The British biologist Thomas H. Huxley (1825–95) felt that outright atheism was too dogmatic, because it made metaphysical claims about God’s nonexistence on insufficient physical evidence.60 It was probably Huxley who coined the term “agnostic” (a word based on the Latin agnosco: “I do not know”) sometime in the 1860s. For Huxley, agnosticism was not a belief but a method. Its requirement was simple: “In matters of the intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated and demonstrable.”
