Tyndall, Huxley, and Arnold: Humanists?

Arguing for the necessity of flexibility in our thinking, for the elimination of dogmas from the way we approach knowledge, Tyndall suggests in his “Belfast Address” that science will “wrest from theology” any theories about the universe and the human place in it (3). Here, Tyndall seems to make a bold claim about human presumption, but what strikes me is that even in this manifesto for intellectual humility in the face of science, Tyndall adheres to conventional humanist values. On the one hand, Tyndall is arguing that scientific knowledge will not advance unless we (well, the Victorians) are able to put away our preconceived ideas about the natural world and its meaning. On the other hand, Tyndall does not question the human-oriented goals of scientific knowledge. After we have banished all our preconceived notions about “cosmological theory”—the ones given to us by religion and the humanities, for example—the end of all our seeking is still a human-centered one. “The lifting of the life is the essential point,” Tyndall writes (4). In other words, the reason for banishing rigidity from our methods of thinking about the world is so that we may turn science into just another one of the “various modes of leverage” by which we can “raise life to a higher level” (4). Science, in this view, becomes a kind of tool, and “combines with every effort towards the bettering of man’s estate” (4, emphasis mine).

In all three prose pieces we read for today, this movement “towards the bettering of man’s estate” is figured as a form of "progress," which I take to mean a human movement forward. All three writers make their arguments more or less in favor of science by couching them in terms of the benefit this knowledge will bring to human society. Take Huxley. In his piece from Science and Culture, Huxley engages Matthew Arnold’s concept of culture by arguing that progress is made through the criticism of life, which requires a foundation of culture. Huxley argues that culture is not truly possible without a concentration on the sciences: “I find myself wholly unable to admit that either nations or individuals will really advance, if their common outfit draws nothing from the stores of physical science” (6, emphasis mine). The aims of culture, in Huxley’s view (which he adopts from Arnold), is to advance human knowledge.

Now take Arnold. Knowledge, according to everyone's favorite proponent of culture, is an aid to human progress. Knowing the ancient Greeks and Romans, Arnold says, is "a help to knowing ourselves and the world" (7). Knowing “as a help” is repeated twice on this page, emphasizing the secondary role that scientific or literary knowledge plays—it is not an end in itself, but a tool for another ultimate goal. That goal, Arnold never shies away from saying, is a human-centered one: “knowing ourselves” (7) Huxley had claimed that Arnold erroneously excluded scientific knowledge from his vision of culture, but Arnold defends himself by enlarging his idea of literature to encompass all writing, including the sciences. According to Arnold, it is “a superficial humanism” that excludes the sciences (6); “a genuine humanism is scientific” (7). Both, then, seem to be in agreement that the distinction between “natural knowledge” and the belles lettres is a false one. In fact, all three authors, if they had met in 1882 after Arnold had completed his rebuttal to Huxley, would theoretically have been in agreement about the need for science in intellectual pursuits.

What strikes me is that they share an even more fundamental assumption: that the purpose of all knowledge, whether “natural knowledge” or the study of human culture, is the betterment of humanity. No one seems to be asking whether scientific and cultural learning ought to be motivated by anything other than the benefits it brings to human society (I imagine they would balk at the suggestion that there might be some other motivation—what, besides Progress, would it be?). But what’s curious is how the scientists’ language of “submit[ting]” and “relinquish[ing]” juxtaposes with what is still very much a humanist way of thinking (Tyndall 3). Arnold is the only one who uses the term “humanism” explicitly, but humanism is the logical foundation of Tyndall and Huxley’s rationale for the study of science, as well.