scholarly journals La labor paleontológica de Thomas Huxley

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-60
Author(s):  
Luis Eduardo García-Peralta ◽  
Carlos Pérez-Malváez ◽  
Guadalupe Bribiesca-Escutia
Keyword(s):  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Thomas Henry Huxley ◽  
Thomas Huxley

Si toda la vida en la Tierra comparte un ancestro común, con la evolución como mecanismo diversificando gradualmente a través del tiempo, entonces, el registro fósil debería proporcionar formas graduadas intermedias. Sin embargo, para 1859 (año de la publicación de El origen de las especies), éstas aún no habían sido descubiertas. Para Charles Darwin (1809-1882), esto representaba una seria objeción a su teoría evolutiva e intentó explicar esta evidencia negativa a través de la imperfección del registro fósil. Por lo tanto, la paleontología era la clave que podía presentar evidencia a favor de la evolución. Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895), hallaría formas de transición que unirían grandes grupos animales sin relación aparente, por ejemplo, las aves con los reptiles a través de los dinosaurios. El objetivo del presente trabajo fue llevar a cabo una investigación sobre la obra paleontológica de Thomas Huxley, haciendo un especial énfasis en su apoyo a las ideas evolutivas de Darwin. Se llegó a la conclusión de que su labor paleontológica demostró que los hechos de la paleontología, en lo que concierne a las aves y a los reptiles, no se oponen a la doctrina de la evolución, sino que, al contrario, eran muy parecidos a los que la doctrina nos llevaría a esperar.

scholarly journals La labor paleontológica de Thomas Huxley

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-60
Author(s):  
Luis Eduardo García-Peralta ◽  
Carlos Pérez-Malváez ◽  
Guadalupe Bribiesca-Escutia
Keyword(s):  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Thomas Henry Huxley ◽  
Thomas Huxley

Si toda la vida en la Tierra comparte un ancestro común, con la evolución como mecanismo diversificando gradualmente a través del tiempo, entonces, el registro fósil debería proporcionar formas graduadas intermedias. Sin embargo, para 1859 (año de la publicación de El origen de las especies), éstas aún no habían sido descubiertas. Para Charles Darwin (1809-1882), esto representaba una seria objeción a su teoría evolutiva e intentó explicar esta evidencia negativa a través de la imperfección del registro fósil. Por lo tanto, la paleontología era la clave que podía presentar evidencia a favor de la evolución. Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895), hallaría formas de transición que unirían grandes grupos animales sin relación aparente, por ejemplo, las aves con los reptiles a través de los dinosaurios. El objetivo del presente trabajo fue llevar a cabo una investigación sobre la obra paleontológica de Thomas Huxley, haciendo un especial énfasis en su apoyo a las ideas evolutivas de Darwin. Se llegó a la conclusión de que su labor paleontológica demostró que los hechos de la paleontología, en lo que concierne a las aves y a los reptiles, no se oponen a la doctrina de la evolución, sino que, al contrario, eran muy parecidos a los que la doctrina nos llevaría a esperar.

Islands of Discovery: Scientific Curiosity in the Works of Darwin, Huxley and Wells

Dark Paradise ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Fuller
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Pacific Islands ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Thomas Henry Huxley ◽  
Scientific Curiosity ◽  
Unknown Species ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Theories Of Evolution ◽  
Descent Of Man

Intrigued by the descriptions of hitherto unknown species, Victorian naturalists embarked on Pacific journeys to study new flora and fauna. The third chapter follows a young Charles Darwin and Thomas Henry Huxley as they develop theories that would challenge the assumed boundaries between “civilized” and “savage” man. Their often overlooked travel narratives, The Voyage of the Beagleand The Voyage of the Rattlesnake respectively, displayed not only emerging theories of evolution and natural selection, but also early biological and anthropological observations that questioned whether Pacific islanders were truly so different from British ones. These radical new ideas, spurred on by later works such as Origin of the Species and The Descent of Man, influenced novelists to use the Pacific islands as a testing ground for new theories of regressive evolution. Capitalizing on the emerging genre of “science fiction,” H.G. Wells imagined the Pacific in The Island of Doctor Moreau not as an idyllic paradise but as a horrific nightmare that reduced all islanders, British and native, to their most bestial forms displaying distinctly Pacific resonances and the changing British perspectives on the islands.

