Agnosticism, Religion, and Science: Some Unexamined Implications

Agnosticism, Religion, and Science: Some Unexamined Implications CHRISTOPHER CLAUSEN "Our one certainty is the existence of the mental world." T. H. Huxley, quoted by James Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism (1899), 1,219 When Thomas Henry Huxley, in 1869, felt himself isolated in the Metaphysical Society because he found no existing name to label his philosophical position, he coined the word agnostic in self-defense and was pleased to find it taken up almost immediately by others who had apparently been in the same dilemma. That the new term gave a name, and thereby a sort of respectability, to those who professed ignorance in metaphysical and religious matters is obvious. The newly defined position also served a number of other purposes, however, for its formulator and for those (such as Darwin, John Tyndall, and Leslie Stephen) who soon adopted it, purposes which have not been sufficiently recognized by writers on Victorian science, philosophy, and religion. Its value as a position distinct from the rationalistic materialism which had characterized many earlier scientific unbelievers is less obvious than its distinctness from Christian belief, yet the former was undoubtedly more important in the history of science. Paradoxically enough, Huxley 's acuteness in breaking the links between science, rationalism, and materialism enormously strengthened Victorian scientists in their conChristopher Clausen (Assistant Professor of English at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University) has previously published articles on nineteenth-century interests in Oriental religions and is presendy preparing an edition of Sir Edwin Arnold's poem The Light of Asia. ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW73 flict with traditional religion, and also had considerable impact on the growth of science's views of itself and of its subject matter. Instead of seeming to defend a metaphysical position of their own, Huxley and. other controversialists were now free to attack the deficiencies of the dominant theological view of the world without presenting any vulnerable front where their enemies could counterattack with the traditional weapons of philosophic discourse. Furthermore, such dubious metaphysical entities as "matter" and "substance" lost much of their respectability in the vocabulary of science, to its great conceptual advantage. Finally, agnosticism had some positive religious sides to it—a fact which Huxley and Tyndall, at least, fully recognized. Indeed, had not Huxley 's services as a champion of science obscured the other sides of his thought, he might justly have received credit for an original and significant contribution to the philosophy of religion. Huxley's account of his coining the term is a fair example of his style in controversy, but gives little indication of his philosophical subtlety . When he became a member of the Metaphysical Society, Every variety of philosophical and theological opinion was represented there, and expressed itself with entire openness; most of my colleagues were -ists of one sort or another; and, however kind and friendly they might be, I, the man widiout a rag of a label to cover himself with, could not fail to have some of the uneasy feelings which must have beset the historical fox when, after leaving the trap in which his tail remained , he presented himself to his normally elongated companions. So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of "agnostic." It came into my head as suggestively andthetic to the "gnosdc" of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant; and I took the earliest opportunity of parading it at our Society, to show diat I, too, had a tail, like the other foxes. To my great satisfaction, the term took; and when the Spectator had stood godfather to it, any suspicion in die minds of respectable people, that a knowledge of its parentage might have awakened , was, of course, completely lulled.1 1T. H. Huxley, Science and Christian Tradition (New York, 1895), p. 239. The OED, s. agnostic, points out that the word is unetymological in its formation and quotes a letter from 74AGNOSTICISM, RELIGION, AND SCIENCE Another member of the Metaphysical Society, Tennyson, had demonstrated a score of years earlier, in In Memoriam, that one could respectably parade one's religious doubts in public; no one before Huxley, however, had had any success...