International Conference and Commemoration of the Bicentenary of the Death of Erasmus Darwin
ABSTRACTS
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Negative and Positive Images: Erasmus Darwin, Tom Wedgwood and the Origins of Photography
This paper will examine an aspect of Erasmus Darwin's work, which is, as yet, little recognized or explored. This is the important contribution he made to the development of photographic media. The conduit of this influence was Thomas Wedgwood, the youngest son of the celebrated potter, Josiah Wedgwood. He was educated jointly by his father and by Erasmus, a close family friend, and I will show that he clearly imbibed many of the ideas formulated in the latter's Zoonomia and Botanic Garden at an early stage of his development. These became the foundation of his mature thought and the inspiration of his career path in science, educational theory and speculative natural philosophy. His 'Speculations', much admired by contemporaries but surviving only in a fragmentary state, will be examined and the centrality of vision, on which he planned an essay, established. Tom Wedgwood's networking with Darwin's contacts, especially those in the Lunar Society such as James Watt and Joseph Priestley, is discussed in the context of his 'photographic' researches. The progress of his later thought is followed through the debates with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whose rapid abandonment of Darwinian notions caused Tom Wedgwood to rethink his position. In contrast to his first biographer, I argue that his effort to find a way of replicating visual images was not a side issue but central to Wedgwood's own critique of Darwin's ideas on visual perception. It can also be seen as a development of Darwin's 'bi-grapher', which could replicate drawings and other such devices invented within the 'Lunar orbit'. The reasons for the seeming failure of Wedgwood's experiments despite their scientific validity are discussed.
Recent historians of photography have come to accept that Humphry Davy's published account of Wedgwood's method (1802), once thought to be obscure, was in fact widely known to later inventors. However, in conclusion I will show that they have not sufficiently noticed its direct links to the successful pioneering work of William Henry Fox-Talbot. Thus they have given far less credit than is due to Tom Wedgwood and missed entirely the significance of Erasmus Darwin.
Darwin, Work and Disease
Erasmus Darwin was in very close touch with many of the major manufacturers of the late eighteenth century. He was a gifted physician with a lively interest in all classes of people, in technology and in the minerals and raw materials from the natural world. In Darwin's time there was some recognition of harm to health arising from work. Surprisingly, his writings do not mention the role of work as a cause of disease.
Ramazzini had published a widely translated text on trade diseases in Italy in 1700. Contemporary knowledge of diseases related to work in the UK included recognition of lead poisoning, of scrotal cancer in chimney sweeps and of a range of occupations where dust exposure caused lung disease. These included needle pointing (Redditch), metal trades (Birmingham) and flint milling (The Potteries). The latter, in particular, must have been well known by Darwin as he had extensive contact with Josiah Wedgwood and even spent a number of years designing a vertical windmill to grind flint. In the eighteenth century preventative intervention was beginning to be introduced and publicised, including wet grinding for both flint and steel and the use of citrus juice to control scurvy. These developments are not considered in any detail in Darwin's writings.
Darwin himself had traumatic experiences with what we might now think of as work related diseases in his own family. One son died of septicaemia following a post-mortem undertaken as a medical student, while another may well have ended his own life because of despair about financial matters in his solicitor's practice.
Why with this background did Darwin not examine the role of work as a cause of harm to health? His belief in industrial progress and in the benefits of the employment that it created may have played a part. Current medical beliefs and Darwin's classification of disease in Zoonomia did not give much scope for specific environmental attribution. His perspective on disease was derived from a practice where he travelled widely to see paying patients but mainly saw the poor close to his home in the non-industrial town of Lichfield. At that time was work in trade and industry, in Darwin's view, less damaging than either agriculture or the life of the gentry or was he perhaps also constrained by wishing to avoid giving the enemies of progress evidence of the harm it sometimes caused?
