‘Great is Darwin and Bergson his poet’: Julian Huxley's other evolutionary synthesis

SUMMARY

In 1912, Julian Huxley published his first book The Individual in the Animal Kingdom which he dedicated to the then world-famous French philosopher Henri Bergson. Historians have generally adopted one of two attitudes towards Huxley's early encounter with Bergson. They either dismiss it entirely as unimportant or minimize it, deeming it a youthful indiscretion preceding Huxley's full conversion to Fisherian Darwinism. Close biographical study and archive materials demonstrate, however, that neither position is tenable. The study of the Bergsonian elements in play in Julian Huxley's early works fed into Huxley's first ideas about progress in evolution and even his celebrated theories of bird courtship. Furthermore, the view that Huxley rejected Bergson in his later years needs to be revised. Although Huxley ended up claiming that Bergson's theory of evolution had no explanatory power, he never repudiated the descriptive power of Bergson's controversial notion of the élan vital. Even into the Modern Synthesis period, Huxley represented his own synthesis as drawing decisively on Bergson's philosophy.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my supervisor Greg Radick for his excellent mentorship, insights and guidance every step of the way. Many thanks also to Jon Hodge, Alice Murphy and Alex Aylward for their feedback and reflections. This research would not have been possible without the financial support of the British Society for the History of Science whose research grant enabled me to visit the Julian Huxley papers at Rice University in Houston. I am also indebted to the archivists of the Woodson Research Center Special Collections & Archives at the Fondren Library for their patience and advice.

Notes

1 Julian Huxley, Memories I (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1970), p. 68.

2 Julian Huxley, The Individual in the Animal Kingdom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1912), p. vii.

3 Huxley, The Individual in the Animal Kingdom, pp. vii–viii.

4 Julian Huxley, Memories II (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1973), p. 92.

5 Robert M. Gascoigne, ‘Julian Huxley and Biological Progress’, Journal of the History of Biology, 24, n°3 (1991), pp. 433–55.

6 John C. Greene, ‘The Interaction of Science and World View in Sir Julian Huxley's Evolutionary Biology’, Journal of the History of Biology, 23, n°1 (1990), pp. 39–55.

7 Peter Bowler, Reconciling Science and Religion. The Debate in Early Twentieth-Century Britain. (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2001).

8 Mary Bartley, ‘Courtship and Continued Progress: Julian Huxley's Studies on Bird Behaviour’, Journal of the History of Biology, 28, n°1 (1995), pp. 91–108.

9 William Provine, ‘Progress in evolution and meaning in life’, in Julian Huxley: Biologist and Statesman of Science, ed. by Kenneth Waters and Albert van Helden (Houston: Rice University Press, 1992), pp. 165–80.

10 Richard Delisle, Les Philosophies du néo-darwinisme (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2009), pp. 24–77.

11 Jean Gayon, ‘L’Evolution creatrice lue par les fondateurs de la theorie synthetique de l’evolution’, in Annales Bergsoniennes IV, ed. by Frédéric Worms (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2008), pp. 59–84.

12 Michael Ruse, From Monad to Man: The Concept of Progress in Evolutionary Biology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), pp. 331–38.

13 Julian Huxley greatly admired his grandfather, T. H. Huxley often referred to as ‘Darwin's bulldog’.

14 Julian Huxley, Memories I, p. 5.

15 Julian Huxley, Evolution, the Modern Synthesis. The Definitive Edition (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2010), pp. 22–28.

16 Jack Morrell, Science at Oxford 1914-1939. Transforming an Arts University (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), p. 269.

17 Morrell, Science at Oxford, p. 270.

18 Huxley, Memories I, p. 61.

19 Huxley, Memories I, p. 67.

20 Huxley, Memories I, p. 68.

21 Huxley, Memories I, p. 71.

22 Henry Wilson, ‘A new method by which sponges may be artificially reared’, Science, 25, n° 649 (1907), pp. 912–15; Henri Wilson, ‘On Some Phenomena of Coalescence and Regeneration in Sponges’, Journal of Experimental Zoology, 5 (1907), pp. 245–58.

23 Julian Huxley, ‘Some Phenomena of Regeneration in Sycon; With a Note on the Structure of its Collar-cells’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, 202 (1911), p. 176.

24 Huxley, ‘Some Phenomena of Regeneration in Sycon’.

25 Huxley, Memories I, p. 75.

26 Wilson, ‘On Some Phenomena’, p. 248.

27 ‘University Intelligence’, The Times, 18 May 1911, p. 4.

28 Philippe Soulez and Frédéric Worms, Bergson (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2002), p. 119.

29 ‘University Intelligence’, The Times, 29 May 1911, p. 5.

