Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Huxley's role in the development of evolutionism explains an interest-
ing anomaly of historical memory—the fact that the scientist everywhere
remembered as “Darwin's bulldog” was at best a pseudo-Darwinist. Huxley
certainly did subscribe to the doctrine of biological evolution on empirical
and philosophical grounds, but he was never able to accept the explanatory
sufficiency of the mechanism proposed by Darwin. So why has this been
lost in public memory? An answer to this question emerges once we recog-
nize evolutionism's dependency upon evolutionary science. Because mythi-
cal treatments of evolution take their authority from the truth value that
evolutionary theory has earned in the professional scientific realm, their
authenticity is called into question once evolutionary science is subject to
doubt of any kind. This has made the firmly Darwinian Huxley of legend
more attractive than the doubting Huxley of history. To remember him
as a rhetorical actor who exploited the mythical potency of evolutionary
concepts in order to advance scientific patronage would draw attention to
the fact that the symbolic creations that sustain the scientific ethos do not
come from science.
My purpose in following the path of evolutionism's historical develop-
ment is to provide an account that explains why it has remained a vital
feature of scientific life, and I will explore the implications of this argument
in closing the topic. Because science is an institutional culture as well as an
enterprise of inquiry, it has always depended upon symbolic resources of a
nonscientific kind to maintain its public ethos. This fundamental reality
did not change as it divorced itself from its former institutional and ideolog-
ical connections to religion in the nineteenth century. What happened at
that crucial moment was that the content of science itself began to perform
this duty. Conventional views of scientific history treat the appearance of
Darwinian science as an event marking the final emancipation of scientific
theorizing from the theological world picture that had dominated up until
that time. My argument is that evolution provided the scientific culture
with symbolic materials that enabled it to subsume rather than eradicate
theology. Such a rhetorical move was demanded by the growing patronage
needs of the scientific culture, the greater need for institutional autonomy
that was achieved through the secularization of higher education, and the
professionalization of scientific vocations. It is not a coincidence that these
profound institutional changes were happening at the same time that evo-
lutionary ideas were gaining scientific credibility. Neither were they a direct
consequence of Darwin's achievement. Rather, the new evolutionary sci-
ence was incorporated into a preexistent ideological framework, one that
