Sir Julian Sorell Huxley (22 June 1887 – 14
February 1975) was a British evolutionary
biologist, eugenicist, and internationalist.
He was a proponent of natural selection, and
a leading figure in the mid-twentieth century
modern synthesis. He was secretary of the
Zoological Society of London (1935–1942),
the first Director of UNESCO, a founding member
of the World Wildlife Fund and the first President
of the British Humanist Association.
Huxley was well known for his presentation
of science in books and articles, and on radio
and television. He directed an Oscar-winning
wildlife film. He was awarded UNESCO's Kalinga
Prize for the popularisation of science in
1953, the Darwin Medal of the Royal Society
in 1956, and the Darwin–Wallace Medal of
the Linnaean Society in 1958. He was also
knighted in that same year, 1958, a hundred
years after Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel
Wallace announced the theory of evolution
by natural selection. In 1959 he received
a Special Award of the Lasker Foundation in
the category Planned Parenthood – World
Population. Huxley was a prominent member
of the British Eugenics Society and was its
president from 1959 to 1962.
There is a public house named after Sir Julian
in Selsdon, London Borough of Croydon, close
to the Selsdon Wood Nature Reserve which he
helped establish.
== Life ==
=== 
Early life ===
Huxley came from the distinguished Huxley
family. His brother was the writer Aldous
Huxley, and his half-brother a fellow biologist
and Nobel laureate, Andrew Huxley; his father
was writer and editor Leonard Huxley; and
his paternal grandfather was Thomas Henry
Huxley, a friend and supporter of Charles
Darwin and proponent of evolution. His maternal
grandfather was the academic Tom Arnold, his
great-uncle was poet Matthew Arnold and his
great-grandfather was Thomas Arnold of Rugby
School.
Huxley was born on 22 June 1887, at the London
house of his aunt, the novelist Mary Augusta
Ward, while his father was attending the jubilee
celebrations of Queen Victoria. Huxley grew
up at the family home in Surrey, England,
where he showed an early interest in nature,
as he was given lessons by his grandfather,
Thomas Henry Huxley. When he heard his grandfather
talking at dinner about the lack of parental
care in fish, Julian piped up with "What about
the stickleback, Gran'pater?" Also, according
to Julian himself, his grandfather took him
to visit J. D. Hooker at Kew.
At the age of thirteen Huxley attended Eton
College as a King's Scholar, and continued
to develop scientific interests; his grandfather
had influenced the school to build science
laboratories much earlier. At Eton he developed
an interest in ornithology, guided by science
master W. D. "Piggy" Hill. "Piggy was a genius
as a teacher ... I have always been grateful
to him." In 1905 Huxley won a scholarship
in Zoology to Balliol College, Oxford.
In 1906, after a summer in Germany, Huxley
took his place in Oxford, where he developed
a particular interest in embryology and protozoa.
In the autumn term of his final year, 1908,
his mother died from cancer at only 46: a
terrible blow for her husband, three sons,
and eight-year-old daughter Margaret. That
same year he won the Newdigate Prize for his
poem "Holyrood". In 1909 he graduated with
first class honours, and spent that July at
the international gathering for the centenary
of Darwin's birth, held at the University
of Cambridge. Also, it was the fiftieth anniversary
of the publication of the Origin of species.
While at Oxford, he developed a friendship
with the ornithologist William Warde Fowler.
=== Early career ===
Huxley was awarded a scholarship to spend
a year at the Naples Marine Biological Station
where he developed his interest in developmental
biology by investigating sea squirts and sea
urchins. In 1910 he was appointed as Demonstrator
in the Department of Zoology and Comparative
Anatomy at the University of Oxford, and started
on the systematic observation of the courtship
habits of water birds such as the common redshank
(a wader) and grebes (which are divers). Bird
watching in childhood had given Huxley his
interest in ornithology, and he helped devise
systems for the surveying and conservation
of birds. His particular interest was bird
behaviour, especially the courtship of water
birds. His 1914 paper on the great crested
grebe, later published as a book, was a landmark
in avian ethology; his invention of vivid
labels for the rituals (such as 'penguin dance',
'plesiosaurus race' etc.) made the ideas memorable
and interesting to the general reader.
In 1912 his life took a new turn. He was asked
by Edgar Odell Lovett to take the lead in
setting up the new Department of Biology at
the newly created Rice Institute (now Rice
University) in Houston, Texas, which he accepted,
planning to start the following year. Huxley
made an exploratory trip to the United States
in September 1912, visiting a number of leading
universities as well as the Rice Institute.
At T. H. Morgan's fly lab (Columbia University)
he invited H. J. Muller to join him at Rice.
Muller agreed to be his deputy, hurried to
complete his PhD and moved to Houston for
the beginning of the 1915–1916 academic
year. At Rice, Muller taught biology and continued
Drosophila lab work.
Before taking up the post of Assistant Professor
at the Rice Institute, Huxley spent a year
in Germany preparing for his demanding new
job. Working in a laboratory just months before
the outbreak of World War I, Huxley overheard
fellow academics comment on a passing aircraft
"it will not be long before those planes are
flying over England". In 1913 Huxley had a
nervous breakdown after the break-up of his
relationship with 'K', and rested in a nursing
home. His depression returned the next year,
and he and his brother Trevelyan (two years
his junior) ended up in the same nursing home.
Sadly, Trevelyan hanged himself. Depressive
illness had afflicted others in the Huxley
family.
