Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
in Darwin's
Origin of Species
. The older narrative, in which science's obedient
hearing of revelation also advanced the course of providence, had become a
story about how science's obedience to natural fact partook of an analogous
evolutionary process. Thus, to reject the universal scope of naturalism that
evolution suggested was to turn away from history. Those so “ashamed” of
being connected to the natural world that they would not open themselves
to Darwin's great idea were also rejecting “the very noblest use of science as
a discipline” that forces human beings to confront difficult truths.
Laden with our idols, we follow her blithely till a parting in the roads
appears, and she turns, and with a stern face asks us whether we are men
enough to cast them aside, and follow her up the steep? Men of science are
such by virtue of having answered her with a hearty and unreserved, Yea;
by virtue of having made their election to follow science whithersoever
she leads, and whatsoever lions be in the path.
20
Even as he seems to set science against the faith of the dominant religious
order, Huxley adopts the language of one of faith's great figures. Science has
become the “narrow way” of John Bunyan's allegory, the Christian's solitary
journey up the steep of “Difficulty” toward natural truth. All those who
do not choose this solitary path follow to their doom the broad avenues
of “Danger” and “Destruction.”
21
Couched in such language, the merely
reactionary dismissal of evolution that Huxley was warning against took on
new meaning as an act putting religionists (traditional ones at least) on the
wrong side of a decisive apocalyptic divide. Anti-evolutionary scoffing was
more than just scientific error. Evolutionary biology was history's decisive
naturalistic revelation, and this had put England at a millenarian crossroad.
It was now revealed that naturalism was life's narrow way and supernatural-
ism the broad avenue to destruction—and yet the old clerical aristocracy
refused to follow science. If the “man of science is the sworn interpreter of
nature in the high court of reason,” then the opinions handed down from
this bench ought to govern public as well as scientific choices. “But of what
avail is his honest speech if ignorance is the assessor of the judge, and preju-
dice foreman of the jury?”
22
This last rhetorical question reflects the fact that Huxley's broader cam-
paign to restructure the mechanisms of patronage was already working to
associate evolutionary science with a positivist conception of history. If the
naturalism implied by Darwin's thesis was history's apocalypse, then science
was its prophet and those who barred its advancement were the enemies of
history. To challenge evolution was to challenge the premise of naturalism,
