Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Speaker 1: Frye and I'm prayse A V.
Speaker 2: Wilson. This is an.
Speaker 1: Episode that we are recording while we are on a
Speaker 1: visit to the Bahamas. We are in the studio at
Speaker 1: Baha Mar So I wanted to do something that related
Speaker 1: to marine biology. It is a little related to marine biology.
Speaker 1: There is a lot more to the story of Thomas
Speaker 1: Henry Huxley than the embarrassing scientific blunder in marine biology
Speaker 1: that he made, although that is one of the most
Speaker 1: famous events of his life, and he actually, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: offers up a pretty good example of having a good
Speaker 1: attitude about learning in public, about making a gaff and
Speaker 1: then acknowledging errors and learning from them. He also is
Speaker 1: sort of famously known by his nickname Darwin's Bulldog for
Speaker 1: his very vocal support part of Darwin's work, and he
Speaker 1: also just generally wanted to promote science and education, particularly
Speaker 1: people that normally did not have access to those things.
Speaker 1: He wrote late in his life quote, it is with
Speaker 1: this intent that I have subordinated any reasonable or unreasonable
Speaker 1: ambition for scientific fame, which I may have permitted myself
Speaker 1: to entertain, to other ends, to the popularization of science,
Speaker 1: to the development and organization of scientific education, to the
Speaker 1: endless series of battles and skirmishes over evolution, and to
Speaker 1: untiring opposition to that ecclesiastical spirit, that clericalism, which in England,
Speaker 1: as everywhere else, and to whatever denomination it may belong,
Speaker 1: is the deadly enemy of science. So he's pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: Heads up, there is so much documentation written about and
Speaker 1: by Thomas Huxley that there's no way to cover it all.
Speaker 1: So if you are a Thomas Huxley scholar, you may
Speaker 1: be like you're leaving some stuff out.
Speaker 2: There's no way not to just know that there is.
Speaker 1: Also plenty that is edited out of his story here,
Speaker 1: But also that means there is plenty that is readily
Speaker 1: available and easy to access. If you look at our
Speaker 1: show notes for today's episode, you will find plenty of
Speaker 1: things that he wrote and people wrote about him. Also,
Speaker 1: we just have to say, right out of the gate,
Speaker 1: this man had spectacular sideburns. Thomas Henry Huxley was born
Speaker 1: May fourth, eighteen twenty five and ealing England today.
Speaker 2: That is part of London.
Speaker 1: At the time, it was a village outside of London,
Speaker 1: but the city eventually just absorbed it. It became part
Speaker 1: of the greater city through urban expansion. His father, George,
Speaker 1: was a schoolmaster who ran a small but respected school
Speaker 1: for boys. George and his wife Rachel, had seven children,
Speaker 1: and Thomas was the youngest. Only six of those children
Speaker 1: lived past infancy, though Thomas was born in their home,
Speaker 1: which was an apartment above a butcher's shop, and he
Speaker 1: wrote a humorous story about his early childhood later in
Speaker 1: his life, saying quote, I am not aware that any
Speaker 1: portence preceded my arrival in this world, But in my
Speaker 1: childhood I remember hearing a traditional account of the manner
Speaker 1: in which I lost the chance of an endowment of
Speaker 1: great practical value. The windows of my mother's room were
Speaker 1: open in consequence of the unusual warmth of the weather.
Speaker 1: For the same reason, probably a neighboring beehive had swarmed,
Speaker 1: and the new colony, pitching on the windowsill, was making
Speaker 1: its way into the room when the horrified nurse shut
Speaker 1: down the sash. If that well meaning woman had only
Speaker 1: abstained from her ill timed interference, the swarm might have
Speaker 1: settled on my lips, and I should have been endowed
Speaker 1: with that molefluous eloquence, which in this country leads far
Speaker 1: more surely than worth capacity or honest work, to the
Speaker 1: highest places in church and state. But the opportunity was lost,
Speaker 1: and I have been obliged to content myself through life
Speaker 1: with saying what I mean in the plainest of plain
Speaker 1: language than which I suppose there is no habit more
Speaker 1: ruinous to a man's prospects of advancement. Beyond that, he
Speaker 1: wrote quote, I have next to nothing to say about
Speaker 1: my childhood. I love him, and I know that was
Speaker 1: a long story to read, but I wanted to include
Speaker 1: it because it really sets you up for what they're
Speaker 1: going to get from Thomas Huxley. He's a little of
Speaker 1: self deprecating all the time, but he's also very simultaneously
Speaker 1: able to kind of stick a little jab in at
Speaker 1: what he thinks is the pompous nature of a lot
Speaker 1: of the institutions of English society. And also, I don't
Speaker 1: know why getting stung by bees would have made him
Speaker 1: more eloquent, but I think it was that they would alight, oh,
Speaker 1: they would alight onto his mouth and give him the
Speaker 1: gift of speech, not that they would sting him, they
Speaker 1: would make him buzz and buzz. Although Thomas grew up
Speaker 1: in an educator's household, he only had two years of
Speaker 1: formal schooling. He attended his father's school starting at age eight,
Speaker 1: but the school closed in eighteen thirty seven and that
Speaker 1: was the end of that. George moved out of education
Speaker 1: and he moved into a career in banking. The family
Speaker 1: did continue to struggle financially, and from the age of
Speaker 1: ten on, Thomas's education was entirely self directed. It wasn't
Speaker 1: like they could afford to send him to a school.