One pleasure of Huxley's life in Texas was
the sight of his first hummingbird, though
his visit to Edward Avery McIlhenny's estate
on Avery Island in Louisiana was more significant.
The McIlhennys and their Avery cousins owned
the entire island, and the McIlhenny branch
used it to produce their famous Tabasco sauce.
Birds were one of McIlhenny's passions, however,
and around 1895 he had set up a private sanctuary
on the Island, called Bird City. There Huxley
found egrets, herons and bitterns. These water
birds, like the grebes, exhibit mutual courtship,
with the pairs displaying to each other, and
with the secondary sexual characteristics
equally developed in both sexes.In September
1916 Huxley returned to England from Texas
to assist in the war effort. He was commissioned
a temporary second lieutenant in the Royal
Army Service Corps on 25 May 1917, and was
transferred to the General List, working in
the British Army Intelligence Corps from 26
January 1918, first in Sussex, and then in
northern Italy. He was advanced in grade within
the Intelligence Corps on 3 May 1918, relinquished
his intelligence appointment on 10 January
1919 and was demobilised five days later,
retaining his rank. After the war he became
a Fellow at New College, Oxford, and was made
Senior Demonstrator in the University Department
of Zoology. In fact, Huxley took the place
of his old tutor Geoffrey Smith, who had been
killed in the battle of the Somme on the Western
Front.
In 1919 Huxley married Juliette Baillot (1896–1994).
She was a French Swiss girl whom he had met
at Garsington Manor, the country house of
Lady Ottoline Morrell, a Bloomsbury Group
socialite with a penchant for artists and
intellectuals. The newly-weds' life together
included students, faculty wives, grebes and,
unfortunately, another depressive breakdown,
this time rather serious. From his wife's
autobiography it seems his mental illness
took the form of a bipolar disorder, with
the depressive phases being of moderate to
severe intensity. It took a long time for
him to recover on this occasion, but despite
this he left a legacy of students who admired
him, and who became leaders in zoology for
the next thirty or forty years. E. B. Ford
always remembered his openness and encouragement
at the start of his career.
In 1925 Huxley moved to King's College London
as Professor of Zoology, but in 1927, to the
amazement of his colleagues and on the prodding
of H. G. Wells whom he had promised 1,000
words a day, he resigned his chair to work
full-time with Wells and his son G. P. Wells
on The Science of Life (see below). For some
time Huxley retained his room at King's College,
and continued as Honorary Lecturer in the
Zoology Department. From 1927 to 1931 he was
also Fullerian Professor of Physiology at
the Royal Institution, where he gave an annual
lectures series. No one realised it at the
time (why would they?), but he had come to
the end of his life as a university academic.
In 1929, after finishing work on The Science
of Life, Huxley visited East Africa to advise
the Colonial Office on education in British
East Africa (for the most part Kenya, Uganda
and Tanganyika). He discovered that the wildlife
on the Serengeti plain was almost undisturbed
because the tsetse fly (the vector for the
trypanosome parasite which causes sleeping
sickness in humans) prevented human settlement
there. He tells about these experiences in
Africa view (1931), and so does his wife.
She reveals that he fell in love with an 18-year-old
American girl on board ship (when Juliette
was not present), and then presented Juliette
with his ideas for an open marriage: "What
Julian really wanted was… a definite freedom
from the conventional bonds of marriage."
The couple separated for a while; Julian travelled
to the US, hoping to land a suitable appointment
and, in due course, to marry Miss Weldmeier.
He left no account of what transpired, but
he was evidently not successful, and returned
to England to resume his marriage in 1931.
For the next couple of years Huxley still
angled for an appointment in the US, without
success.
=== Mid career ===
As the 1930s started, Huxley travelled widely
and took part in a variety of activities which
were partly scientific and partly political.
In 1931 Huxley visited the USSR at the invitation
of Intourist, where initially he admired the
results of social and economic planning on
a large scale. Later, back in the United Kingdom,
he became a founding member of the think tank
Political and Economic Planning.
In the 1930s Huxley visited Kenya and other
East African countries to see the conservation
work, including the creation of national parks,
which was happening in the few areas that
remained uninhabited due to malaria. From
1933 to 1938 he was a member of the committee
for Lord Hailey's African Survey.
In 1935 Huxley was appointed secretary to
the Zoological Society of London, and spent
much of the next seven years running the society
and its zoological gardens, the London Zoo
and Whipsnade Park, alongside his writing
and research. The previous Director, Peter
Chalmers Mitchell, had been in post for many
years, and had skillfully avoided conflict
with the Fellows and Council. Things were
rather different when Huxley arrived. Huxley
was not a skilled administrator; his wife
said "He was impatient… and lacked tact".
He instituted a number of changes and innovations,
more than some approved of. For example, Huxley
introduced a whole range of ideas designed
to make the Zoo child-friendly. Today, this
would pass without comment; but then it was
more controversial. He fenced off the Fellows'
Lawn to establish Pets Corner; he appointed
new assistant curators, encouraging them to
talk to children; he initiated the Zoo Magazine.
Fellows and their guests had the privilege
of free entry on Sundays, a closed day to
the general public. Today, that would be unthinkable,
and Sundays are now open to the public. Huxley's
mild suggestion (that the guests should pay)
encroached on territory the Fellows thought
was theirs by right.
