Evolutionary Naturalism in Victorian Britain

Bernard Lightman is Professor of Humanities, York University, Canada

• Contents: Introduction; Science, scientists and the public: the contested meanings of science in Victorian Britain; Victorian sciences and religions: discordant harmonies; Robert Elsmere and the agnostic crises of faith; Interpreting agnosticism as a nonconformist sect: T.H. Huxley's 'new reformation; Scientists as materialists in the periodical press: Tyndall's Belfast address; Huxley and scientific agnosticism: the strange history of a failed rhetorical strategy; Ideology, evolution, and late-Victorian agnostic popularizers;' Fighting even with death': Balfour, scientific naturalism, and Thomas Henry Huxley's final battle; 'A conspiracy of one': Butler, natural theology and Victorian popularization; 'The voices of nature': popularizing of Victorian science; Frank Buckland and the resilience of natural theology: curiosity of natural history?; Science and the postmodern crisis; Index.

’This volume is the record of a major achievement and will be very useful in making that achievement more easily available to a new generation of scholars.’ British Journal for the History of Science '... [this] collection is undoubtedly an excellent one...' Victorian Studies