Speaker 1: His father had amassed a significant library though, through his teaching,
Speaker 1: so Thomas just decided he would sort of work his
Speaker 1: way through that. He not only read books in English,
Speaker 1: but he also taught himself French and German, so he
Speaker 1: could read books written in those languages as well, including
Speaker 1: the works of Descartes and Guerta. Although his father had
Speaker 1: been a teacher, it was Rachel, his mother, who he
Speaker 1: really credited with giving him the gift of natural intelligence.
Speaker 1: He wrote of her quote, with no more education than
Speaker 1: other women of the middle class in her day, she
Speaker 1: had an excellent mental capacity. Her most distinguishing characteristic, however,
Speaker 1: was rapidity of thought. If one ventured to suggest she
Speaker 1: had not taken much time to arrive at any conclusion,
Speaker 1: she would say, I cannot help it. Things flash across me.
Speaker 1: That peculiarity has been passed on to me in full strength.
Speaker 1: It has often stood me in good stead, it has
Speaker 1: sometimes played me sad tricks, and it has always been
Speaker 1: a danger. But after all, if my time were to
Speaker 1: come over again, there is nothing I would less willingly
Speaker 1: part with than my inheritance of mother. Wit Zelle Huxley
Speaker 1: was raised in an Anglican family. By the time he
Speaker 1: was a teenager, he was starting to question religion, and
Speaker 1: is often described as having aligned with the dissenters of
Speaker 1: nineteenth century England, who rebelled against the dogma of the
Speaker 1: Church of England and sought their own path. Throughout his life,
Speaker 1: Huxley moved farther and farther away from religion as he
Speaker 1: examined its place in the human social structure and viewed
Speaker 1: it from a progressively more scientific lens. When he was thirteen,
Speaker 1: Huxley was apprenticed to John Charles Cook, a doctor who
Speaker 1: was also his sister Ellen's husband. Encyclopedia Britannica described Cook
Speaker 1: as a medical materialist, meaning someone who believes that all maladies,
Speaker 1: including psychological ones, traced back to a physical problem, but
Speaker 1: Holly didn't find much about Cook anywhere to really verify that.
Speaker 1: Huxley didn't stay with Cook for long, though, and eventually
Speaker 1: moved on to a different apprenticeship in London with a
Speaker 1: doctor who served the city's poor. But Huxley acknowledged that
Speaker 1: medicine in terms of actually treating patients had never been
Speaker 1: a passion for him. He was really just interested in
Speaker 1: physiology and was trying to find a way out of poverty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's said that he was really very struck by the
Speaker 1: horrible soircumstances that London's poor were living in, and that
Speaker 1: part of his apprenticeship really impacted the way he thought
Speaker 1: about education for the rest of his life and what.
Speaker 2: He could do to help people.
Speaker 1: Huxley described once going to an autopsy with his friends
Speaker 1: as a boy drawn near because he was interested in physiology,
Speaker 1: and he described what he called dissection poisoning, although in
Speaker 1: this account where he talks about it, he says that
Speaker 1: he didn't cut himself in any way like there was
Speaker 1: no place for anything kind of dangerous to enter his
Speaker 1: skin or his blood stream. But even so he didn't
Speaker 1: get better. He continued to get sick, and he describes
Speaker 1: having to go to the country to a farm to
Speaker 1: get better, stating quote, I soon recovered, but for years
Speaker 1: I suffered from occasional paroxysms of internal pain. And from
Speaker 1: that time my constant friend hypochondriacal dyspepsia commenced his half
Speaker 1: century of co tendancy of my flesh Lee Tabernacle. At
Speaker 1: the age of seventeen, Huxley had acquired enough knowledge and
Speaker 1: the ability to apply it that he was given a
Speaker 1: scholarship to study medicine. This was through the charing Cross
Speaker 1: Hospital at London University, and Huxley met this opportunity with enthusiasm.
Speaker 1: He won a gold medal for his achievement in anatomy
Speaker 1: and physiology from the school. Just after Huxley's graduation from
Speaker 1: London University in eighteen forty five, he made his first
Speaker 1: mark on the scientific world through his observations of hair
Speaker 1: follicles under a microscope. He identified a layer between the
Speaker 1: outer layer and the interior cuticle that gives hair its
Speaker 1: strength by connecting keratin filaments, and that is now known
Speaker 1: as Huxley's Layer. We will talk about Huxley's next somewhat
Speaker 1: surprising career move after we pause for a sponsor break.
Speaker 1: In eighteen forty six, Thomas Huxley joined the Royal Navy.
Speaker 1: This was, by his account, something one of his friends
Speaker 1: encouraged him to do so. He had graduated from medical school,
Speaker 1: but he was still too young to become a member
Speaker 1: of the College of Surgeons, and he needed some kind
Speaker 1: of income, so his friends suggested that he write to
Speaker 1: the Director General for the Medical Service of the Navy,
Speaker 1: Sir William Burnett. And Huxley actually thought this was way
Speaker 1: too forward, but he was desperate enough that he did
Speaker 1: it anyway, and to his surprise, Burnett asked him to meet,
Speaker 1: and after a brief interview, Huxley was in the Navy
Speaker 1: because of his medical background. He was assigned first to
Speaker 1: Haslar Hospital and then several months later to the HMS
Speaker 1: Rattlesnake as the ship's assistant surgeon. The Rattlesnake had orders
Speaker 1: to embark on a multi year mission to the South Pacific.
