Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 159102126X, Paperback)

These two essays by Thomas H. Huxley (1825-1895), the famous champion of Darwin's theory of evolution, tackle a subject that is still a major focus of ethical debates today: the relation of science as a whole, and specifically evolutionary ideas, to ethics and morality. These essays demonstrate Huxley's rhetorical gifts and talent for explaining the importance of science to a lay audience.

"Evolution and Ethics" was written in 1893 in response to the then fashionable "Social Darwinism" popularized by philosopher Herbert Spencer. Society progresses, Huxley maintained, through individuals who prove themselves to be ethically the best, not physically the fittest.

In "Science and Morals" (1886) Huxley addresses the criticism that he and his associates refuse to take seriously anything that is beyond the bounds of physical science. He replies that he takes very seriously a host of mental phenomena that do not, strictly speaking, fall within these narrow physical limits: the universal law of causation, or the esthetic pleasure of the arts, or the truths of mathematics, for example.

Students of ethics, the history of science, and the ongoing debate over evolution will welcome this edition of two masterful essays by "Darwin's bulldog."