Why was T.H. Huxley critical of “Vestiges”?
“The Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation” was published anonymously in 1844, and was immensely popular. It laid out a grand history of life and the universe, all built upon a foundation of law-like evolutionary processes, from star formation to organic diversity. It brought together many themes that had been discussed in the early part of the 19th century (and earlier) and is generally accepted as having prepared polite Victorian society for the idea of evolutionary change, in contrast to the static world-view that dominated Western thought at the time. Reading “Vestiges” one is struck by the apparent degree to which it anticipates later scientific developments, particularly those of Charles Darwin regarding the evolution of life. The work was certainly well-known to Darwin and other naturalists of the time, including Darwin’s friend Thomas Huxley, who generally regarded the book as amateurish. As with many works of popular science then and now, it was looked down upon by the i
