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British physician (1731–1802)
Darwin was born at Elston. He studied medicine at the universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh, obtaining his MB from Cambridge in 1755. Darwin set up practice in Lichfield, where he soon established a reputation such that George III asked him to move to London to become his personal physician – an offer Darwin declined. He remained in Lichfield and founded, with friends, the Lunar Society of Birmingham – so called because of the monthly meetings held at members' houses. It included such eminent men as Joseph Priestley, Josiah Wedgwood, James Watt, and Matthew Boulton.
Darwin was something of an inventor, but is best remembered for his scientific writings, which often appeared in verse form. These were generally well received until the politician George Canning produced a very damaging parody of his work. This was part of a general campaign by the government against the Lunar Society for its support of the French and American revolutions, as well as its denouncement of slavery.
In his work Zoonomia (1794–96), Darwin advanced an evolutionary theory stating that changes in an organism are caused by the direct influence of the environment, a proposal similar to that put forward by Jean Baptiste Lamarck some 15 years later.
Darwin was the grandfather, by his first wife, of Charles Robert Darwin and, by his second wife, of Francis Galton.
| Biography: Erasmus Darwin |
The grandfather of evolutionist Charles Darwin, Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802) was a prominent English physician and poet whose interests included biology, botany, and technology.
Darwin was born December 12, 1731, at Elston Hall, near Newark, in the county of Nottingham. The son of Robert, a retired lawyer, and Elizabeth Hill Darwin, he was educated at Chesterfield School from 1741 to 1750 and studied at Cambridge University from 1750 to 1754. Darwin attended medical school at Edinburgh University from 1750 to 1756 and afterward opened a medical practice in Lichfield, near Birmingham. His medical skills quickly earned him a wide reputation that extended even to London, where King George III is reported to have sought his services as a personal physician. Throughout his career Darwin maintained a thriving medical practice and treated impoverished patients at no charge.
Darwin married Mary Howard in December of 1757. Together they had five children, three of whom survived into adulthood. Their third son, Robert, became the father of the naturalist Charles Darwin. Erasmus Darwin's wife died in 1770, and he continued to live in Lichfield, where he fathered two illegitimate children by a woman named Mary Parker. The two daughters were raised in Darwin's household, and he later helped them establish a school for girls in Ashbourne. In the late 1770s Darwin began cultivating a botanical garden in Lichfield and formed a local botanical society to pursue his interests in that discipline. He moved from Lichfield to Derby following his marriage to a young military widow, Elizabeth Pole, in 1781.
An avid inventor, Darwin often pursued proof of current scientific theories and as a result of his efforts made notable contributions to such areas of study as physics, meteorology, and geology. According to his biographer Desmond King-Hele, Darwin's achievements as a mechanical inventor included a "speaking machine that astonished everyone … [and] a superb copying machine." In addition, his sketches reveal unrealized designs for such advancements as "canal lifts, an 'artificial bird,' and multimirror telescopes." On the strength of his research into the physical properties of gases and steam, Darwin was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1761.
By the mid-1760s Darwin was at the center of a circle of eminent philosophers and inventors that formed in Birmingham. Among the members of the coterie were the inventor James Watt, the manufacturer Matthew Boulton, and the potter Josiah Wedgwood. One of the original members of the society, William Small, whom Darwin had met through his acquaintance with Benjamin Franklin, had formerly been a teacher to Thomas Jefferson. The group formalized their meetings under the title the "Lunar Society," a name derived from their habit of meeting on the evening of a full moon so as to be assured of light for the way home. The "Lunaticks," as they became known, were credited with initiating or advancing many technological developments of the Industrial Revolution. Members of the society discussed scientific and technological issues, inventions, and theories. Chemist Joseph Priestly joined the group in 1780, and his experiments, according to King-Hele, "gave the meetings a chemical focus." In the Dictionary of Literary Biography King-Hele asserted, "The Lunar group was perhaps the strongest intellectual driving force of the Industrial Revolution in Britain, and Darwin did much to keep up their enthusiasm for improving technology."