Speaker 1: Huxley describes this time on this journey as exceptionally rough,
Speaker 1: but he also he said it was really good for him,
Speaker 1: stating quote, it was good for me to live under
Speaker 1: sharp discipline, to be down on the realities of existence
Speaker 1: by living on bare necessities, to find out how extremely
Speaker 1: well worth living life seemed to be when one woke
Speaker 1: up from a night's rest on a soft plank, with
Speaker 1: the sky for canopy and cocoa, and weevily biscuit the
Speaker 1: soul prospect for breakfast, and more especially to learn to
Speaker 1: work for the sake of what I got for myself
Speaker 1: out of it, even if it all went to the
Speaker 1: bottom and I along with it. The Rattlesnake was on
Speaker 1: a surveying mission, and in addition to fulfilling his daily
Speaker 1: work duties, Huxley took on a side project. He studied
Speaker 1: sea anemones and jellyfish throughout the voyage, and he compiled
Speaker 1: his findings into a paper that he sent to the
Speaker 1: Royal Society in eighteen forty nine.
Speaker 2: That paper was titled on.
Speaker 1: The Anatomy and the Affinities of the Family of the Medusa,
Speaker 1: but he never heard anything back from the Society. Upon
Speaker 1: his return to London in eighteen fifty he was very
Speaker 1: surprised to learn that his paper had been received, published
Speaker 1: and lauded by the scientific community. Huxley also came home
Speaker 1: an engaged man. While he was on that journey, he
Speaker 1: met a young woman while the ship was docked in Sydney, Australia.
Speaker 1: Her name was Henrietta Ann Heathorne. The two of them
Speaker 1: fell in love and they agreed to be married. But
Speaker 1: when the ship left, it wasn't like Henrietta could just
Speaker 1: go with them, so she agreed to wait for Thomas
Speaker 1: in Sydney until the time came that they could be together.
Speaker 1: In eighteen fifty one, because of his paper on anemones
Speaker 1: and other critters, Huxley became a Fellow of the Royal Society.
Speaker 1: He continued his naval career for a while, but he
Speaker 1: was also always working on his own research projects. A
Speaker 1: year after he became a fellow, he submitted a paper
Speaker 1: on invertebrate animals, and he won a gold medal for it.
Speaker 1: Huxley had a couple of factors leading him away from
Speaker 1: his military career in the early eighteen fifties. For one,
Speaker 1: he was feeling ready to transition into research being his
Speaker 1: full time occupation. For another, there were arguments between the
Speaker 1: Admiralty and the scientific community about whether the Navy should
Speaker 1: pay for some of the printing costs of Huxley's work.
Speaker 2: That was not out of the blue.
Speaker 1: The military had made promises that they would support and
Speaker 1: encourage officers doing scientific work, but after several years of
Speaker 1: back and forth, the Navy, according to Huxley quote cut
Speaker 1: short the discussion by ordering me to join a ship,
Speaker 1: which thing I declined to do. So he was on
Speaker 1: his own in London without a job, and if he
Speaker 1: had been born into a wealthy family, this is the
Speaker 1: point where he could have just set up his own
Speaker 1: lab and dedicated himself to research while living off the
Speaker 1: family fortune. A lot of people we've talked about on
Speaker 1: the show have done just that, but Huxley needed a job,
Speaker 1: and leaving the stability of the Navy was actually a
Speaker 1: pretty risky move. But he didn't only want to fund
Speaker 1: his research. He also wanted to make enough money that
Speaker 1: he could send for Henrietta and bring her to London
Speaker 1: so that they could start.
Speaker 2: A life together.
Speaker 1: Huxley had already made a name for himself, and because
Speaker 1: of that name, he landed two jobs. One was as
Speaker 1: a curator at the Museum of practical geography. The other
Speaker 1: was a professor position at the Royal School of Mines,
Speaker 1: where he was to teach paleontology and natural history. This
Speaker 1: was not a job he actually wanted because he was
Speaker 1: not an expert at paleontology, so he accepted the job provisionally.
Speaker 1: He wrote that he told his new employer quote that
Speaker 1: I did not care for fossils, and that I should
Speaker 1: give up natural history as soon as I could get
Speaker 1: a physiological post. But I held the office for thirty
Speaker 1: one years, and a large part of my work has
Speaker 1: been paleontological. Neither of Huxley's new positions was especially high paying,
Speaker 1: but the two combined meant that he could finally send
Speaker 1: for Henrietta, and they got married in eighteen fifty five. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were, by all accounts, very very happy together. In
Speaker 1: his thirties, Huxley committed himself fully to promoting the new
Speaker 1: ideas arising in science, and this often meant that he
Speaker 1: was at odds with the establishment, because so much of
Speaker 1: thought and culture in Britain, Europe and the US was
Speaker 1: built around biblical ideology, and a lot of the emerging
Speaker 1: science was very counter to that. This was a period
Speaker 1: of time when scientists were really focusing on the origin
Speaker 1: of humans, which even today gets people riled up sometimes,
Speaker 1: so you can imagine how contentious it could be for
Speaker 1: an idea like evolution to be introduced in nineteenth century England.
