Erasmus Darwin...SCIENCE AND POETRY
I first found out about Dr Darwin last year and even this year read about him in New Scientist magazine, and there's a few books out about him as well.
Has anyone else heard of Erasmus Darwin?(1731-1802) who was a physician, poet and free-thinking radical.By his first wife he was also the grandfather of Charles Darwin, the great scientist who discovered 'natural selection' and wrote works such as On The Origin of Species, The Descent of Man and kept the famous journel On The Beagle Voyage , which he went on as a young man , in his early twenties, and visited places such as the Galapagos Islands(with "Darwin's Giant Turtles").By his second wife he was also the grandfather of Francis Galton who became a famous explorer, scientist and
psychologist.The nineteenth century poet Percy Bysshe Shelley(who studied chemistry and astronomy) was also familar with Dr Darwin and admired him.
He had read his epic poem The Temple of Nature(1803) which embodied Erasmus's own theory of evolution, and note that this was many years before the scientific advancements and discoveries of his grandson Charles Darwin.
His a little extract from Dr Erasmus Darwin's poem The Temple of Nature:
While nature sinks in Time's destructive storms,
The Wrecks of Death are but a change of forms;
Emerging matter from the grave returns,
Feels new desires, with new sensations burns;
With youth's first bloom a finer sense acquires,
And Love and Pleasures fan the rising fires.