Combines Science and Poetry
Active in the Cathedral Close literary circle in Lichfield, Darwin later gained considerable literary fame as a poet during the early 1790s. At the height of his fame he was ranked with such significant literary figures as poet John Milton, and in 1797 Samuel Taylor Coleridge called Darwin "the first literary character in Europe, and the most original-minded Man." Darwin's best-known works treat scientific subjects within the formal conventions of verse. Among his most recognizable works is The Botanic Garden, which was inspired by his translations of the botanical writings of Swedish botanist Linnaeus into English. The work, which began as a rendering of Linnaeus's botanical catalog in rhyming couplets, reveals Darwin's early acceptance of Continental developments in chemistry that had not yet gained approval among leading English intellectuals. Published in two parts as The Loves of the Plants in 1789 and The Economy of Vegetation in 1792, the poem is also notable for introducing such terms as "oxygen," "hydrogen," "convoluted," "iridescent," and "frenzied" into the English language. While King-Hele himself has described Darwin's verse as "smooth and skillful," in the Dictionary of Literary Biography he quoted the contemporary opinions of such notable commentators as William Cowper and Horace Walpole. Cowper, in the Analytical Review of May 1789, assessed Darwin's couplets as having "a boldness of projection … unattainable by any hand but that of a master," while Walpole, in private correspondence dated April 1789, hailed Darwin's work as "the most delicious poem upon earth."
In a similar fashion, Darwin's The Temple of Nature traces the development of life and offers his views on evolutionary theory. Posthumously published in 1803, the work had originally been called The Origin of Society, a title the publisher considered too inflammatory as it could be construed as antireligious. In the work Darwin held that all life originated in the sea and can be traced back to a single common ancestor. He also outlined how species diversified in response to environmental factors. The Temple of Nature reads, in part, "Organic life beneath the shoreless waves/Was born and nurs'd in ocean's pearly caves;/ First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass,/ Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass;/ These, as successive generations bloom,/ New powers acquire and larger limbs assume;/ Whence countless groups of vegetation spring,/ And breathing realms of fin and feet and wing."
Many of Darwin's ideas on evolutionary theory were earlier discussed in the treatise Zoomania, or, the Laws of Organic Life, published in two volumes in 1794 and 1796. Containing an outline of Darwin's extensive medical knowledge, the first volume considers a number of biological and medical subjects, including sleep and instinct, and offers a discussion of evolutionary principles. Darwin investigated such aspects of the problem as how organisms pass through transitional stages, how sexual competition impacts the development of species, and how one species can give rise to another. In the second volume of Zoomania Darwin classified diseases and recommended methods of treatment for each.
Reputation and Legacy
Darwin's chief contributions to the development of life science are perhaps found in his relationship to the advancement of evolutionary theory, in particular to that of his grandson Charles Darwin, and in his participation in the Lunar Society, a group which fostered many of the leading scientific minds of the era. According to King-Hele, "Darwin celebrated the idea of progress via the march of science and technology. He was the laureate of the Industrial Revolution, glorifying the entrepreneurs and engineers … [a]nd ignoring the grief and grime of the factories." In addition, in From Soul to Mind: The Emergence of Psychology from Erasmus Darwin to William James, Edward S. Read has credited Darwin with repositioning psychology in the sciences, driven in part by his view that all mental states derive from the motion of particles in the brain.
As a poet, too, Darwin's influence was significant. His presentation of a humanity integrated with nature influenced the Romantic poets William Blake, William Wordsworth, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, among others. Darwin was also the author of the social reform treatise A Plan for the Conduct of Female Education in Boarding Schools, 1797, and Phytologia, or the Philosophy of Agriculture and Gardening, 1800. He died following a heart attack in Derby on April 17, 1802.
Further Reading
Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 93: British Romantic Poets, 1789-1832, Gale, 1990.
Dictionary of National Biography, Volume V, Oxford University Press, pp. 534-36.
Hassler, Donald M., Erasmus Darwin, Twayne Publishers, 1973.
Read, Edward S., From Soul to Mind: The Emergence of Psychology, from Erasmus Darwin to William James, Yale University Press, 1997.
Los Angeles Times, July 14, 1997.
New Republic, June 12, 1995, p. 42.
"Erasmus Darwin-Champion of Oxygen," http://ci.mond.org/9522/952215.html (March 24, 1998).
"Prairie Pen: Reflections in Natural History," http://www.prairienet.org/gpf/gould.html (March 29, 1998).
