspector of Fisheries 1881–1885; and president of the Marine Biological Association 1884–1890. He was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society in 1869. The thirty-one years during which Huxley occupied the chair of natural history at the Royal School of Mines included work on vertebrate palaeontology and on many projects to advance

2430-534: The Australian moral philosopher and professor Peter Singer , who serves as the Ira ;W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University , has proposed the development of a "Darwinian left " based on the contemporary scientific understanding of biological anthropology , human evolution , and applied ethics in order to achieve the establishment of a more equal and cooperative human society in accordance with

2520-606: The Chinese translation of Huxley's lecture even transformed the Chinese translation of Darwin's Origin of Species . Thomas Henry Huxley was born in Ealing , then a village in Middlesex . He was the second youngest of eight children of George Huxley and Rachel Withers. His parents were members of the Church of England, but he sympathized with nonconformists . Like some other British scientists of

2610-720: The Mastership of University College, Oxford . In 1873 the King of Sweden made Huxley, Hooker and Tyndall Knights of the Order of the Polar Star : they could wear the insignia but not use the title in Britain. Huxley collected many honorary memberships of foreign societies, academic awards and honorary doctorates from Britain and Germany. He also became a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1892. In 1916,

2700-528: The Natural History of Creation , a book which contained some quite pertinent arguments in favour of evolution. Huxley had also rejected Lamarck's theory of transmutation, on the basis that there was insufficient evidence to support it. All this scepticism was brought together in a lecture to the Royal Institution, which made Darwin anxious enough to set about an effort to change young Huxley's mind. It

2790-577: The Royal Society, persuaded government about science, and established scientific education in British schools and universities. He was awarded the highest honours then open to British men of science. The Royal Society , who had elected him as Fellow when he was 25 (1851), awarded him the Royal Medal the next year (1852), a year before Charles Darwin got the same award. He was the youngest biologist to receive such recognition. Then later in life he received

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2880-472: The United Kingdon, creationists often use the term "Darwinism" as a pejorative term in reference to beliefs such as scientific materialism . Huxley, upon first reading Darwin's theory in 1858, responded, "How extremely stupid not to have thought of that!" While the term Darwinism had been used previously to refer to the work of Erasmus Darwin in the late 18th century, the term as understood today

2970-518: The belief and acceptance of Darwin's and of his predecessors' work, in place of other concepts, including divine design and extraterrestrial origins . English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley coined the term Darwinism in April 1860. It was used to describe evolutionary concepts in general, including earlier concepts published by English philosopher Herbert Spencer . Many of the proponents of Darwinism at that time, including Huxley, had reservations about

3060-427: The complete rejection of Lamarckism was Weismann's germ plasm theory. Weismann realised that the cells that produce the germ plasm, or gametes (such as sperm and eggs in animals ), separate from the somatic cells that go on to make other body tissues at an early stage in development. Since he could see no obvious means of communication between the two, he asserted that the inheritance of acquired characteristics

3150-408: The death of his eldest son Noel, who died of scarlet fever in 1860; Huxley's wife Henrietta Anne née  Heathorn and son Noel are also buried there. Huxley and his wife had five daughters and three sons: From 1870 onwards, Huxley was to some extent drawn away from scientific research by the claims of public duty. He served on eight Royal Commissions , from 1862 to 1884. From 1871 to 1880 he

3240-597: The debate at the British Association meeting, on Saturday 30 June 1860 at the Oxford University Museum. Huxley's presence there had been encouraged on the previous evening when he met Robert Chambers, the Scottish publisher and author of Vestiges , who was walking the streets of Oxford in a dispirited state, and begged for assistance. The debate followed the presentation of a paper by John William Draper , and

3330-463: The debate, and written less than a month afterwards. Other eyewitnesses, with one or two exceptions (Hooker especially thought he had made the best points), give similar accounts, at varying dates after the event. The general view was and still is that Huxley got much the better of the exchange, though Wilberforce himself thought he had done quite well. In the absence of a verbatim report, differing perceptions are difficult to judge fairly; Huxley wrote

3420-679: The debates that followed the book's publication. Huxley's support started with his anonymous favourable review of the Origin in the Times for 26 December 1859, and continued with articles in several periodicals, and in a lecture at the Royal Institution in February 1860. At the same time, Richard Owen , whilst writing an extremely hostile anonymous review of the Origin in the Edinburgh Review , also primed Samuel Wilberforce who wrote one in

