Huxley Family - Thomas Henry Huxley, Aldous Huxley, Matthew Arnold, Andrew Huxley, Julian Huxley, Leonard Huxley, John Collier (Paperback)

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 42. Chapters: Thomas Henry Huxley, Aldous Huxley, Matthew Arnold, Andrew Huxley, Julian Huxley, Leonard Huxley, John Collier, Mary Augusta Ward, Crispin Tickell, Thomas Arnold, Tom Arnold, Jerrard Tickell, Matthew Huxley, Laurence Collier. Excerpt: Thomas Henry Huxley PC PRS (4 May 1825 - 29 June 1895) was an English biologist, known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Huxley's famous 1860 debate with Samuel Wilberforce was a key moment in the wider acceptance of evolution, and in his own career. Huxley had been planning to leave Oxford on the previous day, but, after an encounter with Robert Chambers, the author of Vestiges, he changed his mind and decided to join the debate. Wilberforce was coached by Richard Owen, against whom Huxley also debated whether humans were closely related to apes. Huxley was slow to accept some of Darwin's ideas, such as gradualism, and was undecided about natural selection, but despite this he was wholehearted in his public support of Darwin. He was instrumental in developing scientific education in Britain, and fought against the more extreme versions of religious tradition. Huxley coined the term 'agnostic' to describe his own views on theology, a term whose use has continued to the present day (see Thomas Henry Huxley and agnosticism). Huxley had little formal schooling and taught himself almost everything he knew. Remarkably, he became perhaps the finest comparative anatomist of the latter 19th century. He worked on invertebrates, clarifying relationships between groups previously little understood. Later, he worked on vertebrates, especially on the relationship between apes and humans. After comparing Archaeopteryx with Compsognathus, he concluded that birds evolved from small carnivorous dinosaurs, a theory widely accepted today. The tendency has bee...