"Wilkins Lecture-Erasmus Darwin, the Lunaticks and Evolution," The Royal Society Online, http://www.royalsoc.uk/stlect5.htm (March 29, 1998).
| Columbia Encyclopedia: Erasmus Darwin |
Bibliography
See biography by D. King-Hele (1964).
| Biology Q&A: Who was Erasmus Darwin? |
Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802) was the grandfather of Charles
Darwin (1809-1882). Erasmus was a physician, inventor, and natural
scientist who published a book on his ideas (Zoonomia) between
1794 and 1796. Zoonomia contained poetic couplets describing Erasmus Darwin's ideas about
science and, in particular, the evolution of life. Erasmus Darwin's hypo
thesis was that all the animals on the planet had their origin in a "vital
spark" that set in motion life as we know it. In his posthumously published
book Temple of Nature (1803), Erasmus Darwin further speculated on
a theory of evolution that included basic ideas on the unity of organic life
and the importance of both sexual selection and the struggle for existence in
the evolutionary process. Years later, in writing a biography about his
grandfather, Charles Darwin acknowledged that his grandfather's ideas had
influenced his thinking.
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.jpg) Erasmus Darwin in 1792 |
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| Born | 12 December 1731 Elston Hall, Elston, Nottinghamshire near Newark-on-Trent |
| Died | 18 April 1802 (aged 70) Breadsall, Derby |
Erasmus Darwin (12 December 1731 – 18 April 1802) was an English physician who turned down George III's invitation to be a physician to the King. He was also a natural philosopher, physiologist, abolitionist, inventor and poet. His poems included much natural history, including a statement of evolution and the relatedness of all forms of life. He was a member of the Darwin–Wedgwood family, which includes his grandsons Charles Darwin and Francis Galton. Darwin was also a founding member of the Lunar Society of Birmingham, a discussion group of pioneering industrialists and natural philosophers.
Erasmus Darwin House, his home in Lichfield, is now a museum dedicated to Erasmus Darwin and his life's work.
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Born at Elston Hall, Nottinghamshire near Newark-on-Trent, England, the youngest of seven children of Robert Darwin of Elston (12 August 1682–20 November 1754), a lawyer, and his wife Elizabeth Hill (1702–1797). His parents' choice of name, Erasmus, is an unusual one; the most historically significant person of that name was Desiderius Erasmus, the great humanist. His siblings were:
He was educated at Chesterfield Grammar School, then later at St John's College, Cambridge.[1] He obtained his medical education at Edinburgh Medical School. Whether Darwin ever obtained the formal degree of MD is not known.
Darwin settled in 1756 as a physician at Nottingham, but met with little success and so moved the following year to Lichfield to try to establish a practice there. A few weeks after his arrival, using a novel course of treatment, he restored the health of a young man whose death seemed inevitable. This ensured his success in the new locale. Darwin was a highly successful physician for more than fifty years in the Midlands. George III invited him to be Royal Physician, but Darwin declined. In Lichfield, Darwin wrote "didactic poetry, developed his system of evolution, and invented amongst other things, an organ able to recite the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments".[2]
Darwin married twice and had 14 children, including two illegitimate daughters by an employee, and, possibly, at least one further illegitimate daughter.
In 1757, he married Mary (Polly) Howard (1740–1770). They had four sons and one daughter, two of whom (a son and a daughter) died in infancy:
The first Mrs. Darwin died in 1770. A governess, Mary Parker, was hired to look after Robert. By late 1771, employer and employee had become intimately involved and together they had two illegitimate daughters:
Susanna and Mary Jr later established a boarding school for girls. In 1782, Mary Sr (the governess) married Joseph Day (1745–1811), a Birmingham merchant, and moved away.
Darwin may have fathered another child, this time with a married woman. A Lucy Swift gave birth in 1771 to a baby, also named Lucy, who was christened a daughter of her mother and William Swift, but there is reason to believe the father was really Darwin.[3] Lucy Jr. married John Hardcastle in Derby in 1792 and their daughter, Mary, married Francis Boott, the physician.