Erasmus Darwin: A Doctor First
This paper will provide a summary of Darwin's medical career, from his training in Edinburgh to the completion of his expansive medical tome, the Zoonomia. Already hailed as a great scientist, poet, inventor and botanist, his primary profession, that of physician, lies relatively unattended in current historical writings, to the detriment of the general understanding of this man. Seeking to rectify this omission, this paper begins with Darwin's medical training, traces his path through medical practice, and concludes with an in-depth study of his summary work, the Zoonomia. Sources from Darwin's initial education are highlighted, and the array of his training briefly presented. Following his failed practice in Nottingham, the study follows him to Lichfield, outlining some specific cases during his time there. Finally, the Zoonomia is identified as a significant, yet neglected, source for the investigation of Darwin's medical career, containing the summation of Darwin's medical knowledge and practice. Using the author's own medical training, a detailed understanding of the structure of the work is presented in a clinical context, including diagrammatic representations. This is followed by a comparative study of selected diseases in light of modern knowledge. Despite an interval of two hundred years, Darwin's work is shown to be robust in many areas, and certain foci are highlighted as remaining instructive to physicians in the 21st century. The summary sheets created serve as a resource in equipping future readers of the Zoonomia, by outlining Darwin's structuring of the work. As such, this paper is a portal, both to a general understanding of Darwin, the doctor, and through which, the further study, that is still necessary, of Darwin's medical career and writings, becomes possible.
The Derbyshire "Darwinians": the Persistence of Erasmus Darwin's Influence on a British provincial Literary and Scientific Community, c.1780-1850
The paper will argue that Erasmus Darwin exerted an important influence on the Derby literary and scientific community both directly in institutional and literary terms and through the actions of his friends and associates, notably William Strutt - the closest scientific friend of his last years - and that this influence persisted long after his national reputation had declined. The most obvious manifestation of the Darwinian influence was the persistence of the Derby Philosophical Society and the foundation of other knowledge-based associational organisations in the town by his associates, notably the Literary and Philosophical Society (1808), and the Derby Mechanics' Institute (1825). It will also be argued that other 'innovative' local urban institutions such as the Derbyshire General Infirmary and the Derby Arboretum owed something of their originality, in part at least, to the continuing Darwinian influence, and particularly to Darwin's enthusiasm for urban and educational improvement. It will be contended that Darwin's literary works - particularly the Botanic Garden and the Temple of Nature remained influential amongst the Derby philosophers, as an analysis of local associational and private library records will demonstrate. Furthermore, it will be argued that the most important manifestation of this was what will be described as Darwin's broad evolutionary orldview inspired by Enlightenment natural science, which, as the other papers in the conference will emphasise, embraced biological and geological developmentalism in addition to political and educational reformism, and that these aspects of his ideas exerted an important influence on the Derby philosophical community. So in the context of a general Enlightenment intellectual inheritance, most of the leaders of the group retained an adherence to Darwin's broad 'evolutionary worldview' and particularly his conception of scientific and intellectual progress, and that probably the most important manifestation of this was the work of the Spencers culminating in Herbert Spencer's synthetic philosophy. Examples drawn from Darwin's works and those of Spencer will elucidate the latter part of the argument, demonstrating the parallels that can be drawn between the two 'evolutionary' philosophers, whilst of course, illuminating the differences.
Paley and Parkinson: Two Peri-Erasmatic Thinkers
Dr Christopher Gardner-Thorpe [cgardnerthorpe@doctors.org.uk]
Erasmus Darwin's wide interests are representative of many topics explored by other thinkers of his time. Darwin's own observations, experiments and views were far ahead of many of that era but they were not alone. Two of these 'peri-erasmatic' thinkers were a clergyman with many medical interests and a doctor with many clerical interests, both with wide-ranging scientific and biological thoughts. They were William Paley and James Parkinson. William Paley (1743-1805), Archdeacon of Carlisle (where he is buried) wrote on the organisation of animal and human species and suggested that anatomical design proved the existence of God. His extensive writing encouraged clergy and lay persons to learn and understand the principles of organisation and anatomy. James Parkinson (1755-1824), general medical and surgical practitioner in Hoxton in the East End of London, had strong church leanings. He was baptised, married and buried at St. Leonards' Church in Shoreditch where he was a churchwarden. Best known for his writings on the shaking palsy (later named Parkinson's Disease by Jean Martin Charcot) he was also a foremost geologist with many political leanings as shown by his pamphlets published under the name Old Hubert. Both Paley and Parkinson professed interests that weave a web around and within the widespread medical and scientific interests of Erasmus Darwin and other foremost thinkers of the Eighteenth century and the early part of the Nineteenth.
