Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
English constituents because, by imitating the older Baconian one, it spoke
to an indigenous cultural tradition that had long regarded science's devo-
tion to empirical fact as an expression of the same hermeneutical ethic that
had made Protestant piety distinctive. But because this Baconian model
also represented the unfolding of empirical knowledge as the natural coun-
terpart to the unfolding of providence, Huxley's naturalized impersonation
of this had similar implications. This is where Darwinism came in. If provi-
dence was going to endure as evolutionary progress, Huxley would need to
establish a scientific basis for historical meaning, and it was by mythologiz-
ing the emerging evolutionary paradigm that he achieved this.
This chapter will explore this symbolic pattern in Huxley's public dis-
courses. But before turning to those, it will be worthwhile to consider how
evolutionism's symbolic dependency upon Darwin's science helps to explain
the odd anomaly I touched on in the previous chapter, namely Huxley's
continued association with a Darwinian thesis that he never fully accepted.
While the Huxley of popular legend is everywhere known as “Darwin's bull-
dog,” in reality the Victorian scientist supposed to have taken up the defense
of
Origin of Species
on behalf of its reticent author was
not
a Darwinist. As
Michael Bartholomew first showed, there was nothing particularly compel-
ling about Huxley's advocacy of the case for natural selection, and his own
post-
Origin
science was little different from the science he was doing before
1859.
2
Huxley embraced evolution on other grounds and was never able
to accept the mechanism proffered by Darwin. There were scientific rea-
sons for Huxley's lukewarm reception, and these misgivings were admitted
whenever he addressed Darwin's thesis. So why does the Huxley of cultural
memory endure as Darwinism's great champion? My answer is that his role
in forging evolutionism accounts for this anomaly. The truth value of evo-
lutionism is only as good as the truth value of evolutionary science, and so
a powerful symbolic association needed to be forged between the foremost
author of the first and the foremost pioneer of the second.
In general outline, this thesis has already been suggested by Frank
Turner, who surmised that the “immediate social implications of the accep-
tance of evolution were more important to Huxley than agreement about
the mechanism.” Huxley had rhetorical as well as scientific reasons for want-
ing to promote evolution since it had “something to do with the place of
science and scientists in Victorian society and intellectual life.”
3
That some-
thing, in my view, was its power to sustain a historical narrative capable of
authorizing science's unbounded patronage. This outcome made it attrac-
tive to advance an evolutionary stance that, in his own view at least, still
