NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/sci/bio/4992

Internet Message Format | 1993-01-28 | 3.4 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!yale.edu!ira.uka.de!math.fu-berlin.de!news.netmbx.de!Germany.EU.net!mcsun!uknet!brunel!mt90dac
From: [e-mail] (Del Cotter)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: 'Soapy Sam' Wilberforce (summary)
Keywords: Wilberforce Huxley Darwin evolution history
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 27 Jan 93 13:45:45 GMT
References: <[e-mail]>
Organization: Brunel University, West London, UK
Lines: 64

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (M.Moore) writes:
>My recollection (not of the debate...) is that there were no verbatim
>accounts of the debate, (which took place in the Union debating society),
>but that it was written up, or reported, later.

Thank you, and thanks to all who have mailed me.  I know no more than I did,
but at least I know the record is at fault, not me.

(Summary of mailed responses begins)

Date: Thu, 21 Jan 93 15:32:21 EST
From: [e-mail] (Mickey Rowe)
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: What did 'Soapy Sam' Wilberforce say?

>Stephen J. Gould wrote a column about this interchange once.  He was
>principally interested in Huxley's side of the discussion, but he
>researched the conversation in question to get to the bottom of it as
>well as he could.  I remember mostly that Huxley's riposte was either
>not immediate, or not as well spoken as his descendents later claimed.
>If you want, I can look for the issue in which this is spelled out...
>I suspect that it has been reprinted in _Bully for Brontosaurus_.

Date: Sun, 24 Jan 93 10:34:17 PST
From: "Elihu M. Gerson" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Wilberforce & Huxley
To: Del Cotter <[e-mail]>

>With respect to your query in usenet-- Nobody knows exactly what Wilberforce
>said because no-one was transcribingthe procedings. Most accounts agree
>that W asked Huxley whether he was descended from an ape on his father's
>side or his mother's. This was considered shockingly rude because of the
>implied comment on the sexual habits of one (or more) elder Huxleys-- i.e.,
>marrying an animal is just as bad (or perhaps worse) than being descended
>from one.
>
>Accounts similarly agree that Huxley took Wilberforce to task for using
>ad hominem (ad pithecem?) argument.  In short, the interchange had nothing
>to do with the merits of Darwin's argument. Most of Wilberforce's
>speech rehearsed Richard Owen's objections.
>
>Adrian Desmond's works are probably best on the whole subject--
>"Architypes and Ancestors" (1982) (on Huxley and Owen) and his
>new biography of Darwin (with J. Moore).

To: [e-mail]  (Mickey Rowe)
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 93 20:38:55 BST

To: [e-mail] (Elihu M. Gerson)
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 93 13:06:00 BST

[slightly edited]

>Thanks.  Every source I have gives Huxley's reputed reply in detail from
>a letter of Huxley's written afterward, congratulating himself on his
>success (Of course, he may have improved his speech after the fact...).
>
>But *nobody* knows quite what it was that Wilberforce said, except
>that it was some crack along the lines of 'which one was the ape, your
>mother or your father?'.  Perhaps it's lost to history.
--
 ',' ' ',','  |                                                  |  ',' ' ',','
   ', ,','    |       Del Cotter       [e-mail]      |    ', ,','
     ','      |                                                  |      ','