Physicians and Physick in 17th and 18th Century Lichfield
Erasmus Darwin practised as a physician in Lichfield from 1756 to 1781. Commensurate with its population and importance in the 17th and 18th centuries, one university-educated physician at a time lived and practised in Lichfield during most of this period. Anthony Hewett (c.1603-1684) and Sir John Floyer (1649-1734), two notable predecessors of Erasmus Darwin, were successively in practice locally for nearly a century. As students, Anthony Hewett went to the universities of Cambridge and Padua, Sir John Floyer to the university of Oxford, and Erasmus Darwin to the universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh. They were influenced respectively by ideas current in Renaissance medicine, in experimental natural philosophy and medicine at the time of the Restoration, and in medicine of the Enlightenment. Consideration will be given to some of the ways in which their early educational experience influenced their professional outlook and lives while they were physicians working in different periods in the same provincial city. There were others who also participated in the physicianly succession in Lichfield. Brief mention will be made of Robert James (1705-1776), friend of Samuel Johnson and author of The Medicinal Dictionary, who practised locally for only a few years, and of Trevor Jones (d.1832), who succeeded Erasmus Darwin as physician in Lichfield, in the last few years of the 18th century.
The Poet as Pathologist: Myth & Medicine in Erasmus Darwin's Epic Poetry
This paper will investigate the nexus between the Edenic myth and Darwin's subversion, or more strictly conversion, of the myth through the botanical and biological discourses of his three epic poems: The Economy of Vegetation, The Loves of the Plants, and The Temple of Nature. Darwin's deconstruction of the notion of 'Paradise' in terms of hermaphroditic reproduction and its malign 'genetic' consequences will be explored as an important ingredient in his subversion of the whole Biblical creation myth. The same paradigm will be applied to Darwin's re-interpretation of the consequences of the Fall as benign in terms of the evolutionary development and improvement of the earth's flora and fauna through the mechanism of sexual reproduction. This critique will be set within the central iatric argument concerning 'Hygeia', or health, and beyond this to wider questions of the pathologies of the human condition. This conversion of myth into medicine, of theology into biology, will be seen as a key strategy within Darwin's epic poetry.
Mama and Papa: the ancestors of modern-day speech science
Dr Philip J.B. Jackson [p.jackson@bham.ac.uk] (presentation)
Erasmus Darwin's writings on the subject of human speech included discussion of the alphabet as an unsatisfactory phonetic representation of the spoken word, of mechanisms of speech production and, indeed, of a mechanical speaking machine [1, 2]. His studies of the acoustic properties of speech were limited, as it was not until many generations later that the physical behaviour of sound waves began to be understood in any detail [3]. Nevertheless, his analysis of sounds on the basis of their manner of production and place of articulation was highly insightful, and is comparable to the classification scheme laid down by the International Phonetic Association. Furthermore, the wooden and leather device he had built was capable of pronouncing the vowel /a/ and labial consonants which, in English, are /p/, /b/ and /m/. These could be combined to create some simple utterances, as in my title. This paper will examine many of the technical aspects of Darwin's investigations into the nature of speech, and relate them to the findings of contemporary research in the field. In particular, it will review the application of articulatory information in approaches to speech synthesis, and show how magnetic resonance images, together with a model of the vocal-tract acoustics, can be used for such purposes. Where appropriate, demonstrations will be given, to illustrate the different aspects of the technology, and connexions will be made between those aspects that Darwin brought to light and what speech science knows of them now.
References
- Darwin, Erasmus (1803), The Temple of Nature, J. Johnson, London, Add. Note XV:107-120.
