1. Thomas Henry Huxley
1825 - 1895

2. The Young Surgeon
Son of a schoolmaster
Self-taught after only two years of
schooling
Studied medicine at Charing Cross
Hospital
Published first paper in 1845 and
passed first portion of M.B. degree
Surgeons assistant on HMS
Rattlesnake (1846 - ‘50)

3. The Young Huxley
1849: “On the anatomy and the
affinities of the family of
Medusae”
1850: FRS at age 25
1851: Royal Society Medal
Scientific journalism & lecturing
1854; Professor of Natural
History at Royal School of Mines.
Married Henrietta Heathorn

4. On Vestiges
1854
The “once attractive and still
notorious work of fiction …
shown to be a mass of
pretentious nonsense” yet
survived due to the “utter
ignorance of the public mind as
to the methods of science and
the criterion of truth.”

5. As “Gentleman of Science”
1855: Fullerian Professor at Royal
Institute
1863: Hunterian Professor at Royal
College of Surgeons
1869: President, British Association
for the Advancement of Science
1869: Founds Nature
1872: President, Geological Society
1883: President, Royal Society

6. As Mentor
Michael Foster (Physiology,
Cambridge)
E. Ray Lankester (Zoology, UCL)
William Flower (Director,
Natural History Museum)
St. George Jackson Mivart
(Heretic)

7. Public Intellectual
1862: Royal Commissioner
1870: London School Board
1881: Inspector of Fisheries
1892: Privy Councillor
Ongoing public debates with
Disraeli, Gladstone, Balfour ...

8. Huxley
Professionalization of science
Prevalence of morphological
studies in British zoology
Popularization of science
Adult education programs
Coiner of ‘agnostic’
Atheists were as reprehensible as
religious dogmatists
Mitigated skepticism
Critic of deriving morality from
nature

9. “Bones and Stones and Such-
like Things”
Mechanics Institute lectures
Lecture “On A Piece of Chalk”
Chalk, fossils and evolution
versus special creation
Science as trained and organized
common sense
Science will set you free!

10. “Pope Darwin”
A secular state run by the
scientifically trained
Importance of naturalistic
explanations (as exemplified by
Darwinism)
Evolution as “a good stick with
which to beat the clergy”

11. 1855
Lecture at Royal Institute
“On certain zoological arguments commonly adduced
in favour of the hypothesis of the progressive
development of animal life in time”
Against Chambers, Lamarck and transmutation itself
Introduced to Darwin’s ideas by CD himself

12. Natural Selection
“How extremely stupid not to
have thought of that”
Utility of natural selection as
an hypothesis versus it as
“truth”
“[U]ntil selection and breeding
can be seen to give rise to
varieties which are infertile
with each other, natural
selection cannot be proved.”

13. Darwin
“The empirical evidence you call for is both impossible
in practical terms, and in any event unnecessary. It's the
same as asking to see every step in the transformation
(or the splitting) of one species into another. My way so
many issues are clarified and problems solved; no other
theory does nearly so well.”

14. Evolution
Evolution as hypothesis
rather than theory (Feb 1860)
Evolution as a theory well
supported by empirical
evidence (1880)
Humans, birds, and horses

17. John Tyndall
“Belfast Address” 1874
Despite Huxley’s warning,
advocated materialism within
evolutionism
Darwinian theory “rejected the
notion of creative power”
Religion as "mischievous if
permitted to intrude on the
region of objective knowledge,
over which it holds no command".

