THINKER'S ALMANAC - May 4

How is being agnostic about ideas consistent with intellectual humility?

Subject: Agnosticism - Darwin’s Bulldog

Event:  Birth of English scientist Thomas Huxley, 1825

Try to learn something about everything and everything about something. -Thomas Huxley

The English biologist and anthropologist Thomas Huxley was born on this day in 1825.  Huxley was born into a middle-class family, but he was forced to leave school at age 10 when his father lost his job as a mathematics teacher.  Undaunted by his family’s financial struggles, Huxley educated himself through voracious and omnivorous reading.

When Charles Darwin published his On the Origin of Species in 1859, Huxley eagerly read the book.  He recognized the revolutionary nature of Darwin’s thesis.  Just as Copernicus challenged the long-held idea that the Earth was the center of the universe, Darwin challenged the long-held notion that man was the “paragon of animals.”  The theory of evolution placed man and all other animals into the same tree of life.  All living things, according to Darwin, evolved or became extinct over long periods of time based on the forces of natural selection.  

Initially, Huxley was skeptical of Darwin’s theory, but as he read and reread it, he became convinced that Darwin was right.  In a letter dated November 23, 1859, Huxley expressed his appreciation to Darwin and offered his willingness to help him in the dogfight that seemed inevitable: 

I trust you will not allow yourself to be in any way disgusted or annoyed by the considerable abuse & misrepresentation which unless I greatly mistake is in store for you— Depend upon it you have earned the lasting gratitude of all thoughtful men— And as to the curs which will bark & yelp—you must recollect that some of your friends at any rate are endowed with an amount of combativeness which (though you have often & justly rebuked it) may stand you in good stead—

I am sharpening up my claws & beak in readiness. (2)

Huxley was true to his word.  On June 30, 1860, he debated the Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, at the Oxford Museum of Natural History.  Employing a straw man argument (See THINKER’S ALMANAC - January 8 and April 18) -- a deliberate distortion of Darwin’s theory -- Wilberforce asked Huxley whether he had descended from apes on his grandfather’s side or his grandmother’s side.  Huxley responded with one of the greatest retorts of all time:

If then the question is put to me whether I would rather have a miserable ape for a grandfather or a man highly endowed by nature and possessed of great means of influence and yet employs these faculties and that influence for the mere purpose of introducing ridicule into a grave scientific discussion, I unhesitatingly affirm my preference for the ape.

Of course, Huxley knew how absurd Wilberforce’s argument was.  Darwin never argued that humans were descended from apes; instead, his theory posited that apes and humans shared a common ancestor.  For his willingness and deftness to defend Darwin, Huxley earned the nickname “Darwin’s Bulldog.”

Another notable accomplishment of Huxley is his invention of the word “agnostic,” a term he needed to explain his dogged determination to stay true to the truth and to resist claiming to know anything that cannot be backed up on scientific grounds.

As he explained, the word came to him as he contrasted his attitude of skepticism with others who had an attitude of certainty:

The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure they had attained a certain "gnosis"–had, more or less successfully, solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble. And, with Hume and Kant on my side, I could not think myself presumptuous in holding fast by that opinion ... So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of "agnostic". It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the "gnostic" of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant. ... To my great satisfaction the term took.

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  How did Huxley earn the nickname “Darwin’s Bulldog”?

Challenge - Clearing Up Confusion:  Do some research on the terms “agnostic” and “atheist.” Explain the difference based on the different definitions of the two words.

Sources:

1-Grimes, David Robert. Good Thinking. New York:  Prometheus Books, 2021.

2-Darwin Correspondence Project.  Letter from T.H. Huxley to Charles Darwin, 23 Nov. 1859. University of Cambridge