Myth 12 - That Huxley Was Darwin’s Bulldog and Accepted All Aspects of His Theory

Summary

This is a myth that is ‘good in parts.’ T. H. Huxley certainly emerged as the leading defender of the Origin of Species against critics who believed that organic forms are designed – directly or indirectly – by God. But this does not mean that he accepted natural selection as a complete explanation of how evolution works. The theory suited his naturalistic ideology because it was based solely on observable processes. From the start, though, Huxley cautioned that Darwin needed to show how artificial selection could produce a new species and (more importantly) that he was wrong to rule out the possibility of new characters appearing by abrupt saltations. The latter point is the key to a basic difference between their worldviews. As a morphologist Huxley was not convinced that the fundamental structure of each type could be the accumulated product of a series of small adaptive modifications. He eventually suggested that forces internal to the organism might play a role in directing variation – a position not far removed from that of anti-Darwinians such as Mivart.