Speaker 1: But though Huxley was eager to understand where human life began,
Speaker 1: that didn't mean that he supported all scientific ideas that
Speaker 1: explored that topic. In eighteen oh nine, French naturalist Jean
Speaker 1: Baptiste Lamarque had published a book titled Philosophy Zoologice. That
Speaker 1: book built on work that Lamarck had been doing for years,
Speaker 1: and it laid out the origin of life as having
Speaker 1: been the result of spontaneous generation with regards to the
Speaker 1: simplest forms of life, and then suggested that two drivers
Speaker 1: led to more complex forms of life. One was what
Speaker 1: he called the power of life, which he described as
Speaker 1: a natural progression toward increased complexity. The other was an
Speaker 1: environmental effect. The needs of an organism's environment would cause
Speaker 1: them to adopt various behaviors for survival, and those behaviors
Speaker 1: would change their bodies, and those changes would be inherited
Speaker 1: by their offspring. The classic example that he used for
Speaker 1: this was giraffes. He made the case that as they
Speaker 1: stretched to reach high leaves in trees for food, their
Speaker 1: necks elongated, and that that elongation made it into subsequent generations.
Speaker 1: Of course that was incorrect, but it was the beginning
Speaker 1: of scientific discourse about evolution, and writing several decades later
Speaker 1: about it, thought that Lamark had some really interesting ideas,
Speaker 1: but that he was not correct in his assessment, and
Speaker 1: that he had made some leaps that were not really
Speaker 1: supported by any kind of scientific evidence. He wrote, quote
Speaker 1: Lamarck sagacious, as many of his views were mingled them
Speaker 1: with so much that was crude and even absurd, as
Speaker 1: to neutralize the benefit which his originality might have affected
Speaker 1: had he been a more sober and cautious thinker. In
Speaker 1: eighteen forty four, Robert Chambers published a book titled Vestiges
Speaker 1: of the Natural History of Creation. No one knew that
Speaker 1: it was Chambers who wrote it. The book was published anonymously,
Speaker 1: and Chambers, who was a Scottish publisher, was not revealed
Speaker 1: to be the author until forty years later. He had
Speaker 1: withheld his name because he knew it would be controversial
Speaker 1: and he didn't want the potential fearer to destroy his livelihood.
Speaker 1: He was really correct to be worried about this. This
Speaker 1: was not a case where he was scientists who had
Speaker 1: discovered something so new that it would break people's understanding
Speaker 1: of the world. He was parroting things that a bunch
Speaker 1: of other people had claimed and kind of combining them
Speaker 1: into one scientific history of the world from the beginning
Speaker 1: to the point where humans appeared.
Speaker 2: And the work repeated a lot.
Speaker 1: Of things that the scientific community had already dismissed as
Speaker 1: incorrect and in some cases even silly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was like he did no vetting.
Speaker 1: He read the internet and said I did my research,
Speaker 1: and he wrote one big paper about it, and then
Speaker 1: everyone was like, oh my dude, that's not it.
Speaker 2: No, nope.
Speaker 1: Uh. Huxley's writing about this work is frequently described as scathing.
Speaker 1: Scathing is the word almost everyone uses, and that is
Speaker 1: really pretty accurate. He wrote, quote, we grudged no man
Speaker 1: either the glory or the prophet to be obtained from Charlotteanery.
Speaker 1: And we can hardly expect that those who are so
Speaker 1: ignorant of science as to be misled by the vestiges
Speaker 1: will read what we have to say upon the subject.
Speaker 1: But a book like a weed acquire an importance by
Speaker 1: neglect which it could have attained in no other mode.
Speaker 1: And therefore it becomes our somewhat unpleasant duty to devote
Speaker 1: a few of our pages to an examination of some
Speaker 1: of the leading points of this once attractive and still
Speaker 1: notorious work of fiction. Indeed, we feel the more called
Speaker 1: upon to undertake this criticism at present, since, as we
Speaker 1: shall see, the vestigiarian has bolstered up his case by
Speaker 1: the use of names and authorities which were justifiable might
Speaker 1: give a certain value to his statements. But then, in
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty nine, Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species,
Speaker 1: which changed science forever, and it became a pivotal work
Speaker 1: in Huxley's life and career. Unlike the Lamarck and Chambers
Speaker 1: writing on evolution, Darwin's work captured Huxley's attention, and that
Speaker 1: started before it was ever published. Darwin had brought the
Speaker 1: work to Huxley for review before it went to print,
Speaker 1: and Huxley had made an in depth study of the manuscript.
Speaker 1: Andy felt that the reasoning and science of natural selection
Speaker 1: as outlined in Darwin's work really stood up the reason
Speaker 1: why Huxley got the nickname of Darwin's bulldog was because
Speaker 1: he was comfortable embracing the conflict around this controversial writing
Speaker 1: and just towing up with the detractors.