18. Assaulting the Pall Mall

19. The X Club
Monthly meetings between 1864 and 1892
Tyndall, Hooker, Herbert Spencer, and others.
Rise to power in BAAS, Royal Society, Royal College of
Surgeons
Treatment of Henry Charlton Bastain and St. George
Jackson Mivart

20. Dinosaurs & Birds
Problems with Owen’s depictions
of Iguanodon
Archaeopteryx as bird (Owen 1863)
Birds evolved from small
carnivorous dinosaurs (Huxley
1868)

22. Horses

23. O.C. Marsh

30. The Hippocampus Controversy

31. Arzani 1564

32. Owen 1857
Humans were a separate sub-
class of Mammalia.
Study of ....
South American monkey
Negro (Tiedemann)
Chimpanzee (van der Kolk
& Vrolik)

33. Owen 1857
“I cannot shut my eyes to the
significance of that all-pervading
similitude of structure - every
tooth, every bone, strictly
homologous - which makes the
determination of the difference
[between man and ape] the
anatomist’s difficulty”
Removed from Rede Lecture,
Cambridge, 1859

34. Owen 1857
Projection of the posterior
lobe
Presence of posterior horn
Presence of hippocampus
minor.

36. Darwin
A “grand paper; but I
cannot swallow Man
making a division as
distinct from a
Chimpanzee, and an
ornithorhynchus from a
Horse: I wonder what a
Chimpanzee w[oul]d say
to this?”

37. Huxley
“[B]efore I have done with
that mendacious humbug I will
nail him out, like a kite to a
barn door, an example to all
evil doers.”
“On the Theory of the
Vertebrate Skull” (June ’58)

38. BAAS 1860
Huxley was asked (and declined) to comment on a
paper discussing Darwin’s ideas
Owen: “the brain of the gorilla was more different
from that of man than from that of the lowest primate
particularly because only man had a posterior lobe, a
posterior horn, and a hippocampus minor.”
Huxley: politely "denied altogether that the difference
between the brain of the gorilla and man was so great"

39. BAAS 1860

40. Huxley
Death of son, Noel, requires
Charles Kingsley to calm THH.
(1860)
Paper in Natural History Review
argued Owen was “guilty of
falsehood” (January 1861)
“The Relation of Man to the Rest
of the Animal Kingdom” (School
of Mines, May 1861)

41. Paul du Chaillu - 1856 to ’59

42. Owen 1861
“The Gorilla and the
Negro” (March)
Only humans have a
hippocampus minor “as
defined in human anatomy.”
The issue was one of
interpretation, not facts.
Resultant exchange lead THH
to declare ...

43. Huxley
“Life is too short to occupy
oneself with the slaying of the
slain more than once.”

44. Darwin to Hooker
“Owen occupied an entirely
untenable position ... The fact is he
made a prodigious blunder in
commencing the attack, and now
his only chance is to be silent and
let people forget the exposure. I
do not believe that in the whole
history of science there is a case
of any man of reputation getting
himself into such a contemptible
position. He will be the laughing-
stock of all the continental
anatomists.”

45. Am I satyr or man?
Pray tell me who can,
And settle my place in the scale.
A man in ape's shape,
An anthropoid ape,
Or monkey deprived of his tail?
The Vestiges taught,
That all came from naught
By "development," so called, "progressive;"
That insects and worms
Assume higher forms
By modification excessive.
“Monkeyana” - Punch - May 1861

46. Then Darwin set forth
In a book of much worth,
The importance of "nature's selection;"
How the struggle for life
Is a laudable strife,
And results in "specific distinction."
Let pigeons and doves
Select their own loves,
And grant them a million of ages,
Then doubtless you'll find
They've altered their kind,
And changed into prophets and sages.
“Monkeyana” - Punch - May 1861

47. Then Huxley and Owen,
With rivalry glowing,
With pen and ink rush to the scratch;
'Tis Brain versus Brain,
Till one of them's slain,
By JOVE! it will be a good match!
Says Owen, you can see
The brain of Chimpanzee
Is always exceedingly small,
With the hindermost "horn"
Of extremity shorn,
And no "Hippocampus" at all.
“Monkeyana” - Punch - May 1861

48. Next Huxley replies,
That Owen he lies,
And garbles his Latin quotation;
That his facts are not new,
His mistakes not a few,
Detrimental to his reputation.
"To twice slay the slain,
By dint of the Brain,
(Thus Huxley concludes his review)
Is but labour in vain,
Unproductive of gain,
And so I shall bid you 'Adieu'!"
“Monkeyana” - Punch - May 1861

