Darwin's Bulldog Bites Soapy Sam: The Oxford "Debate" over Evolution, 1860

In June 1860, seven months after Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, scientists gathered at the Oxford University Museum. The occasion was the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Darwin himself was not in attendance, due to illness. (Image: Oxford Museum of Natural History, as it is today)

The meeting lasted a week but the main event took place on Saturday June 30. It was preceded by a long, tedious presentation by Professor John W. Draper of New York University. His subject was the intellectual development of Europe considered in relation to Darwin's theory. 

The discussion that followed is often called the Huxley-Wilberforce Debate after two the key participants, biologist and comparative anatomist Thomas Henry Huxley and Samuel Wilberforce, the Anglican Bishop of Oxford. 

Their clash has gone down in history as a dramatic moment when evolutionary science, represented by Huxley, self-styled "Darwin's Bulldog" delivered a knockout blow against religion, championed by the Bishop, nicknamed "Soapy Sam." 

How Wilberforce got his nickname is a matter of debate, but he is supposed to have explained it good-humoredly, saying that although often in hot water, he always came out with clean hands. 

The caricatures below are of Wilberforce and Huxley, by "Ape" from Vanity Fair, 1869 and 1871. The artist, Carlo Pellegrini, often signed his work "Ape." It was not a reference to anthropoids, fitting as that might be. It was Italian for "Bee." Pellegrini could sting as well as amuse.

The reality of the Great Debate is more complicated than the legend. No official record exists of the discussion. Those who attended left conflicting recollections of what was said. The main lines are clear enough, however.

Wilberforce and Huxley were not the only participants in the discussion. Both of them were supported by prominent scientists and clergymen, which renders a strict "Science v. Religion" interpretation problematic. Both, however, came to the meeting with the intent of defending their respective positions on "Darwinism."

Huxley's most notable ally at Oxford was the renowned botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker. Darwin's closest friend, Hooker was the Assistant Director of Kew Botanical Gardens. He later became its Director.

Several prominent scientists supported Wilberforce. Among them was Robert Fitzroy, who had commanded the expedition during which Darwin had conceived the outlines of natural selection. After The Origin appeared, Fitzroy is supposed to have declared that he wished he had never taken Darwin along on the Voyage of the Beagle. (Image: Robert Fitzroy)

Fitzroy was a first-rate meteorologist who devoted much of his life developing an effective system for warning ships of approaching stormy weather. He was also a devout Christian literalist. His main contribution to the Oxford Debate seems to have been raising a large Bible over his head and beseeching the audience to believe in God rather than man -- the man in this case being Darwin. 

(Image: HMS Beagle in Tierra del Fuego) 

Another of Bishop Wilberforce's supporters was Richard Owen, professor of biology. An accomplished comparative anatomist and paleontologist, Owen is perhaps best known for coining the word "dinosaur. " His greatest achievement was campaigning for and overseeing the establishment of the vast and wonderful Natural History Museum in South Kensington, London (below).

Owen had written a highly critical review of Darwin's Origin after its publication. He had also helped Wilberforce to write a longer review of his own. Owen encouraged Wilberforce to speak at the Oxford meeting and coached him on the main points of attack. 

Owen did not deny the idea of evolution itself, and some of his views have influenced modern evolutionary theory. But he claimed that Darwin had oversimplified the developmental process, that humans were a unique species, and that all life developed according to designed (divine) laws. (Image: Richard Owen)

Darwin ascribed Owen's hostility to the Origin to jealousy of the attention it brought to Darwin. Owen had also attacked Huxley and Hooker as Darwin's "short-sighted disciples." In particular, Owen had ridiculed Huxley for suggesting that humans were descended from an ape-like creature. 

At the 1860 debate, Bishop Wilberforce used scientific arguments, largely supplied by Owen, to counter Darwin's position. But what made the encounter famous (eventually) was Wilberforce's question, directed at Huxley, which went something like this: 

"Is it through your grandfather or your grandmother that you claim descent from a monkey?" 

Many years later Huxley wrote that hearing that, he turned to the man sitting next to him, Dr. Benjamin Brodie, and said, "The Lord hath delivered him (Wilberforce) into my hands" 

Huxley had not sought this encounter. He had intended to skip the session and head for home. Wilberforce was a famous and accomplished orator. Huxley, not yet the great public speaker he later became, did not relish butting heads with the Bishop. He was persuaded to stay and "defend the cause" by Robert Chambers, a Scottish journalist. 

Chambers had published a book advocating evolution in 1844. The Vestiges of Creation was a bestseller that aroused a huge furor. Huxley, then an evolutionary skeptic, had written a hostile review of the Vestiges, but the two men were now on the same side. Chambers believed that Huxley's knowledge of comparative anatomy could carry the day.

Huxley countered Wilberforce by defending the main points of Darwin's theory of natural selection. Then he finished with the famous declaration that he would not be ashamed to have a monkey for his ancestor. What he would be ashamed of was to be descended from a man who used great gifts to obscure the truth. 

