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Thomas Henry Huxley: The Evolution of a Scientist

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This splendid, relatively terse, tome on the life and career of Thomas Henry Huxley, the celebrated 19th Century English biologist, is a masterpiece of splendid scholarship and prose by its author, Sherrie L. Lyons. Lyons makes a persuasive case showing how Huxley's strict adherence to the scientific method led eventually to the acrimonious feud between him and Richard Owen, the eminent anatomist of the mid 19th Century. Lyons shows how Huxley gradually shifted his allegience from the German structuralist view championed by Owen to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution via natural selection, but at the same time recognizing some major pitfalls to Darwin's theory, most notably the significance of hybrid sterility. Huxley's legitimate criticisms of natural selection led Darwin to embark upon an ambitious research program - with the assistance of other leading British scientists - to study hybrid sterility, among others, resulting in a further strengthening - not weakening - of Darwin's original concept of natural selection. Lyons notes how the discoveries of important fossils in the 1860's with ample evidence of gradual transitions between species eventually led to Huxley's shift from a strict saltationalist view of the origin of species that was greatly at odds with natural selection to fully embracing Darwin's concept of natural selection as a gradual evolutionary process. She also points out that Huxley, long before Darwin himself, was willing to seize the initiative and note the strong kinship of the great apes with Man, making this point in public lectures, popular articles and finally, a book published in 1864, seven years prior to Darwin's "The Descent of Man". Last, but not least, Lyons notes how Huxley's original concerns regarding natural selection are still being investigated by evolutionary biologists - most notably paleontologists and developmental biologists - today.

Sherrie L. Lyons' Thomas Henry Huxley provides an excellent history of the English biologist who was the foremost defender of Darwin's theory of evolution. His scientific background and contributions are revealed in an excellent survey.

This fascinating and important biography of T.H.Huxley shows almost another Huxley from the one we associate with the Darwinian tradition. Huxley is an important figure, for in many ways he saw more clearly than Darwin, and current biology is catching up with him. The author begins by noting that 'while Huxley enthusiastically accepted the idea of descent with modification, he was critical of the two central components of Darwin's theory: gradualism and natural selection'. As the author notes, Huxley warned Darwin on the eve of publication that he had burdened his theory unnecessarily with the dictum, natura non facit saltum. This eye opening account reveals a Huxley who could step from a time machine into the contemporary debates on evolution, as the issues that were clearly in the background to Darwin's public triumph resurface with renewed force. Indeed, we discover that Huxley was close also to the developmental tradition with his interest in morphology and considerations of type.

It is a strange testimony to the telescoped pictures we have as non-specialists dependent on hurried summaries that this alternate side of Huxley should have remained unclear throughout the whole Darwin debate. And it is a reminder that the debate is one of selective emphasis of issues that were present from the beginning and never enter the mythical accounts of the Wilberforce debate. This biography, from Prometheus books no less, seems a bellwether for a paradigm in transition. Must reading.

Cf. also Adrian Desmond's Huxley, for a fuller picture of the nineteenth century background of culture and ideology.