49. “Monkeyana” - Punch - May 1861 Sir Phillip Egerton

50. 1862
William Henry Flower -
refutes Owen’s three features
based on dissection of 16
species.
van der Kolk & Vrolik - the
orang utan had the three
features
Huxley - Owen was “lying and
shuffling”

51. 1862
“Is it not high time that the annual
passage of barbed words between
Professor Owen and Professor
Huxley, on the cerebral distinction
between men and monkeys, should
cease? ... Continued on its present
footing, it becomes a hindrance
and an injury to science, a joke for
the populace, and a scandal to the
scientific world.”
British Medical Journal

52. “The Great Hippopotamus Test”

53. Charles Kingsley - The Water Babies - 1862/3

54. Professor Ptthmllnsprts “held very strange theories about a good many things. He
had even got up once at the British Association, and declared that apes had
hippopotamus majors in their brains just as men have. Which was a shocking thing
to say; for, if it were so, what would become of the faith, hope, and charity of
immortal millions? You may think that there are other more important differences
between you and an ape, such as being able to speak, and make machines, and
know right from wrong, and say your prayers, and other little matters of that
kind; but that is a child’s fancy, my dear. Nothing is to be depended on but the
great hippopotamus test. If you have a hippopotamus major in your brain, you are
no ape, though you had four hands, no feet, and were more apish than the apes of
all aperies. But if a hippopotamus major is ever discovered in one single ape’s
brain, nothing will save your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-
great-great-greater-greatest-grandmother from having been an ape too. No, my
dear little man; always remember that the one true, certain, final, and all-important
difference between you and an ape is, that you have a hippopotamus major in your
brain, and it has none; and that, therefore, to discover one in its brain will be a
very wrong and dangerous thing, at which every one will be very much shocked,
as we may suppose they were at the professor.—Though really, after all, it don’t
much matter; because—as Lord Dundreary and others would put it—nobody but
men have hippopotamuses in their brains; so, if a hippopotamus was discovered in
an ape’s brain, why it would not be one, you know, but something else.”

55. Obaysch - 1851

56. And from the foot of the throne there
swum away, out and into the sea, millions of
new-born creatures, of more shapes and
colours than man ever dreamed. And they
were Mother Carey’s children, whom she
makes out of the sea-water all day long.
He expected, of course – like some grown
people who ought to know better – to find
her snipping, piecing, fitting, stitching,
cobbling, basting, filing, planing, hammering,
turning, polishing, moulding, measuring,
chiselling, clipping, and so forth as men do
when they go to work to make anything.
But instead of that, she sat quite still with
her chin upon her hand, looking down into
the sea with two great grand blue eyes, as
blue as the sea itself.
Mother Carey

57. Tom said:
‘‘I hear you are very busy.’’
‘‘I am never more busy than I am now,’’ she
said without stirring a finger.
‘‘I heard, ma’am, that you were always
making new beasts out of old.’’
‘‘So people fancy. But I am not going to
trouble myself to make things, my little
dear. I sit here and make them make
themselves.’’
Mother Carey

58. Evidence as to Mans Place in Nature (1863)

64. Owen 1866
On the Anatomy of Vertebrates
The three structures were in
apes only “under modified
form and low grades of
development.”

65. Evolution and Ethics
“There are two very different
questions which people fail to
discriminate. One is whether
evolution accounts for morality, the
other whether the principle of
evolution in general can be adopted
as an ethical principle. The first, of
course, I advocate, and have
constantly insisted upon. The second
I deny, and reject all so-called
evolutional ethics based upon it.”

66. Changes
Rise in secularization
Rise in power of scientific community to self-define
knowledge and to control popularization
Increased professionalization
Dilution of influence of Oxford and Cambridge on
education
Acceptance of “evolution” (common descent) but not
“Darwinism” (natural selection)

69. Aldous Huxley Julian Huxley