Transcript for the lecture

TRIANGULAR
RELATIONSHIPS
Dr Patricia Fara
Clare College, Cambridge
Wilberforce v Huxley
Wilberforce v Darwin
Erasmus
Charles
‘The Loves of the Triangles’
Anti-Jacobin, 1798
The Loves of the Plants
The Loves of the Plants
…MEADIA’S soft chains five
suppliant beaux confess,
And hand in hand the
laughing belle address;
Alike to all, she bows with
wanton air,
Rolls her dark eye, and
waves her golden hair…
‘The Loves of the Triangles’
…And first, the fair PARABOLA behold,
Her timid arms with virgin blush unfold!
Though, on one focus fix’d, her eyes betray
A heart that glows with love’s resistless
sway…
Anti-Jacobin, 1798
‘The Loves of the Triangles’
…For me, ye CISSOIDS, round my temples bend
Your wandering Curves; ye CONCHOIDS extend;
Let playful PENDULES quick vibration feel,
While silent CYCLOIS rests upon her wheel…
Anti-Jacobin, 1798
‘The Loves of the Triangles’
‘The Loves of the Triangles’
…How Loves and Graces in an Angle dwell ; *
How slow progressive Points protract the Line…**
* Angle—Gratus puellæ risus ab Angulo. —Hor.
** How slow progressive Points—The Author has reserved
the picturesque imagery which the Theory of Fluxions
naturally suggested for his ALGEBRAIC GARDEN;
where the Fluents are described as rolling with an even
current between a margin of Curves of the higher order,
over a pebbly channel, inlaid with Differential Calculi.
William Pitt
A SPHERE, projecting
against a PLANE
James Gillray, 1792
‘Loves of the Triangles’
…Nor long the time ere Britain’s shores shall
greet
The warrior-sage with gratulation sweet:
Eager to grasp the wreath of Naval Fame,
The GREAT REPUBLIC plans the Floating
Frame!...
TRIANGULAR RELATIONSHIPS
• QUANTIFICATION
• PROGRESS
• SLAVERY
…The freckled IRIS
owns a fiercer flame,
And three unjealous
husbands wed the
dame...
…Three gentle swains
evolve their longing
arms,
…And woo the young
REPUBLIC’S virgin
charms:
The Loves of the Plants, ‘The Loves of the
Triangles’, 1798
1789
TRIANGULAR RELATIONSHIPS
• QUANTIFICATION
Edmund Burke
…[variations between different parts of
France] ‘render mensuration a ridiculous
standard of power…and equality in
geometry the most unequal of all
measures in the distribution of men.’
Reflections on the Revolution in France,
1790
French Encyclopédie
‘…that pestiferous work’
disseminating
‘Anarchy and Atheism...’
…A man would not
naturally expect to
meet with disgusting
strokes of obscenity
in a system of botany,
but...obscenity is the
very basis of the
Linnean system…
Sir Joseph Banks
(President of the
Royal Society)
Gillray, New Morality
Pieter Camper
TRIANGULAR RELATIONSHIPS
• PROGRESS
No. XV
THE PROGRESS OF
MAN. A DIDIACTIC
POEM.
DEDICATED TO
R. P. KNIGHT, ESQ.
Richard Payne Knight
The Progress of Civil
Society
1796
ouroboros
Darwin
…With quicken’d pace
successive rollers move,
And these retain, and those
extend the rove;
Then fly the spoles, the
rapid axles glow; -And slowly circumvolves the
labouring wheel below…
Darwin
…With quicken’d pace
successive rollers move,
And these retain, and those
extend the rove;
Then fly the spoles, the
rapid axles glow; -And slowly circumvolves the
labouring wheel below…
Anti-Jacobin
…The spiral grooves in
smooth meanders flow,
Drags the long chain, the
polish’d axles glow,
While slowly circumvolves
the piece of beef below:
The conscious fire with
bickering radiance burns,
Eyes the rich joint, and
roasts it as it turns…
‘…all nature exists in a
state of perpetual
improvement…’
Erasmus Darwin
…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…and thus
possessing the faculty of continuing to improve
by its own inherent activity, and of delivering
down those improvements by generation to its
posterity, world without end!...
