In the moral vacuum and world of shifting values following World War I, Aldous Huxley was both a sensitive reflector and an articulate catalyst. This work provides a highly illuminating analysis of Huxley's evolution from skeptic to mystic. As Milton Birnbaum shows, in a perceptive interpretation of Huxley's poetry, fiction, essays and biographies--what evolved in Huxley's moral and intellectual pilgrimage was not so much a change in direction as a shift in emphasis. Even in the sardonic Huxley of the 1920s and 1930s, there is a moral concern. In the later Huxley, there are traces of the satirical skepticism which delighted his readers in the decades preceding World War II. A man of letters, a keen observer, seeker of new ways while profoundly knowledgeable in the truths of ancient wisdom, Huxley tried to achieve a symbiotic synthesis of the best of all worlds. In clarifying and interpreting Huxley's intellectual, moral, and philosophical development, Birnbaum touches upon all the subjects that came under the scrutiny of a singularly encyclopedic mind. This book is of great worth to those interested both in Huxley the brilliant satirist and in Huxley the seeker of salvation. In his search, Huxley typified the modern quest for values. Milton Birnbaum's study is an invaluable guide in that journey. His new introduction takes account of research and analysis of Huxley that has occurred since this book's original publication. Milton Birnbaum is the retired Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences and professor of English at American International College. He has contributed articles on English and American literature to many journals and has published satiric articles in The Chronicle of Higher Education under the logo of "Higher Education, Eh?'"

This and the next Annual feature a collection of Aldous Huxley's early essays in art criticism, for the most part published anonymously. The present issue focuses on Huxley's critical approach to painting, particularly to Modernist works (Part I); The forthcoming Annual will concentrate on Huxley's appraisal of architecture, applied arts and sculpture in the 1920s (Part II). Bernfried Nugel is head of the Centre for Aldous Huxley Studies at the English Seminar of the University of Muenster (Germany). Jerome Meckier is a researcher at the University of Kentucky and at the Centre for Aldous Huxley Studies at the English Seminar of the University of Muenster.

In this text, Cyril Bibby gathered Huxley's most significant writings on education.

A collection of critical essays on Aldous Huxley and his work.

During the Victorian period, the practice of science shifted from a religious context to a naturalistic one. It is generally assumed that this shift occurred because naturalistic science was distinct from and superior to theistic science. Yet as Huxley’s Church and Maxwell’s Demon reveals, most of the methodological values underlying scientific practice were virtually identical for the theists and the naturalists: each agreed on the importance of the uniformity of natural laws, the use of hypothesis and theory, the moral value of science, and intellectual freedom. But if scientific naturalism did not rise to dominance because of its methodological superiority, then how did it triumph? Matthew Stanley explores the overlap and shift between theistic and naturalistic science through a parallel study of two major scientific figures: James Clerk Maxwell, a devout Christian physicist, and Thomas Henry Huxley, the iconoclast biologist who coined the word agnostic. Both were deeply engaged in the methodological, institutional, and political issues that were crucial to the theistic-naturalistic transformation. What Stanley’s analysis of these figures reveals is that the scientific naturalists executed a number of strategies over a generation to gain control of the institutions of scientific education and to reimagine the history of their discipline. Rather than a sudden revolution, the similarity between theistic and naturalistic science allowed for a relatively smooth transition in practice from the old guard to the new.

Aldous Leonard Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English philosopher and writer. He published nearly 50 books, both works of non-fiction and novels, as well as lengthy articles, essays, and poems. Raised into the influential Huxley family, he received a degree in English literature at Balliol College, Oxford. He wrote poetry and short stories at the beginning of his career and edited Oxford Poetry's literary journal, before releasing satire, screenplays, and travel writing. He lived the last part of his career, residing in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death. By just the end of his career, Huxley was generally regarded as one of the leading thinkers of his time. He was proposed seven times for the Nobel Prize in Literature and was appointed Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature in the year. He was interested in metaphysical universalism and mysticism, discussing these topics through works such as The Perennial Philosophy (1945), which explores the commonalities between Western and Eastern mysticism, and The Doors of Perception (1954), which interprets his mystical encounter of mescaline. He introduced his vision of dystopia and utopia in his most popular novel Brave New World (1932), and his final novel Island (1962), respectively.

Within the cycle that runs from Erewhon to Island, British literary utopias compete with one another to form the most persuasive picture of what the future might, or should, be like. At issue for Butler, Wells, Zamiatin, Orwell and others is whether utopia, be it positive or negative, is essentially prediction or hypothesis. Huxley contributed to this debate at roughly fifteen-year intervals, his three utopias becoming its key texts. In addition, Aldous Huxley and Utopia examines ironic cure scenes, the obsession with golf in the brave new world, attitudes towards death in Brave New World and Island, problems with names and history in the former, the role of islands in both, the detrimental impact of Madame Blavatsky and young Krishnamurti on the story of Pala, and the significance of a zoological conclusion of Island.

Aldous Huxley and Alternative Spirituality offers an incisive analysis of the full range of Huxley’s spiritual interests, spanning both mysticism (neo-Vedanta, Taoism, Mahayana and Zen Buddhism) and Western esotericism (mesmerism, spiritualism, the paranormal). Jake Poller examines how Huxley’s shifting spiritual convictions influenced his fiction, such as his depiction of the body and sex, and reveals how Huxley’s use of psychedelic substances affected his spiritual convictions, resulting in a Tantric turn in his work. Poller demonstrates how Huxley’s vision of a new alternative spirituality in Island, in which the Palanese select their beliefs from different religious traditions, anticipates the New Age spiritual supermarket and traces the profound influence of Huxley’s ideas on the spiritual seekers of the twentieth century and beyond.

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895) was one of the intellectual giants of Victorian England. A surgeon by training, he became the principal exponent of Darwinism and popularizer of "scientific naturalism." Huxley was a prolific essayist, and his writings put him at the center of intellectual debate in England during the later half of the nineteenth century. The Major Prose of Thomas Henry Huxley fills a very real and pressing chasm in history of science books, bringing together almost all of Huxley's major nontechnical prose, including Man's Place in Nature and both "Evolution in Ethics" and its "Prolegomena."