Science and Culture

by Thomas Henry Huxley

Assigned by 1 of the 9 reading lists, catalogue entry only

Written
1880
Form
Essay
Language
English
Length
Short · 20 ppunder 120 pages
Difficulty
Moderate2 of 5 for a first-year reader

We recommendScience and Education, EssaysCambridge University Press, 2011Reprints volume three of Huxley's Collected Essays, where the address appears with his other writings on education.

These links go straight to Amazon and Bookshop.org and earn this site nothing today. Prices are the same either way. How this works.

An address Huxley gave at the opening of Josiah Mason's Science College in Birmingham in 1880, published the next year in Science and Culture, and Other Essays. Answering those who held that only a classical education could produce culture, he argues that a training in the methods and results of physical science does so just as well, that the Renaissance humanists were themselves rebels against a dead learning, and that a man who knows no science is as poorly educated as one who knows no literature. Matthew Arnold replied in Literature and Science.

No reading guide yet

The catalogue entry above is complete: the dates, the form, the themes and every program that assigns Science and Culture are verified against each program's published list.

What is missing is the part that takes real work: the summary, the key passages, and a recommended translation. The edition named below is the one most programs assign, so the buy links are useful already.

Browse the 48 works that do have a guide →

Science and Culture, and Other Essays, Mason College, Birmingham, liberal education, classics versus science, Matthew Arnold, scientific education, Victorian education debate, T. H. Huxley