30 See ‘Professor Bergson on the Soul’, The Times, 21 October 1911, p. 4; ‘Professor Bergson on the Soul’, The Times, 23 October 1911, p. 4; ‘Professor Bergson on the Soul’, The Times, p. 11; ‘Professor Bergson on the Soul’, The Times, 30 October 1911, p. 10.

31 Alexander Dunlop Lindsay, The Philosophy of Bergson (London: J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd, 1911).

32 Huxley, Memories I, p. 58.

33 Henri Bergson, Essai sur les Données Immédiates de la Conscience (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1889).

34 Henri Bergson, Matière et Mémoire (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1896).

35 Henri Bergson, Le Rire: essai sur la signification du comique (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1900).

36 Henri Bergson, L’Evolution créatrice (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1907).

37 My translation ‘Il y a des changements, mais il n’y a pas de choses qui changent: le changement n’a pas besoin d’un support. Il y a des mouvements, mais il n’y a pas nécessairement des objets invariables qui se meuvent: le mouvement n’implique pas un mobile’. Henri Bergson, La Perception du changement. Conférences faites à l’Université d’Oxford les 26 et 27 mai 1911 (Oxford : The Clarendon Press, 1911), p. 24.

38 Julian Huxley, ‘Of the Behaviour of a Chamois: and Incidentally of Some Other Matters’, in Oxford Mountaineering Essays, ed. by Arnold Lunn (London: E. Arnold, 1912), pp. 37–55.

39 Huxley, On the Behaviour of a Chamois, p. 42

40 Huxley, On the Behaviour of a Chamois, p. 42.

41 Huxley, On the Behaviour of a Chamois, p. 55.

42 Ronald W. Clark, Sir Julian Huxley, F. R. S. (London: Phoenix House Ltd, 1960), pp. 20–21.

43 Julian Huxley, ‘The Meaning of Death’, The Cornhill Magazine, 30 (1911), pp. 492–507.

44 Huxley, The Individual in the Animal Kingdom, p. vii.

45 Huxley, The Individual in the Animal Kingdom, p. vii.

46 Huxley, The Individual in the Animal Kingdom, pp. vii–viii.

47 Huxley, The Individual in the Animal Kingdom, p. ix.

48 My translation: ‘Vous n’avez pas seulement réussi à synthétiser un nombre considérable de faits sous une forme simple, claire et élégante ; vous esquissez en outre une espèce de philosophie de la nature, en nous montrant le progrès de la vie dans la direction de l’individualité. La vision de ce progrès nous renseigne d’ailleurs sur l’essence de l’individualité bien mieux que ne peut le faire une formule simple comme celle que j’avais donnée, – formule que vous me faites l’honneur de citer’ – Houston, Rice University, Fondren Library, Julian Huxley Papers, Box 5 General correspondence, Bergson to Huxley, December 14, 1912.

49 Huxley, The Individual in the Animal Kingdom, p. 7.

50 Houston, Rice University, Fondren Library, Julian Huxley Papers, box 57, Rice lectures 1914–1916.

51 Huxley, Memories I, p. 36.

52 Burkhardt, Patterns of Behavior: Konrad Lorenz, Niko Tinbergen, and the Founding of Ethology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), p. 108.

53 Julian Huxley, ‘A disharmony in the reproductive habits of the wild duck (Anas boschas, L)’, Biologisches Zentralblatt, 32 (1912), 621.

54 Julian Huxley, ‘A first account of the courtship habits of the redshank (Totanus calidris L.)’, Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, 84 (1912), pp. 647–56.

55 Julian Huxley, ‘The great crested grebe and the idea of secondary sexual characteristics’, Science, 36 (1912), pp. 601–02.

56 Julian Huxley, ‘The great crested grebe and the idea of secondary sexual characteristics’, p. 601.

57 Julian Huxley, ‘The great crested grebe and the idea of secondary sexual characteristics’, p. 602.

58 Burkhardt, Patterns of Behavior, p. 106.

59 Burkhardt, Patterns of Behavior, p. 107.

60 Huxley, ‘A first account of the courtship habits of the redshank’, p. 650.

61 Julian Huxley quoted by Richard W. Burkardt, ‘Huxley and the Rise of Ethology’ in Julian Huxley: Biologist and Statesman of Science, ed. by Kenneth Waters and Albert van Helden (Houston: Rice University Press, 1992), p. 135.

62 John R. Durant, ‘The Tension at the Heart of Julian Huxley's Evolutionary Ethology’ in Julian Huxley: Biologist and Statesman of Science, ed. by Kenneth Waters and Albert van Helden (Houston: Rice University Press, 1992), pp. 150–60.

63 Julian Huxley, ‘The courtship habits of the Great Crested Grebe (Podiceps cristatus) with an addition to the Theory of Sexual Selection’, Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, 84 (1912), pp. 491–562.

