In February 1850 he was accordingly placed on half-pay; nor did he ever serve again, although advanced in due course by seniority to the ranks of rearand vice-admiral on the retired list (1857, 1863). In 1851 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society,

"If I did not think you a good tempered and truth-loving man I should not tell you that ... I have read your book with more pain than pleasure. Parts of it I admired greatly; parts I laughed at till my sides were almost sore; other parts I read with absolute sorrow; because I think them utterly false and grievously mischievous. You have deserted - after a start in that tram-road of all solid physical truth - the true method of induction ..."

Within ten years of the publication of the Origin, Huxley was hailing Darwin as a high priest. In a lightning sketch on the back of a letter, he once depicted Darwin as a new Pope, archbishop of the `church scientific,’ being venerated by a visiting
naturalist. At the same time many radicals saw Darwin as the antithesis of religion. A New York cartoon portrayed him as the `sun of the nineteenth century’ beaming on a benighted humanity, banishing clouds of bishops, Bibles and priestly hobgoblins.

.. if at all possible, imagine yourself as a black teenager in a science class in high school, today, learning Darwin's theory of evolution. To complicate that, imagine being a science major in college and studying Darwin's theory of evolution and hearing your college professor laud Darwin's genius and go through the motions of making his writings appear as valid science, making it appear that the scientific community as a whole also validates that science.

Well aside from the fact that blacks and people of color, the lower classes of any color, even the jews in another morbid extension of the same idea, have had to suffer and fight, and suffer and fight still, against an enormous amount of cruel stereoptyping which Darwin's theories supplanted in the minds of people everywhere the ideas flourished as authentic science, I guess there is no reason.

Why do you ask?

Frederick Douglass was actually quite popular. Until Darwin's theories and explanations for the differences between peoples began to be offically taught in the schools, many whites probably would have never conceived such horrid racist ideas themselves, much less expressed them publicly.

Serious question for Linear or Linda...

.. if at all possible, imagine yourself as a black teenager in a science class in high school, today, learning Darwin's theory of evolution. To complicate that, imagine being a science major in college and studying Darwin's theory of evolution and hearing your college professor laud Darwin's genius and go through the motions of making his writings appear as valid science, making it appear that the scientific community as a whole also validates that science.

Then imagine going home with the Darwin's Descent of Man tucked neatly under your arm, settling down at your desk and reading about the intellectual inferiority of blacks, their savage behavior and infantile demeanors and less than doglike capacity to solve problems.

Do you think it would be very uplifting and inspiring? Or would you rather feel more like burning down the schoolhouse and hurting some white people?

In chains these people were beaten and abused for generations. And now you use your 'science' to keep them chained and strip them of their dignity in the public schools and you expect approval for your veiled efforts of racial hatred.

Raise your own child with books and ideas that tell her she is as dumb as a dog and see what kind of product you get. Tell yourself and all the neighbors she is as dumb as a dog, maybe that will help you and the rest of the world treat her better too.

The well's proven dry, but I'm not ready to give up just yet. I don't think the Royal Navy had quite enough boats to provide cushy jobs for all young men. It still looks to me like the young evolutionists got more than their share.

I have to admit, sessions like this last one are what make history seem boring.

Like continuing to teach Darwin's theory of evolution even though much of the science is invalid and the personal views egregious, as you and Linda have both pointed out.

Linear, in regard to your comments, sometimes people do things not because they feel ever so innately deeply that it is the right thing to do, but because the world around them tells them it is the right thing to do, because Mama tells them it is so, because Grandpa tells them it is so, and/or because they learn it in school and emulate the behaviors of those around them (and of course, to make money, acquire wealth), simply to fit in.

... Like continuing to teach Darwin's theory of evolution even though much of the science is invalid and the personal views egregious, as you and Linda have both pointed out.

The answer to every question you asked otherwise has already been given in previous posts either by myself or CTD.

I don't quite comprehend the connection you are trying to make to the Royal Navy. It was simply the thing to do for lots of people, go to school at the Royal Navy. Feather in the cap sort of thing like going to to West Point or something... gives people officer status. Being subjects of the crown it also showed their loyalty and desire to serve.

