Thomas Henry Huxley:伝記、業績、そして不朽の遺産

Huxley was slow to accept some of Darwin's ideas, such as gradualism, and was undecided about natural selection, but despite this, he was wholehearted in his public support of Darwin. Instrumental in developing scientific education in Britain, he fought against the more extreme versions of religious tradition. Huxley coined the term "agnosticism" in 1869 and elaborated on it in 1889 to frame the nature of claims in terms of what is knowable and what is not.

Huxley had little formal schooling and was virtually self-taught. According to Edward Poulton, he became perhaps the finest comparative anatomist of the later 19th century. He worked on invertebrates, clarifying relationships between groups previously little understood. Later, he worked on vertebrates, especially on the relationship between apes and humans. After comparing Archaeopteryx with Compsognathus, he correctly concluded that birds evolved from small carnivorous dinosaurs.

Huxley's was best known for his controversial and energetic advocacy of evolution, which had significant effects on society in Britain and elsewhere. Huxley's 1893 Romanes Lecture, "Evolution and Ethics", is influential in China; the Chinese translation of Huxley's lecture transformed the Chinese translation of Darwin's On the Origin of Species.