Speaker 2: But Darwin was not Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was like Darwin was like, I don't want to
Speaker 1: fight about this, and Huxley was like, oh, I will
Speaker 1: bring it off. We are going to talk about some
Speaker 1: of these debates after we hear from the sponsors that
Speaker 1: keep stuff you missed in history class going. Huxley got
Speaker 1: into a lot of public debates about Darwin's writing, and
Speaker 1: the most famous of those was a formal debate staged
Speaker 1: at Oxford University on June thirtieth, eighteen sixty. It has
Speaker 1: actually come to be known as the Great Debate, and
Speaker 1: this event was part of the ceremony to open the
Speaker 1: new University Museum, and it pitted Huxley against Samuel Wilberforce,
Speaker 1: who is the Bishop of Oxford. Wilberforce was a fellow
Speaker 1: of the Royal Society in addition to being a leader
Speaker 1: in the Anglican Church, so it wasn't like he didn't
Speaker 1: know about talking about science. He was a very strong
Speaker 1: public speaker and he was there to defend creation as
Speaker 1: it is portrayed in the Bible as the true origin
Speaker 1: of man. There is actually no full detailed account of
Speaker 1: how the debate played out that evening. I sure wish
Speaker 1: there were, and I know I'm not the only one,
Speaker 1: But there is a moment that has lived on in
Speaker 1: accounts of the debate and has been told by many people.
Speaker 1: It was written about by a lot of people that
Speaker 1: were there. And this moment is one in which Wilberforce
Speaker 1: tries to throw the theory of evolution in Huxley's face
Speaker 1: by suggesting that if he believes this, that means he
Speaker 1: has to acknowledge that one of his forebears must have
Speaker 1: been an ape. And Huxley Famesley replied, quote, if then
Speaker 1: the question is put to me whether I would rather
Speaker 1: have a miserable ape for a grandfather, or a man
Speaker 1: highly endowed by nature and possessed of great means of influence,
Speaker 1: and yet employs these faculties and that influence for the
Speaker 1: purpose of introducing ridicule into a grave scientific discussion. I
Speaker 1: unhesitatingly affirm my preference for the ape. You'll see other
Speaker 1: variations of that sentiment that are written a little bit differently,
Speaker 1: because again we're getting them through everybody's secondhand accounts, but
Speaker 1: they all say essentially the same thing, like they're very
Speaker 1: pro ape. The room where that debate took place and
Speaker 1: where Wilberforce is recognized as having kind of gotten the
Speaker 1: SmackDown is known as the Huxley Room today, and it
Speaker 1: houses more than one million insect specimens. Huxley's story and
Speaker 1: his writing also offer up an opportunity to sort of
Speaker 1: set the record straight regarding humanity's place and the order
Speaker 1: of things and what Darwin did and didn't say about it.
Speaker 1: A lot of people who argue against the idea that
Speaker 1: humanity and apes share a common ancestor kind of blame
Speaker 1: that idea on Darwin, when it was really Huxley who
Speaker 1: went hard on it. Darwin's writing on the origin of
Speaker 1: species did not ever make the leap to saying anything
Speaker 1: about the humans and this discussion of various species having
Speaker 1: common ancestors. He literally puts off the question, including it
Speaker 1: as an example of something that will likely be researched later.
Speaker 1: He states quote in the distant future, I see open
Speaker 1: fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based
Speaker 1: on a new foundation that of the necessary acquirement of
Speaker 1: each mental power and capacity by gradation, light will be
Speaker 1: thrown on the origin of man and his history.
Speaker 2: He would eventually write.
Speaker 1: About humankind's origins, but not for more than a decade
Speaker 1: after the Origin of species. Yeah. At that point he
Speaker 1: is kind of building on what Huxley was about to
Speaker 1: put forward, because Huxley, unlike Darwin, was willing to jump
Speaker 1: into the fray regarding humankind's evolution. Four years after Darwin's
Speaker 1: book came out, Huxley published Evidence as to Man's place
Speaker 1: in nature, and in it he makes the case that
Speaker 1: humans and grade age should be in the same taxonomical class,
Speaker 1: namely mammalia. He knew this was going to be difficult
Speaker 1: for people to accept, and he addressed it in the work,
Speaker 1: and he suggests in the writing that we pretend we
Speaker 1: are from another planet and observing humans as a specimen
Speaker 1: without our own baggage, to make all of these ideas
Speaker 1: easier to accept. Writing quote, bearing this obvious course of
Speaker 1: zoological reasoning in mind, let us endeavor for a moment
Speaker 1: to disconnect our thinking selves from the mask of humanity.
Speaker 1: Let us imagine ourselves scientific saturnians. If you will fairly
Speaker 1: acquainted with such animals as now inhabit the Earth, and
Speaker 1: employed in discussing the relations they bear to a new
Speaker 1: and singular, erect and featherless biped which some enterprising traveler,
Speaker 1: overcoming the difficulties of space and gravitation, has brought from
Speaker 1: that distant planet for our inspection, well preserved, maybe in
Speaker 1: a cask of rum, we should all at once agree
Speaker 1: upon placing him among the mammalian vertebrates, and his lower jaw,
Speaker 1: his molars, and his brain would leave no room for
Speaker 1: doubting the systematic position of the new genus among those
Speaker 1: mammals whose young are nourished during gestation by means of
Speaker 1: a placenta, or what are called the placental mammals. So
Speaker 1: he's basically like, just pretend you don't know you're a
Speaker 1: human and you're looking at this very objectively, it's so
Speaker 1: obvious they're connected. Although Huxley was promoting concepts that he
Speaker 1: knew were going to cause a lot of controversy and disdain,
Speaker 1: particularly from religious quarters, he viewed even that conflict as
Speaker 1: a necessary step in moving humankind's understanding of the world forward.
Speaker 2: In the late.