In 1941 Huxley was invited to the United States
on a lecturing tour, and generated some controversy
by saying that he thought the United States
should join World War II: a few weeks later
came the attack on Pearl Harbor. When the
US joined the war, he found it difficult to
get a passage back to the UK, and his lecture
tour was extended. The Council of the Zoological
Society—"a curious assemblage… of wealthy
amateurs, self-perpetuating and autocratic"—uneasy
with their secretary, used this as an opportunity
to remove him. This they did by abolishing
his post "to save expenses". Since Huxley
had taken a half-salary cut at the start of
the war, and no salary at all whilst he was
in America, the Council's action was widely
read as a personal attack on Huxley. A public
controversy ensued, but eventually the Council
got its way.
In 1943 he was asked by the British government
to join the Colonial Commission on Higher
Education. The Commission's remit was to survey
the West African Commonwealth countries for
suitable locations for the creation of universities.
There he acquired a disease, went down with
hepatitis, and had a serious mental breakdown.
He was completely disabled, treated with ECT,
and took a full year to recover. He was 55.
=== Later career ===
Huxley, a lifelong internationalist with a
concern for education, got involved in the
creation of the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO),
and became the organization's first director-general
in 1946. His term of office, six years in
the Charter, was cut down to two years at
the behest of the American delegation. The
reasons are not known for sure, but his left-wing
tendencies and humanism were likely factors.
In a fortnight he dashed off a 60-page booklet
on the purpose and philosophy of UNESCO, eventually
printed and issued as an official document.
There were, however, many conservative opponents
of his scientific humanism. His idea of restraining
population growth with birth control was anathema
to both the Catholic Church and the Comintern/Cominform.
In its first few years UNESCO was dynamic
and broke new ground; since Huxley it has
become larger, more bureaucratic and stable.
The personal and social side of the years
in Paris are well described by his wife.Huxley's
internationalist and conservation interests
also led him, with Victor Stolan, Sir Peter
Scott, Max Nicholson and Guy Mountfort, to
set up the WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature
under its former name of the World Wildlife
Fund).
Another post-war activity was Huxley's attack
on the Soviet politico-scientist Trofim Lysenko,
who had espoused a Lamarckian heredity, made
unscientific pronouncements on agriculture,
used his influence to destroy classical genetics
in Russia and to move genuine scientists from
their posts. In 1940, the leading botanical
geneticist Nikolai Vavilov was arrested, and
Lysenko replaced him as director of the Institute
of Genetics. In 1941, Vavilov was tried, found
guilty of 'sabotage' and sentenced to death.
Reprieved, he died in jail of malnutrition
in 1943. Lysenko's machinations were the cause
of his arrest. Worse still, Lysenkoism not
only denied proven genetic facts, it stopped
the artificial selection of crops on Darwinian
principles. This may have contributed to the
regular shortage of food from the Soviet agricultural
system (Soviet famines). Huxley, who had twice
visited the Soviet Union, was originally not
anti-communist, but the ruthless adoption
of Lysenkoism by Joseph Stalin ended his tolerant
attitude. Lysenko ended his days in a Soviet
mental hospital, and Vavilov's reputation
was posthumously restored in 1955.
In the 1950s Huxley played a role in bringing
to the English-speaking public the work of
the French Jesuit-palaeontologist Pierre Teilhard
de Chardin, who he believed had been unfairly
treated by the Catholic and Jesuit hierarchy.
Both men believed in evolution, but differed
in its interpretation as de Chardin was a
Christian, whilst Huxley was an unbeliever.
Huxley wrote the foreword to The Phenomenon
of Man (1959) and was bitterly attacked by
his rationalist friends for doing so.On Huxley's
death at 87 on 14 February 1975, John Owen
(Director of National Parks for Tanganyika)
wrote "Julian Huxley was one of the world's
great men… he played a seminal role in wild
life conservation in [East] Africa in the
early days… [and in] the far-reaching influence
he exerted [on] the international community".In
addition to his international and humanist
concerns, his research interests covered evolution
in all its aspects, ethology, embryology,
genetics, anthropology and to some extent
the infant field of cell biology. Julian's
eminence as an advocate for evolution, and
especially his contribution to the modern
evolutionary synthesis, led to his awards
of the Darwin Medal of the Royal Society in
1956, and the Darwin–Wallace Medal of the
Linnaean Society in 1958. 1958 was the centenary
anniversary of the joint presentation On the
tendency of species to form varieties; and
the perpetuation of varieties and species
by natural means of selection by Darwin and
Wallace.Huxley was a friend and mentor of
the biologists and Nobel laureates Konrad
Lorenz and Niko Tinbergen, and taught and
encouraged many others. In general, he was
more of an all-round naturalist than his famous
grandfather, and contributed much to the acceptance
of natural selection. His outlook was international,
and somewhat idealistic: his interest in progress
and evolutionary humanism runs through much
of his published work. He was one of the signers
of the Humanist Manifesto.
== Special themes ==
=== Evolution ===
Huxley and biologist August Weismann insisted
on natural selection as the primary agent
in evolution. Huxley was a major player in
the mid-twentieth century modern evolutionary
synthesis. He was a prominent populariser
of biological science to the public, with
a focus on three aspects in particular.
