A new plinth – or historical marker – commemorates the 1860 debate between Thomas Henry Huxley and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce at Oxford. The Guardian has an article:
Oxford academic Dr Diane Purkiss said the debate “was really the first time Christianity had ever been asked to square off against science in a public forum in the whole of its history”. “It was also a public debate about evolution, still a hot button in the war between militant secularists and equally militant fundamentalists,” she said. “There was then a further debate about who had ‘won’, but this was in a way less important than that it had happened at all.”
Be sure to read Brian Switek’s post from 2008, Did Huxley really mop the floor with Wilberforce?, and look over Why is the Huxley-Wilberforce ‘debate’ so well known? Here’s a picture of the plinth posted on Flickr by FlickrDelusions:
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