Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
We are in the midst of a gigantic movement greater than that which pro-
ceeded and produced the Reformation, and really only the continuation
of that movement. But there is nothing new in the ideas which lie at the
bottom of the movement, nor is any reconcilement possible between free
thought and traditional authority. One or other will have to succumb
after a struggle of unknown duration, which will have as side issues vast
political and social troubles. I have no more doubt that free thought will
win in the long run than I have that I sit here writing to you, or that
this free thought will organize itself into a coherent system, embracing
human life and the world as one harmonious whole. But this organisa-
tion will be the work of generations of men, and those who further it
most will be those who teach men to rest in no lie, and to rest in no
verbal delusions. I may be able to help a little in this direction—perhaps
I may have helped already.
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Here, notably, are all the hallmarks of positivism: (1) a progressive view
of history in which science emerges from but also succeeds religion; (2) the
abandonment of traditional authority for rational authority; (3) the inevita-
bility (naturalness) of this evolutionary process; (4) the destiny of this move-
ment to encompass all arenas of human life—including governance—in one
vast system; and finally (5) the hallmark notion from which positivism takes
its name, that language should only reference empirical data.
In the end, Huxley's polarization of positivism and agnosticism was
really just an inversion of figure and ground. Huxley was not abandoning
positivism any more than Protestant Reformers had abandoned Christian-
ity in ceasing to call it Catholic. The positivists were not infidels for Huxley
but rather papistical idolaters, holders of the received tradition but having
only the form of religion without its substance. His world-building project,
at least as he saw it, was merely a more faithful version of what his French
counterparts had aspired to do. Like them, Huxley merged religious his-
tory into scientific history because he looked at the past through similar
developmental glasses. The evolution and ultimate triumph of science, like
everything else, would necessarily have a natural basis of some sort. If his-
tory were evolutionary and governed by a scientific
telos
, then some scientific
ingredient would have to be discernable in its record, even if its fabric had
been deeply dyed with the colorings of religion.