- King-Hele, Desmond (1981), The Letters of Erasmus Darwin, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
- Lord Rayleigh (1877), The Theory of Sound, 2nd edition, Dover, New York.
Erasmus Darwin the air man
The behaviour of air, gases and vapours fascinated Darwin all his life. He made important progress in three distinct areas. First, he formulated a theory governing the properties of gases. Second, there are his advances and bright ideas in meteorology, some forgotten and not re-established for a hundred years. Third, he ventured into the upper atmosphere, emerging with several surprising insights: again these were largely ignored, and rediscovered much later - one not until the 1960s. My paper brings together these varied achievements in the realm of air.
How Erasmus Darwin improved the steering of carriages - and cars
As the young Erasmus Darwin rattled over the rutted and pot-holed roads to visit his patients, he was all too painfully aware of the deficiencies in carriage design. About 1759 he devised a new mechanism for improved steering and stability, and road-tested it successfully over 20 000 miles on two carriages. R.L. Edgeworth heard about Darwin's design in 1765 and tried to publicize it via the Society of Arts. Not much was written down at the time; but with the aid of sketches in manuscript letters, it is possible to reconstruct Darwin's technique, which relies on four jointed rods, initially in the form of an isosceles trapezium. A mathematical analysis of the rotatory motion shows the virtues of Darwin's mechanism. It was reinvented fifty years later, and, later still, was widely adopted in early modern cars, including the Ford Model T.
Erasmus Darwin in Australia
In Australia, the genus of splendid wild flowers, Darwinia, commemorates the life and work of Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802). These living memorials comprise the Scent Myrtles, and include the Mountain Bell (Darwinia meeboldii) and the Mondurup Bell (Darwinia macrostegia). The genus Darwinia was raised in 1815 by the English botanist, Edward Rudge (1763-1846) of the Abbey Estate, Evesham, to commemorate, posthumously, Erasmus Darwin's contributions to botany, gardening and medicine. Rudge developed a special interest in Australian flora, and described and named the genus Trachmene in 1811. Erasmus Darwin had died in 1802 and by 1815, when Rudge raised Darwinia, the former's fame had been intensified by his death. The Darwinias collectively are of special significance not only for their aesthetic and historically attributive synergy; but bloom afresh each year as one of his most enduring memorials. It is apposite that Erasmus Darwin made the first tentative suggestions of natural selection with his speculation on its potential consequence of speciation - developed of course by his grandson in The Origin of Species. It is apposite that the environmental extremes encountered throughout the Australian continent form one of the most dramatic examples of eco-biodiversity; and as such were to prove another example, as dramatic as that from the Galapagos, of the theme of natural selection. A total of 41 species of Darwinia are now identified; and collectively form the most beautiful and enduring of all memorials to Erasmus Darwin.
Metaphor and Science in Darwin's Temple of Nature
The importance of The Temple of Nature as the summation of Darwin's most developed views on evolution, the big bang and much else is now well established, mainly thanks to Desmond King-Hele's untiring efforts. Less fully explored are its astonishingly ambitious 'poetic' techniques - replacing Eden with the suspiciously infidel temple using a quasi-cinematic montage of images, and then aiming to reproduce the Eleusinian Mysteries through an imagery sustained over four cantos. As well as these techniques, my paper will examine Darwin's development of metaphorical 'analogy' from the straightforward if saucy epic similes of Loves of the Plants to The Temple's use of such similetic introducers as 'so' and 'thus' to combine the functions of imaginative metaphor with those of evidential demonstration in strange new ways.
