Thomas Henry Huxley e o parentesco entre dinossauros e aves

Este trabalho consiste em uma tradução do artigo “On the Animals which are most nearly intermediate between Birds and the Reptiles”, de autoria de Thomas Huxley (1825-1895), publicado no Annals and Magazine of Natural History, em fevereiro de 1868. Nesse artigo, Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895) lidou com a hipótese da existência de uma relação de parentesco entre répteis e aves após ter observado diversas similaridades entre dois fósseis pertencentes a esses grupos: Compsognathus e Archeopteryx. Apesar das inúmeras evidências apontadas por Huxley, e outros pesquisadores, a hipótese de que aves descendiam de dinossauros perdeu força na década de 1920. Só seria retomada na década de 1970, e desde então é consenso na comunidade científica.

Evolutionary antagonisms and the progress of three categories of traits

Darwin in The Descent of Man deliberates over the question of progress in relation to three categories of traits – aesthetic, moral and intellectual – attending to their interplay. The later formulations of Thomas Henry Huxley and Alfred Russel Wallace shift and reframe the terms for weighing together progress and the relationship across these traits, downplaying the role of aesthetic assessments. Huxley and Wallace invoke ‘antagonisms’ countering, respectively, ‘ethical progress’ and ‘cosmic process’, ‘humanity – the essentially human emotion’ and ‘physical and even intellectual race-improvement’. Thereafter, evolutionary antagonisms reappear – whether to endorse, dismiss or overcome them – and they remain relevant in evolutionary arguments, whether made explicit or left implicit. Following a thread of ongoing appeals to this interplay of traits and corresponding antagonisms invoking Huxley's 1893 lecture ‘Evolution and ethics’, implicit differences appear in the treatment of aesthetic, moral and intellectual development. These treatments maintain the progress that their own ethical systems represented, even while granting moral variation and conceding independent/alternative notions of the beautiful. They generally took as granted the uniformity of intellectual judgements, where evolutionary progress was both ethical and intellectual/scientific, even when speculating on the development of different types of mind. As characteristic of future-oriented visions of progress by the first decades of the twentieth century, sexual selection was subsumed under natural selection.

“I would sooner die than give up”: Huxley and Darwin's deep disagreement

Thomas Henry Huxley and Charles Darwin discovered in 1857 that they had a fundamental disagreement about biological classification. Darwin believed that the natural system should express genealogy while Huxley insisted that classification must stand on its own basis, independent of evolution. Darwin used human races as a model for his view. This private and long-forgotten dispute exposes important divisions within Victorian biology. Huxley, trained in physiology and anatomy, was a professional biologist while Darwin was a gentleman naturalist. Huxley agreed with John Stuart Mill's rejection of William Whewell's sympathy for Linnaeus. The naturalists William Sharp Macleay, Hugh Strickland, and George Waterhouse worked to distinguish two kinds of relationship, affinity and analogy. Darwin believed that his theory could explain the difference. Richard Owen introduced the distinction between homology and analogy to anatomists, but the word homology did not enter Darwin's vocabulary until 1848, when he used the morphological concept of archetype in his work on Cirripedia. Huxley dropped the word archetype when Richard Owen linked it to Plato's ideal forms, replacing it with common plan. When Darwin wrote in the Origin of Species that the word plan gives no explanation, he may have had Huxley in mind. Darwin's preposterous story in the Origin about a bear giving birth to a kangaroo, which he dropped in the second edition, was in fact aimed at Huxley.

La labor paleontológica de Thomas Huxley

Si toda la vida en la Tierra comparte un ancestro común, con la evolución como mecanismo diversificando gradualmente a través del tiempo, entonces, el registro fósil debería proporcionar formas graduadas intermedias. Sin embargo, para 1859 (año de la publicación de El origen de las especies), éstas aún no habían sido descubiertas. Para Charles Darwin (1809-1882), esto representaba una seria objeción a su teoría evolutiva e intentó explicar esta evidencia negativa a través de la imperfección del registro fósil. Por lo tanto, la paleontología era la clave que podía presentar evidencia a favor de la evolución. Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895), hallaría formas de transición que unirían grandes grupos animales sin relación aparente, por ejemplo, las aves con los reptiles a través de los dinosaurios. El objetivo del presente trabajo fue llevar a cabo una investigación sobre la obra paleontológica de Thomas Huxley, haciendo un especial énfasis en su apoyo a las ideas evolutivas de Darwin. Se llegó a la conclusión de que su labor paleontológica demostró que los hechos de la paleontología, en lo que concierne a las aves y a los reptiles, no se oponen a la doctrina de la evolución, sino que, al contrario, eran muy parecidos a los que la doctrina nos llevaría a esperar.