3510-434: The discipline itself, developed. Huxley's detailed anatomical work was, as always, first-rate and productive. His work on fossil fish shows his distinctive approach: Whereas pre-Darwinian naturalists collected, identified, and classified, Huxley worked mainly to reveal the evolutionary relationships between groups. The lobe-finned fish (such as coelacanths and lungfish ) have paired appendages whose internal skeleton

3600-420: The first time indicated the direct line of descent of an existing animal. With the generosity of true greatness, he gave up his own opinions in the face of new truth, and took my conclusions as the basis of his famous New York lecture on the horse." Huxley was originally not persuaded by "development theory", as evolution was once called. This can be seen in his savage review of Robert Chambers ' Vestiges of

3690-465: The horse fossils were really special. After a week with Marsh and his fossils, Huxley wrote excitedly, "The collection of fossils is the most wonderful thing I ever saw." The collection at that time went from the small four-toed forest-dwelling Orohippus from the Eocene through three-toed species such as Miohippus to species more like the modern horse. By looking at their teeth he could see that, as

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3780-707: The more prominent approaches, summed in the 1864 phrase " survival of the fittest " by Herbert Spencer, later became emblematic of Darwinism even though Spencer's own understanding of evolution (as expressed in 1857) was more similar to that of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck than to that of Darwin, and predated the publication of Darwin's theory in 1859. What is now called " Social Darwinism " was, in its day, synonymous with "Darwinism"—the application of Darwinian principles of "struggle" to society, usually in support of anti- philanthropic political agenda. Another interpretation, one notably favoured by Darwin's half-cousin Francis Galton ,

3870-449: The name of Hydrozoa . The connection he made was that all the members of the class consisted of two cell layers, enclosing a central cavity or stomach. This is characteristic of the phylum now called the Cnidaria . He compared this feature to the serous and mucous structures of embryos of higher animals. When at last he got a grant from the Royal Society for the printing of plates, Huxley

3960-577: The navy by refusing to return to active service, and in July 1854 he became professor of natural history at the Royal School of Mines and naturalist to the British Geological Survey in the following year. In addition, he was Fullerian Professor at the Royal Institution 1855–1858 and 1865–1867; Hunterian Professor at the Royal College of Surgeons 1863–1869; president of the British Association for

4050-412: The nineteenth century such as Alfred Russel Wallace , Huxley was brought up in a literate middle-class family which had fallen on hard times. His father was a mathematics teacher at Great Ealing School until it closed, putting the family into financial difficulties. As a result, Thomas left school at the age of 10, after only two years of formal schooling. Despite this lack of formal schooling, Huxley

4140-466: The older man. The sobriquet appears to be Huxley's own invention, although of unknown date, and it was not current in his lifetime. While the second half of Darwin's life was lived mainly within his family, the younger and combative Huxley operated mainly out in the world at large. A letter from Huxley to Ernst Haeckel (2 November 1871) states: "The dogs have been snapping at [Darwin's] heels too much of late." Famously, Huxley responded to Wilberforce in

4230-412: The orbit of Darwinism should be a little too circular? What if species should offer residual phenomena, here and there, not explicable by natural selection? Twenty years hence naturalists may be in a position to say whether this is, or is not, the case; but in either event they will owe the author of "The Origin of Species" an immense debt of gratitude.... And viewed as a whole, we do not believe that, since

4320-656: The original. Later on, as a young adult, he made himself an expert, first teaching himself about invertebrates , and later on vertebrates . He did many of the illustrations for his publications on marine invertebrates. In his later debates and writing on science and religion, his grasp of theology was better than many of his clerical opponents. He was apprenticed for short periods to several medical practitioners: at 13 to his brother-in-law John Cooke in Coventry, who passed him on to Thomas Chandler, notable for his experiments using mesmerism for medical purposes. Chandler's practice

4410-535: The phylum Chordata . Other papers on the morphology of the cephalopods and on brachiopods and rotifers are also noteworthy. Following a lecture at the Royal Institution on 30 April 1852 Huxley indicated that it remained difficult to earn a living as a scientist alone. This was demonstrated in a letter written on 3 May 1852, where he states "Science in England does everything—but PAY. You may earn praise but not pudding". However, Huxley effectively resigned from

4500-496: The place of science in British life. Huxley retired in 1885, after a bout of depressive illness which started in 1884. He resigned the presidency of the Royal Society in mid-term, the Inspectorship of Fisheries, and his chair (as soon as he decently could) and took six months' leave. His pension was £1200 a year. Huxley's London home, in which he wrote many of his works, was at 4  Marlborough Place , St John's Wood . The house

