Studies in history and philosophy of biological and biomedical sciences
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Stud Hist Philos Biol Biomed Sci · Aug 2016
Biography Historical ArticleThe "History" of Victorian Scientific Naturalism: Huxley, Spencer and the "End" of natural history.
As part of their defence of evolutionary theory, T. H. Huxley and Herbert Spencer argued that natural history was no longer a legitimate scientific discipline. ⋯ It affected their conceptions of human agency, contingency, and directionality in history. Examining Huxley's and Spencer's responses to the "end" of natural history reveals some of the deep divisions within scientific naturalism and the inherent problems of naturalism in general. Whereas Huxley chose to separate the natural and the historical, Spencer opted to fuse them into a single system.