Erasmus Darwin

Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802) was a British physician, poet, and botanist noted for his republican politics and materialistic theory of evolution[1][8]. British naturalist, poet, philosopher and physician Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of naturalist Charles Darwin, was born in Nottinghamshire and educated at Cambridge and Edinburgh[5]. Erasmus Darwin was one of the greatest polymaths of the 18th Century. It has been said that no one since has ever rivalled him for achievements in such a wide range of fields[25].

Early Life and Education

Erasmus Darwin was born December 12, 1731, in Elston, Nottinghamshire. He was the seventh and youngest child of Robert Darwin, a lawyer, and Elizabeth Hill Darwin[3]. As a youth, he attended Chesterfield School[3]. Darwin was born in Elston Hall, Nottinghamshire, and educated at Cambridge from 1750 to 1754 and at Edinburgh from 1754 to 1756, where he acquired a reputation for his radicalism[2]. After four years of study at Cambridge, he spent two years at the Edinburgh Medical School[3].

Professional Development

After graduating, he began to practice medicine in Lichfield[3][2] in 1756. His medical practice thrived, and after several years George III offered to make him his personal physician[2]. However, Darwin declined, however, preferring to remain in Lichfield, where he came to know Joseph Priestley, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Lichfield native Samuel Johnson[2]. In 1756 he settled in Lichfield as a physician, where he often treated poor patients free of charge[5].

Erasmus Darwin was a medical doctor and earned his living through this profession. His methods were typical of their time and it is doubtful whether he saved any more lives than any other contemporary doctor, but he gained a reputation that meant that he treated some of the wealthiest individuals in the land, including the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire[6]. In 1758 the young Dr. Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802; F. R. S. 1761) was travelling about 10,000 miles a year in visits to patients from his house at Lichfield[24].

Personal Life

The following year, he married Mary Howard, with whom he had five children[3]. However, only two lived to adulthood: Erasmus, who became a lawyer, and Robert, a doctor who would father the famous naturalist Charles Darwin[3]. But the youngest, physician Robert Waring Darwin, married the daughter of Darwin's close friend, English craftsman and scientific entrepreneur Josiah Wedgwood. The young couple's fifth son was Charles Darwin, who would later write the influential work On the Origin of Species (1859)[1].

Darwin's wife died in 1770, after which he fathered two illegitimate daughters with Mary Parker: Susan and Mary Parker[3]. In 1781 Erasmus married a young widow, Elizabeth Pole, who insisted that he move to her home in Derby, where he started writing scientific poetry and textbooks[1]. Together they had seven children; their eldest daughter was the mother of Francis Galton, who in the late 19th century would found the science of eugenics[1].

Lunar Society of Birmingham

Darwin was a significant figure in the Lunar Society, a group of intellectuals advocating for scientific advancements, which included notable members like Josiah Wedgwood[3]. They were led by the larger-than-life physician Erasmus Darwin, a man of extraordinary intellectual insight with his own pioneering ideas on evolution. Others included the flamboyant entrepreneur Matthew Boulton, the brilliantly perceptive engineer James Watt whose inventions harnessed the power of steam, the radical polymath Joseph Priestley who, among his wide-ranging achievements discovered oxygen, and the innovative potter and social reformer Josiah Wedgwood[13].

Matthew Boulton, who made metal goods, met Erasmus Darwin, a doctor and poet. They both loved experiments and inventions. Darwin had a strong understanding of science, and Boulton was great at putting ideas into practice[12]. Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802), grandfather of Charles Darwin, was a founder of the Lunar Society in Birmingham (c. 1765–c. 1800), which counted several physicians in its numbers[18].

The society gained its name as its monthly meetings were always scheduled for the Monday nearest to the full moon, the better light helping to ensure the members a safer journey home along the dangerous, unlit streets[15]. The society's name came from their practice of scheduling their meetings at the time of the full moon. Since there was no street lighting, the extra light made the journey home easier and safer[20]. They called themselves "lunarticks" (a play on the word lunatics), and later, the "Lunar Society" because they only met on days with a full moon, claiming that it provided enough light for a safer journey home[17].

The Dining Room at Soho House is also known as the Lunar Room and it is where the Lunar Society met. The meetings held here were lively affairs, where all the latest ideas and inventions were discussed and scientific experiments carried out[11]. Their preferred venue was Soho House in Handsworth, the home of Mathew Boulton who was the heart of the Lunar Society[15].

Their debates brought together philosophy, arts, science and commerce, and as well as debating and discovering, the 'Lunarticks' also built canals and factories, managed world-class businesses — and changed the face of Birmingham[13]. The Society has been described as the thinktank of the Industrial Revolution[20].

Scientific Contributions and Evolutionary Theory

Darwin's major early interests were medicine and invention, but in the late 1770s he became fascinated by botany[1]. Throughout the 1790s Darwin produced his major works, including several treatises on natural history in verse: The Botanic Garden (1789-1791) and Zoonomia (1794-1796) (in which he described a theory of evolution similar to that of Lamarck)[2].

In 1794, Darwin published the first volume of Zoonomia: Or, the Laws of Organic Life, which outlined his own system of medicine and an early theory of biological evolution[3]. Erasmus came up with a coherent theory of evolution a full 70 years before Charles turned his mind to it. He expounded this in his extraordinary book Zoonomia or the Laws of Organic Life which, first published in 1794, took him 25 years to write and also includes a comprehensive classification of diseases and treatments[25].