64 Michael Brooke, ‘Michael Brooke reappraises Julian Huxley's pioneering classic of animal behaviour on its centenary’, Nature, 513 (2014), p. 484.

65 Burkhardt is however suspicious of these claims. See Burkardt, ‘Huxley and the Rise of Ethology’, p. 135 and Burkhardt, Patterns of Behavior.

66 Huxley, ‘The courtship habits of the Great Crested Grebe’, p. 491.

67 Huxley, ‘The courtship habits of the Great Crested Grebe’, p. 509.

68 Huxley, ‘The courtship habits of the Great Crested Grebe’, p. 559.

69 Huxley, ‘The courtship habits of the Great Crested Grebe’, p. 510.

70 Huxley, ‘The courtship habits of the Great Crested Grebe’, p. 557.

71 Huxley, ‘The courtship habits of the Great Crested Grebe’, p. 509.

72 Huxley, ‘The courtship habits of the Great Crested Grebe’, p. 510.

73 Huxley, ‘The courtship habits of the Great Crested Grebe’, p. 510.

74 Huxley, ‘The courtship habits of the Great Crested Grebe’, p. 511.

75 This was an idea that Huxley further developed, less than ten years later, in an article with a telling title, ‘Ils n’ont que de l’âme: An essay on bird mind’ (Julian Huxley, ‘Ils n’ont que de l’âme : An essay on bird mind’, The Cornhill Magazine, 54 (1923), pp. 415–27). Even if there were different degrees in consciousness, a ‘principle of uniformity’ should apply and naturalists should expand their study of animal behaviour to include the whole range of animal emotion that organisms have acquired through evolution.

76 Houston, Rice University, Fondren Library, Julian Huxley Papers, Box 48, Diary December 1916 – March 1917.

77 Houston, Rice University, Fondren Library, Julian Huxley Papers, box 57, Rice lectures 1914–1916.

78 Michael Ruse, From Monad to Man, p. 337.

79 Bergson, L’Evolution créatrice, pp. 268–80.

80 Huxley, The Individual in the Animal Kingdom, p. 29.

81 Huxley, The Individual in the Animal Kingdom, pp. 114–16.

82 Huxley, Evolution, the Modern Synthesis, p. 28.

83 Julian Huxley, ‘Progress Biological and Other’, in Essays of a Biologist (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1923), p. 29.

84 Huxley, ‘Progress Biological and Other’, p. 30.

85 Huxley, Evolution, the Modern Synthesis, pp. 556–78.

86 Huxley, ‘Progress Biological and Other, p. 33.

87 Julian Huxley, ‘Progress Biological and Other’, p. 33.

88 Houston, Rice University, Fondren Library, Julian Huxley Papers, box 57, Rice lectures 1914–1916.

89 See Delisle, Les Philosophies du néo-darwinisme.

90 Emily Herring, ‘Des évolutionnismes sans mécanisme: les néo-lamarckismes métaphysiques d’Albert Vandel (1894-1980) et Pierre-Paul Grassé (1895-1985)’ Revue d’histoire des sciences, 69, 2 (2016), pp. 369–98.

91 Gregory Radick, ‘Biographical article on W. H. Thorpe’, in The New Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ed by Noretta Koertge (Detroit, Michigan: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2008), pp. 42–45.

92 Jimena Canales, The Physicist and the Philosopher: Einstein, Bergson, and the Debate That Changed Our Understanding of Time (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015) .

93 Jon Hodge, ‘Biology and Philosophy (Including Ideology): A Study of Fisher and Wright’, in The Founders of Evolutionary Genetics, ed. by Sahotra Sarkar (Dodrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992), pp. 231–93.

94 Jean Gayon, ‘L’Evolution créatrice lue par les fondateurs de la théorie synthétique de l’évolution’.

95 Delisle, Les Philosophies du néo-darwinisme.

96 In addition to Huxley, these other Modern Synthesis architects were especially enthusiastic about Creative Evolution for its anti-deterministic and anti-teleological arguments. Darwin's tree of life had eliminated the possibility of evolution following a predetermined goal. For decades after the publication of the Origin of Species, however, evolutionary progress continued to be portrayed as the ascent of a ladder leading towards mankind or modern industrial civilisation as end products. It is interesting to note that, despite his critique of Darwinian natural selection, Bergson proposed a non-directional vision of progress which provided the Neo-Darwinians of the early 20th century with theoretical tools to counter the teleological ladder model and drive home Darwin's original message. Evolution by natural selection, according to these thinkers, was creative in a Bergsonian sense, meaning that it brought about absolute novelties and therefore did not follow a predetermined plan nor did it result from deterministic causation. For more on this point see Jean Gayon, ‘L’Evolution créatrice lue par les fondateurs de la théorie synthétique de l’évolution’. My PhD thesis (forthcoming 2018) will examine these questions at length.