*Ø* Blogmanac December 12, 1731| Happy birthday, Erasmus Darwin
1731 Erasmus Darwin, English physician, scientist and poet, polymathic genius; grandfather of Charles Darwin and of Francis Galton, founder of eugenics; great-grandfather of George Darwin, Plumian Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge.
Erasmus was also an inventor, coming up with a steam car ("a fiery chariot"); a wire-drawn ferry; a horizontal windmill; and an artificial bird. He invented a speaking machine which could trick some people into thinking they heard real a person saying "mama" or "papa", a copying machine and a carriage steering system later used in motor vehicles.
Darwin was co-founder of The Birmingham Lunar Society, a small group of intellectual friends who met on the full moon. “The lunar men” included Joseph Priestley (preacher, politician and chemist, the first to discover photosynthesis and isolate the element oxygen); James Watt (‘father of the steam engine’); Matthew Boulton (engineer and chemist, business man backer of Watt); Josiah Wedgwood (mineralogist, chemist and potter to the Queen; related to Erasmus by marriage as Charles Darwin and his cousin Emma Wedgwood married).
Erasmus Darwin was the first to explain how clouds form and to describe the full process of photosynthesis in plants. As a young man he expounded the theory of biological evolution (as we have come to know it), later publishing E Conchis Omnia – ‘Everything from Shells’. In this work, the grandfather of the world’s most famous evolutionist expressed his belief that all life comes from a single microscopic ancestor, a radical idea that brought him condemnation in society and perhaps prevented him from obtaining the position of Poet Laureate.
Rejection by society did not stop him, and he wrote a long, precognitive poem, The Temple of Nature or The Origin of Society, tracing the progress of life from microscopic entities in primordial oceans through fishes and amphibians to humankind, as he calls us.
His ideas sometimes presaged those of his more famous grandson, Charles:
Some birds have acquired harder beaks to crack nuts, as the parrot. Others have acquired beaks adapted to break the harder seeds, as sparrows. Others for the softer seeds of flowers, or the buds of trees as the finches. Other birds have acquired long beaks to penetrate the moister soils in search of roots, as woodcocks; and others broad ones to filtrate the water of lakes, and to retain aquatic insects. All of which seem to have been gradually produced during many generations by the perpetual endeavour of the creatures to supply the want of food.
Erasmus Darwin, Zoonomia Book I
... He was so corpulent he had to have a half-circle cut out of his dining table so his huge stomach would fit. Incongruously, perhaps, he also became the first Englishman to fly in a large-sized hydrogen balloon.
The 'Lunatics'
Around about 1765, Darwin helped to found the Lunar Society, a discussion club of a number of prominent geologists, chemists, engineers, theorists industrialists andscientists, who met regularly in the latter half of the 18th century. The society's name came from their practice of scheduling their meetings at the time of the full moon (the better light ensuring a higher attendance as generally the streets were unpoliced and very dark.). Meeting in, among other places, a house on a crossroads outside Birmingham, England, between them they managed to launch the Industrial Revolution, discover oxygen, harness the power of steam and pioneer the theory of evolution.
Venues included Matthew Boulton's home, Soho House, and Great Barr Hall.
They were a very influential group in British science and industry of the time – amongst those who attended meetings more or less regularly were the following remarkable men:
Matthew Boulton, Erasmus Darwin, Samuel Galton Junior, James Keir, William Murdoch, Joseph Priestley, Josiah Wedgwood, James Watt and William Withering.
More peripheral characters and correspondents included:
Sir Richard Arkwright, John Baskerville, Thomas Beddoes, Thomas Day, Richard Lovell Edgeworth, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Anna Seward, William Small, John Smeaton, Thomas Wedgwood, John Wilkinson, Joseph Wright, James Wyatt, Samuel Wyatt.
Antoine Lavoisier frequently corresponded with various members of the group, as did Benjamin Franklin, who also visited them in Birmingham on several occasions.
This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today, including Iceland's Yuletide trolls and more on the Virgin Mary/Aztec goddess connection at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date when you're there.