In his posthumously published Temple of Nature, Erasmus Darwin outlined not only his belief in evolution, but his belief in shared ancestry — that modern life arose from simple, minute organisms[10]. His biographer Desmond King-Hele claimed his was the 'greatest imaginative construct in the history of the world, because he was the first person to arrive at and fully express and expound a nearly correct view of the development of life on Earth.'[9]

Erasmus first tentatively suggested the idea of evolution in 1770. His family coat of arms featured three scallop shells, and to these he added the Latin words E Conchis omnia ('everything from shells'). He had this motto painted on his carriage to publicize his theory 'without anyone noticing'[21]. He first suggested the idea in 1770 by putting the allegorical motto E conchis omnia, or "Everything from shells" on his carriage and his bookplate[10].

Inventions and Mechanical Innovations

He also invented numerous mechanical devices, including a copying machine and steering wheels, and sketches for rocket engines (a century ahead of rocket science), horizontal windmills, and artificial birds[5]. To his credit were the inventions of a speaking machine (fueled by his interest in the origin of language, the partially completed model fooled some first-time listeners into thinking they heard real a person saying "mama" or "papa"), a mechanical copying machine, a "fiery chariot" (steam car) and a carriage steering system later used in automobiles[10].

To alleviate the danger and discomfort of his journey, he developed a design for improved carriage steering and stability, which he road-tested over 20,000 miles on two carriages. With the aid of manuscripts from the Archive of the Royal Society of Arts and elsewhere, I offer a reconstruction of Darwin's improved method of steering, which relies on four jointed rods, initially in the form of an isosceles trapezium[24]. For example, the trapezoid steering, originally meant for horse-drawn vehicles, was invented independently by Erasmus Darwin in 1759 and by Georg Langensperger in 1816[22].

In a 1764 letter to Matthew Boulton, Darwin describes and draws the design of a fascinating steam-powered carriage[23]. Keep in mind that this is still five years before Cugnot would unveil his lumbering Steam Drag, and the steam engine itself had only really been in common use for about 50 years. A steam engine that operated at anything above atmospheric pressure wouldn't be around until 1781. Believe me, 1764 is a very early time to even be imagining cars[23].

Many of these inventions and plans are noteworthy in that they illustrate the protean character of Darwin's imagination; among them are plans for canal locks, a horizontal windmill which was used by Wedgwood to grind colors and flints until the advent of Watt's steam engine, a speaking machine, a telescopic candlestick a stocking frame, a plan for a water closet of a modern type, a rocket motor that used hydrogen and oxygen as propellants, a mechanical bird that flapped its wings, copying machines, and many other ingenious devices[7].

Literary Works and Poetry

His long poem The Botanic Garden (1789), structured in rhyming couplets with extensive footnotes, addresses a range of scientific concerns, including the beginnings of his theory of evolution[5]. He authored several works, including the long poem "The Botanic Garden," which gained popularity and combined his interests in botany and poetry[3]. Although Erasmus Darwin is best known today for his scientific work, for a short period of time in his own day he was known as the most popular poet in England[3].

He translated textbooks and composed "The Loves of the Plants" (1789), which mainly comprises elaborate footnoted verses extolling Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus's taxonomic system[1]. In 1800, he published another scientific book, Phytologia, which described the process of photosynthesis[3]. Erasmus was the first person to fully understand and explain the process of photosynthesis in plants and to describe the formation of clouds[25].

His final book, a long poem, was published after his death, in 1803. Although he had titled the volume The Origin of Society, the publisher, Joseph Johnson, changed the title to The Temple of Nature for political reasons. Again using rhyming couplets and material explored in an earlier work, Darwin, in this poem, presents his own evolutionary theory[3].

Social and Political Views

Darwin was an advocate of women's education, publishing the treatise Female Education in Boarding Schools (1797)[5]. He advocated education for women and despised slavery. Livid to learn that slave muzzles were manufactured in Birmingham, he wrote his friend Wedgewood and suggested the items be displayed in the House of Commons to illustrate the cruelty of the slave trade[10]. Despite being asked to serve as a private physician to George III, Erasmus openly sympathized with the colonies in the American Revolution, and was good friends with Benjamin Franklin[10].

Legacy and Impact

Despite Darwin's subsequent eclipse, research has made it clear how extensively he influenced his contemporaries and successors. Most famously, British writers Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley commented on his importance for Mary's novel Frankenstein, and Charles Darwin studied the elder Darwin's work closely[1]. It is well known that Darwin's works were consulted and commented upon by his grandson Charles Darwin, author of On the Origin of Species[9].

Today he is the subject of increasing historical interest and has been variously reconfigured as the true forefather of evolutionary theory, as an exploitative industrial capitalist, as a major influencer of Romantic literature, and as a prescient inventor whose insights included the steering system used in cars[1]. He has been described as a genius in a recent volume by Smith and Arnott and as "the greatest of all the Darwins" by D. King-Hele, his most authoritative recent biographer. He was certainly regarded with great respect both in his lifetime and in the 19th century by those who knew of the scope of his work and ideas[6].

Darwin died in 1802 of a heart attack[3]. Erasmus Darwin died on Sunday 18th April 1802, probably of a lung infection. His final volume of poetry The Temple of Nature or The Origin of Society was published posthumously[25].