AYRES,C.E. RELIANCE ON HUXLEY,T.H - DID DARWINS BULLDOG BITE

In David Seckler's Thorstein Veblen and the Institutionalists, the pro position is advanced that ''Ayres out-Veblens Veblen and out Deweys De wey''. This commonly held view of the intellectual orientation of the prominent American institutional economist, Clarence Edwin Ayres, plac es him as an intellectual descendent of philosopher John Dewey's pragm atism, and economist Thorstein B. Veblen's institutionalist economics. Certainly such an outlook is not incorrect, but it is also not adequa te if one is to achieve an understanding of Ayres. A careful check of the indexes of Ayres's major works shows that his references preponder antly go not to Dewey and to Veblen, but to Adam Smith and Charles Dar win. Moreover, it is to the latter that Ayres turned in his effort to overturn the former. However, Ayres in interpreting Darwin relied not upon Dewey and Veblen, but rather upon Thomas Henry Huxley, the Britis h physician turned scientist, who because of his outspoken advocacy of Darwin's evolutionary biology became known as ''Darwin's bulldog.''