Two special doctors: Erasmus Darwin and Luigi Galvani
In the preface of the 1818 text of her novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley wrote, "the event on which this fiction is founded has been supposed, by Dr. Darwin, and some of the physiological writers of Germany, as not of impossible occurrence". In the preface of the 1831 edition, she says Lord Byron and Shelley "talked of the experiments of Dr. Darwin, who presented a piece of vermicelli in a glass case, till by some extraordinary means it began to move with voluntary motion. Not thus, after all, would life be given. Perhaps, a corpse would be reanimated; galvanism had given token of such things.". Undoubtedly, the doctors Erasmus Darwin and Luigi Galvani were deeply involved, through convincing and sound experiments, in an intriguing study of the principles of life. They were both certainly a rather special kind of doctor, for they cultivated a wide variety of interests with the idea of improving the art of medicine, whose subject was perceived to be the overall functioning of the human organism in sickness and in health, as well as related to other living beings. In 1791, Luigi Galvani, professor of anatomy at the Bologna University, published a memoir entitled De viribus electricitatis in motu musculari where he presented his ideas on the relation between electrical forces and the contraction of animal muscles. In this work he summarised the results of a long series of experiments on electrophysiology, that he began in the early 1780s. Galvani's discovery that the muscles were subject to contraction because of the existence of a detectable and visible electrical fluid in the nerves, was an extraordinary response to the solution of all problems faced by supporters of the theory of irritability, particularly of that one of Albrecht von Haller. Darwin, analysing the problem of living organisms in his Zoonomia (1794-96), characterised animal motion not as a mechanical or chemical power, but as an intrinsic stimulus linked with the concept of irritation. The point is that both Darwin, who knew the antihaller ideas of the Scottish doctor Robert Whytt and of his pupil William Cullen, and Galvani, who kept in touch with them via Fontana's experiments, believed in an organism understood as a dynamic system of communication with a proper internal organisation based on the brain, not on the heart.
All From Fibres: Erasmus Darwin's Psychobiology
Erasmus Darwin resembled his more famous grandson in his theoretical cast of mind. In the Zoonomia he sought to develop a theoretical neuropsychology to account for the observations he made during his medical practice. Without good theory, he writes, practice remains in the dark. In this paper I review that theory. It has resemblences to those of Haller, Boerhaave and Julian Offray de la Mettrie. In this respect Darwin belongs to that great tradition of Western thinkers who have sought to make sense of the relation of mind to brain. He endeavoured to distance himself from both the iatromechanics of the Cartesians and the Newtonian vibrationism of David Hartley. In contrast he built his neurophysiology from a living unit, the fibre. He uses this concept not only to account for motor outflow but, and more interestingly, to account for sensation, perception and mentation. In this attempt at theoretical unification he is, as others have remarked, one of the founders of psychosomatic medicine. In addition to his medical practice Erasmus Darwin was also, of course, profoundly interested in the whole of the living world. As, again, many have noted, not least the biologists of his grandson's generation, his thought, as expressed in The Temple of Nature and elsehwere anticipates that of the slightly later Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck. Once again we find at the origin of his evolution theory a living fibre, or, as he writes, 'filament'. Taken together the Zoonomia and Temple of Nature thus sketch out an evolutionary psychobiology. This paper reviews this work and compares it with the other psychophysiologies of the eighteenth century. How original is Darwin's thought? Has it exerted any influence on subsequent neuroscience?
