Huxley's Church and Maxwell's Demon

From Theistic Science to Naturalistic Science

Stanley Matthew

During the Victorian period, the practice of science shifted from a religious context to a naturalistic one. It is generally assumed that this shift occurred because naturalistic science was distinct from and superior to theistic science. As Huxley's Church and Maxwell's Demon reveals, however, most of the methodological values underlying scientific practice were virtually identical for the theists and the naturalists: each agreed on the importance of the uniformity of natural laws, the use of hypothesis and theory, the moral value of science, and intellectual freedom. But if scientific naturalism did not rise to dominance because of its methodological superiority, then how did it triumph?

Matthew Stanley explores the overlap and shift between theistic and naturalistic science through a parallel study of two major scientific figures: James Clerk Maxwell, a devout Christian physicist, and Thomas Henry Huxley, the iconoclast biologist who coined the word agnostic. Both were deeply engaged in the methodological, institutional, and political issues that were crucial to the theistic-naturalistic transformation. What Stanley's analysis of these figures reveals is that the scientific naturalists executed a number of strategies over a generation to gain control of the institutions of scientific education and to reimagine the history of their discipline. Rather than a sudden revolution, the similarity between theistic and naturalistic science allowed for a relatively smooth transition in practice from the old guard to the new.

About the Author

Matthew Stanley is associate professor at New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study. He is the author of "Practical Mystic: Religion, Science, and A. S. Eddington" and lives in New York City.

Reviews

"Stanley has produced a book that will challenge the general reader, stimulate academic discussion, and contribute much to understanding the subtleties and diversities of past and present scientific practice and religious debate" – Science

"The context of Victorian science swung smoothly from the theistic to the naturalistic, shedding supernatural causality along the way. Stanley attributes the relative amity between Christian and atheist scientists to shared ideals such as intellectual freedom" – Nature

"Matthew Stanley's wonderful new book introduces us to Maxwell and Huxley as they embodied theistic and naturalistic science, respectively, in Victorian Britain. Moving well beyond the widespread assumption that modern science and religion are and always have been fundamentally antithetical to one another, Huxley's Church & Maxwell's Demon offers a history of scientific naturalism that illustrates the deep and fundamental commonalities between positions on the proper practice of science that began to diverge relatively late and in very particular historical circumstances" – New Books in Science, Technology, and Society

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