Transcript Erasmus Darwin

Erasmus Darwin
1731 - 1802
Personal Life
 1731 - 1802
 Early Life
 Born in Elston, England
 Youngest of 7
 Father - Lawyer
 Married Twice
 14 Children
 2 were illegitimate children from an affair with
his mistress
 Grandfather of Charles Darwin
Interests
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Physician
Poet
Deist
Inventor
Anti-slavery
Pro-democracy
Pro-American/ French Revolutions
Owned a botanical garden
Education
 Chesterfield Grammar School
 St. John’s College, Cambridge
 Edinburgh Medical School
 Unknown if he earned a formal medical
degree
Career
 Physician (50 years)
 Highly successful
 Attended to the wealthy
 Helped poor at no charge
 Declined King George III’s invitation
to become the Royal Physician
Lunar Society (1765–1813)
 One of the founding members (1770)
 Prestigious society of prominent
industrialists, natural philosophers,
and intellectuals
 Met during full moons (most lighting)
 Driving force behind England’s
Industrial Revolution
 Darwin befriended many members
including Benjamin Franklin
Lichfield Botanical Society
 Translated works of Carl Linnaeus
from Latin to English
 Coined many of the English names
used for plants
 A System of Vegetables (1783)
 Categorized over 1400 plants
 The Families of Plants (1787)
 “Stamen” and “Pistil”
Stamen vs. Pistil
The Botanic Garden
The Botanic Garden
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2 long poems (1791)
The Economy of Vegetation
The Love of Plants
Came from his love of botany
Best seller
 Incredible reviews
 Made Darwin a very popular poet
The Economy of Vegetation
 “The Love of Plants”
 Scientific, social, and political progress
 All part of a single evolutionary process
– nature and society are one
 Humanity evolving towards perfection
The Love of Plants
 Descriptions of numerous species followed
by extensive notes
 Personified Plants
 Plants are living creatures, like humans
 Plants have gender
 Evolutionary change and progress occur
through sexual reproduction
 “From the sexual generation of plants new
varieties are frequently obtained”
 This concept also applies to humans and animals
Zoonomia
Zoonomia
 (1794, 1796) – most important book
 1st volume - The Laws of Organic Life
 Speculation on evolution
 All species came from one living organism
 “… all warm-blooded animals have arisen
from one living filament, which the great
First Cause endued with animality…”
 3 main causes of change in organisms
 Lust, need for security, and hunger
The Temple of Nature
The Temple of Nature
 Published posthumously (1803)
 Considered his best poetic work
 Theory of Evolution
 Modern life came from simple
microorganisms, not divine creation
 His grandson Charles Darwin expanded
upon this theory, plus natural selection
Divine Creation?
Evolution.
The Temple of Nature
“
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. “
Other Scientific Contributions
A carriage steering system
A model of the atmosphere
Speculated on the Big Bang
Sketched a simple liquid-fuel rocket
engine
 Plants breath through tiny pores
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After Death/ Legacy
 Foreshadowed the
Theory of Evolution
 Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
 Charles Darwin
 His ideas became “dangerous”
 The Life of Erasmus Darwin, Charles
Darwin’s attempt to restore his
grandfather’s reputation
Major Works
 Evolutionary Works
 A System of Vegetables
 The Families of Plants
 The Botanic Garden
 The Love of Plants
 The Economy of Vegetation
 Zoonomia
 The Temple of Nature
 Other Major Works
 A Plan for the Conduct of Female Education in
Boarding Schools
 The Philosophy of Agriculture and Gardening.
References
 http://www.strangescience.net/erasmus.htm
 http://www3.shropshire-cc.gov.uk/darwine.htm
 http://www.enotes.com/nineteenth-centurycriticism/darwin-erasmus
 http://books.google.com/books?id=sUcSAAAAYAAJ&print
sec=frontcover&dq=erasmus+darwin#PPA13,M1
 http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/iss/library/speccoll/bomarc
h/bomjune04.html
 http://www.planetfusion.co.uk/~pignut/Erasmus.html
 http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/Edarwin.html
 http://www.wikipedia.com