==== Personal influence ====
In the early 20th century he was one of the
minority of biologists who believed that natural
selection was the main driving force of evolution,
and that evolution occurred by small steps
and not by saltation (jumps). These opinions
are now standard.Though his time as an academic
was quite brief, he taught and encouraged
a number of evolutionary biologists at the
University of Oxford in the 1920s. Charles
Elton (ecology), Alister Hardy (marine biology)
and John Baker (cytology) all became highly
successful, and Baker eventually wrote Huxley's
Royal Society obituary memoir. Perhaps the
most significant was Edmund Brisco Ford, who
founded a field of research called ecological
genetics, which played a role in the evolutionary
synthesis. Another important disciple was
Gavin de Beer, who wrote on evolution and
development, and became Director of the Natural
History Museum. Both these fine scholars had
attended Huxley's lectures on genetics, experimental
zoology (including embryology) and ethology.
Later, they became his collaborators, and
then leaders in their own right.
In an era when scientists did not travel so
frequently as today, Huxley was an exception,
for he travelled widely in Europe, Africa
and the United States. He was therefore able
to learn from and influence other scientists,
naturalists and administrators. In the US
he was able to meet other evolutionists at
a critical time in the reassessment of natural
selection. In Africa he was able to influence
colonial administrators about education and
wildlife conservation. In Europe, through
UNESCO, he was at the centre of the post-World
War II revival of education. In Russia, however,
his experiences were mixed. His initially
favourable view was changed by his growing
awareness of Stalin's murderous repression,
and the Lysenko affair. There seems little
evidence that he had any effect on the Soviet
Union, and the same could be said for some
other Western scientists."Marxist-Leninism
had become a dogmatic religion… and like
all dogmatic religions, it had turned from
reform to persecution."
==== 
Evolutionary synthesis ====
Huxley was one of the main architects of the
modern evolutionary synthesis which took place
around the time of World War II. The synthesis
of genetic and population ideas produced a
consensus which reigned in biology from about
1940, and which is still broadly tenable."The
most informative episode in the history of
evolutionary biology was the establishment
of the 'neo-Darwinian synthesis'." Berry and
Bradshaw, 1992. The synthesis was brought
about "not by one side being proved right
and the others wrong, but by the exchange
of the most viable components of the previously
competing research strategies". Ernst Mayr,
1980.Huxley's first 'trial run' was the treatment
of evolution in the Science of Life (1929–30),
and in 1936 he published a long and significant
paper for the British Association. In 1938
came three lengthy reviews on major evolutionary
topics. Two of these papers were on the subject
of sexual selection, an idea of Darwin's whose
standing has been revived in recent times.
Huxley thought that sexual selection was "…merely
an aspect of natural selection which… is
concerned with characters which subserve mating,
and are usually sex-limited". This rather
grudging acceptance of sexual selection was
influenced by his studies on the courtship
of the great crested grebe (and other birds
that pair for life): the courtship takes place
mostly after mate selection, not before.
Now it was time for Huxley to tackle the subject
of evolution at full length, in what became
the defining work of his life. His role was
that of a synthesiser, and it helped that
he had met many of the other participants.
His book Evolution: The Modern Synthesis was
written whilst he was secretary to the Zoological
Society, and made use of his remarkable collection
of reprints covering the first part of the
century. It was published in 1942. Reviews
of the book in learned journals were little
short of ecstatic; the American Naturalist
called it "The outstanding evolutionary treatise
of the decade, perhaps of the century. The
approach is thoroughly scientific; the command
of basic information amazing".
Huxley's main co-respondents in the modern
evolutionary synthesis are usually listed
as Ernst Mayr, Theodosius Dobzhansky, George
Gaylord Simpson, Bernhard Rensch, Ledyard
Stebbins and the population geneticists J.
B. S. Haldane, Ronald Fisher and Sewall Wright.
However, at the time of Huxley's book several
of these had yet to make their distinctive
contribution. Certainly, for Huxley, E. B.
Ford and his co-workers in ecological genetics
were at least as important; and Cyril Darlington,
the chromosome expert, was a notable source
of facts and ideas.An analysis of the 'authorities
cited' index of Evolution the modern synthesis
shows indirectly those whom Huxley regarded
as the most important contributors to the
synthesis up to 1941 (the book was published
in 1942, and references go up to 1941). The
authorities cited 20 or more times are:Darlington,
Darwin, Dobzhansky, Fisher, Ford, Goldschmidt,
Haldane, J. S. Huxley, Muller, Rensch, Turrill,
Wright.This list contains a few surprises.
Goldschmidt was an influential geneticist
who advocated evolution by saltation, and
was sometimes mentioned in disagreement. Turrill
provided Huxley with botanical information.
The list omits three key members of the synthesis
who are listed above: Mayr, Stebbins the botanist
and Simpson the palaeontologist. Mayr gets
16 citations and more in the two later editions;
all three published outstanding and relevant
books some years later, and their contribution
to the synthesis is unquestionable. Their
lesser weight in Huxley's citations was caused
by the early publication date of his book.
Huxley's book is not strong in palaeontology,
which illustrates perfectly why Simpson's
later works were such an important contribution.
It was Huxley who coined the terms the new
synthesis and evolutionary synthesis; he also
invented the term cline in 1938 to refer to
species whose members fall into a series of
sub-species with continuous change in characters
over a geographical area. The classic example
of a cline is the circle of subspecies of
the gull Larus round the Arctic zone. This
cline is an example of a ring species.Some
of Huxley's last contributions to the evolutionary
synthesis were on the subject of ecological
genetics. He noted how surprisingly widespread
polymorphism is in nature, with visible morphism
much more prevalent in some groups than others.
