Philip Henry Gosse (1810–1888) was a naturalist and populariser of natural science. He wrote more than 40 books and 270 scientific and religious articles, including An Introduction to Zoology (1844) and a series on Natural History. He was virtually the inventor of the seawater aquarium, and an innovator in the study of marine biology.
In recognition of his scientific contributions, Gosse was elected an Associate of the Linnaean Society (1850) and a Fellow of the Royal Society, London (1856). His greatest legacy, however, was as a popular writer of science for the general public.
He is credited with producing the first illustrated field guide on marine organisms to help the non-specialist identify and learn about animals. In addition, Gosse invented the first salt-water aquarium in which to observe and study marine organisms and he designed the first public aquarium, which opened in London in 1858.
Today, Gosse is perhaps best known as the author of Omphalos in 1857. This attempted to reconcile the immense geological ages presupposed by Charles Lyell with the Biblical account of creation, which suggested that the world was six-thousand-years old.
Gosse argued that in order for the world to be ‘functional’, God must have created the Earth with mountains and canyons, trees with growth rings, and Adam and Eve with hair, fingernails, and navels (‘omphalos’ being Greek for ‘navel’).
God had given things the appearances of a history that they had not experienced. Hence, all the geological strata and the fossils collected by Victorian scientists were false evidence of a gradual history that the world had never had. Accordingly, he stated that there was no truth in the claim that the earth was of any great age.
By rejecting the antiquity of the earth, and by challenging the validity of evolution, Gosse has been described as the father of what today is called Creationism.
Not surprisingly, the great majority of Victorian scientists rejected Gosse’s ideas.
For over 30 years, the scientist lived in Torquay.
His son, Edmund Gosse in Father and Son (1907) describes how, at the age of 8, he moved from London to Torquay in 1857. Along with his father and governess, they took residence in Sandhurst, a villa in Manor Park, St Marychurch.
He gives a picture of his father as a despotic and fanatically religious man and of the narrowness of their life as members of the conservative evangelical Christian denomination, the Plymouth Brethren. Soon after his arrival in Torquay, Gosse became the Brethren’s pastor and overseer of the Brethren meetings. At first, the meetings were held over a stable, but then in finer quarters, which Gosse may have financed himself.
As an indication of the severity of his religious views, Gosse refused to use the ‘St’ in St Marychurch and even gave his address as ‘Torquay’ so as not to have anything to do with the “so-called Church of England”. He also gave money to charity, especially to foreign missionaries, including ones sent to the “Popish, priest-ridden Irish.”
Gosse died at St Marychurch on August 23, 1888, at the age of 78, and was buried at Torquay Cemetery.
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