The Genius of Erasmus Darwin (Science, Technology and Culture, 1700-1945)

Smith, Christopher; Arnott, Robert

ISBN 10: 0754636712 / ISBN 13: 9780754636717

Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited, Aldershot, 2005

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 027344

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Genius of Erasmus Darwin (Science, Technology and Culture, 1700-1945)
• Publisher: Ashgate Publishing Limited, Aldershot
• Publication Date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0754636712
• ISBN 13: 9780754636717
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Figures and tables
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: New
• Dust Jacket Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

The Genius of Erasmus Darwin provides insight into the full extent of Erasmus Darwin's exceptional intellect. He is shown to be a major creative thinker and innovator, one of the minds behind the late eighteenth-century industrial revolution, and one of the first, if not the first, to perceive the living world (including humans) as part of a unified evolutionary scenario. The contributions here provide contextual understandings of Erasmus Darwin's thought, as well as studies of particular works and accounts of the later reception of his writings. In this way it is possible to see why the young Samuel Taylor Coleridge was moved to describe Darwin as 'the first literary character in Europe, and the most original-minded man'. Erasmus Darwin, Charles Darwin's grandfather, was one of the leading intellectuals of eighteenth-century England. He was a man with an extraordinary range of interests and activities: he was a doctor, biologist, inventor, poet, linguist, and botanist. He was also a founding member of the Lunar Society, an intellectual community that included such eminent men as James Watt and Josiah Wedgwood.