5. Thomas Huxley became known as Darwin’s Bulldog in the debate over natural selection
What is known in modern parlance as evolution was in Darwin’s day called development theory, and Huxley, a self-taught anthropologist and biologist, was not supportive of it, questioning what could be the basis of its operation. His position was that there was a lack of scientific evidence to support the theory. When he was one of a small group of scientists who were shown Darwin’s theory of natural selection before it was published, his response was, “How extremely stupid not to have thought of that”. Huxley harbored doubts that natural selection was the driver of the evolutionary process, but accepted it as a working hypothesis for further study.
It was Huxley who wrote one of the earliest reviews praising On the Origin of Species for the Times of London in December 1859. He followed it with articles supporting Darwin’s methods of collecting and analyzing evidence which supported his theories, written for several publications. Reviews which panned Darwin’s work appeared in other British newspapers, among them the Edinburgh Review, written by Richard Owen. Another, by Samuel Wilberforce, appeared in the Quarterly Review. The hostile reviews demonstrated battle lines being drawn, to be resolved via academic debate, over the validity of Darwin’s scientific methods and the conclusions he had drawn.