In 1775, Darwin met Elizabeth Pole, daughter of Charles Colyear, 2nd Earl of Portmore, and wife of Colonel Edward Pole (1718–1780); but as she was married, Darwin could only make his feelings known for her through poetry. When Edward Pole died, Darwin married Elizabeth and moved to her home, Radbourne Hall, four miles (6 km) west of Derby. The hall and village are these days known as Radbourne. In 1782, they moved to Full Street, Derby. They had four sons, one of whom died in infancy, and three daughters:
Darwin died suddenly on the 18 April 1802, weeks after having moved to Breadsall Priory, just north of Derby. He is buried in All Saints Church, Breadsall.
Erasmus Darwin is commemorated on one of the Moonstones, a series of monuments in Birmingham.
Darwin formed the Lichfield Botanical Society in order to translate the works of the Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus from Latin into English. This took seven years. The result was two publications: A System of Vegetables between 1783 and 1785, and The Families of Plants in 1787. In these volumes, Darwin coined many of the English names of plants that we use today.
Darwin then wrote The Loves of the Plants, a long poem, which was a popular rendering of Linnaeus' works. Darwin also wrote Economy of Vegetation, and together the two were published as The Botanic Garden.
Darwin's most important scientific work is Zoönomia (1794–1796), which contains a system of pathology, and a treatise on "generation", in which he anticipated the views of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, and Lamarckism, which foreshadowed the modern theory of evolution and the modern evolutionary synthesis. Darwin based his theories on David Hartley's psychological theory of associationism.[4] The essence of his views is contained in the following passage, which he follows up with the conclusion that one and the same kind of living filament is and has been the cause of all organic life:
Would it be too bold to imagine that, in the great length of time since the earth began to exist, perhaps millions of ages before the commencement of the history of mankind would it be too bold to imagine that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament, which the great First Cause endued with animality, with the power of acquiring new parts, attended with new propensities, directed by irritations, sensations, volitions and associations, and thus possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent activity, and of delivering down these improvements by generation to its posterity, world without end!
Erasmus Darwin was familiar with the earlier evolutionary thinking of James Burnett, Lord Monboddo, and cited him in his 1803 work Temple of Nature.
Erasmus Darwin offered the first glimpse of his theory of evolution, obliquely, in a question at the end of a long footnote to his popular poem The Loves of the Plants (1789), which was republished throughout the 1790s in several editions as The Botanic Garden. His poetic concept was to anthropomorphize the stamen (male) and pistil (female) sexual organs, as bride and groom. In this stanza on the flower Curcuma (also Flax and Tumeric) the "youths" are infertile, and he devotes the footnote to other examples of neutered organs in flowers, insect castes, and finally associates this more broadly with many popular and well-known cases of vestigal organs (male nipples, the third and fourth wings of flies, etc.)
65 Woo'd with long care, CURCUMA cold and shy
Meets her fond husband with averted eye:
Four beardless youths the obdurate beauty move
With soft attentions of Platonic love.
"Curcuma_. l. 65. Turmeric. One male and one female inhabit this flower; but there are besides four imperfect males, or filaments without anthers upon them, called by Linneus eunuchs. The flax of our country has ten filaments, and but five of them are terminated with anthers; the Portugal flax has ten perfect males, or stamens; the Verbena of our country has four males; that of Sweden has but two; the genus Albuca, the Bignonia Catalpa, Gratiola, and hemlock-leaved Geranium have only half their filaments crowned with anthers. In like manner the florets, which form the rays of the flowers of the order frustraneous polygamy of the class syngenesia, or confederate males, as the sun-flower, are furnished with a style only, and no stigma: and are thence barren. There is also a style without a stigma in the whole order dioecia gynandria; the male flowers of which are thence barren. The Opulus is another plant, which contains some unprolific flowers. In like manner some tribes of insects have males, females, and neuters among them: as bees, wasps, ants."[citation needed]
"There is a curious circumstance belonging to the class of insects which have two wings, or diptera, analogous to the rudiments of stamens above described; viz. two little knobs are found placed each on a stalk or peduncle, generally under a little arched scale; which appear to be rudiments of hinder wings; and are called by Linneus, halteres, or poisers, a term of his introduction. A.T. Bladh. Amaen. Acad. V. 7. Other animals have marks of having in a long process of time undergone changes in some parts of their bodies, which may have been effected to accommodate them to new ways of procuring their food. The existence of teats on the breasts of male animals, and which are generally replete with a thin kind of milk at their nativity, is a wonderful instance of this kind. Perhaps all the productions of nature are in their progress to greater perfection! an idea countenanced by the modern discoveries and deductions concerning the progressive formation of the solid parts of the terraqueous globe, and consonant to the dignity of the Creator of all things."[citation needed]
Darwin's final long poem, The Temple of Nature, was published posthumously in 1803. The poem was originally titled The Origin of Society. It is considered his best poetic work. It centers on his own newly-conceived theory of evolution. The poem traces the progression of life from microorganisms to civilized society. Darwin largely anticipated most of what his grandson Charles Darwin would later propose, except for the idea of natural selection.