The immense diversity of colour and pattern
in small bivalve molluscs, brittlestars, sea-anemones,
tubicular polychaetes and various grasshoppers
is perhaps maintained by making recognition
by predators more difficult.
==== Evolutionary progress ====
Huxley always believed that on a broad view
evolution led to advances in organisation.
Progress without a goal was one of his phrases,
to distinguish his point of view from classical
Aristotelian teleology. "The ordinary man,
or at least the ordinary poet, philosopher
and theologian, always was anxious to find
purpose in the evolutionary process. I believe
this reasoning to be totally false."The idea
of evolutionary progress was subjected to
some fierce criticism in the latter part of
the twentieth century. Cladists, for example,
were (and are) strongly against any suggestion
that a group could be scientifically described
as 'advanced' and others as 'primitive.' For
them, and especially for the radical group
of transformed cladists, there is no such
thing as an advanced group, they are derived
or apomorphic. Primitive groups are plesiomorphic.
Ironically, it was Huxley who invented the
terms clade and grades. However, to take a
rather extreme case, it would seem strange
to say that when man is compared to bacteria,
that mankind is not a vastly more complex
and advanced form of life; or that the invasion
of the land by plants and animals was not
a great advance in the history of life on
this planet. On this issue Julian was at the
opposite end of the spectrum from his grandfather,
who was, at least for the first half of his
career, a propagandist for 'persistent types',
getting close to denying any advances at all.
Huxley argued his case many times, even in
his most important works. In the final chapter
of his Evolution the modern synthesis he defines
evolutionary progress as "a raising of the
upper level of biological efficiency, this
being defined as increased control over and
independence of the environment," Evolution
in action discusses evolutionary progress
at length: "Natural selection plus time produces
biological improvement… 'Improvement' is
not yet a recognised technical term in biology
… however, living things are improved during
evolution… Darwin was not afraid to use
the word for the results of natural selection
in general… I believe that improvement can
become one of the key concepts in evolutionary
biology.""Can it be scientifically defined?
Improvements in biological machinery… the
limbs and teeth of grazing horses… the increase
in brain-power… The eyes of a dragon-fly,
which can see all round [it] in every direction,
are an improvement over the mere microscopic
eye-spots of early forms of life." "[Over]
the whole range of evolutionary time we see
general advance—improvement in all the main
properties of life, including its general
organization. 'Advance' is thus a useful term
for long-term improvement in some general
property of life. [But] improvement is not
universal. Lower forms manage to survive alongside
higher". These excerpts are much abbreviated,
but give some idea of his way of thinking.
He addresses the topic of 'persistent types'
(living fossils) later in the same book (pp
126–28).
The question of evolutionary advancement has
quite a history. Of course, pre-Darwin, it
was believed without question that Man stood
at the head of a pyramid (scala naturae).
The matter is not so simple with evolution
by natural selection; Darwin's own opinion
varied from time to time. In the Origin he
wrote "And as natural selection works by and
for the good of each being, all corporeal
and mental endowments will tend to progress
towards perfection". This was much too strong;
as Sober remarks, there is nothing in the
theory of natural selection which demands
that selection must produce an increase in
complexity or any other measure of advancement.
It is merely compatible with the theory that
this might happen. Elsewhere Darwin admits
that "naturalists have not yet defined to
each other's satisfaction what is meant by
high and low forms" (p. 336); nor have they
now – this is one of the problems. Other
evolutionary biologists have had similar thoughts
to Huxley: G. Ledyard Stebbins and Bernhard
Rensch, for example. The term for progressive
evolution is anagenesis, though this does
not necessarily include the idea of improvement.The
objective description of complexity was one
of the issues addressed by cybernetics in
the 1950s. The idea that advanced machines
(including living beings) could exert more
control over their environments and operate
in a wider range of situations perhaps serves
as a basis for making the terms such as 'advanced'
amenable to more exact definition. This is
a debate that continues today.For a modern
survey of the idea of progress in evolution
see Nitecki and Dawkins.
=== Secular humanism ===
Huxley's humanism came from his appreciation
that mankind was in charge of its own destiny
(at least in principle), and this raised the
need for a sense of direction and a system
of ethics. His grandfather T. H. Huxley, when
faced with similar problems, had promoted
agnosticism, but Julian chose humanism as
being more directed to supplying a basis for
ethics. Julian's thinking went along these
lines: "The critical point in the evolution
of man… was when he acquired the use of
[language]… Man's development is potentially
open… He has developed a new method of evolution:
the transmission of organized experience by
way of tradition, which… largely overrides
the automatic process of natural selection
as the agent of change". Both Huxley and his
grandfather gave Romanes Lectures on the possible
connection between evolution and ethics. (see
evolutionary ethics) Huxley's views on god
could be described as being that of an agnostic
atheist.Huxley had a close association with
the British rationalist and secular humanist
movements. He was an Honorary Associate of
the Rationalist Press Association from 1927
until his death, and on the formation of the
British Humanist Association in 1963 became
its first President, to be succeeded by AJ
Ayer in 1965. He was also closely involved
with the International Humanist and Ethical
Union. Many of Huxley's books address humanist
themes. In 1962 Huxley accepted the American
Humanist Association's annual "Humanist of
the Year" award.