4590-522: The publication of Von Baer's "Researches on Development," thirty years ago, any work has appeared calculated to exert so large an influence, not only on the future of Biology, but in extending the domination of Science over regions of thought into which she has, as yet, hardly penetrated. These are the basic tenets of evolution by natural selection as defined by Darwin: "Darwinism" soon came to stand for an entire range of evolutionary (and often revolutionary) philosophies about both biology and society. One of

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4680-644: The remains of Pithecanthropus erectus (now known as Homo erectus ). He died of a heart attack (after contracting influenza and pneumonia) in 1895 in Eastbourne, and was buried in London at East Finchley Cemetery . No invitations were sent out but two hundred people turned up for the funeral; they included Joseph Dalton Hooker , William Henry Flower , Mulford B. Foster , Edwin Lankester , Joseph Lister , and apparently Henry James . The family plot had been purchased upon

4770-599: The review in the Quarterly : Since Lord Brougham assailed Dr Young , the world has seen no such specimen of the insolence of a shallow pretender to a Master in Science as this remarkable production, in which one of the most exact of observers, most cautious of reasoners, and most candid of expositors, of this or any other age, is held up to scorn as a "flighty" person, who endeavours "to prop up his utterly rotten fabric of guess and speculation," and whose "mode of dealing with nature"

4860-457: The role of Charles Darwin as opposed to others in the history of evolutionary thought —particularly contrasting Darwin's results with those of earlier theories such as Lamarckism or later ones such as the modern evolutionary synthesis. In political discussions in the United States , the term is mostly used by its enemies. Biologist E. O. Wilson at Harvard University described the term as being "a rhetorical device to make evolution seem like

4950-462: The significance of natural selection, and Darwin himself gave credence to what was later called Lamarckism . The strict neo-Darwinism of German evolutionary biologist August Weismann gained few supporters in the late 19th century. During the approximate period of the 1880s to about 1920, sometimes called " the eclipse of Darwinism ", scientists proposed various alternative evolutionary mechanisms which eventually proved untenable. The development of

5040-550: The size grew larger and the toes reduced, the teeth changed from those of a browser to those of a grazer. All such changes could be explained by a general alteration in habitat from forest to grassland. And, it is now known, that is what did happen over large areas of North America from the Eocene to the Pleistocene : The ultimate causative agent was global temperature reduction (see Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum ). The modern account of

5130-505: The sociobiological explanation of altruism. In evolutionary aesthetics theory, there is evidence that perceptions of beauty are determined by natural selection and therefore Darwinian; that things, aspects of people and landscapes considered beautiful are typically found in situations likely to give enhanced survival of the perceiving human's genes . [REDACTED] Evolutionary biology portal Thomas Henry Huxley Thomas Henry Huxley (4 May 1825 – 29 June 1895)

5220-455: The surviving story of the debate is 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

5310-474: The term Darwinism in April 1860. Darwinism subsequently referred to the specific concepts of natural selection, the Weismann barrier , or the central dogma of molecular biology . Though the term usually refers strictly to biological evolution, creationists have appropriated it to refer to the origin of life or to cosmic evolution , that are distinct to biological evolution, and therefore consider it to be

5400-472: The term "Darwinism" in a different sense from the above examples. Describing himself as non-religious and as accepting the concept of natural selection as a well-established fact, Stove nonetheless attacked what he described as flawed concepts proposed by some "Ultra-Darwinists". Stove alleged that by using weak or false ad hoc reasoning, these Ultra-Darwinists used evolutionary concepts to offer explanations that were not valid: for example, Stove suggested that

5490-445: The term to exclude those like American botanist Asa Gray who combined Christian faith with support for Darwin's natural selection theory, before answering the question posed in the book's title by concluding: "It is Atheism." Creationists use pejoratively the term Darwinism to imply that the theory has been held as true only by Darwin and a core group of his followers, whom they cast as dogmatic and inflexible in their belief. In

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5580-519: The term. The term Darwinism is often used in the United States by promoters of creationism , notably by leading members of the intelligent design movement , as an epithet to attack evolution as though it were an ideology (an "ism") based on philosophical naturalism , atheism , or both. For example, in 1993, UC Berkeley law professor and author Phillip E. Johnson made this accusation of atheism with reference to Charles Hodge 's 1874 book What Is Darwinism? However, unlike Johnson, Hodge confined

5670-473: The traditional beliefs of organised religion made enemies in the establishment – he had vigorous debates in print with Benjamin Disraeli , William Ewart Gladstone , and Arthur Balfour , and his relationship with Lord Salisbury was less than tranquil. Huxley was for about thirty years evolution's most effective advocate, and for some Huxley was " the premier advocate of science in the nineteenth century [for]

