Thomas Huxley Quotes on Nature
Thomas Henry Huxley was an English biologist, philosopher of science, and public lecturer, famous in his lifetime as Darwin's bulldog for his vigorous defense of evolutionary theory after the publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859. This page collects quotes attributed to Thomas Huxley on the topic of nature, drawn from across the philosopher's works.
Quotes
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“On the Educational Value of the Natural History Sciences" (1854)”
I cannot but think that he who finds a certain proportion of pain and evil inseparably woven up in the life of the very worms, will bear his own share with more courage and submission ; and will, at any rate, view with suspicion those weakly amiable theories of the Divine government, which would have us believe pain to be an oversight and a mistake, — to be corrected by and by. On the other hand, -
“To a person uninstructed in natural history, his country or sea-side stroll is a walk through a gallery filled with wonderful works of art, nine-tenths of which have their faces turned to the wall.”
On the Educational Value of the Natural History Sciences" (1854) p. 29 -
“On the Educational Value of the Natural History Sciences" (1854) p. 29”
To a person uninstructed in natural history, his country or sea-side stroll is a walk through a gallery filled with wonderful works of art, nine-tenths of which have their faces turned to the wall. -
“If the question is put to me would I rather have a miserable ape for a grandfather or a man highly endowed by nature and possessed of great means of influence and yet who employs these faculties and that influence for the mere purpose of introducing ridicule into a grave scientific discussion, I unhesitatingly affirm my preference for the ape. Response, as quoted in Harvest of a Quiet Eye (1977) by Alan L. Mackay.”
A man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there was an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would rather be a man — a man of restless and versatile intellect — who not content with an equivocal success in his own sphere of activity, plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them with aimless rhetoric, and