Locke was also at the forefront of the scientific revolution and advocated the teaching of geography, astronomy, and anatomy.

Thomas Henry Huxley applied Darwin's ideas to humans, using paleontology and comparative anatomy to provide strong evidence that humans and apes shared a common ancestry.

New ideas in physics, astronomy, biology, human anatomy, chemistry, and other sciences were posing a challenge for many conceptions about nature that had prevailed starting in Ancient Greece and continuing through the Middle Ages.