Huxley biography

By the half-age of the death of a doctor by education, a philosopher by nature, a wonderful stylist-writer and a polemicist, geologist and paleontologist, physiologist and morphologist embryologist and anatomist, evolutionist-biologist, anthropologist and ethnologist, equally informing in the natural science and humanitarian sphere of knowledge: pedagogy, sociology, history, literature, and ethics.

Theology inclusive-Huxley-the scientist is striking in the breadth of his mental horizon with the depths of his ideological and in-inflated implementation. But there is another, deeper feature, connecting Huxley and his spiritual warehouse with the spiritual appearance of Spinoza [1] - the inexorableness with which Huxley spent his worldview, not only from the department and in the book, but also in his personal life, so bright and brightly protruding in his posthumously published correspondence.

The versatile, as the thought and calling of their author, brilliant in form, these letters in their innermost part reveal to us the actual personality of Huxley, which is so easily hiding behind the name of the great scientist and polemicist. It is enough for us to recall only one letter, marked with such significant for his author, so successful for Huxley as a scientist and so tragic in his personal life.

The historical phrase, thrown by him in a public dispute attacked by Darwin Bishop Oxford, Wilberfors, is well known and entered the textbooks and whether many people know that the father at the grave of his son, the written confession of the great wrestler, who trembled to write: “All my beliefs and negative, and negatively, were slowly and composed slowly and hard and hard.

For a long time and they are rooted tightly. From the very hard blow to the very foundations of them seemed shaken and, I live a few centuries earlier, I could imagine that the devil was mocking me, asking me: for the sake of what benefits I discarded the hopes and comfort of most people? Truth is above the benefits! I was looking for justifications for my beliefs, and if I had to lose everything after another - my wife, children, and honor, and name - I would still resist!

And in this sense, Thomas Huxley is more than his great “client” Darwin, more than any naturalist of the past century, is drawn as an example of a scientist in the conditions of life and science of the 19th century. From the spiritual and moral appearance of the scientist to his spiritual heritage. Bypassing his special works with their transient role for replacing schools of science, we turn to the radical question: what is the creations of the Huxley of universal and enduring?

What is the essence of the “scientific reformation” to which he called on his thoughtful, his hot word? Evolutionary teaching? But on speaking already about Darwin and his forerunners, the main idea of ​​this teaching according to the thought of Huxley himself is as ancient as scientific thinking. A view to the world, as a single and harmonious system, controlled by eternal and unchanging laws?

The epistemological beliefs of Huxley, his skepticism and scientific criticism, prompted him to equally abandon both spiritualism and extreme, vulgar materialism? Actually, the ethical views of Huxley? His moral motto: “Evil does not lead to prosperity, good - does not cause punishment”? But, not to mention the ethics of Spinoza and Descartes, the very idea of ​​the mutual connection of morality and science is not an echo of teaching, announced 23 centuries ago in Hellas, its first martyr, the teachings of Socrates about the identity of knowledge and virtue, teachings, as powerless then in an attempt to apply it to the problem of moral improvement Biology, neither in philosophy, nor in the ethics of Huxley himself-it might seem like-he left nothing original-positive, worthy of his talent, if so, so!

But we will not forget that the “eclecticisms” of the Huxley range not every century appear, because not every century can indicate people in which, along with universal knowledge, a cold mind with an ardent heart would be combined with iron will. It was precisely such a “flaming boiler that feeds the work of the refrigerator”, in the aircraft and figurative expression of one philosopher, that Socrates was once, the same spinoz, Goethe, in the second rustle of his life, and the same Spinosist and “Goxtean” Huxley was the same.

On the example of Huxley, life and science seemed to have tried to summarize the passions and thoughts of mankind, encountering contradictions that have accumulated over the centuries in the same chest, subjecting the full -time betting of a person and a scientist and the results, and the results of this eternal drama Faust? Is Huxley only “agnosticism”-is it created by him, a rubberizing-damping word?

So it might seem and, however, only against the background of life and science of the nineteenth century.The history of assessment and judgments, more optimistic, more designated for the disclosure of enduring values ​​in the ideas and creators of ideas, the view, which of all the great questions of the nature of the nineteenth century, Thomas Huxley, are more justified before the court, and perhaps only he alone, confidently and closely came to the great truth, the disclosure of which is the task of the present, the twentieth century, the inheritance of which is, the inheritance of which is to expand To deepen, complete evolutionary teaching, finish, complete the "struggle for intellectual freedom." VI-I PRECISILY HALF of A Century ELAPSED SINCE OF THE GREATETSTESS and FIGHTERS FOR THE RIGHTS OF SCENENCEED FROM THIS Life: Death Came for Thomas H.