Speaker 1: Eighteen fifties and early eighteen sixties, Huxley was examining the
Speaker 1: silty deep sea mud from the floor of the Atlantic
Speaker 1: Ocean when he noticed something that he thought might be important. Incidentally,
Speaker 1: that mud sample was collected by the vessel HMS Cyclops
Speaker 1: while it was surveying for the best route for the
Speaker 1: Transatlantic telegraph cable. We talked about that on the show
Speaker 1: all the way back in November of twenty sixteen, and
Speaker 1: while the Cyclops was still at sea, the mud that
Speaker 1: it gathered was examined under a microscope and it was
Speaker 1: seen to be quote full of minute shells.
Speaker 2: So by the time.
Speaker 1: Huxley had it, there was already some speculation about it
Speaker 1: having some kind of minuscule forms of life in it.
Speaker 1: That was something that everybody involved was really excited about.
Speaker 1: Huxley dubbed these cocoliths, and that was a name that stuck.
Speaker 1: There was not a huge surge of research about them, though,
Speaker 1: and they seemed to drop out of the consciousness of
Speaker 1: the scientific community. But then in eighteen sixty eight Huxley
Speaker 1: revisited the mud, which had been preserved in a jar
Speaker 1: for more than a decade at that point, and at
Speaker 1: that point it appeared that there might be a living
Speaker 1: substance in the mud Huxley observed what he described as
Speaker 1: quote innumerable lumps of a transparent gelatinous substance that had
Speaker 1: not been there before. Then he examined these lumps, and
Speaker 1: he found that they contained cocoliths as well as other
Speaker 1: foreign bodies and granules. Through testing, he came to the
Speaker 1: conclusion that he described in his paper about it, which
Speaker 1: was titled on some organisms living at great depths in
Speaker 1: the North Atlantic Ocean, and he described it this way.
Speaker 1: Quote the granule heaps and the transparent gelatinous matter in
Speaker 1: which they are embedded represent masses of protoplasm. Take away
Speaker 1: the cysts which characterized the radiolaria, and a dead spherozoum
Speaker 1: would very nearly resemble one of the masses of this
Speaker 1: deep sea ersk climb, which which must I think be
Speaker 1: regarded as a new form of those simple animated beings
Speaker 1: which have recently been so well described by Heckel in
Speaker 1: his monography der Moneran. I propose to confer upon this
Speaker 1: new owner the generic name of Bathhibius, and to call
Speaker 1: it after the eminent professor of zoology in the University
Speaker 1: of Jena, B.
Speaker 2: Hakeli I.
Speaker 1: The scientist that he's talking about there, and for whom
Speaker 1: he wanted to name this was Ernst Heckel, who was
Speaker 1: very flattered by this situation. Bathhibius Heclei was entered into
Speaker 1: the zoological record that same year, and it became the
Speaker 1: source of a lot of scientific interest as researchers tried
Speaker 1: to analyze its place in the understanding of the origin
Speaker 1: of life. Additional samples were collected and similar findings were
Speaker 1: made with them until the expedition of the HMS Challenger,
Speaker 1: which began in eighteen seventy two. A chemist named Buchanan
Speaker 1: was on board the ship, and he conducted some experiments
Speaker 1: of his own on the four year voyage. He had
Speaker 1: noticed that their samples that were kept in plane seawater
Speaker 1: did not form globules like Huxley's samples had, but when
Speaker 1: he added alcohol to the seawater, it spawned a precipitate.
Speaker 1: What Huxley had found was not protoplasm spawning life. He
Speaker 1: had just misidentified a chemical reaction of calcium sulfate or
Speaker 1: gypsum combining with alcohol. Who when Huxley was informed of
Speaker 1: this information, bless him, He did not get indignant, He
Speaker 1: did not get in a big fight about it. He
Speaker 1: wrote a letter to the editor of Nature for publication
Speaker 1: in which he acknowledged his embarrassing error with very good humor,
Speaker 1: stating quote, if you have read your Shakespeare, you would
Speaker 1: know what it is to mean by eating a leak. Well,
Speaker 1: every honest man has to do that now and then.
Speaker 1: And I assure you that if eaten fairly and without grimaces,
Speaker 1: the devouring of that herb has a very wholesome cooling
Speaker 1: effect on the blood, particularly in people of sanguine temperament.
Speaker 1: He also stated, my poor dear Bthhibius appears likely to
Speaker 1: turn out to be a blunderubus. And he stated that
Speaker 1: he intended to always set the record straight at every
Speaker 1: opportunity if anyone was walking around with the misinformation that
Speaker 1: he had promoted, and he did that he'd lived that
Speaker 1: out the entirity of his life. While he was absolutely
Speaker 1: willing to admit this error, what he would not do
Speaker 1: was let other people use his gaff to try to
Speaker 1: discredit science. George Douglas Campbell, the Duke of Argyle, was
Speaker 1: particularly enthusiastic about using this mistake to claim that all
Speaker 1: of the theory of evolution was ridiculous. Huxley responded by saying, quote,
Speaker 1: the most considerable difference I note among men is not
Speaker 1: in their readiness to fall into error, but in their
Speaker 1: readiness to acknowledge these inevitable lapses. Thomas Huxley, who had
Speaker 1: gained his vast knowledge through self directed study, believed very
Speaker 1: deeply that education was for everyone, and he used his
Speaker 1: position as he became a well recognized intellectual, to give
Speaker 1: other people an opportunity for education, and in a way
Speaker 1: that actually tried to decrease the divide between intellectuals and
Speaker 1: average people. In the eighteen fifties, he started a project
Speaker 1: called the Workingman Lectures, which sought to demystify science and
Speaker 1: showed that it was for everyone. These were talks that
Speaker 1: were open to anyone who wished to attend, and they
Speaker 1: were particularly targeted to adults who, like him, did not
Speaker 1: get a formal education in their youth. And he laid
Speaker 1: out in really easy to understand terms the ideas that
Speaker 1: were being bandied about by the Royal Society, and he
Speaker 1: made clear to any attendees that science was really just
Speaker 1: a matter of observing things, questioning them, and examining evidence.