Erasmus Darwin's contributions to the geological sciences
In a life so crowded with achievements, it is surprising how much Darwin was involved with geology. Whilst still at Cambridge he made his first such linking friendship, with the tutor of Queen's College, John Michell (1724-1793), who later made fundamental contributions to the study of earthquakes and would be seen as a pioneer in stratigraphy too, if only his results had been published. After Darwin's move to Lichfield he became involved in the Trent and Mersey canal and his friend Josiah Wedgewood's more utilitarian interests in the materials exposed by such extensive surgery of the Earth (which was later crucial to the career of William Smith, pioneer of mineral prospecting). Darwin's connections with John Whitehurst ( 1713-1788) and their explorations of Derbyshire mines and stratigraphy soon added this area to his geological activities. In 1774 James Watt (1736-1819), the steam engineer, having failed with his separately condensing engine in Scotland, came south to see whether Birmingham expertise could instead succeed. Watt came with his close friend James Hutton (1726-1797), so-called 'father of modern geology' who, from Darwin's Lichfield base, also explored the Peak District. Darwin was considerably influenced by Hutton's novel ideas about the nature of basalt and granite, his dismissal of the idea that mountains were 'primitive', and his view that the role of heat had been important in the formation of the earth. When Darwin's son Robert settled in Shrewsbury, he drew Erasmus' attention to the tar in the Tar Tunnel near Ironbridge, discovered in 1786. Darwin suggested this tar had originated through sublimation from underlying coals, through such heat. This was one of the first attempts to explain the origin of the oil and petrol we are now addicted to. In the 1790's Darwin was in touch with a Shropshire-based mineral prospector (and former teacher of elocution) Dr Henry Gray Macnab (1760-1823). Darwin published Macnab's brother-in-law's section of a Newcastle colliery and attempted his own 'Section of the Earth' published in the Botanic Garden. But Darwin was never able to discover the basic secret of mineral prospecting, although he was well aware of its importance. He wrote to Stebbing Shaw (1762-1802), historian of Staffordshire, advising him "to search into the bowels of the earth... for the different Strata, as being in [my] opinion of much greater use to mankind than all the Pedigrees &c from the days of Noah". Darwin's failure in turn sheds light on the real achievements of the man who did succeed, who was following so closely in his footsteps, the above named William Smith.
Darwin and the Lunar Society: educating the girls
The Lunar Society of Birmingham included Boulton and Watt, Wedgwood and Priestley, Richard Lovell Edgeworth, Thomas Day and others, with Darwin as their charismatic theorist. Most were not only experimental natural philosophers but also radicals in thought, religion and politics. Yet there were no women at their meetings -so how was their liberalism reflected in their views on the education of girls? This talk looks briefly at some of their 'experiments' - Day and the foundlings, Wedgwood's 'Etruscan School', the Edgeworths' schemes and particularly Darwin's 'Plan for the Conduct of Female Education' - and uncovers a surprising (and entertaining) mix of sense, sensibility and science.
Nature And Man In Erasmus Darwin's Doctrine Of Imagination
Erasmus Darwin regarded science and technology as expressions of human creativity and power, as aspirations towards human dominance over nature. It is undeniable that Darwin's purpose was to unveil the human shapes of nature. In this case, we face a topic that is present both in Darwin's thought and in the wide Romantic tradition: Darwin, Young, Coleridge and Wordswoth shared a total confidence in human reason and imagination, that were seen as the mirror of divine creativity in nature. Darwin's emphasis fell upon man's power. But this emphasis points out only one aspect of a more complex plan. In the late eighteenth century, nature was not only the immovable stage in which the drama between God and human spirit happens. On the contrary, nature was often the true protagonist: mind and God are both expressions of nature's power. The idea of power of nature is also a typical Darwinian theme. If Darwin celebrated a new industrial humanity, his humanity was no more 'self-centered': in opposing French illuministic bourgeoisie, Darwin's provincial and agricultural mankind grows inside the womb of nature. Hence, 1) the romantic idea of nature plays a central role in Darwin's thought; 2) we can follow the first footsteps of this new romantic notion of nature especially through Darwin's doctrine of imagination. Because nature is not only the straight effect of God's creative will, it gets a high degree of autonomy. Individuals and species create themselves, and transform themselves thanks to a reproductive or, better, to an imaginative process, without any supernatural intervention. Beyond human initiative, gigantic natural forces appear in the world by means of 'imagination's power'. Overlooked but in the same time 'saved' (Darwin's word) by imagination, man becomes a part of this natural force. My purpose is so to show: 1) that starting with the mid-eighteenth century (i.e. starting with Charles Gildon, Mark Akenside, Joseph Warton) a concept of an enlarged imagination makes its way: imagination was no longer simply a faculty of the mind or a human gift. It is rather a cosmic-generative force, acting before the human race was born. 2) We can discover a similar theme also in Darwin's work, although scholars have not sufficiently stressed it. According to Darwin, imagination is a pre-human source, from which the life flows. Quoting the Temple of Nature, 'the potent wish in the productive hour calls to its aid Imagination's power'.