Huxley also presided over the founding Congress
of the International Humanist and Ethical
Union and served with John Dewey, Albert Einstein
and Thomas Mann on the founding advisory board
of the First Humanist Society of New York.
=== Religious naturalism ===
Huxley wrote that "There is no separate supernatural
realm: all phenomena are part of one natural
process of evolution. There is no basic cleavage
between science and religion;… I believe
that [a] drastic reorganization of our pattern
of religious thought is now becoming necessary,
from a god-centered to an evolutionary-centered
pattern". Some believe the appropriate label
for these views is religious naturalism.
Many people assert that this abandonment of
the god hypothesis means the abandonment of
all religion and all moral sanctions. This
is simply not true. But it does mean, once
our relief at jettisoning an outdated piece
of ideological furniture is over, that we
must construct something to take its place.
=== Parapsychology ===
Huxley took interest in investigating the
claims of parapsychology and spiritualism.
He joined the Society for Psychical Research
in 1928. After investigation he found the
field to be unscientific and full of charlatans.
In 1934, he joined the International Institute
for Psychical Research but resigned after
a few months due to its members spiritualist
bias and non-scientific approach to the subject.After
attending séances, Huxley concluded that
the phenomena could be explained "either by
natural causes, or, more usually by fraud".
Huxley, Harold Dearden and others were judges
for a group formed by the Sunday Chronicle
to investigate the materialization medium
Harold Evans. During a séance Evans was exposed
as a fraud. He was caught masquerading as
a spirit, in a white nightshirt.In 1952, Huxley
wrote the foreword to Donovan Rawcliffe's
The Psychology of the Occult.
=== Eugenics and race ===
Huxley was a prominent member of the British
Eugenics Society, and was Vice-President (1937–1944)
and President (1959–1962). He thought eugenics
was important for removing undesirable variants
from the human gene pool, though after World
War II he believed race was a meaningless
concept in biology, and its application to
humans was highly inconsistent.Huxley was
an outspoken critic of the most extreme eugenicism
in the 1920s and 1930s (the stimulus for which
was the greater fertility of the 'feckless'
poor compared to the 'responsible' prosperous
classes). He was, nevertheless, a leading
figure in the eugenics movement (see, for
example, Eugenics manifesto). He gave the
Galton memorial lecture twice, in 1936 and
1962. In his writing he used this argument
several times: no one doubts the wisdom of
managing the germ plasm of agricultural stocks,
so why not apply the same concept to human
stocks? "The agricultural analogy appears
over and over again as it did in the writings
of many American eugenicists."Huxley was one
of many intellectuals at the time who believed
that the lowest class in society was genetically
inferior. In this passage, from 1941, he investigates
a hypothetical scenario where social darwinism,
capitalism, nationalism and the class society
is taken for granted:
If so, then we must plan our eugenic policy
along some such lines as the following:...
The lowest strata, allegedly less well-endowed
genetically, are reproducing relatively too
fast. Therefore birth-control methods must
be taught them; they must not have too easy
access to relief or hospital treatment lest
the removal of the last check on natural selection
should make it too easy for children to be
produced or to survive; long unemployment
should be a ground for sterilization, or at
least relief should be contingent upon no
further children being brought into the world;
and so on. That is to say, much of our eugenic
programme will be curative and remedial merely,
instead of preventive and constructive.
Here, he does not demean the working class
in general, but aims for "the virtual elimination
of the few lowest and most degenerate types".
The sentiment is not at all atypical of the
time, and similar views were held by many
geneticists (William E. Castle, C.B. Davenport,
H. J. Muller are examples), and by other prominent
intellectuals.
However, Huxley advocated a completely different
alternative, in which the lower classes are
ensured a nutritious diet, education and facilities
for recreation:
We must therefore concentrate on producing
a single equalized environment; and this clearly
should be one as favourable as possible to
the expression of the genetic qualities that
we think desirable. Equally clearly, this
should include the following items. A marked
raising of the standard of diet for the great
majority of the population, until all should
be provided both with adequate calories and
adequate accessory factors; provision of facilities
for healthy exercise and recreation; and upward
equalization of educational opportunity. ... we
know from various sources that raising the
standard of life among the poorest classes
almost invariably results in a lowering of
their fertility. In so far, therefore, as
differential class-fertility exists, raising
the environmental level will reduce any dysgenic
effects which it may now have.
Concerning a public health and racial policy
in general, Huxley wrote that "…unless [civilised
societies] invent and enforce adequate measures
for regulating human reproduction, for controlling
the quantity of population, and at least preventing
the deterioration of quality of racial stock,
they are doomed to decay …" and remarked
how biology should be the chief tool for rendering
social politics scientific.
In the opinion of Duvall, "His views fell
well within the spectrum of opinion acceptable
to the English liberal intellectual elite.
He shared Nature's enthusiasm for birth control,
and 'voluntary' sterilization." However, the
word 'English' in this passage is unnecessary:
such views were widespread. Duvall comments
that Huxley's enthusiasm for centralised social
and economic planning and anti-industrial
values was common to leftist ideologists during
the inter-war years. Towards the end of his
life, Huxley himself must have recognised
how unpopular these views became after the
end of World War II. In the two volumes of
his autobiography, there is no mention of
eugenics in the index, nor is Galton mentioned;
and the subject has also been omitted from
many of the obituaries and biographies. An
exception is the proceedings of a conference
organised by the British Eugenics Society.In
response to the rise of European fascism in
the 1930s, he was asked to write We Europeans
with the ethnologist A. C. Haddon, the zoologist
Alexander Carr-Saunders and the historian
of science Charles Singer. Huxley suggested
the word 'race' be replaced with ethnic group.