Speaker 1: His advocacy for education for all was really for all
Speaker 1: not just for men, but also for women. In eighteen seventy,
Speaker 1: he was one of the founders of the London School
Speaker 1: of Medicine for Women. This effort was in conjunction with
Speaker 1: names that have appeared on our show before, including Sofia,
Speaker 1: Jex Blake and Elizabeth Blackwell, the doctor not the botanical
Speaker 1: illustrator that we just talked about. They were also both
Speaker 1: involved in the school's founding. Additionally, he helped put together
Speaker 1: curricula for teachers to teach science so that educators in
Speaker 1: small towns and more rural areas could benefit from the
Speaker 1: same information that was readily available in the cities. At
Speaker 1: the age of sixty eight, Huxley published Evolution and Ethics,
Speaker 1: a book which sought to lay out ways that believing
Speaker 1: in the information that science could show, rather than just
Speaker 1: following religious faith, did not mean that morality was left
Speaker 1: out of the equation. Huxley made the case that ethics
Speaker 1: were a vital part of humankind's survival, and that if
Speaker 1: everyone is treated ethically, both the individual and the larger
Speaker 1: group are going to benefit and have a better outcome.
Speaker 1: Huxley is also often credited with coining the term agnostic,
Speaker 1: and he was definitely using it in his writing by
Speaker 1: the eighteen sixties. Throughout his life he often wrote about
Speaker 1: the unknowability of a supreme being and how justice with
Speaker 1: science a person should look at available evidence when assessing
Speaker 1: matters of morality. In an eighteen eighty nine essay titled
Speaker 1: Agnosticism in Christianity, he wrote, quote, the extent of the
Speaker 1: region of the uncertain, the number of the problems the
Speaker 1: investigation of which ends in a verdict of not proven,
Speaker 1: will vary according to the knowledge and the intellectual habits
Speaker 1: of the individual agnostic. I do not very much care
Speaker 1: to speak of anything as unknowable. What I am sure
Speaker 1: about is that there are many topics about which I
Speaker 1: know nothing, and which, so far as I can see,
Speaker 1: are out of reach of my faculties. He had also
Speaker 1: included a reference to a footnote after the word unknowable,
Speaker 1: which is sort of charming. He says in that footnote quote,
Speaker 1: I confess that long ago I once or twice made
Speaker 1: this mistake, even to the waste of a capital you
Speaker 1: uh and you know, said in eighteen ninety three. So
Speaker 1: basically he went from the unknowable being a capitalized thing
Speaker 1: as being you know, kind of a reference to some
Speaker 1: sort of deity to be like, it doesn't even get
Speaker 1: a capital letter for me anymore. The last dozen years
Speaker 1: of Huxley's life included a series of challenges. His daughter
Speaker 1: Marian started to have mental health issues. She's described as
Speaker 1: having gone mad, although the specifics are not very clear.
Speaker 1: This happened as Huxley was already stretched a bit thin
Speaker 1: after touring North America giving lectures about the connections between
Speaker 1: birds and dinosaurs, and he was still continuously engaged in
Speaker 1: debates about science. He was basically living with a lot
Speaker 1: of stress, and Marian's mental illness really seemed to have
Speaker 1: kind of broken him. Yeah, he lived his life in
Speaker 1: a constant online argument. Basically, everyone was always coming for
Speaker 1: him because they knew he was the mouthpiece of evolution
Speaker 1: and evolutionary science. He had been made President of the
Speaker 1: Royal Society in eighteen eighty three, but he resigned that
Speaker 1: post in eighteen eighty five as his family faced the
Speaker 1: strain of what was going on with Marion. He also
Speaker 1: stopped lecturing, and at that point the Prime Minister, in
Speaker 1: recognition of Huxley's lifetime of work, gave him a state
Speaker 1: pension of twelve hundred pounds a year. His health really
Speaker 1: began to decline by the start of the eighteen nineties.
Speaker 1: He had issues with his lungs in his heart, and
Speaker 1: he moved to the seaside in Sussex in the hopes
Speaker 1: that getting out of London would help. London was having
Speaker 1: a very bad small problem at the time. Thomas Huxley
Speaker 1: died of heart failure on June twenty ninth, eighteen ninety five.