The vertiginous philosophers: Erasmus Darwin and William Charles Wells on vertigo
Darwin and Wells were referred to as the "vertiginous philosophers" by an anonymous correspondent to The Gentleman's Magazine of 1794. In 1792 Wells had presented experimental evidence contrary to the afterimage theory of visual vertigo proposed by Robert Darwin in 1786. Darwin suggested that the sequence of light entering the eyes during body rotation was visible as a moving afterimage when the body came to rest. Wells demonstrated that visual vertigo followed rotation in the dark, and that the eyes continued to move when the body ceased rotating. He also established that the direction of visual and eye movement was dependent upon the orientation of the head during rotation, and that the eyes underwent nystagmic movements. Erasmus supported his and his son's theory in the first edition of Zoonomia (1794). In so doing he conducted an ingenious experiment that was based on false assumptions. He rotated his body with his head tilted backwards to be horizontal; when he stopped and held his head erect he experienced circular visual motion. Darwin did not believe that the eyes could undergo torsion, and so considered that rotary motion could not be associated with eye movements. Wells conducted an experiment in which he generated an afterimage of a horizontal line prior to rotation and noted that it underwent rotation of body rotation ceased. Wells' two letters to The Gentleman's Magazine in 1794, addressed to Dr. Darwin, were not answered by him, although Erasmus did return to the topic of vertigo in the second and third editions of Zoonomia. Despite designing a human centrifuge in 1801 for generating vertigo as a treatment for the mentally disturbed, Darwin failed to appreciate the power of Wells' experiments, which implicated eye movements in visual vertigo. Indeed, the episode could be taken as reflecting the reluctance of Erasmus to accept experimental evidence that questioned his medical speculations.
Erasmus Darwin on Animal Generation: Placing Heredity within Historical and Zoonomian Contexts
Historians typically cite Erasmus Darwin's section, "Of Generation", from Zoonomia (1794-96) to establish an intellectual background for his grandson, Charles Darwin's thoughts on evolution. Most frequently, the former's views are recounted in terms of Lamarckianism and sexual selection. Such foreshadowing misses the opportunity to analyse Erasmus Darwin's thoughts on heredity within their own Enlightenment and early Romantic era contexts. This essay begins to fill this lacuna by illuminating the key influences upon Erasmus Darwin as evident in his own writings on generation. In particular, this essay focuses upon animal heredity, an area that even Erasmus Darwin enthusiasts have neglected in favour of his more voluminous botanical writings.
As Darwin's work illustrates, thoughts about the process of heredity not only held considerable interest but were also highly contested among natural philosophers in his era. In "Of Generation," from Zoonomia, Darwin cites accounts of heredity ranging from the Biblical Adam and ancient philosopher, Plato to Enlightenment philosophers including Linnaeus, Buffon, Hume, Hartley, Priestley, Hunter, and Blumenbach. Additional influences may be inferred from his elaborate descriptions. This essay draws upon these influences to present an encapsulated view of Darwin's thoughts on generation amidst the schisms between the mechanists and vitalists, the preformationists and epigenecists, and the animalculists and ovists of his day. Additionally, his viewpoints are elucidated on such critical contemporary issues as the power of the imagination in guiding embryonic development, the possibility of spontaneously generating animals, and the developmental difficulties underlying the formation of mules, monsters, and hermaphrodites. Finally, Darwin's account of animal generation is placed within the broader context of the four classes of motion or stimuli discussed in his Zoonomia: irritation, sensation, volition, and association. This overview of Darwin on animal generation demonstrates 1) his encyclopaedic breadth of knowledge regarding natural philosophy, 2) his ability to clearly articulate philosophical beliefs in prose as well as in poetry, 3) his inclination to intersperse selective empirical evidence that supported his philosophical framework, and 4) his use of animal generation as one demonstration of the grand synthesis of the spiritual and material workings of Nature.
© maintained by Philip Jackson, and last updated on 19 June 2003.