There's a pretty good piece about Huxley here:

The Huxley File - A Sort of Firm
http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/guide3.html

Linear, in regard to your comments, sometimes people do things not because they feel ever so innately deeply that it is the right thing to do, but because the world around them tells them it is the right thing to do, because Mama tells them it is so, because Grandpa tells them it is so, and/or because they learn it in school and emulate the behaviors of those around them (and of course, to make money, acquire wealth), simply to fit in.

There's a brief page on contemporary authors of the 19th century within a piece about Jack London, here, that is worth a read as well:
http://london.sonoma.edu/Essays/philosophy.html

As that page points out, Herbert Spencer drew upon Darwin's work as social Darwinism.

Science reckons many prophets, but there is not even a promise of a Messiah

Within ten years of the publication of the Origin, Huxley was hailing Darwin as a high priest. In a lightning sketch on the back of a letter, he once depicted Darwin as a new Pope, archbishop of the `church scientific,’ being venerated by a visiting naturalist. At the same time many radicals saw Darwin as the antithesis of religion.

T.H.Huxley was quite the double-talker. Even S.J.Gould says so (I may hunt for the quote later).

1. Evidence that the science actually is invalid.

2. That the personal views of the founder(s) and early proponents of the theory have any bearing on the truth or falseness of the theory.

Martin Luther, the founder of Protestant Christianity was a very vocal anti-Semite. He even wrote an entire pamphlet entitled The Jews and Their Lies. A great many early protestants were anti-Semitic....purges and pogroms were quite common.

I looked back and saw no answers to my questions about how many white slaves were there in the US prior to Darwin's work, if scientists are more racist than regular folk, or if Europeans were more racist than US folk. Of course I would expect some support for any answers that were provided. Maybe you could point out where those questions were answered, or just cut and paste them in your response to me. It would be a great help.

Malthus has discussed these several checks, but he does not lay stress enough on what is probably the most important of all, namely infanticide, especially of female infants and the habit of procuring abortion. These practices now prevail in many quarters of the world; and infanticide seems formerly to have prevailed, as Mr. M'Lennan* has shewn on a still more extensive scale. These practices appear to have originated in savages recognising the difficulty, or rather the impossibility of supporting all the infants that are born.

Lamarckism is touched on also.

Notice that Darwin refers to people practising infanticide as "savages." I don't see any evidence here that he is saying it is a practice that should be adopted by the "civilised."

Explain please?

Much of what became common when evolutionism was accepted can be found inCh.2, Descent of Man
For example,
In this single chapter, Darwin explains the benefits of infanticide/abortion eugenics/racism, and at least some forms of Social Darwinism. Not the most pleasant reading - I didn't yet do a thorough job myself.

Ironically, we now live in a much more primitive culture than he did. Ironically, but not surprisingly.

and before we leave the subject of abortion too quickly, heres a diddy for you...

Margaret sanger, biggest voice in pro-abortion, founded planned parenthood etc (we'll have to get some of her very very racist writings and comments up here, many many, sterilization of black women etc) but anyway, she is thrust headlong into her quest for birth control and abortion, mostly for poor women and black women, the idea being that 'better' women should more and not so good women should breed less,,, and she has 3 children herself at that point and guess what? Her only daughter dies at age 5 or 6.

Such irony.

And this says something about evolution?

And remember, racism started in 1859 with the Theory of Evolution. Before that everyone loved each other. The American Indians lived in peace and harmony with the white men and gladly welcomed them on to the western prairie. The negros picked cotton happily in exchange for the room and board on the white man's plantation, cheerfully marrying the spouses that the owner of the land advised them to marry.

Also, infanticide began the same year. Before that no one ever killed a baby.

The idea of racial purity also began then. There was never any thought of prohibiting someone from marrying outside their own group before 1859. etc etc etc

It has occurred to me, we are devolving, not evolving. I guess it's the tendency of people who teach the theory of evolution to exclaim about how much more intelligent we are than our ancesotors but I have failed time and again to find proof of it.

Concerning abortion directly, it kind of makes you wonder how many brilliant minds we have thrown into the trash can, before they could even speak. And we convince ourselves somehow it's right. Without the theory of evolution, social darwinism, being drilled into the heads of generations of kids it never would have been possible that is a fact.