According to later accounts, this put-down of Wilberforce left the audience in an uproar. One woman is reported to have fainted at seeing a bishop treated so disrespectfully. Or, maybe her corset was too tight.

History generally credits Huxley as the winner of the Great Debate. At the time, that was not so clear. Many contemporaries thought Wilberforce had the best of it. Never a shrinking violet, he was sure he had. 

Hooker claimed that Huxley did not adequately defend the arguments of the Origin and added the audience couldn't hear much of what he said anyway. Hooker, who spoke after Huxley, claimed that it was he and not Huxley who done the best job of countering Wilberforce's attacks. Scientists are human, after all.  (Image: Joseph Hooker)

The debate at Oxford did not receive a huge amount of attention at the time. It became legendary as a pivotal moment in the history of science only decades later. The monument memorializing the debate (below) was erected 150 years later outside the Oxford Museum.

Owen feuded with Huxley and Hooker for many years. Their disagreements became more than intellectual. Darwin, once friendly with Owen, wrote in 1871: "I used to be ashamed of hating him (Owen) so much, but now I will carefully cherish my hatred and contempt to the last days of my life."

Interestingly, Huxley and Darwin remained on good terms with Wilberforce after the debate. Darwin had gone to Cambridge with the aim of entering the church as an Anglican minister. Even after he returned from the voyage aboard the Beagle, he seems to have retained that aim for a time. 

In 1839, Rev. John Bachman of Charleston, himself an accomplished naturalist, was visiting England. He met Darwin and asked him what he was going to do with the rest of his life. Darwin replied, he intended to become a bishop. 

If Darwin was serious then he soon abandoned that intention. In his autobiography he explained that he no longer believed in God. His family removed those passages from later editions.  

The Oxford Debate may not have been the clear seismic event some later accounts claimed. But it remains an important and fascinating moment in the history of science. 

  

 

 

Hunting the Feejee Mermaid: from Charleston to London

I took a trip across London not long ago to visit the Horniman Museum and Gardens. The Horniman contains much of interest in its natural history, ethnography, and botanical collections. I must admit, however, that the star attraction for me was a famous hoax: the Feejee Mermaid. 

I had first stumbled onto the Feejee Mermaid while researching an article on the influence of two pseudo-sciences, mesmerism and phrenology, in antebellum Charleston, South Carolina. The Mermaid had been exhibited there in 1842 by the great American showman of the day, P. T. Barnum. He claimed it had been caught by fishermen in Fiji. A contemporary drawing of it reveals that this was not much like the beautiful, siren-like mermaids of legend. 

The Mermaid proved a big hit despite its grotesque appearance. It also sparked a major controversy among Charleston's intellectuals, with some, Rev. John Bachman, a highly competent naturalist, denouncing it as a crude fake. Others, notably Richard Yeadon, editor of the Charleston Courier, pronouncing it as genuine. 

Disagreement in Charleston over the mermaid's bona fides became quite heated, with both sides accusing the other of violating the Southern code of honor. Bachman and Yeadon traded insults and came close to the dueling field, an outcome only prevented by the intervention of mutual friends. 

I summarized the Charleston mermaid dispute in the article I mentioned above, because the animosities carried over into the debate over mesmerism a few months later. 

But back to the Horniman Museum. I arrived to discover that the ballyhooed Mermaid was not there! In the place where it was supposed to be, there was a placard with a picture of the mangy critter and the words "the following object has been temporarily removed from display." I learned from one of the guides that it was on loan to a museum in the USA. The object that was not there looks like this:



That the main thing I came to see was away on tour was not the only surprise I was in for. The object that was not in the Horniman is called the Feejee "Merman," not the Feejee "Mermaid." Due to its absence, of course, I was unable to verify its sex or gender. I subsequently learned that there was not one mermaid or merman but at least several, perhaps many. 

Learning from Barnum, other circuses and promoters secured (or constructed) their own mermaids or mermen for their sideshows. Some of them were made in Japan, including Barnum's and the one in the Horniman. The Barnum mermaid was exhibited elsewhere, including Cape Town and England for twenty years before a collaborator of Barnum, Moses Kimball, acquired it. Most naturalists denounced it as a fake, but the promoters who exhibited it and others were more interested in the revenue it produced. 

Some accounts say that Barnum's mermaid was destroyed in a fire; others say it survived. The Peabody Museum at Harvard University claims that the object below is the Barnum mermaid, but other "mermaid experts" disagree. They argue it was one of many that were exhibited during the nineteenth century. 

My visit to the Horniman was a failure in that I did not see the Mermaid or Merman. But I learned that the history of the "Feejee Mermaid" was much more complicated and interesting than I had thought. 

Further Reading: 

The Feejee Mermaid; Early Barnum Hoax: Live Science

Kenneth S. Greenberg, "The Nose, the Lie, and the Duel in the Antebellum South," The American Historical Review, Vol. 95, No. 1 (Feb., 1990), pp. 57-74.

Peter McCandless, 'Mesmerism and Phrenology in Antebellum Charleston: Enough of the Marvellous,' The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 58, No. 2 May, 1992, pp. 199-230.