1731 Erasmus Darwin, English physician, scientist and poet, polymathic genius; grandfather of Charles Darwin and of Francis Galton, founder of eugenics; great-grandfather of George Darwin, Plumian Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge.
Erasmus was also an inventor, coming up with a steam car ("a fiery chariot"); a wire-drawn ferry; a horizontal windmill; and an artificial bird. He invented a speaking machine which could trick some people into thinking they heard real a person saying "mama" or "papa", a copying machine and a carriage steering system later used in motor vehicles.
Darwin was co-founder of The Birmingham Lunar Society, a small group of intellectual friends who met on the full moon. “The lunar men” included Joseph Priestley (preacher, politician and chemist, the first to discover photosynthesis and isolate the element oxygen); James Watt (‘father of the steam engine’); Matthew Boulton (engineer and chemist, business man backer of Watt); Josiah Wedgwood (mineralogist, chemist and potter to the Queen; related to Erasmus by marriage as Charles Darwin and his cousin Emma Wedgwood married).
Erasmus Darwin was the first to explain how clouds form and to describe the full process of photosynthesis in plants. As a young man he expounded the theory of biological evolution (as we have come to know it), later publishing E Conchis Omnia – ‘Everything from Shells’. In this work, the grandfather of the world’s most famous evolutionist expressed his belief that all life comes from a single microscopic ancestor, a radical idea that brought him condemnation in society and perhaps prevented him from obtaining the position of Poet Laureate.
Rejection by society did not stop him, and he wrote a long, precognitive poem, The Temple of Nature or The Origin of Society, tracing the progress of life from microscopic entities in primordial oceans through fishes and amphibians to humankind, as he calls us.
His ideas sometimes presaged those of his more famous grandson, Charles:
Some birds have acquired harder beaks to crack nuts, as the parrot. Others have acquired beaks adapted to break the harder seeds, as sparrows. Others for the softer seeds of flowers, or the buds of trees as the finches. Other birds have acquired long beaks to penetrate the moister soils in search of roots, as woodcocks; and others broad ones to filtrate the water of lakes, and to retain aquatic insects. All of which seem to have been gradually produced during many generations by the perpetual endeavour of the creatures to supply the want of food.
Erasmus Darwin, Zoonomia Book I
... He was so corpulent he had to have a half-circle cut out of his dining table so his huge stomach would fit. Incongruously, perhaps, he also became the first Englishman to fly in a large-sized hydrogen balloon.
The 'Lunatics'
Around about 1765, Darwin helped to found the Lunar Society, a discussion club of a number of prominent geologists, chemists, engineers, theorists industrialists andscientists, who met regularly in the latter half of the 18th century. The society's name came from their practice of scheduling their meetings at the time of the full moon (the better light ensuring a higher attendance as generally the streets were unpoliced and very dark.). Meeting in, among other places, a house on a crossroads outside Birmingham, England, between them they managed to launch the Industrial Revolution, discover oxygen, harness the power of steam and pioneer the theory of evolution.
Venues included Matthew Boulton's home, Soho House, and Great Barr Hall.
They were a very influential group in British science and industry of the time – amongst those who attended meetings more or less regularly were the following remarkable men:
Matthew Boulton, Erasmus Darwin, Samuel Galton Junior, James Keir, William Murdoch, Joseph Priestley, Josiah Wedgwood, James Watt and William Withering.
More peripheral characters and correspondents included:
Sir Richard Arkwright, John Baskerville, Thomas Beddoes, Thomas Day, Richard Lovell Edgeworth, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Anna Seward, William Small, John Smeaton, Thomas Wedgwood, John Wilkinson, Joseph Wright, James Wyatt, Samuel Wyatt.
Antoine Lavoisier frequently corresponded with various members of the group, as did Benjamin Franklin, who also visited them in Birmingham on several occasions.
This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today, including Iceland's Yuletide trolls and more on the Virgin Mary/Aztec goddess connection at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date when you're there.
Pip Wilson posted item above at 12:40 PM | Permalink
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