Tag: Gertrude Himmelfarb

Flannery: When Gertrude suggested to Julian [Huxley, Darwin’s faithful puppy] that her book might shed new light on Darwinian evolution, he immediately protested, “New! There is nothing new to say about evolution. Everything that needs saying has already been said. The theory is incontrovertible.” She says that abruptly ended the conversation.

Himmelfarb: Darwin usually engaged in rhetorical sleight-of-hand where “possibilities were promoted into probabilities, and probabilities into certainties, so ignorance itself was raised to a position only once removed from certain knowledge” (p. 335)