Concept
Erasmus Darwin
Overview
Erasmus Robert Darwin (12 December 1731 – 18 April 1802) was an English physician. One of the key thinkers of the Midlands Enlightenment, he was also a natural philosopher, physiologist, abolitionist, inventor, freemason, and poet.
His poems included much natural history, including a statement of evolution and the relatedness of all forms of life.
He was a member of the Darwin–Wedgwood family, which includes his grandsons Charles Darwin and Francis Galton. Darwin was a founding member of the Lunar Society of Birmingham, a discussion group of pioneering industrialists and natural philosophers.
He turned down an invitation from George III to become Physician to the King.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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Naturalists, and multitudes besides naturalists, know that the hypothesis which I am represented as putting forward as new, is much older than the hypothesis of natural selection--goes back at least as far as Dr. Erasmus Darwin. My purpose was to bring into the foreground again a factor which has, I think, been of late years improperly ignored; to show that Mr.
Herbert Spencer, Essays
The author is tied to Erasmus Darwin in the knowledge graph; names Erasmus Darwin.
Dr. Krause's contribution formed the second part of the _Life of Erasmus Darwin_, my father supplying a "preliminary notice." This expression on the title-page is somewhat misleading; my father's contribution is more than half the book, and should have been described as a biography.
Charles Darwin, Charles Darwin
Close in meaning to Erasmus Darwin; the term itself is not named.
It is true that he apparently rejected altogether the causal agencies alleged by earlier inquirers. In the Historical Sketch prefixed to the later editions of his _Origin of Species_ (p. xiv, note), he writes:—“It is curious how largely my grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, anticipated the views and erroneous grounds of opinion of Lamarck in his 'Zoonomia' (vol. i, pp. 500-510), published in 1794.” And since, among…
Herbert Spencer, The Factors of Organic Evolution
The author is tied to Erasmus Darwin in the knowledge graph; names Erasmus Darwin.
Philosophers who discussed Erasmus Darwin
Related ideas
- Freemasonry
- Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
- Industrial Revolution
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- James Watt
- John Locke
- Josiah Wedgwood
- David Hartley (philosopher)
- Frankenstein
- Mary Wollstonecraft
- Oliver Cromwell
- Physiology
- Matthew Boulton
- University of Cambridge
- Sherlock Holmes
- American Philosophical Society
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Place in the tradition
Part of British philosophy.