Several years ago I read an article in National Geographic that compared the behaviors of what is believed to be one of the most violent primitive people still left on earth (somewhere down in SA, cannibals even if i remember correctly) to our own culture. And essentially, in comparison, our culture is actually more violent was the conclusion.

"Civilization" generally translates quite well as "arrogance". Just look at the Romans.

The title Descent of Man was more accurate than intended. If Darwin only knew, I'm sure he'd have changed it to Ascent of Man.

Evolution of methods of subjection perhaps and evolution of how to rationalize it in the minds of those who cater to various methods of the acquisition of enormous wealth is all I see. He fails to mention the various methods used to keep subjected peoples in their lowly places, the stripping away of basic human rights and needs etc so really, often exactly the reverse can be shown to be true in regard to evolution of intellectual powers, how a dignified person can be made to behave like an animal...

That people used to believe in a Flat Earth. While during some periods in history, certain groups have advocated theories of a flat earth, the knowledge that the Earth is likely a sphere of some sort dates back at least to Aristotle. According to historian Jeffrey Burton Russell, this myth has been used to encourage the dichotomy of science and religion.

Wiki's 'Scientific Mythology' page lists some of the antihistorical propaganda which has been produced. Skull & Bones member Andrew Dickson White and others wrote distortions, and attempted to portray "religion vs. science" as an long, ongoing war. The idea is now called 'conflict thesis'.

Allow me to assist in fleshing this out a bit. I've found some interesting information. I'll present it here one step at a time.

1.) When properly understood, evolution refutes racism. Before Darwin, people used typological thinking (the concept that organisms of a species conform to a specific norm; in this view variation is considered abnormal) for living things, considering different plants and animals to be their distinct "kinds." This gave rise to a misleading conception of human races, in which different races are thought of as separate and distinct. Darwinism helped eliminate typological thinking and with it the basis for racism.

2.) Genetic studies show that humans are remarkably homogeneous genetically, so all humans are only one biological race. Evolution does not teach racism; it teaches the very opposite. We're all brothers and sisters, dude.

3.) Racism is thousands of years older than the theory of evolution, and its prevalence has decreased since Darwin's day; certainly slavery is much less common and acceptable now. That is the opposite of what we would expect if evolution promotes racism.

4.) Darwin himself was far less racist than most of his contemporaries.

a.) Virtually all Englishmen in Darwin's time viewed blacks as culturally and intellectually inferior to Europeans. Some men of that time (such as Louis Agassiz, a staunch creationist apparently) went so far as to say they were a different species. Charles Darwin was a product of his times and no doubt viewed non-Europeans as inferior in ways, but he was far more liberal than most: He vehemently opposed slavery, and he contributed to missionary work to better the condition of the native Tierra del Fuegans. He treated people of all races with compassion.

b.) The views of Darwin, or of any person, are irrelevant to the fact of evolution. Evolution is based on evidence, not on people's opinions.

5.) Racism historically has been closely associated with creationism, as is evident in the following examples:

-- George McCready Price, who apparently is to young-earth creationism what Darwin is to evolution, was much more racist than Darwin. He wrote,

The poor little fellow who went to the south
Got lost in the forests dank;
His skin grew black, as the fierce sun beat
And scorched his hair with its tropic heat,
And his mind became a blank.

In The Phantom of Organic Evolution, he referred to Negroes and Mongolians as "degenerate humans."

-- During much of the long history of apartheid in South Africa, evolution was not allowed to be taught. The Christian National Education system, formalized in 1948 and accepted as national policy from 1967 to 1993, stated, among other things, that white children should 'receive a separate education from black children to prepare them for their respective superior and inferior positions in South African social and economic life, and all education should be based on Christian National principles'.

The policy excluded the concept of evolution, taught a version of history that negatively characterized non-whites, and made Bible education, including the teaching of creationism, and religious assemblies compulsory. Strange what you find when you hunt around a bit.

The Bible Belt in the southern United States fought hardest to maintain slavery.