5760-566: The version prevalent during the early 20th century. Similarly, Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould have used neo-Darwinism in their writings and lectures to denote the forms of evolutionary biology that were contemporary when they were writing. Darwinism Darwinism is a term used to describe a theory of biological evolution developed by the English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–1882) and others. The theory states that all species of organisms arise and develop through

5850-452: The whole English-speaking world". Though he had many admirers and disciples, his retirement and later death left British zoology somewhat bereft of leadership. He had, directly or indirectly, guided the careers and appointments of the next generation. Huxley thought he was "the only man who can carry out my work": The deaths of Balfour and W.K. Clifford were "the greatest losses to science in our time". The first half of Huxley's career as

5940-535: The word to mean "Darwinism without Lamarckism." Following the development, from about 1918 to 1947, of the modern synthesis of evolutionary biology , the term neo-Darwinian started to be used to refer to that contemporary evolutionary theory. Biologists, however, have not limited their application of the term neo-Darwinism to the historical synthesis. For example, Ernst Mayr wrote in 1984 that: Publications such as Encyclopædia Britannica use neo-Darwinism to refer to current-consensus evolutionary theory, not

6030-588: Was "deep in debt". So, at a friend's suggestion, he applied for an appointment in the Royal Navy . He had references on character and certificates showing the time spent on his apprenticeship and on requirements such as dissection and pharmacy. William Burnett , the Physician General of the Navy, interviewed him and arranged for the College of Surgeons to test his competence (by means of a viva voce ). Finally, Huxley

6120-469: Was America's first professor of palaeontology, but also one who had come west into hostile Indian territory in search of fossils, hunted buffalo, and met Red Cloud (in 1874). Funded by his uncle George Peabody , Marsh had made some remarkable discoveries: the huge Cretaceous aquatic bird Hesperornis , and the dinosaur footprints along the Connecticut River were worth the trip by themselves, but

6210-426: Was a Secretary of the Royal Society and from 1883 to 1885 he was president. He was president of the Geological Society from 1868 to 1870. In 1870, he was president of the British Association at Liverpool and, in the same year was elected a member of the newly constituted London School Board . He was president of the Quekett Microscopical Club from 1877 to 1879. He was the leading person amongst those who reformed

6300-702: Was able to summarise this work in The Oceanic Hydrozoa , published by the Ray Society in 1859. The value of Huxley's work was recognised and, on returning to England in 1850, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In the following year, at the age of twenty-six, he not only received the Royal Society Medal but was also elected to the Council. He met Joseph Dalton Hooker and John Tyndall , who remained his lifelong friends. The Admiralty retained him as

6390-415: Was advocating a "pure theory of natural selection to the exclusion of any supplementary theory." Taking influence from Darwin, Romanes was a proponent of both natural selection and the inheritance of acquired characteristics . The latter was denied by Wallace who was a strict selectionist. Romanes' definition of Darwinism conformed directly with Darwin's views and was contrasted with Wallace's definition of

6480-409: Was an English biologist and anthropologist who specialized 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

6570-522: Was arranged by Edward Forbes FRS (who had also been a pupil of Knox). Both before and after the voyage Forbes was something of a mentor to Huxley. Huxley's paper "On the anatomy and the affinities of the family of Medusae" was published in 1849 by the Royal Society in its Philosophical Transactions . Huxley united the Hydroid and Sertularian polyps with the Medusae to form a class to which he subsequently gave

6660-460: Was chaired by Darwin's former botany tutor John Stevens Henslow . Darwin's theory was opposed by the Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce , and those supporting Darwin included Huxley and their mutual friends Hooker and Lubbock . The platform featured Brodie and Professor Beale, and Robert FitzRoy , who had been captain of HMS Beagle during Darwin's voyage, spoke against Darwin. Wilberforce had

6750-427: Was descended from an ape on his mother's side or his father's side) was probably unplanned, and certainly unwise. Huxley's reply to the effect that he would rather be descended from an ape than a man who misused his great talents to suppress debate—the exact wording is not certain—was widely recounted in pamphlets and a spoof play. The letters of Alfred Newton include one to his brother giving an eyewitness account of

6840-448: Was determined to educate himself. He became one of the great autodidacts of the nineteenth century. At first he read Thomas Carlyle , James Hutton 's Geology , and Hamilton 's Logic . In his teens, he taught himself German , eventually becoming fluent and used by Charles Darwin as a translator of scientific material in German. He learned Latin , and enough Greek to read Aristotle in

6930-424: Was enough for Huxley to give credence to Darwin's gradualism, and to introduce the story of the horse into his lecture series. Marsh's and Huxley's conclusions were initially quite different. However, Marsh carefully showed Huxley his complete sequence of fossils. As Marsh put it, Huxley "then informed me that all this was new to him and that my facts demonstrated the evolution of the horse beyond question, and for

