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oxford university museum of natural
history is home to an internationally
significant natural history collection
including the first dinosaur fossils to
be scientifically described
and the only surviving soft tissue from
a dodo anywhere in the world
but it is also one of the most
remarkable buildings of the gothic
revival
a treasure house of victorian sculpture
and design
my name is john holmes i'm professor of
victorian literature and culture at the
university of birmingham and an honorary
associate of the museum
over this series of podcasts i want to
introduce you to the art and
architecture of oxford university museum
of natural history
and to give you a virtual tour of this
extraordinary and beautiful building
so far in this series we've looked at
how the art and architecture of the
museum was designed to teach its
visitors and students about science
the museum's gothic style and the angel
above its main entrance
told them that in victorian oxford
science was the study of god's creation
in this last episode i want to look at
how the museum responded when this
conception of science
known as natural theology came into
conflict with the new
evolutionary and revolutionary ideas of
charles darwin
when oxford university agreed to build a
museum of natural history in the
mid-1850s
the scientists who had campaigned for it
reassured the other dons that this would
be
an overtly christian enterprise not
everyone was convinced
in high anglican oxford suspicion of
science remained high
in may 1855 a month before the
foundation stone was due to be laid
a last ditch attempt was made to stop
the building of what one popular
pamphlet called
the babylon of a new museum in an
allusion to the personification of sin
in the book of revelation the dons who
warned against the dangerous materialism
of science may well have felt vindicated
five years later
when the museum celebrated its opening
by hosting the british association for
the advancement of science
the british association meetings were
large public gatherings
drawing in crowds of amateur as well as
professional scientists
and anyone else interested in new
knowledge and the development of
scientific ideas
on the 30th of june 1860 several hundred
people gathered for a debate
on the validity and implications of the
theory of evolution by natural selection
which had been proposed by charles
darwin at the end of the previous year
in his book on the origin of species the
meeting was held
in the large reading room on the first
floor of the museum the room has since
been partitioned by a mezzanine
but the original painted ceiling remains
giving a sense
of how grand and imposing the
architecture must have been
the great debate as it has come to be
known has been much mythologized
darwin himself was not present according
to popular legend the leading
antagonists were samuel wilberforce the
bishop of oxford
known as soapy sam for his habit of
bringing his hands together while he
spoke as if he was washing them
and the rising naturalist thomas henry
huxley
wilberforce notoriously asked huxley if
he had any particular predilection for a
monkey ancestry
and if so on which side whether he would
prefer an ape for his grandfather and a
woman for his grandmother
or a man for his grandfather and an ape
for his grandmother
huxley's reply to the bishop's smutty
joke was that
if the alternative were given to him
being descended from a man conspicuous
for his talents and eloquence
but who misused his gifts to ridicule
the laborious investigators of science
and obscure the light of scientific
truth
or from the humble origin alluded to he
would far rather choose the latter
than the former a report of the debate
in the little-known local paper called
the oxford chronicle
and berkshire and buckinghamshire
gazette discovered by the historian of
science richard england in 2017
shows that this exchange certainly took
place much to the enjoyment of a rather
raucous crowd
though there were many other speakers
for and against darwin and the debate
was far from a simple clash between
science and religion
wilberforce was a bishop not a scientist
but he spoke for many scientists
nonetheless
including several of those involved in
building the museum when he questioned
darwin's ideas
and huxley was not attacking religion
per se but the subordination of
scientific inquiry to christian
revelation
that was implicit in natural theology
what was at stake here then was not just
human evolution
but the whole question of what science
was
the study of god's creation or a method
for investigating the properties of a
material world
the great debate initiated a conflict to
the museum between natural theology
and methodological materialism or
scientific naturalism as it came to be
known
this conflict played out in the museum
science but also in its art
and in a growing tension between the two
the angel above the door to the museum
is a clear sign of the museum's initial
commitment to natural theology
while the only hints at darwinian
evolution in the early carvings of the
museum
are equivocal at best one of the windows
carved by james o'shea in the spring of
1860
around six months after diamond's book
was published features some curious
grotesques
unlike most of the carvings at the
museum these are not actual animals but
hybrids
the four quarters like those of a large
carnivore the hindquarters
and eel-like tail the most likely
explanation is that they're an allusion
to a notorious passage in the origin of
species
where darwin imagines that over time
natural selection might turn a species
of bear that swims around with its mouth
open
catching insects into a creature as
monstrous as a whale
the suggestion to include them was
probably made to ashay by either henry
ackland or charles dorbany
both of them were oxford scientists who
worked on the construction of the museum
and they were both skeptical towards
darwin at least initially
ackland and dorbany shared o'shea's
mischievous sense of humor
and the oxford bear whales seemed more
like a parody of darwin than a homage to
him
there's another joke perhaps at darwin's
expense perhaps at huxley's perhaps even
at wilberforces
in the central court in the next bay
round
from a carving of a monkey puzzle are
two decidedly puzzled looking monkeys
they look like they've been repurposed
from a sketch that james has shaded for
some carvings of monkeys around a window
which may have been the original design
for what became the cat window
the architectural historian frederick
o'dwyer suggests that o'shea was
probably back carving in the central
court by mid-august 1860
so he may well have added these monkeys
as a direct reference to the debate
which had taken place in the museum only
a few weeks before
if the museum's initial response to
darwin was parody
it did change its tune the older natural
theologians retired or died
while ackland and his younger colleagues
such as the anatomist george rollerston
soon came to see that the best way to
sustain both their faith and their
science
was to distinguish them from one another
rather than to look to nature
to corroborate religion by the 1880s the
museum had abandoned natural theology
and become instead one of the leading
centres for researching and teaching
evolution on the principles of
scientific naturalism
there was however one recently appointed
professor at the museum who held out
against darwin
in 1869 john ruskin who had been
actively involved in the design of the
museum in the 1850s
was appointed the first slade professor
of fine art at oxford university
throughout the 1870s and for another
brief term in the 1880s
ruskin taught art at oxford principally
lecturing in the museum itself
ruskin was appalled by the materialism
of darwin's theories
for him they reduced human morality and
the god-given beauty of the world
to mechanical processes of survival and
sex
ruskin wanted the museum to celebrate
life but its displays of skeletons and
human skulls
including specimens of genetic
deformities seem to him to call to mind
death and disease instead
he increasingly hated the methods of
science too
having championed art and science
together in the 1850s he now declared
that portraits of great men and even
pictures of ducks and drakes
could teach more than the scientific
collections in the museum
ruskin resigned his professorship in
1884 in protest against the use of
vivisection in scientific research
at the museum which he had helped to
found fifteen years later
a statue of charles darwin carved by
henry hope pinker
was unveiled at the museum in the
central court only a few feet away
from o'shea's teasing monkeys almost 40
years after the great debate
oxford university museum of natural
history had at last made its peace with
darwin
it honoured him publicly in the way that
its founders had always honored science
through art
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