Henry Morris, of the Institute for Creation Research, has in the past read racism into his interpretation of the Bible:

"Sometimes the Hamites, especially the Negroes, have even become actual slaves to the others. Possessed of a genetic character concerned mainly with mundane, practical matters, they have often eventually been displaced by the intellectual and philosophical acumen of the Japhethites and the religious zeal of the Semites" (Morris 1976, 241).

Do you think it's accurate for someone to claim that Chrstianity is inherently racist because of the beliefs and practices of these people and others?

6.) As I've said repeatedly, none of this matters to the science of evolution.

Although creationism is not inherently racist, it is based upon and inseparable from religious bigotry, and religious bigotry is no less hateful and harmful than racism.

A little more research might have revealed the rebuttal found at http://creationwiki.org/index.php/Evolution_is_racist.

When the 23 year-old Albert Einstein started a study group, the Olympia Academy, with his two younger friends, Maurice Solovine and Conrad Habicht, he suggested that the first book to be read was Pearson's The Grammar of Science. This book covered several themes that were later to become part of the theories of Einstein and other scientists. Pearson asserted that the laws of nature are relative to the perceptive ability of the observer. Irreversibility of natural processes, he claimed, is a purely relative conception. An observer who travels at the exact velocity of light would see an eternal now, or an absence of motion. He speculated that an observer who traveled faster than light would see time reversal, similar to a cinema film being run backwards. Pearson also discussed antimatter, the fourth dimension, and wrinkles in time.

Oh? Have you asked them? And just how much more evidence is required?

But just for laughs, here's some.

1. The lyrics are pro-science;
2. The scientific references in the text are far too numerous and knowledgable for creationists;
3. IDers would not use the word “creationism”. I think this is the killer arument;
4. The expelled logo is not the real logo of the movie (ducking copyright?);
5. The machine in the intro is a metaphor for science;
6. It makes the scientists look cool. Surely if this was a viral marketing campaign run by a PR firm they would not make that mistake. They are not that stupid…

And finally an ad hominem to please this crowd: Creationists simply can’t make something this awesome.

Thanks for the laugh CTD! Absolutely brilliant parody!!!! I read some of the comments from the evolutionists, but not all. That gave me a bit of a laugh, but at the sametime, a little hard to stomach <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> once more they're analysing and misinterpreting the obvious.

I've had to watch this youtube more than once it was so catchy and funny. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

By the way, did you catch the cartoon guy at 3.00 with the smoke and the head band "I love KKK" <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

6. It makes the scientists look cool. Surely if this was a viral marketing campaign run by a PR firm they would not make that mistake. They are not that stupid…

Yes indeed very funny.

The whole bit including the blogs.

This says it all:



oh yes, very cool. hoy. I will say no more but not for lack of trying. There simply is no more to say.

XXX on the hat Bex, for sure. Looks like a jug of moonshine or else a cherry bomb that it's pasted on.

It is thus by a vague hypothesis, entirely unsupported by facts, that our author meets a
difficulty which appears to us, as it has appeared to many others, to be of the gravest
magnitude.... [Darwin’s approach is] to found a theory, not on our knowledge, but on our
ignorance. Nor is this the only instance in which he seems to have adopted similar reasoning....
We confess ourselves to have been somewhat astonished at this bold manner of disposing of
difficulties....We had imagined, too, that the facts reasoned upon ought to be real, and not
hypothetical....We confess that the adoption of such conclusions, unsupported by any positive
and independent evidence, merely on the demand of an unproved theory, appears to us little
consistent with the sobriety and dignity of philosophical investigation.

We are asked to believe all these “maybes” happening on an enormous scale, in order that
we may believe the final Darwinian “maybe” as to the origin of species. The general form of his
argument is as follows:—all these things may have been, therefore my theory is possible, and
since my theory is a possible one, all those hypotheses which it requires are rendered probable.
There is little direct evidence that any of these maybes actually have been. Many of these
assumed possibilities are actually impossibilities,…

An anti-evolutionist approach is taken by many non-creationist scientists. Olson reports that there are "some among the biologists who feel that much of the [macroevolutionary] theory accepted by the majority today is actually false.

