The following is rare footage of the Huxley vs. Wilberforce debate. Wilberforce, the one in pink, appears to be on top but he clearly has no chance against the brilliant Huxley.
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On June 30, 1860, T.H. ("Darwin's Bulldog") Huxley and Samuel ("Soapy Sam") Wilberforce met at Oxford to debate the concepts put forward in Charles Darwin's recently published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, an encounter that is often celebrated even though the details of…
[Note:] I realized I posted this entry very recently, only three months prior to today, but since it is the anniversary of the Oxford debate/lectures I thought it would be fitting to throw this entry up again (with a few minor edits). I have also included two caricatures of Huxley (top) and…
Sometimes textbook cardboard refuses to disintegrate. According to scientific lore, T.H. Huxley singlehandedly slew Samuel "Soapy Sam" Wilberforce during a debate at Oxford in the sweltering heat of an 1860 summer, causing a woman to faint and sending Robert Fitzroy, (former captain of the HMS…
Speaking of D. James Kennedy, a reader left a link in a comment below about the time-honored practice of tracking down creationist misquotations. Anyone involved in the evolution debate has had to do this at least once. A creationist gives you some juicy quote from a famous scientist that you know…
Brilliant!
With Huxley's Vulcan neck grip, Wilberforce didn't stand a chance.
If Huxley could converse in English right now, he would say:
"Daaaaaaaaad! you keep putting me in embarrassing videos...
...and you're showing to whom?
Stop it."
Don't forget to archive those pictures and videos. Some day a 16yo Huxley will want to get a whole-body tattoo, take up toad licking (for spiritual reasons), and move to a commune to eat organic quantum-laser-tuned wheat grass juice, and worship the latest incarnation of "The Great One" ... and the leverage will come in handy.
Cute. Thanks. The perfect start to a relaxing evening.
That bear must have been heavy. The poor little tyke is breathing hard.
He's got a cold. In this case, it turns out to be a special effect.
Cold nothing. He was clearly trying to take Wilberforce's head off! I don't normally encourage debates to get violent like this one, though I have to admit it was entertaining to watch.
This is off-topic, but Greg, I wondered if you know of the economic historian Gregory Clark?
He has written a new paper claiming, for instance:
"First, England, all the way from the heart of the Middle Ages in 1200 to 2009, is a society without persistent social classes, at least among the descendants of the medieval population. It was a world of complete social mobility, with no permanent over-class and under-class, a world of complete equal opportunity."
Anyway, here is a post about the paper:
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2010/02/social-mobilit…
The comments make interesting reading, and Clark himself shows up.