Erasmus Darwin

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Related to Erasmus Darwin: Charles Lyell

Erasmus Darwin
Birthday	Wednesday, December 12, 1731
Birthplace	Elston Hall, Elston, Nottinghamshire near Newark-on-Trent
Died	Sunday, April 18, 1802

Darwin, Erasmus

Darwin, Erasmus, 1731–1802, English physician and poet. During most of his life he practiced medicine in Lichfield and cultivated a botanical garden. He was a prominent member of the Lichfield literary group, which included Anna Seward and Thomas Day. In a long poem, The Botanic Garden (1789–91), Darwin expounded the botanical system of Linnaeus. His Zoonomia (1794–96), explaining organic life according to evolutionary principles, anticipates later theories. He was the grandfather of Charles Darwin and of Francis Galton.

Bibliography

See biographies by D. King-Hele (1964) and P. Fara (2012).

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Darwin, Erasmus

Born Dec. 12, 1731, in Elton; died Apr. 18, 1802, in Derby. English physician, naturalist, and poet. Grandfather of C. Darwin.

In Zoonomia (1794–96), Darwin developed a theory in natural philosophy concerning the evolution of organisms. According to Darwin, embryos originate in the form of very thin fibrils that separate from the nerve endings in the body of the father and enter the ovum during fertilization. This process is the same for all animals, which, Darwin suggested, originated from the mixture of several “natural orders”; under the influence of the external environment, the use and nonuse of organs, and other causes, animals develop and change. In the narrative poems entitled The Botanic Garden (1789–92) and The Temple of Nature (1803; Russian translation, 1911) Darwin set forth his views of natural science in poetical form; philosophically, he was a deist.

REFERENCES

Krause, E. Erasmus Darwin und seine Stellung in der Geschichte der Descendenz-Theorie mit seinem Lebens- und Charakterbilde von Ch. Darwin. Leipzig, 1880.
Darwin, C. “Zhizn’ Erazma Darvina.” Soch.. vol. 9. Moscow, 1959. Pages 250–306.

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References in periodicals archive ?

Martin Priestman, The Poetry of Erasmus Darwin (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013).

Linnaeus, analogy, and taxonomy: botanical naming and categorization in Erasmus Darwin and Charlotte Smith

On the other side of the channel, Erasmus Darwin took up this call with gusto.

Vegetable love: reimagining sexuality in Frankenstein and "Christabel."

"Lieut Erasmus Darwin, who was a grandson of the great scientist, became secretary of Messrs Bolck-k ow Vaughan and Co Ltd some years ago.

How Darwin's grandson did Teesside proud and led platoon with bravery

In Erasmus Darwin, Fara organizes her examination of the polymath's life and career around the framework of three poems written by Darwin, "The Loves of the Plants," "The Economy of Vegetation," and "The Temple of Nature," plus a parody written by his conservative detractors, "The Loves of the Triangles." Fara describes the progress of her research, provides plainspoken commentary upon her reactions to the overwrought quality of Darwin's poetry, and divulges the truth about her field of endeavor--that the practice of history is not at all precise and, instead, follows a meandering path full of accidental discoveries, "false trails," and "jettisoned chapters" (p.

Erasmus Darwin: Sex, Science, and Serendipity

Key Words: Erasmus Darwin; Charles Darwin; Lunatick; polymath; physician: poet.

Erasmus Darwin, 18th-century polymath

There are chapters here on Wordsworth (who had little interest in plants except vicariously through his sister), Erasmus Darwin, Crabbe, Clare, Ruskin, and Lawrence, and, in her final chapter, pages on Roethke, William Carlos Williams, Jon Silkin, Michael Longley, Ted Hughes and Les Murray.

M. M. Mahood. The Poet as Botanist

But Watt is just one of the names in the Boulton facebook: Erasmus Darwin, Joseph Priestley, Josiah Wedgwood, Benjamin Franklin--Boulton knew them all and worked with them.

Review: John Pullin visits Birmingham's exhibition marking Matthew Boulton's bicentenary, but leaves with questions unanswered

The essays are divided into two sections, 'Britain and Ireland' and 'Europe and Beyond', which seems to cover all eventualities until one comes across the fascinating essay by Deidre Coleman in which it is the location of the polyp between the vegetable and the natural worlds that is debatable, and more generally that area cultivated by several writers of the period, Erasmus Darwin among them, that lies between 'imagination and science, speculation and system, the playful and the serious' (p.

Romanticism's Debatable Lands

The grandson of the poet and physician Erasmus Darwin, and a relation of both Josiah Wedgwood (founder of the famous pottery firm) and Sir Francis Galton (founder of eugenics), Charles Darwin had been intended for the priesthood before he set off on his voyage of discovery on HMS Beagle in 1831 which would turn the Bible's creation theory on its head.

Going Ape over Darwin: Mark Bryant on cartoons of the man who shook Victorian society to the core

He crossed paths with Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, Madame de Stall, and Erasmus Darwin, Charles's grandfather, who not only translated Linnaeus but set him to verse.