After the Second World War, he was instrumental
in producing the UNESCO statement The Race
Question, which asserted that:
A race, from the biological standpoint, may
therefore be defined as one of the group of
populations constituting the species Homo
sapiens"… "National, religious, geographic,
linguistic and cult groups do not necessary
coincide with racial groups: the cultural
traits of such groups have no demonstrated
genetic connexion with racial traits. Because
serious errors of this kind are habitually
committed when the term 'race' is used in
popular parlance, it would be better when
speaking of human races to drop the term 'race'
altogether and speak of ethnic groups"…
"Now what has the scientist to say about the
groups of mankind which may be recognized
at the present time? Human races can be and
have been differently classified by different
anthropologists, but at the present time most
anthropologists agree on classifying the greater
part of present-day mankind into three major
divisions, as follows: The Mongoloid Division;
The Negroid Division; The Caucasoid Division."
… "Catholics, Protestants, Moslems and Jews
are not races … The biological fact of race
and the myth of 'race' should be distinguished.
For all practical social purposes 'race' is
not so much a biological phenomenon as a social
myth. The myth 'race' has created an enormous
amount of human and social damage. In recent
years it has taken a heavy toll in human lives
and caused untold suffering. It still prevents
the normal development of millions of human
beings and deprives civilization of the effective
co-operation of productive minds. The biological
differences between ethnic groups should be
disregarded from the standpoint of social
acceptance and social action. The unity of
mankind from both the biological and social
viewpoint is the main thing. To recognize
this and to act accordingly is the first requirement
of modern man ...
Huxley won the second Anisfield-Wolf Book
Award for We Europeans in 1937.
In 1957, Huxley coined the term transhumanism
for the view that humans should better themselves
through science and technology, possibly including
eugenics, but also, importantly, the improvement
of the social environment.
=== Public life and popularisation ===
Huxley was always able to write well, and
was ever willing to address the public on
scientific topics. Well over half his books
are addressed to an educated general audience,
and he wrote often in periodicals and newspapers.
The most extensive bibliography of Huxley
lists some of these ephemeral articles, though
there are others unrecorded.These articles,
some reissued as Essays of a Biologist (1923),
probably led to the invitation from H. G.
Wells to help write a comprehensive work on
biology for a general readership, The Science
of Life. This work was published in stages
in 1929–30, and in one volume in 1931. Of
this Robert Olby said "Book IV The essence
of the controversies about evolution offers
perhaps the clearest, most readable, succinct
and informative popular account of the subject
ever penned. It was here that he first expounded
his own version of what later developed into
the evolutionary synthesis". In his memoirs,
Huxley says that he made almost £10,000 from
the book.In 1934 Huxley collaborated with
the naturalist Ronald Lockley to create for
Alexander Korda the world's first natural
history documentary The Private Life of the
Gannets. For the film, shot with the support
of the Royal Navy around Grassholm off the
Pembrokeshire coast, they won an Oscar for
best documentary.Huxley had given talks on
the radio since the 1920s, followed by written
versions in The Listener. In later life, he
became known to an even wider audience through
television. In 1939 the BBC asked him to be
a regular panelist on a Home Service general
knowledge show, The Brains Trust, in which
he and other panelists were asked to discuss
questions submitted by listeners. The show
was commissioned to keep up war time morale,
by preventing the war from "disrupting the
normal discussion of interesting ideas". The
audience was not large for this somewhat elite
programme; however, listener research ranked
Huxley the most popular member of the Brains
Trust from 1941 to 1944.Later, he was a regular
panelist on one of the BBC's first quiz shows
(1955) Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? in which
participants were asked to talk about objects
chosen from museum and university collections.
In 1937 Huxley was invited to deliver the
Royal Institution Christmas Lecture on Rare
Animals and the Disappearance of Wild Life.
In his essay The Crowded World Huxley was
openly critical of Communist and Catholic
attitudes to birth control, population control
and overpopulation. Based on variable rates
of compound interest, Huxley predicted a probable
world population of 6 billion by 2000. The
United Nations Population Fund marked 12 October
1999 as The Day of Six Billion.
=== Terms coined ===
Clade (1957): a monophyletic taxon; a single
species and its descendants
Cline (1938): a gradient of gene frequencies
in a population, along a given transect
Ethnic group (1936): as opposed to race
Evolutionary grade (1959): a level of evolutionary
advance, in contrast to a clade
Mentifact (1955): objects which consist of
ideas in people's minds
Morph (1942): as more correct and simpler
than polymorph
Ritualization (1914): formalised activities
in bird behaviour, caused by inherited behaviour
chains
Sociofact (1955): objects which consist of
interactions between members of a social group
Transhumanism (1957): the transforming of
human beings
=== 
Titles and phrases ===
Religion Without Revelation (1927, 1957)
The New Systematics (1940)
The Uniqueness of Man (1941)
Evolution: The Modern Synthesis (1942)
Evolutionary Ethics (1943)
Evolution as a Process (1954)
Essays of a Humanist (1964)
The Future of Man (1966)
== Works ==
The individual in the animal kingdom (1911)
The courtship habits of the Great crested
grebe (1914) [a landmark in ethology]
Essays of a Biologist (1923)
Essays in Popular Science (1926)
The stream of life (1926)
The Tissue-Culture King (1926) [science fiction]
Animal biology (with J. B. S. Haldane, 1927)
Religion without revelation (1927, revised
edition 1957)
Ants (1929)
The science of life: a summary of contemporary
knowledge about life and its possibilities
(with HG & G. P. Wells, 1929–30). First
issued in 31 fortnightly parts published by
Amalgamated Press, 1929–31, bound up in
three volumes as publication proceeded. First
issued in one volume by Cassell in 1931, reprinted
1934, 1937, popular edition, fully revised,
1938. Published as separate volumes by Cassell
1934–37: I The living body. II Patterns
of life (1934). III Evolution—fact and theory.
