Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 6
both as an iconographic representation of human evolution (in the biologi-
cal sense) and as a mythical representation of the social evolutionary vision
that Huxley has verbalized.
Each step of the traditional chain of being, ranging from nonliving
things at the bottom to humans and sometimes angels at its highest point,
symbolized the relative value accorded to creatures by virtue of their ordained
proximity to the uncreated author of all things. The analogous value that
arises from Huxley's image is found in the metaphorical significance of each
creature's position relative to some imagined end of evolution. But what is
this end? As would seem fitting for an agnostic chain of being, these skeletal
figures advance toward that unseen future into which the human figure at
the forefront of this parade seems to step, perhaps toward the “Unknow-
able” spiritual
telos
of Spencer's philosophy. But while this ordering principle
remains unseen, the greater proximity that evolution has created between
the human figure and this presupposed end signals the higher value that
Huxley accords to the scientific worldview on the opposite page.
In this modernist chain of being, science has become the measure of all
things. As the discoverer of evolution, it has command of the principle of
hierarchy. The ascending movement that we find in the traditional image is
now represented as an evolutionary march of knowledge toward an answer
to Huxley's “question of questions.” The steps of this
scala naturae
no longer
