350 Lightman
political speculation that sought to upset “the existing arrangements of
society on the faith of deductions” from “highly questionable axioms,”
such as the doctrine of natural rights. To make any progress, political
thinkers had to recognize that problems could not be solved a priori and
that “the natural order of things,” which tended to maintain the war of
each against all, had to be taken into account.^38 Huxley joined Spencer
and other scientifi c naturalists in drawing on evolutionary theory to argue
that there were natural limits to what could be accomplished through
social reform.^39 Kropotkin, as well as other socialist thinkers, responded
to Huxley’s evolutionary capitalism by calling for a reinterpretation of
Darwinian theory, which took into account natural sociability and mutual
support within species.^40ELITE RESISTANCE TO SCIENTIFIC NATURALISM
The attempts of scientifi c naturalists to redefi ne the intellectual and in-
stitutional basis of British science were resisted by other members of the
intellectual elite. The strongest resistance came from within the Anglican
clergy, including many of those gentlemen of science who lingered on
into the second half of the century as well as younger Anglicans in sci-
ence. They continued to look to the Anglican Church as the chief cultural
authority within British society and they vehemently rejected the no-
tion that a scientifi c worldview could provide meaning if divorced from a
religious foundation. Materialistic scientifi c theories missed the spiritual
truth that lay behind all natural phenomena. Even as late as the 1890s,
Anglican intellectuals such as Arthur Balfour, a future Tory prime minister,
were still attacking scientifi c naturalism. In his Foundations of Belief (1895),
Balfour carefully dissected the weaknesses of the secular conception of
scientifi c knowledge, denying that scientifi c naturalism had any intrinsic
connection to, or authority over, science.^41 To Balfour, naturalism was but
a “poor relation” of science that had forced itself into the “retinue of sci-
ence” and now claimed to “represent her authority and to speak with her
voice.”^42 Anglicans were joined by non- Anglican Protestant and Catholic
members of the intellectual elite stung by the attacks of scientifi c natural-
ists on Christian doctrine.
Effective opposition also came from a group of scientists who from the
1850s to the 1870s constructed the science of energy thereby redrawing
the disciplinary map of physics. Like the scientifi c naturalists, they too
had a reform program for the whole range of physical and even life sci-
ences. Bearing the impress of Scottish Presbyterianism, representing Whig