IV Reproduction, heredity and the development
of sex. V The history and adventure of life.
VI The drama of life. VII How animals behave
(1937). VIII Man's mind and behaviour. IX
Biology and the human race. Published in New
York by Doubleday, Doran & Co. 1931, 1934,
1939; and by The Literary Guild 1934. Three
of the Cassell spin-off books were also published
by Doubleday in 1932: Evolution, fact and
theory; The human mind and the behavior of
Man; Reproduction, genetics and the development
of sex.
Bird-watching and bird behaviour (1930)
An introduction to science (with Edward Andrade,
1931–34)
What dare I think?: the challenge of modern
science to human action and belief. Chatto
& Windus, London; Harper, N.Y. (1931)
Africa view (1931)
The captive shrew and other poems (1932)
Problems of relative growth (1932) (on allometry)
A scientist among the Soviets (1932)
If I were Dictator. Methuen, London; Harper,
N.Y. (1934)
Scientific research and social needs (1934)
Elements of experimental embryology (with
Gavin de Beer, 1934)
Thomas Huxley's diary of the voyage of HMS
Rattlesnake (1935)
We Europeans (with A.C. Haddon, 1936)
Animal language (photographs by Ylla, includes
recordings of animal calls: 1938, reprinted
1964)
The present standing of the theory of sexual
selection. In Gavin de Beer (ed) Evolution:
Essays on aspects of evolutionary biology
(pp 11–42). Oxford: Clarendon Press (1938)
The living thoughts of Darwin (1939)
The new systematics. Oxford. (1940) [this
multi-author volume, edited by Huxley, is
one of the foundation stones of the 'Modern
synthesis', with essays on taxonomy, evolution,
natural selection, Mendelian genetics and
population genetics]
Democracy marches. Chatto & Windus, London;
Harper N.Y. (1941)
The uniqueness of man. Chatto & Windus, London.
(1941; reprint 1943). U.S. as Man stands alone.
Harper, N.Y. 1941.
On living in a revolution. Harper, N.Y. (1944)
Evolution: the modern synthesis. Allen & Unwin,
London. (1942, reprinted 1943, 1944, 1945,
1948, 1955; 2nd ed, with new introduction
and bibliography by the author, 1963; 3rd
ed, with new introduction and bibliography
by nine contributors, 1974). U.S. first edition
by Harper, 1943. [this summarises research
on all topics relevant to the modern synthesis
of evolution and Mendelian genetics up to
the Second World War]. New edition by MIT
Press in 2010 with Foreword by Massimo Pigliucci
and Gerd B. Müller.
Evolutionary ethics (1943)
TVA: Adventure in planning (1944)
Evolution and ethics 1893–1943. Pilot, London.
In the US as Touchstone for ethics Harper,
N.Y. (1947) [includes text from both T. H.
Huxley and Julian Huxley]
Man in the modern world (1947) eBook, essays
selected from The uniqueness of man (1941)
and On living in a revolution (1944)
Soviet genetics and World science: Lysenko
and the meaning of heredity. Chatto & Windus,
London. In the US as Heredity, East and West.
Schuman, N.Y. (1949).
Evolution in action (1953)
Evolution as a process (with Hardy A. C. and
Ford E. B. eds.) Allen & Unwin, London. (1954)
From an antique land: ancient and modern in
the Middle East. Parrish, London (1954, revised
1966)
Kingdom of the beasts (with W. Suschitzky,
1956)
Biological aspects of cancer (1957)
New bottles for new wine Chatto & Windus,
London; Harper N.Y. (1957); repr as Knowledge,
morality, destiny. N.Y. (1960)
The treasure house of wild life 13 Nov, More
meat from game than cattle 13 Nov, Cropping
the wild protein 20 Nov, Wild life as a World
Asset, second page 27 Nov; The Observer newspaper
articles that led to the setting up of the
World Wildlife Fund (1960)
The humanist frame (as editor, 1961)
The coming new religion of humanism (1962)
Essays of a humanist (1964) reprinted 1966,
1969, 1992: ISBN 0-87975-778-7
The human crisis (1964)
Darwin and his world (with Bernard Kettlewell,
1965)
Aldous Huxley 1894–1963: a memorial volume.
(as editor, 1965)
The future of man: evolutionary aspects. (1966)
The wonderful world of evolution (1969)
Memories (2 vols 1970 & 1973) [his autobiography]
The Mitchell Beazley Atlas of World Wildlife.
Mitchell Beazley, London; also published as
The Atlas of World Wildlife. Purnell, Cape
Town. (1973
