Huxley, Thomas Henry

HUXLEY, THOMAS HENRY. - Naturalist and philosopher, b. 4 May 1825 at Ealing, d. 29 June 1895 at Eastbourne. He did not have a regular education but early on read a great deal of Hamilton's logic and the works of Carlyle; he studied medicine. As a naturalist he first followed Owen and Oken; later, after Darwin had published On the origin of species (1859), he adhered, with reservations, to his system and did not accept Spencer's doctrine of evolution, whom he knew personally. He regarded embryology and paleontology as foundations of organic evolution, but maintained the necessity of adhering strictly to experience.

H. adheres to positivism and to agnosticism: indeed, it appears that the term agnosticism was introduced by him. Knowledge is limited to the facts of our experience; consciousness is only an epiphenomenon (v.) of physiological facts, «automate conscient». But if everything is to be interpreted by matter and by force, these are given only as objective contents of consciousness. H. does not resolve the contradiction of a consciousness that is merely an effect and of a matter that is merely a symbol. In the same way, while he would want a living faith in the order of nature, he proclaims the antagonism between the cosmic order and the moral order.

Principal works: Man's place in nature (1864); Hume (1879); Science and culture (1882); Evolution and ethics (1893).

Andrea Ferro