‘The Loves of the Triangles’
…We may conceive this Primeval
Point…evolving itself by its own energies,
to have moved forward in a right Line, ad
infinitum, till it grew tired—After which, the
right Line, which it had generated, would
begin to put itself in motion in a lateral
direction, describing an Area of infinite
extent…capable of containing the present
existing Universe…
‘The Loves of the Triangles’
…it seems highly probable that the first
effort of Nature terminated in the
production of Vegetables, and that these
supplied themselves with wings or feet…
in time, would restrict themselves to the
use of their hind feet: their tails would
gradually rub off by sitting in their caves or
huts…
Joseph Priestley
…it is nothing but a superior knowledge of
the laws of nature, that gives Europeans
the advantages they have over the
Hottentots...science advancing, as it does,
it may be taken for granted, that mankind
some centuries hence will be as much
superior to us...as we are now to the
Hottentots…
TRIANGULAR RELATIONSHIPS
• SLAVERY
This day buried a fine woman slave, No.
11, having been ailing some time…Sent a
girl, ill of the flux (No. 92) on shoar…This
morning buryed a woman slave (No. 47).
Know not what to say she died of…
Tea, the ‘blood-sweeten’d
beverage’
Æsop, c. 1755
- The SLAVE, in chains, on
supplicating knee,
Spreads his wide arms, and
lifts his eyes to Thee;
With hunger pale, with
wounds and toil
oppress’d,
“ARE WE NOT
BRETHREN?” sorrow
choaks the rest…
Darwin, Botanic Garden
Immortal
FRANKLIN…stabb’d the
struggling Vampires…
The Warrior, LIBERTY, with
bending sails...
..the Giant-form on
GALLIA’s plains
Inglorious slept,
unconscious of his
chains…
Darwin
…Round his large limbs were wound a thousand
strings
By the weak hands of Confessors and Kings…
Touch’d by the patriot-flame, he rent amazed
The flimsy bonds, and round and round him gazed;
Starts up from earth, above the admiring throng
Lifts his colossal form, and towers along…
Darwin
…High o’er his foes his hundred arms He
rears,
Plowshares his swords, and pruning hooks
his spears;
Calls to the Good and Brave with voice, that
rolls
Like Heaven’s own thunder round the
echoing poles…
‘The Loves of the Triangles’
…O’er the huge plane gigantic Terror stalks…
The Commune spreads, the gay Departments
smile,
Fair Freedom’s Plant o’ershades the laughing isle:
―Fired with new hopes, the exulting peasant sees
The Gallic streamer woo the British breeze…
TRIANGULAR RELATIONSHIPS
Anti-Jacobin
‘more satisfied with
things as they are’
than Darwin, but
‘less convinced of the
practical influence of
Didactic Poems.’
• draft manuscript ‘The Progress of Society’
• draft manuscript ‘The Progress of Society’
• 1798 ‘The Loves of the Triangles’ as a
sequel to ‘The Progress of Man’
• draft manuscript ‘The Progress of Society’
• 1798 ‘The Loves of the Triangles’ as
sequel to ‘The Progress of Man’
• 1803 The Temple of Nature; or, The Origin
of Society
• draft manuscript ‘The Progress of Society’
• 1798 ‘The Loves of the Triangles’ as sequel to
‘The Progress of Man’
• 1803 The Temple of Nature; or, The Origin of
Society
• 1859 On the Origin of Species
?
DARWIN
…Such is the condition of organic nature!
whose first law might be expressed in the
words, “Eat or be eaten!” and which would
seem to be one great slaughter-house,
one universal scene of rapacity and
injustice…