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this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2024
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No Stupid Questions
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It's too bad T.H. Huxley was such a racist POS. He was a great paleontologist and I like his style of agnosticism.
I just read his Wikipedia page. Under the conditions of his time, how was he a racist? The article says he opposed slavery, opposed “scientific racists” of the time who argued polygenism and that some races were “transitional” between animal and man, and he asserted that science could never excuse the atrocities of slave owners.
He did have incomplete theories about a racial hierarchy of intelligence, which was a common idea at the time. The article doesn’t suggest that he was a primary champion of that theory, or that it heavily featured in most of his work.
In my opinion, he seems like a man who was doing what he could to expand his understanding of his observations, even if he was limited and misled by the prevailing methods and attitudes of his lifetime. Perhaps he should be judged against his peers rather than modern sensitivities, particularly without any evidence of malice in his work.
You're right, and he softened his stance with age (as well as his stance on sexism). To add to it on a personal level, I also enjoy the works of H.P. Lovecraft and he was wildly racist even compared to his peers.
It's less about judging him by today's standards than it is about lamenting that I'll never be able to think of his work without remembering his racist views. I also can't watch Call Girl of Cthulhu without remembering Lovecraft's cat's name. I can separate the art and science from the artist and scientist, especially if they're dead so that they can't benefit from it, but because of my own past (I was raised with a lot of passive racism by well meaning people) I can't forget what they said.