H. Anatomist and Physician by Education, Philosopher by His Very Nature, Writer of a Splendid Style and Eminent Orator-Polemist, GeeLogist, Palantologist, Morphologist and Physiologist, Zelegist and Embryologist, Ethnologist and Anthropologist, Biologist, Experting Botral and Humanistic Fields: In Pedagogics, in Pedagogics, Hystory and Sociology, in Literature, Ethic and Theology Included, Huxley as a Scientist Is Strikebhe Broadness of His “Omnivorous” Spirit thes of But Another Feature Still More Prominent, and Touching, Joining Huxley and Spinoza, this, As Huxley Called Him, Noblest of Jews and Thinker, Spiritally Nearest to Himself.

Brilliant by Their Form and Offten Touching by Their Content Many of these Letters in their Intimate Real Personality Offen Hidden, By the? SPLENDID ARMOUR of the "GLADITOR-GENERAL For Science". One of these letters, Dated, Let Us to Remember, From a year, SO Lucky for Its Author, As a Scientist and Polemist, So Tragic in His Privat Life. The Historical Retort Successfuly Thrwn by Huxley in the Oxford Dispute is Well Known from Text-Books ..

But How Many Know Thus Response Given Inaudibly By A Father, Given At the Grave of His Son, A Response, Written by the Blood of Heart, Which Vid Note Write The Following Words: “My Convictions, Position and Negating BUT THE GREAT BOLOCH FELL UPON ME SEEMED To StEM to Their Foundation, And Had I Lved AF Centuries Earlier I Am Couple Have Fancied A Devil Scoffing AT Me and Them - And Asking Me What Profit It Was to have Stripped Myself of the Hopes and Consulations of the Mass of Mankind?

To which my only reply was and is: OH DEVIL! Truth Is Better than Much Profit. I have Searched Over the Grounds of My Belief, And if Wife and Child and Name and Fame Were All To Lost to Mee Onter Onter as the Penalty, Still i Will Not Lie. Huxley, Vol I, p. From the Intellectual and Moral Image of the Great Requerr Thomas Huxley Let Us to His Inheritance in Human Culture.

In What is the Essence P of the Scientific "Reformation" that he propagated in his ardent and Reflective Words? Is it the evolutionary doctrine? BUT EVEN COMPLE to Speak of Darwin and HIS Predecessors, is the Main Idea of ​​Evolution-In Accordance with the Vith of Huxley-Net As the Scientific Thouugcht itself? Is it The Grand Conception of the University As of a Harmonious and Single System, Ruled by Eternal Laws?

But are the Roots of this Idea of ​​"Cosmos-Universe" Not Going Down to Heraaclites and Pythagoreans, An Idea, That Found Its Brilliant Grants in the Greatest Work of Goethe - as it was Assumed with SO Much Sagitation by Huxley His Gnoseological Convictions and Opinions? HIS Principle "To Think Truly and So to Live Rightly"? But, if not to Speak of the Ethical Principiples of Spinosa and Descrates the Idea of ​​the Reciprocal Relations Between Moral Perish and the Want of Knowledge, IS It Not ALLECHOO of a doctrin propagated in an ancient Hellas, 23 centuries ag Its First Martyr, Socrates His Tragical Conviction of People Wisdom and OFER Biology, Nor in Philosophy or Etics Huxley Himself-So it Might Seem-Did Net Leave Anythinly Positive and Worth of His So Many Superb and Unique Synthesis of Darwin-Goethe and Spinosa, The Darwinian Evolutionary Theory Under the Sign of Goethe and All this of Modern Critical, Exactly Knowledge Let it be so!

In the Life and Work of Thomas Huxley, Life and Science as If Tried to Reckon Up An Alternate Account of Thought and Passions of Humanity, Putting Together in One and One and One and One and One and One and One and One The Same Breast All the Contradictions Accumulated During Many Ages and Confronting in Person the Eternal Dramama of A Man .. and the Results, The Balance of This Tragedy of Faust?

IT BE BE ANLY AGNOSTICISM - This Reconeilating, Resignating Word of Huxley?More CorreSponding to the Judgement of History May Another View, More Optimistic and More Sitable for the Revealing of Eternal Values ​​and Their Creators, the Opinion, That from All the Great Inquires of the Nature of the XIX-Th Century Thomas Huxley, and May He Alone Only, Approached the Great Truth, A Full Revealment of Which may be the Task of OUR Pressent Century: to Deepen, To Accomplich the Evolutionary Theory, To Crown the Ever Lasting Fight for the Liberty in Science.

KOHTS Prof. Moscow State Darwin Museum.