In Metamorphoses 1. 461–8 Ovid lists islands visited by Minos and brought into his realm during his journey from Crete to Aigina on the way to avenge the death of Androgeos in Attica.

T. H. Huxley (1825-1895) was not only an active protagonist in the religious and scientific upheaval that followed the publication of Darwin's theory of evolution but also a harbinger of the sociobiological debates about the implications of evolution that are now going on. His seminal lecture Evolution and Ethics, reprinted here with its introductory Prolegomena, argues that the human psyche is at war with itself, that humans are alienated in a cosmos that has no special reference to their needs, (...) and that moral societies are of necessity in conflict with the natural conditions of their existence. Seen in the light of current understanding of the mechanisms of evolution, these claims remain as controversial today as they were when Huxley proposed them. In this volume George Williams, one of the best-known evolutionary biologists of our time, asserts that recent biological ideas and data justify a more extreme condemnation of the "cosmic process" than Huxley advocated and more extreme denial that the forces that got us here are capable of maintaining a viable world. James Paradis, an expert in Victorian studies, has written an introduction that sets the celebrated lecture in the context of cultural history, revealing it to be an impressive synthesis of Victorian thinking, as well as a challenge to eighteenth-century assumptions about the harmony of of nature. With Huxley's lecture as a focal point, the three parts of this book unite philosophy and science in a shared quest that recalls their common origins as systems of knowledge. Originally published in 1989. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

For a period of almost twenty years Aldous Huxley made use in his novels and biographies of the theories of physique and character developed by the psychometrist William Sheldon. This is most clearly seen in the novel Time must have a stop, whose characters follow Sheldon's theories in the most intricate and precise fashion. Huxley's use of Sheldon's work in this novel will be examined, and his motives for embarking on this relatively rare use of science in literature (...) discussed. (shrink)

There is widespread agreement among philosophers that William James's well-known attempt to justify religious faith in ‘The Will to Believe’ is a failure. But despite the fact that James wrote his essay as a reply to the ‘tough-minded’ ethics of belief represented by such thinkers as W. K. Clifford and T. H. Huxley, the reasons commonly given today for rejecting James's position seem to be mostly based on the same principle of intellectual ethics that motivated Clifford and Huxley. (...) Clifford, it may be recalled, maintained that ‘It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence’. Although this is a rather rhetorical way of stating it, the principle is basically the same one adhered to by most scientists and philosophers who consider themselves rigorous and ‘objective’ thinkers. Even philosophers not associated with the hardheaded modern Anglo-American style of empiricism commonly pledge their allegiance to such a principle. For example, Brand Blanshard holds that the ‘main principle’ of the ethics of belief is that one should ‘equate one's assent to the evidence’ and he then goes on to criticize James, on the basis of this principle, for advocating self-deception and intellectual dishonesty. (shrink)

The 1920-1960 period saw the creation of the conditions for a unification of disciplines in the area of evolutionary biology under a limited number of theoretical prescriptions: the evolutionary synthesis. Whereas the sociological dimension of this synthesis was fairly successful, it was surprisingly loose when it came to the interpretation of the evolutionary mechanisms per se, and completely lacking at the level of the foundational epistemological and metaphysical commitments. Key figures such as Huxley, Simpson, Dobzhansky, and Rensch only paid (...) lip service to the conceptual dimension of the evolutionary synthesis, as they eventually realized that a number of evolutionary phenomena could not be explained by its narrow theoretical corpus. Apparently, the evolutionary synthesis constituted a premature event in the development of evolutionary biology. Not only are the real achievements of the evolutionary synthesis in need of reevaluation, but this reassessment also has important implications for the historiography of Darwinism and the current debates about the darwinian movement. (shrink)

Aristotle and Huey P. Newton, Confucius and Abbie Hoffman, Gandhi and Eldridge Cleaver, and Plato and Noam Chomsky are some of the contrasts to be found in the groupings of selections in this unusual book of readings. The editors insist that in choosing "relevant" readings, they are using the same criterion of relevance as applies in logical argumentation, but they explain as follows a special application of this concept: "The material for the readings in this book has been primarily chosen (...) for its emphasis on relevant issues that are outside the traditional area of philosophy." Five topics are covered—education, protest, technology, national liberation, and the good life. The longest section is the one on protest, which includes passages from the writings of Sophocles, Plato, the New Testament, Thoreau, Bobby Seale, and nine others. Authors in the section on the good life range from al-Farabi to Bakunin, Aldous Huxley, Erich Fromm, and Jerry Rubin. Teachers of philosophy, if considering this book as a textbook, may be staggered by the high proportion of radical viewpoints presented in it. Nevertheless, the volume has a number of important merits. The topics treated are at the center of student interest, and the philosophical roots of the topics are displayed, at least in outline, in the range of selections. The readings are spicy, but they agitate the elements of genuinely profound problems.—W. G. (shrink)