Well apparently neither you nor Linda have yet been able to figure out that this thread is not a debate about whether evolution is true or false so maybe you should answer your own question yourself, somehow, about your mental capabilities.

Tyndall visited the Alps for purposes of recreation in 1849 and began to go there yearly for the purpose of studying the glacier formation. This resulted in 1856 in an expedition with Huxley and produced a joint treatise 'On the Structure and Motion of Glaciers'. For the next four years glaciers became the major focus of Tyndall's scientific interest. In the process he became an accomplished mountaineer and in 1860 he made the first ascent of the Weisshorn. He also published 'Glaciers of the Alps' in this year.

In 1876 Tyndall married Louisa, daughter of Lord Claud Hamilton. He built in 1877 a cottage on Bel Alp above the Rhone valley, and in 1885 a house on Hindhead, near Haslemere in Surrey. At the latter place he spent most of his later years; his health was, however, no longer as vigorous as his brain, and he suffered frequently from sleeplessness.

The problem of the flow of glaciers occupied his attention for years, and his views brought him into acute conflict with others, particularly James David Forbes and James Thomson. Every-one knew that glaciers moved, but the questions were: how they moved, for what reason and by what mechanism.

The strength of the doctrine of evolution consists, not in an experimental demonstration (for the subject is hardly accessible to this mode of proof), but in its general harmony with scientific thought.

The greatest obstacles in the way of investigating the laws of the distribution of organized beings over the surface of our globe, are to be traced to the views generally entertained about their origin. There is a prevailing opinion, which ascribes to all living beings upon earth one common centre of origin, from which it is supposed they, in the course of time, spread over wider and wider areas, till they finally came into their present state of distribution. And what gives this view a higher recommendation in the opinion of most men is the circumstance, that such a method of distribution is considered as revealed in our sacred writings. We hope, however, to be able to show that there is no such statement in the book of Genesis; that this doctrine of a unique centre of origin and successive distribution of all animals is of very modern invention, and that it can be traced back for scarcely more than a century in the records of our science.

THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE GLACIAL THEORY.

Fxrrv years have now elapsed since the glacial theory was first formulated
and piomulgated. This brilliant scientific conception is commonly supposed to
have originated with the Swiss savant, Louis A~assiz; but Dr. Otto Volger, in a
recent paper published in the Ailgemeine Zeitung, of Munich (February 17th and
18th), affirms and clearly proves that Agassiz borrowed this idea from Karl
Schimper, and that he was not only fully conscious of this indebtedness, but also
most carefully concealed it. In the interests of truth and justice, and as a matter
of scientific history, it certainly seems desirable that the facts in the case should
be presented to the English-reading public.

wiki says:
The financial and scientific advantages presented to him in the United States induced him to settle there, where he remained to the end of his life. He was appointed professor of zoology and geology at Harvard University in 1847 where he founded the Museum of Comparative Zoology in 1859 and served as the museum's first director until his death in 1873. During his tenure at Harvard, he was, among many other things, an early student of the effect of the last Ice Age on North America.

One of Mr. Murray's assistants poured a large quantity of spirits of wine into a bottle containing some pure sea-water, when lo! the wonderful protoplasm Bathybius appeared. It was the chemical precipitate of sulphate of lime produced by the mixture of alcohol and sea-water. This was bathos indeed.

The Lamarck presented in schoolbooks, however, is a fiction -- an imaginary figure who has been fashioned from hearsay and wrong guesses, and who has been replicated in countless books by successive teams of plagiarists. This figure shares very little, except his name, with the Lamarck of history. Textbook-writers have imbued the fictitious Lamarck with an importance that the real Lamarck never had, and they have credited him with ideas that the real Lamarck did not hold. They also have invented a myth in which those ideas are compared falsely with Darwin's ideas, to produce a bogus dichotomy.

... But for several reasons I wd. urge you not to publish it for some months, at the soonest, & then consider whether you think it new & important enough to counterbalance the evils; remembering the cart-loads which have been published on the subject.— The evils are giving pain to others, & injuring your own power & usefulness. Last night Dicey & Litchfield were talking about J. Stuart Mill, never expressing his religious convictions, as he was urged never to do by his Father.f2f3 Both agreed strongly that if he had done so he wd. never have influenced the present age in the manner in which he has done. His books wd. not have been text-books at Oxford.— To take a weaker instance Lyell is most firmly convinced that he has shaken the faith in the Deluge &c far more efficiently by never having said a word against the Bible, than if he had acted otherwise.— ...