His poetry was admired by Coleridge and Wordsworth. It often made reference to his interests in science; for example botany and steam engines.
The last two leaves of Darwin's A plan for the conduct of female education in boarding schools (1797) contain a book list, an apology for the work, and an advert for "Miss Parkers School". The work probably resulted from his liaison with Mary Parker. The school advertised on the last page is the one he set up in Ashbourne, Derbyshire for their two illegitimate children, Susanna and Mary.
Darwin regretted that a good education had not been generally available to women in Britain in his time, and drew on the ideas of Locke, Rousseau, and Genlis in organising his thoughts. Addressing the education of middle class girls, Darwin argued that amorous romance novels were inappropriate and that they should seek simplicity in dress. He contends that young women should be educated in schools, rather than privately at home, and learn appropriate subjects. These subjects include physiognomy, physical exercise, botany, chemistry, mineralogy, and experimental philosophy. They should familiarize themselves with arts and manufactures through visits to sites like Coalbrookdale, and Wedgwood's potteries; they should learn how to handle money, and study modern languages. Darwin's educational philosophy took the view that men and women should have different, but complementary capabilities, skills, spheres, and interests.[5] In the context of the times, this program may be read as a modernising influence.
The Lunar Society: these dates indicate the year in which Darwin became friends with these people, who, in turn, became members of the Lunar Society. The Lunar Society existed from 1765 to 1813.
Before 1765:
After 1765:
Darwin also established a lifelong friendship with Benjamin Franklin, who shared Darwin's support for the American and French revolutions. The Lunar Society was instrumental as an intellectual driving force behind England's Industrial Revolution.
The members of the Lunar Society, and especially Darwin, opposed the slave trade. He attacked it in The Botanic Garden (1789–1791), and in The Loves of Plants (1789) and The Economy of Vegetation (1791).
In addition to the Lunar Society, Erasmus Darwin belonged to the influential Derby Philosophical Society, as did his brother-in-law Samuel Fox (see family tree below). He experimented with the use of air and gases to alleviate infections and cancers in patients. A Pneumatic Institution was established at Clifton in 1799 for clinically testing these ideas. He conducted research into the formation of clouds, on which he published in 1788. He also inspired Robert Weldon's Somerset Coal Canal caisson lock.
Darwin's experiments in galvanism were an important source of inspiration for Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein.[citation needed]
Contemporary literature dates the cosmological theories of the Big Bang and Big Crunch to the 19th and 20th centuries. However Erasmus Darwin had speculated on these sorts of events in The Botanic Garden, A Poem in Two Parts: Part 1, The Economy of Vegetation, 1791:
Roll on, ye Stars! exult in youthful prime,
Mark with bright curves the printless steps of Time;
Near and more near your beamy cars approach,
And lessening orbs on lessening orbs encroach; —
Flowers of the sky! ye too to age must yield,
Frail as your silken sisters of the field!
Star after star from Heaven's high arch shall rush,
Suns sink on suns, and systems systems crush,
Headlong, extinct, to one dark center fall,
And Death and Night and Chaos mingle all!
— Till o'er the wreck, emerging from the storm,
Immortal Nature lifts her changeful form,
Mounts from her funeral pyre on wings of flame,
And soars and shines, another and the same.
Darwin was the inventor of several devices, though he did not patent any. He believed this would damage his reputation as a doctor, and encouraged his friends to patent their own modifications of his designs.
In notes dating to 1779, Darwin made a sketch of a simple liquid-fuel rocket engine, with hydrogen and oxygen tanks connected by plumbing and pumps to an elongated combustion chamber and expansion nozzle, a concept not to be seen again until one century later.
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