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    Huxley, Thomas Henry (1825-1895)

    Thomas Huxley
    English biologist who became the foremost expounder of Darwinism of his time and a pioneer of the modern idea that life evolved from non-living matter. His Edinburgh lecture "On the Physical Basis of Life," in 1868, can be seen as the starting point for the scientific debate about the chemical origin of life and the final denunciation of vitalism. Pointing out that protoplasm (which he considered to be the fundamental substance of life) was made principally from the elements carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, which were combined into water, carbonic acid, and nitrogen compounds, he said:
    These new compounds, like the elementary bodies of which they are composed, are lifeless. But when they are brought together, under certain conditions, they give rise to the still more complex body, protoplasm, and this protoplasm exhibits the phenomenon of life. I see no break in this series of steps in molecular complication.
    His line of reasoning was soon taken up by Tyndall and others. Huxley's tutelage of H. G. Wells played a significant part in the young writer's preoccupation with aspects and extrapolations of evolutionary theory in his early science fiction novels, including The War of the Worlds.


    Quotes by T. H. Huxley
    "The known is finite, the unknown is infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicabibilty. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land."

    "I am too much of a sceptic to deny the possibility of anything."

    "The great tragedy of Science: the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact."


    Related entry

       • evolutionary theory and extraterrestrial life


    Related category

       • BIOLOGISTS



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