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Erasmus Darwin
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Erasmus Darwin (12 December 1731–18 April 1802), was an English physician, natural philosopher, physiologist, abolitionist, inventor and poet. He was one of the founder members of the Lunar Society, a discussion group of pioneering industrialists and natural philosophers. He was a member of the Darwin-Wedgwood family, which includes his grandson, Charles Darwin.
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).
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Erasmus Darwin (12 December 1731–18 April 1802), was an English physician, natural philosopher, physiologist, abolitionist, inventor and poet. He was one of the founder members of the Lunar Society, a discussion group of pioneering industrialists and natural philosophers. He was a member of the Darwin-Wedgwood family, which includes his grandson, Charles Darwin.
Early life
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 significant person of that name is Desiderius Erasmus, the great humanist. His siblings were:
- Robert Darwin (17 October 1724–4 November 1816)
- Elizabeth Darwin (15 September 1725–8 April 1800)
- William Alvey Darwin (3 October 1726–7 October 1783)
- Anne Darwin (12 November 1727–3 August 1813)
- Susannah Darwin (10 April 1729–29 September 1789)
- John Darwin, rector of Elston (28 September 1730–24 May 1805)
He was educated at Chesterfield Grammar School, then later at St John's College, Cambridge. 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."
Marriages and children
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:
- Charles Darwin (1758–1778)
- Erasmus Darwin II (1759–1799)
- Elizabeth Darwin (1763, survived 4 months)
- Robert Waring Darwin (1766–1848), father of the naturalist Charles Darwin
- William Alvey Darwin (1767, survived 19 days)
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 Parker (1772–1856)
- Mary Parker Jr (1774–1859)
Susanna and Mary Jr later established a boarding school for girls. In 1782, Mary Sr 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. . 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. Edward Pole died in 1780. So, in 1781, Darwin married Elizabeth Pole 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:
- Edward Darwin (1782–1829)
- Frances Ann Violetta Darwin (1783–1874), married Samuel Tertius Galton, was the mother of Francis Galton
- Emma Georgina Elizabeth Darwin (1784–1818)
- Sir Francis Sacheverel Darwin (1786–1859)
- John Darwin (1787–1818)
- Henry Darwin (1789–1790), died in infancy.
- Harriet Darwin (1790–1825), married Admiral Thomas James Malling
Death
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.
Scientific writings
Botanical works
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.
Zoönomia
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. 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.
Another of his grandsons was Francis Galton (see family tree below).
Poem on evolution
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.
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.
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.
Lunar Society
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:
- Josiah Wedgwood, potter 1765
- Dr. William Small, 1765, man of science, formerly Professor of Natural Philosophy at the College of William and Mary, where Thomas Jefferson was an appreciative pupil
- Richard Lovell Edgeworth, 1766, inventor
- James Watt, 1767, improver of steam engine
- James Keir, 1767, pioneer of the chemical industry
- Thomas Day, 1768, eccentric and author
- Dr. William Withering, 1775, the death of Dr. Small left an opening for a physician in the group.
- Joseph Priestly, 1780, experimental chemist and discoverer of many substances.
- Samuel Galton, 1782, a Quaker gunmaker with a taste for science, took Darwin's place after Darwin moved to Derby.
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).
Other achievements
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.
Cosmological speculation
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.
Inventions
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.
- A horizontal windmill, which he designed for Josiah Wedgwood (who would be Charles Darwin's other grandfather, see family tree below).
- A carriage that would not tip over (1766).
- A speaking machine (at Clifton in 1799).
- A canal lift for barges.
- A minute artificial bird.
- A copying machine (1778).
- A variety of weather monitoring machines.
- An artesian well (1783).
Rocket engine
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.
Major publications
- Erasmus Darwin, A Botanical Society at Lichfield. A System of Vegetables, according to their classes, orders... translated from the 13th edition of Linnaeus’ Systema Vegetabiliium. 2 vols., 1783, Lichfield, J. Jackson, for Leigh and Sotheby, London.
- Erasmus Darwin, A Botanical Society at Lichfield. The Families of Plants with their natural characters...Translated from the last edition of Linnaeus’ Genera Plantarum. 1787, Lichfield, J. Jackson, for J. Johnson, London.
- Erasmus Darwin, The Botanic Garden, Part I, The Economy of Vegetation. 1791 London, J. Johnson.
- Part II, The Loves of the Plants. 1789, London, J. Johnson.
- Erasmus Darwin, Zoonomia; or, The Laws of Organic Life, 1792, Part I. London, J. Johnson,
- Part I-III. 1796, London, J. Johnson.
- Erasmus Darwin, A Plan for the Conduct of Female Education in Boarding Schools, 1797, Derby, for J. Johnson.
- Erasmus Darwin, Phytologia; or, The Philosophy of Agriculture and Gardening. 1800, London, J. Johnson.
- Erasmus Darwin, The Temple of Nature; or, The Origin of Society. 1806–1807, London, J. Johnson.
Family tree
Appearance in fiction and music
Charles Sheffield, an author noted largely for hard science fiction, wrote a number of stories featuring Darwin in a style quite similar to Sherlock Holmes. These stories were collected in a single book The Amazing Dr. Darwin.
Darwin's opposition to slavery in poetry was included by Benjamin Zephaniah in a reading. This inspired the establishment of the , whose album includes quotations from Erasmus "Ras" Darwin, his grandson Charles Darwin and Haile Selassie.
The forgetting of Erasmus' designs of a rocket is a major plot point in Stephan Baxter's tale alternate universes Manifold: Origin.
Referred to as an influence on Victor Frankenstein in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
Phrases from Darwin's poem The Botanic Garden are used as chapter headings in The Pornographer of Vienna by Lewis Crofts.
See also
External links
- in Ernst Krause, Erasmus Darwin (1879)
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