It’s the 181st anniversary of the birth of T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley, eminent biologist, close friend of Charles Darwin and one of the staunchest supporters of Darwin’s Natural Selection, a man who did much to see it accepted and popularized.
He tirelessly advocated and promoted Darwin’s work (while not blindly following it, he criticized several aspects of it) and became known as Darwin’s Bulldog. He was an accomplished scientist in his own right, one of the most prominent scientists of his day. He also had a reputation for a biting savage wit. It was he who coined the word "Agnostic" and he is the originator of the often used quote "A beautiful theory, killed by a nasty, ugly, little fact". His defense of Natural Selection and Evolution during a public debate with the Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, is legendary.
Happy Birthday T.H.!
"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 and yet who employs these faculties and that influence for the mere purpose of introducing ridicule into a grave scientific discussion, I unhesitatingly affirm my preference for the ape." — T.H. Huxley
"Try to learn something about everything, and everything about something." — T.H. Huxley
"Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man’s training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly." — T.H. Huxley
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A fine birthday tribute,Clare, for a great thinker and writer. I love Huxley’s letter (23/11/1859) to Darwin after he finished reading The Origin of the Species:
I finished your book yesterday. . . 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.
I love that quote also Pam. I almost included it in the post, and I’m happy you did.
so much wisdom.. enjoyed reading about a man who definitely had great insight.
Clare–I’m delighted to see your post on Huxley. Huxley was a fascinating fellow and his roles in the sociology and science of both evolutionary biology and anatomy were critical. I’ve always enjoyed the anatomical debates he had with Richard Owen about the homologies in vertebrate skeletons.
T. H. Huxley’s son Leonard was an important biographer of his father’s generation. Leonard edited the letters of J. D. Hooker, for whom he also wrote a biographical sketch. When I was examining the correspondence of J. D. Hooker at Kew last winter there were various pencilled interpretations scrawled on Hooker’s nearly indecipherable letters, and I like to assume that that the attempted translations belonged to the younger Huxley.