Thomas Henry Huxley: The Evolution of a Scientist Book

Thomas Henry Huxley, The Evolution of a Scientist by Sherrie Lyons

Science advances exploded in the 19th century, led in England by the likes of Charles Lyell (whom many consider to be the father of geology) and Charles Darwin, who all know as the father of common ancestry biological evolution. Those who know Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895) at all, know him as "Darwin's Bulldog," the sharp and combative defender of the Darwinian model. But Huxley was a prominent scientist in his own right with his own views and hypotheses, often at odds with Darwin's.

This book is an excellent, informative and very readable work of science history. It is not a biography; a fact that took me a couple of chapters to adjust to. The book is the history of the science of THH (and Darwin and the other great minds of that exciting era) and how Huxley's science and views evolved over his career. Lyons comprehensively places the science and the scientists in the context of the times and socio-religious setting.

The author shows us that while THH was indeed Darwin's great defender, Huxley never accepted Darwin's central premise of natural selection as the only force driving species change. Those debates continue to this day and fueled the great 30-year 20th century ongoing argument between Stephen J. Gould of Harvard and Richard Dawkins of Oxford. While I find the debates of the mechanics of evolution only mildly interesting, I loved this book because Lyons continually stressed home the central premise of Huxley that worked to place science on a whole new level - the separation of science from theology. How much THH was responsible for this separation I do not know and Lyons does not offer an opinion - but the separation did take place, and rapidly. And that uncoupling of science from theology prepared the way for the explosion of science knowledge in the 20th century. For unshackling science from theology, we all owe a great debt of thanks to Charles Darwin and Thomas Henry Huxley.

Now I wish I could find a good biography of the Huxley family. THH's descendants include Julian Huxley, Aldous Huxley and Andrew Huxley, each significant contributors to the fields of evolutionary biology, literature and medicine.