7020-407: Was exonerated of crime, but thought it best to leave Scotland. In 1845, under Wharton Jones' guidance, Huxley published his first scientific paper demonstrating the existence of a hitherto unrecognised layer in the inner sheath of hairs, a layer that has been known since as Huxley's layer . Later in life, Huxley organised a pension for his old mentor. At twenty he passed his First M.B. examination at

7110-541: Was extended in the early 1870s to include a large drawing and dining room at which he held informal Sunday gatherings. In 1890, he moved from London to Eastbourne , where he had purchased land in the Staveley Road upon which a house was built, 'Hodeslea', under the supervision of his son-in-law F. Waller. Here Huxley edited the nine volumes of his Collected Essays . In 1894 he heard of Eugene Dubois ' discovery in Java of

7200-498: Was in London's Rotherhithe amidst the squalor endured by the Dickensian poor. Afterward, another brother-in-law took him on: John Salt, his eldest sister's husband. Now aged 16, Huxley entered Sydenham College (behind University College Hospital ), a cut-price anatomy school. All this time Huxley continued his programme of reading, which more than made up for his lack of formal schooling. A year later, buoyed by excellent results and

7290-613: Was introduced when Charles Darwin's 1859 book On the Origin of Species was reviewed by Thomas Henry Huxley in the April 1860 issue of The Westminster Review . Having hailed the book as "a veritable Whitworth gun in the armoury of liberalism" promoting scientific naturalism over theology , and praising the usefulness of Darwin's ideas while expressing professional reservations about Darwin's gradualism and doubting if it could be proved that natural selection could form new species, Huxley compared Darwin's achievement to that of Nicolaus Copernicus in explaining planetary motion: What if

7380-433: Was made Assistant Surgeon ('surgeon's mate', but in practice marine naturalist) to HMS Rattlesnake , about to set sail on a voyage of discovery and surveying to New Guinea and Australia. The Rattlesnake left England on 3 December 1846 and, once it arrived in the southern hemisphere, Huxley devoted his time to the study of marine invertebrates. He began to send details of his discoveries back to England, where publication

7470-402: Was presented by Lyell and Hooker to the Linnean Society in 1858 alongside excerpts from Darwin's notebook and a Darwin letter to Asa Gray . Huxley's famous response to the idea of natural selection was "How extremely stupid not to have thought of that!" However, he never conclusively made up his mind about whether natural selection was the main method for evolution, though he did admit it was

7560-421: Was that "Darwinism" implied that because natural selection was apparently no longer working on "civilized" people, it was possible for "inferior" strains of people (who would normally be filtered out of the gene pool ) to overwhelm the "superior" strains, and voluntary corrective measures would be desirable—the foundation of eugenics . In Darwin's day there was no rigid definition of the term "Darwinism", and it

7650-490: Was the kind of thing Darwin did with his closest scientific friends, but he must have had some particular intuition about Huxley, who was by all accounts a most impressive person even as a young man. Huxley was therefore one of the small group who knew about Darwin's ideas before they were published (the group included Joseph Dalton Hooker and Charles Lyell ). The first publication by Darwin of his ideas came when Wallace sent Darwin his famous paper on natural selection, which

7740-448: Was therefore impossible; a conclusion now known as the Weismann barrier . It is, however, usually George Romanes who is credited with the first use of the word in a scientific context. Romanes used the term to describe the combination of natural selection and Weismann's germ plasm theory that evolution occurs solely through natural selection, and not by the inheritance of acquired characteristics resulting from use or disuse, thus using

7830-434: 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

7920-497: Was used by opponents and proponents of Darwin's biological theory alike to mean whatever they wanted it to in a larger context. The ideas had international influence, and Ernst Haeckel developed what was known as Darwinismus in Germany, although, like Spencer's "evolution", Haeckel's "Darwinism" had only a rough resemblance to the theory of Charles Darwin, and was not centred on natural selection. In 1886, Alfred Russel Wallace went on

8010-426: Was virtually self-taught. 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 concluded that birds evolved from small carnivorous dinosaurs ,

8100-507: Was wrong to pitch the loss of orders in the Phanerozoic as low as 7%, and he did not estimate the number of new orders which evolved. Persistent types sat rather uncomfortably next to Darwin's more fluid ideas; despite his intelligence, it took Huxley a surprisingly long time to appreciate some of the implications of evolution. However, gradually Huxley moved away from this conservative style of thinking as his understanding of palaeontology, and

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