... But my advice is to pause, pause, pause.—

Your affectionate Father | Ch Darwin

P.S. Oct 22d. Hen. has taken your M.S. to London, & will write.— I have lately read Morley's Life of Voltaire & he insists strongly that direct attacks on Christianity (even when written with the wonderful force & vigour of Voltaire) produce little permanent effect: real good seems only to follow from slow & silent side attacks.— I have been talking on this head with Litchfield, & he strongly concurs, & insists how easily a man may for ever destroy his own influence.

I repeat that your essay seems to me clever & interesting, but I urge you to pause long, & if you do, I do not think that you will publish it.

Remember that every author worth a fig writes far more than he ever publishes. On the whole after deliberating to the best of my power I advise you not to publish; but in such cases every man must judge for himself.

C.D.

In ordinary speech a system of any sort is said to be stable when it cannot be upset easily, but the meaning attached to the word is usually somewhat vague. It is hardly surprising that this should be the case, when it is only within the last thirty years, and principally through the investigations of M. Poincare, that the conception of stability has, even for physicists, assumed a definiteness and clearness in which it was previously lacking. The laws which govern stability hold good in regions of the greatest diversity; they apply to the motion of planets round the sun, to the internal arrangement of those minute corpuscles of which each chemical atom is constructed, and to the forms of celestial bodies. In the present essay I shall attempt to consider the laws of stability as relating to the last case, and shall discuss the succession of shapes which may be assumed by celestial bodies in the course of their evolution.

I believe further that homologous conceptions are applicable in the consideration of the transmutations of the various forms of animal and of vegetable life and in other regions of thought. Even if some of my readers should think that what I shall say on this head is fanciful, yet at least the exposition will serve to illustrate the meaning to be attached to the laws of stability in the physical universe.

When he came to review Origin of Species in 1859, Huxley identified this same method of forming sound beliefs as characteristic of Darwin: "so outspoken [is] his conviction, so honest and fair the candid expression of his doubts." Huxley urged that Darwin's readers adopt the same frame of mind: a state of "doubt which so loves truth that it neither dares rest in doubting, nor extinguish itself by unjustified belief."

In support of his claim, Huxley referred to the many passages in Origin in which Darwin raised objections to his own theory, or discussed the limits of scientific knowledge on particular questions. One can indeed find numerous examples of this in Darwin's publications: his devotion of a whole chapter in Origin to the difficulties of the theory of descent; his mode of assembling evidence favourable and unfavourable, circling around a position from all sides for dozens of pages, as in his writing on hybrid sterility in Variation in animals and plants under domestication (1868); or on the origin of human races in Descent of man (1871).
Photograph of Alfred Russel Wallace

Magnifying glass icon. Alfred Russel Wallace

Some leading Darwinians found this approach frustrating. Alfred Russel Wallace repeatedly urged Darwin to place more emphasis on the facts favourable to natural selection, and worried that Darwin gave leverage to his critics by calling attention to the difficulties of his theory. Indeed, Huxley's own style of debate, often aggressive and confrontational, hardly followed the Darwin role model.

What Darwin did was to make it current intellectual coin. He gave it a form that commended itself to the scientific and public intelligence of the day, and he won wide-spread conviction by showing with consummate skill that it was an effective formula to work with, a key which no lock refused. In a scholarly, critical, and pre-eminently fair-minded way, admitting difficulties and removing them, foreseeing objections and forestalling them, he showed that the doctrine of descent supplied a modal interpretation of how our present-day fauna and flora have come to be.

as I was asked by Laura Huxley, shortly before her death last December, to create and direct the Thomas Henry and Aldous Huxley Foundation. (I was also honored to become a member of the nine member X Club, where I’m expected to be some kind of cross between Hooker, Galton, and Spencer; as botanist, statistician, and positivist, respectively). I am having difficulty figuring out when people at Wikipedia are joking.