La labor paleontológica de Thomas Huxley

Si toda la vida en la Tierra comparte un ancestro común, con la evolución como mecanismo diversificando gradualmente a través del tiempo, entonces, el registro fósil debería proporcionar formas graduadas intermedias. Sin embargo, para 1859 (año de la publicación de El origen de las especies), éstas aún no habían sido descubiertas. Para Charles Darwin (1809-1882), esto representaba una seria objeción a su teoría evolutiva e intentó explicar esta evidencia negativa a través de la imperfección del registro fósil. Por lo tanto, la paleontología era la clave que podía presentar evidencia a favor de la evolución. Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895), hallaría formas de transición que unirían grandes grupos animales sin relación aparente, por ejemplo, las aves con los reptiles a través de los dinosaurios. El objetivo del presente trabajo fue llevar a cabo una investigación sobre la obra paleontológica de Thomas Huxley, haciendo un especial énfasis en su apoyo a las ideas evolutivas de Darwin. Se llegó a la conclusión de que su labor paleontológica demostró que los hechos de la paleontología, en lo que concierne a las aves y a los reptiles, no se oponen a la doctrina de la evolución, sino que, al contrario, eran muy parecidos a los que la doctrina nos llevaría a esperar.

Thomas Henry Huxley

We have seen how in Hamilton, Mansel, and Spencer the combination of metaphysical realism and a belief in ‘the relativity of knowledge’ leads to agnosticism about ultimate reality—the position that cognition stands defeated before the ‘unconditioned’, or ‘absolute’, or ‘unknowable’. But the thinker most associated with the term ‘agnosticism’—indeed, the one who first came up with the word—was Thomas Henry Huxley. This chapter begins by examining Huxley’s own account of the origins of the term ‘agnosticism’ as well as his relationship with Herbert Spencer. Following a general discussion of his philosophical orientation that takes into account his suspicion of metaphysics, his strict adherence to scientific methodology, and his views about both Hume and Kant, the discussion moves on to consider in more detail his views about religion, causation, the external world, and the mind–brain relationship. The chapter concludes by contrasting Huxley’s views about ethics and evolution with those of Herbert Spencer.

GLADSTONE, DEVELOPMENT, AND THE DISCIPLINE OF HISTORY, 1840–1896

Between 1885 and 1891, the Liberal statesman William Ewart Gladstone debated the scientific status of the Book of Genesis with the natural historian Thomas Henry Huxley in a series of articles published in the Nineteenth Century. Viewed in isolation, this episode has been seen as a case of a professional scientist dismissing an amateur interloper. This article repositions this familiar dispute as one chapter in Gladstone's lifelong engagement with the concept of historical ‘development’, the unfolding or evolution of Providence to human reason over time, a concept which came to prominence in the 1840s, in both Tractarian theology and in natural history. Gladstone consistently advocated an accommodation between transmutation and natural theology based on a probabilist ontology derived from the eighteenth-century Anglican churchman Joseph Butler (1692–1752). That understanding of historical truth to which Gladstone credited his ability to discern when political issues became ripe for agitation demanded a humble, Christian moral temper that embraced doubt and salutary suffering, rather than certainty and whiggish celebration of progress.

Sobre las variantes textuales de Las fuerzas extrañas y la intertextualidad de ‘Un fenómeno inexplicable’

Este artículo comenta la olvidada importancia de las variantes textuales de varios relatos de Las fuerzas extrañas y reproduce para ello las versiones originales de los mismos, para cotejarlas con las versiones que posteriormente publicó Lugones en su libro. Se llega a la conclusión de que esas variantes son de una relevancia cuantitativa y cualitativa mucho mayor que la señalada hasta ahora y que iluminan tanto el proceso de elaboración del libro como el significado ulterior de este. Finalmente se sugiere la posibilidad de que “Un fenómeno inexplicable” haya tenido su origen en una fotografía de Thomas Henry Huxley, el famoso evolucionista inglés, y que por tanto haya que insistir en que la lectura de este relato y todo de todo el libro debe tener como primera referencia las creencias espiritualistas y teosóficas de Lugones.

Answering Huxley: “now” students take a “then” exam

Twenty-eight undergraduate students in a health sciences program volunteered for an exercise in the history of examinations. They had completed a second-year course in anatomy and physiology in which they studied modern texts and took standard contemporary exams. For this historical “experiment,” students studied selected chapters from two 19th century physiology texts (by Foster M. A Textbook of Physiology, 1895; and Broussais FJV. A Treatise on Physiology Applied to Pathology, 1828). They then took a 1-h-long exam in which they answered two essay-type questions set by Thomas Henry Huxley for second-year medical students at the University of London in 1853 and 1857. These were selected from a question bank provided by Dr. P. Mazumdar (University of Toronto). A questionnaire probed their contrasting experiences. Many wrote thoughtful, reflective comments on the exercise, which not only gave them an insight into the difficulties faced by students in the past, but also proved to be a valuable learning experience (average score: 8.6 ± 1.6 SD).