Darwinism

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Ruse
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
General Term ◽  
Evolutionary Change ◽  
Social Darwinism ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
Mendelian Genetics ◽  
Thomas Henry Huxley ◽  
Foundational Work

The modern usage of the term Darwinism dates from the publication of On the Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin, in which he argued for evolution through natural selection. Very soon after the appearance of the Origin (in 1859), Darwin’s great supporter Thomas Henry Huxley introduced the term Darwinism. The term—together with the related terms Darwinian and Darwinist—took root. The codiscoverer of natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace, used the term as the title of a book expounding evolution: Darwinism: An Exposition of the Theory of Natural Selection, with Some of Its Applications. Note that there seems to be a fuzziness about the term. Some identify Darwinism with evolution through natural selection. Others suggest that the essence of Darwinism is not selection per se but change or variation. Late in the 19th century, George Romanes coined the term neo-Darwinism to cover those for whom natural selection is basically the only significant cause of change. In 1930 Ronald A. Fisher, in his Genetical Theory of Natural Selection, argued that the newly developed theory of Mendelian genetics offered the required foundation for a perspective that made natural selection the central force of evolutionary change. Although the British were happy to call the Darwin-Mendel synthesis neo-Darwinism, in America the synthesis was known as the synthetic theory of evolution. This reflects that in the New World it was Sewall Wright who did the foundational work in bringing Mendelian genetics into the evolutionary picture and that he never thought of natural selection as being the force that Fisher took it to be. For Wright and his followers, especially Theodosius Dobzhansky, genetic drift was always a major component of the evolutionary picture, and as Fisher pointed out nonstop, this is about as non-Darwinian a notion as it is possible to have. By 1959 professional evolutionists (on both sides of the Atlantic) agreed that Darwin had been right about natural selection: it is the major cause of evolutionary change. Neo-Darwinism fell into disuse, as everyone now used the term Darwinism for evolution through natural selection. Mention should also be made of so-called social Darwinism, the application of Darwinism to persons and groups within society. The earliest use apparently was during Darwin’s own lifetime, by a historian discussing land tenure in Ireland. However, it was not a popular or general term, coming into widespread use only in the 1940s, with the publication of the American historian Richard Hofstadter’s book Social Darwinism in American Thought.

Essay reviews: Cataloguing for Empire

1994 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 309-311
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Comparative Anatomy ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Natural History Museum ◽  
Fossil Species ◽  
History Museum ◽  
Thomas Henry Huxley ◽  
Richard Owen ◽  
The Many

Richard Owen, The Hunterian Lectures in Comparative Anatomy. May and June 1837 . Edited with an Introduction by Phillip Reid Sloan. Natural History Museum Publications, 1992. Pp. xii + 340, £37.50 hardback, £15.95 paper. ISBN 0-565-011065, 0-565-011448 Jacob W. Gruber and John C. Thackray, Richard Owen Commemoration: Three Studies . Historical Studies in the Life and Earth Sciences No. 1. Natural History Museum Publications, 1992. Pp. x + 181, £29.95. ISBN 0-565-01109 Over the last 10 to 15 years it has become increasingly clear that an astonishing proportion of Victorian natural history and comparative anatomy revolved around the enigmatic figure of Richard Owen - so much so that when the centenary of his death came around in 1992, the commemorations willingly spread themselves over several days and a great diversity of scientific themes. Owen’s life and work thoroughly embraced the industrious spirit of the nineteenth century. In his time he was renowned as Britain’s most gifted anatomist, as a public lecturer, a palaeontologist, taxonomist and philosopher on natural history topics, and, in another more concrete sense, as the man who brought the Natural History Museum in South Kensington into existence. He catalogued John Hunter’s collection while curator at the Royal College of Surgeons, dissected rare animals from the zoo, invented dinosaurs, classified a succession of gigantic fossil species from the outposts of empire, wrote memoirs on the pearly Nautilus, Australian marsupials, the Archaeopteryx , the aborigines of the Andaman Islands, the gorilla and the dodo, took an active role in London’s scientific society, received a shower of medals, including the Royal Medal in 1846 and the Copley in 1851, went to the opera, played chess with Edwin Landseer, visited the Queen at Osborne, and ended up with a knighthood and an attractive grace-and-favour residence in Richmond, known as Sheen Lodge. Yet in spite of being such a man of parts, Owen was not liked. Thomas Henry Huxley hated him and never ignored an opportunity to fight. Charles Darwin lost his temper over a review of the Origin of Species and never talked to him again. Antonio Panizzi did his best to prevent him splitting up the British Museum’s collections. It is one of the many achievements of these two books, published to coincide with the centenary, that Owen’s pugnacious, self-aggrandizing character and famous slipperiness under pressure emerge, not quite sanitized, but as the kind of ambitious qualities that were needed to get things done.