Speaker 1: In nineteen oh seven, Huxley's widow, Henrietta, published a book
Speaker 1: of Thomas's writings that she had selected. It was titled
Speaker 1: Aphorisms and Reflections. She wrote the preface to it, and
Speaker 1: no doubt accidentally bolstered this misunderstanding about what Huxley had
Speaker 1: actually said about the origin of man. But it's a
Speaker 1: lovely tribute to him.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 1: Thomas Henry Huxley may come to be remembered by the
Speaker 1: public merely as a man who held that we were
Speaker 1: descended from the ape, or as the apostle of Darwinism,
Speaker 1: or as the man who worsted Bishop Wilberforce at Oxford
Speaker 1: to prevent such limitation and to afford more intimate and
Speaker 1: valuable reasons for the remembrance of this man of science
Speaker 1: and lover of his fellow men. I have gathered together
Speaker 1: passages on widely differing themes. Some of the passages were
Speaker 1: picked out for their philosophy, some for their moral guidances,
Speaker 1: some for their scientific exposition of natural facts, or for
Speaker 1: their insight into social questions. Others for their charms of
Speaker 1: imagination are genial humor, and many not the least for
Speaker 1: their pure beauty of lucid English writing. I hope that
Speaker 1: these selections may attract the attention of the working man
Speaker 1: who's caused my husband so ardently espoused, and to whom
Speaker 1: he was the first to reveal, by his free lectures,
Speaker 1: the loveliness of nature, the many rainbow colored rays of science,
Speaker 1: and to show forth to his listeners how all these
Speaker 1: glorious rays unite in the one, pure white light of
Speaker 1: holy truth. They were both very good writers. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I just feel like hanging out at their house listening
Speaker 1: to them speak must have been terrific.
Speaker 2: Well, and he.
Speaker 1: Thought he was so bad at it because the bees
Speaker 1: never visited. But he was a terrific writer. Just in
Speaker 1: case you were wondering, writer, Aldus Huxley was Thomas Huxley's grandson.
Speaker 1: In fact, several of his grandsons were quite impressive and
Speaker 1: continued Huxley's legacy in science. His grandson Andrew Fielding Huxley
Speaker 1: won the nineteen sixty three Nobel Prize in Physiology or
Speaker 1: Medicine alongside Alan Lloyd Hodgkin and Sir John Carew eccles
Speaker 1: quote for their discoveries concerning the ionic mechanisms involved in
Speaker 1: excitation and inhibition in the peripheral and central portions of
Speaker 1: the nerve cell membrane chip off the old Block. And
Speaker 1: his grandson, Julian Sorel Huxley, was UNESCO's first director and
Speaker 1: one of the founders of the World Wildlife Fund. So
Speaker 1: quite a family to be a part of. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: really like him, and boy do I love his writing.
Speaker 2: He's so quotable.
Speaker 1: I spent a lot of time just reading things he
Speaker 1: wrote that really had no place in the podcast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have some listener mail for us I do. This
Speaker 1: is from our listener Melanie, who writes, Hi, First of all,
Speaker 1: I love your podcast. My teenager recently asked me a
Speaker 1: history question, and when I said I didn't know the
Speaker 1: answer and we should look it up, he looked at
Speaker 1: me and said, I thought you would have heard about
Speaker 1: it in that podcast you listened to. I love to
Speaker 1: talk about the things I learn at the dinner table.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure my kids love it as much as
Speaker 1: I too, though. I am writing because recently you shared
Speaker 1: a reader's email about kids and historical clothing, so I
Speaker 1: thought it would be fun to share a few of
Speaker 1: our family holiday card pictures. Back in twenty seventeen, I
Speaker 1: decided I was bored with doing whatever everyone else was
Speaker 1: doing for their cards and opted to use my theater
Speaker 1: costuming background to be a little creative. Each year, I
Speaker 1: choose an era and make historical clothing for my entire family.
Speaker 1: I like to make the card look as close to
Speaker 1: a card or photograph might have in the time it
Speaker 1: is set, or as close to what I imagine they
Speaker 1: would do if they had the technology to do it.
Speaker 1: It has been a very fun journey. I'm sending you
Speaker 1: my three favorite which were hard to choose, as well
Speaker 1: as a picture of our frog for pet tax. We
Speaker 1: have many pets, but I haven't heard anyone sharing a
Speaker 1: frog yet. And Moss, named after Richard Ioaid's character from
Speaker 1: The It Crowd, is adorable. Moss is adorable. These pictures
Speaker 1: of her family are so stink and cute. The one
Speaker 1: that I there were two that I really really love.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're all great. One though, is like nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties where for everybody and it looks like they're essentially
Speaker 1: on the first opening day of Disneyland. It's the cutest
Speaker 1: thing you've ever seen in your life. Another is them
Speaker 1: in Victorian bathing costs, which is also near and dear
Speaker 1: to my heart. And then there's a third one where
Speaker 1: they might have been hobbits. I'm not remembering because I
Speaker 1: printed them out and I looked at them, but we
Speaker 1: have since been on flights that made my brain break
Speaker 1: and my print out came out like my printer just
Speaker 1: had a fit. But that frog sure is cute. Moss
Speaker 1: is real cute. I have not watched the It Crowd
Speaker 1: me neither, but I like that frog, and you love frogs.
Speaker 1: I just think they're precious.
Speaker 2: They are.
Speaker 1: If you would like to write to us, you can
Speaker 1: do that at History Podcast at.
Speaker 2: iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1: If you would like to look at the resources we
Speaker 1: use to make the show. As I said, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of Huxley writing it, and it is all in
Speaker 1: the show notes. You can look at that at mistinhistory
Speaker 1: dot com. You can subscribe to the show on the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, or anywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.