Biology Reference
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consistent with what is supposed about the Huxley of legend than about
the Huxley of fact.
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Michael Ruse's monumental effort to chronicle evolutionism's ubiquitous
growth since the nineteenth century bears witness to the rhetorical vitality
of what Huxley set in motion a century and a half ago. For Huxley evo-
lutionism was the symbolic correlative of his efforts to build a scientific
empire, and it has continued to expand and diversify as science has con-
tinued to grow. It has done so because institutional cultures, no less than
other human inventions, are maintained by replicating the symbol systems
that first built them.
As I bring this topic to a close, I wish to consider some of the impor-
tant implications of evolutionism both for the present world of science and
for the nonscientific world that now relies so significantly upon scientific
understanding. To do this, of course, requires some consideration of a vast
store of scientific rhetoric that has arisen since the nineteenth century, and
a fair treatment of this subject would require several more volumes of this
length. Having space for only a few examples, I mean to highlight three of
evolutionism's symbolic patterns that I believe to be especially pervasive and
meaningful:
1. The allure of evolutionism tempts scientists to exaggerate the scope
and meaning of evolutionary science, especially when concerns of sci-
entific identity are at stake.
2. Evolutionism and creationism are mutually reinforcing. The existence
of each fosters the existence of the other.
3. As a kind of meta-paradigm for science, evolutionism closes itself off
from criticism by identifying itself with evolutionary science.
Let me begin with the first proposition. Evolutionary science in the
service of the scientific identity will have difficulty remaining faithful to
the normative standards that science otherwise avows. This is because more
than the truth value of evolutionary science is at stake. Because evolutionism
derives its mythical potency from evolutionary science, its vitality depends
upon that science. I do not presume that the messages of evolutionary sci-
ence are directly influenced by these identity concerns when they appear in
the professional contexts of scientific communication, and so this proposi-
tion only pertains to the public communication of evolutionary ideas. In