Was Darwin a Social Darwinist?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas Allchin
Keyword(s):  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Social Competition ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
Evolution Of Morality ◽  
Thomas Henry Huxley ◽  
The Status ◽  
Evolutionary Context ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Origins ◽  
Unacceptable Consequence

Are humans inherently selfish brutes? Skeptics and critics of evolution routinely denounce the ghastly specter of society “red in tooth and claw” as an unacceptable consequence of Darwin’s concept of natural selection. They equate Darwinism with so-called Social Darwinism, a belief in ruthless social competition and unmitigated individualism. Many evolutionists, too—even staunch defenders of Darwinism, from Thomas Henry Huxley to Michael Ruse—seem to concur that the natural history of humans leaves an ethical void. Darwin himself, by contrast, had a well-developed interpretation of the evolution of morality. Others since have deepened our biological understanding of human and cultural origins. Perhaps, then, we are ready to challenge this entrenched assumption, this sacred bovine: that belief in evolution entails forsaking any foundation for morality. Many scientists disavow any role for biology in addressing ethics. They retreat behind the shield of the fact/value distinction or invoke the threat of the fallacy of deriving values from nature. Yet morality is an observable behavior, a biological phenomenon. We might well document it in other species. For example, empathy has recently been observed in both mice and, ironically perhaps, rats. The rats will even forgo chocolate to help a cage mate escape restraint. Morality deserves a biological explanation, especially for those who wonder about the status of humans in an evolutionary context. There are important limits, of course. One does well to heed philosophers who warn that we cannot justifiably derive particular values or moral principles from mere description. Many have tried, and all have failed. “Oughts” do not arise from “ises.” Values and facts really do have different foundations. Yet why or how we can express values at all, have moral impulses, and engage in ethical arguments are all psychological or sociological realities, susceptible to analysis and interpretation. Indeed, an understanding of human evolution may well be incomplete without addressing these very important human traits. One may begin, of course, as one often does with evolutionary topics, by returning to the source: Charles Darwin. How did Darwin regard culture?

Lu Hsun's “Call to Arms”

Worldview ◽  
1982 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 8-9
Author(s):  
Robert M. Bartlett
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Naval Academy ◽  
Western Literature ◽  
Classical Education ◽  
Thomas Huxley ◽  
Contemporary Writers ◽  
Lu Hsun

When Party Chairman Hu Yao-bang chose the centennial of China's famous author Lu Hsun (1881-1936) to launch a condemnation of the “bourgeois liberalism” among China's contemporary writers, he acted within an established tradition of the Communist party to claim Lu Hsun as its own. In 1939, three years after Lu Hsun's death, Mao Tse-tung issued a statement praising “Lu Hsun the Communist, the giant of China's cultural Revolution,” ignoring the fact that the writer never joined the Party and never accepted the precepts of Marx and Lenin.Born Chou Shu-jen, Lu Hsun received a classical education, revealing an early affinity for books and art. He entered the Kiangnan Naval Academy and shortly thereafter transferred to the Army Academy, both in Nanking. Here he was introduced to translations of Western literature, notably the works of Charles Darwin and Thomas Huxley.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document