Myth 13 - That Huxley Defeated Wilberforce, and Ridiculed His Obscurantism, in the 1860 Oxford Debate

Summary

The story of Thomas Huxley’s humiliation of bishop Samuel Wilberforce during their altercation in Oxford is the stuff of legend. To the Bishop of Oxford’s provocative enquiry whether Huxley would prefer to have an ape for an ancestor on his grandmother’s or grandfather’s side, Huxley famously retaliated that that he would rather have an ape for an ancestor than a bishop who pronounced on matters of which he was ignorant. A victory for Huxley and for science over religion! But was it really? In this chapter, we examine the accretion of mythology surrounding this notoriously public event. There is no denying that it took place before a raucous and animated audience. Its historical significance is not so easily interpreted. By the end of the nineteenth century, by which time most features of Darwin’s theory enjoyed acceptance, Huxley’s ‘victory’ had become a foundation myth of scientific professionalism, testimony to the importance of intellectual freedom in science and the ascendancy of expert knowledge over amateur prejudice. That retrospective interpretation can, however, distort perceptions of how matters stood in 1860. Even Huxley’s son, Leonard, conceded that talk of his father’s ‘victory’ was misplaced; Wilberforce was not the scientific ignoramus commonly supposed; and Huxley, despite his anticlericalism, considered talk of ‘conflict between science and religion’ to be a fabrication fostered in ignorance.