The Genius of Erasmus Darwin
By Fara, Patricia
C. U. M. SMITH and ROBERT ARNOTT (eds.), The Genius of Erasmus Darwin. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005. Pp. xvii + 416. ISBN 0-7546-3671- 2. 60.00 (hardback).
doi:10.1017/S000708740637937X
Historiographically, Erasmus Darwin is the Joseph Banks of the Midlands. During the nineteenth century the reputations of these two Enlightenment bon viveurs – one a provincial poetic physician dominating Lichfield and the Lunar Society, his younger contemporary a botanical imperialist (and occasional poet) presiding over Lincoln and London-were eclipsed by scientific campaigners searching for heroic ancestors. But now they are flourishing: historians have discovered that since both men had wide interests transcending modern disciplinary boundaries, they can be conveniently and repeatedly reinterpreted. Australians converted Banks into a national scientific icon, and for almost fifty years the eminent scientist Desmond King-Hele has been generating British interest in Darwin. Formerly passed over as the misguided grandfather of Charles, Darwin has been variously reconfigured as the true forefather of evolutionary theory, an exploitative industrial capitalist, a major influence on Romantic literature and a prescient inventor whose insights included the steering system used in modern cars.
Tellingly entitled The Genius of Erasmus Darwin, this commemorative volume is designed to stimulate further enthusiasm for Darwin’s diverse abilities. Although many publishers try to disguise a book’s conference origins, here the scholarly papers are sandwiched between personal accounts of the 2002 celebrations organized in Lichfield to mark the bicentenary of Darwin’s death. Contributed mainly by scientists, the short and accessible articles are divided into six sections – medicine, biology, education, technology, environment and literature – and mostly view Darwin’s achievements from a modern vantage point. For example, as an expert on speech processing, Philip Jackson is well placed to appraise Darwin’s discussions of the alphabet and his mechanical speaking machine, a device made from leather and wood that could pronounce four consonants and one vowel. Jackson articulates the aim clearly shared by other authors, ‘to decipher the works of Darwin, so as to bring them to life in the context of a modern understanding [and highlight] the way in which key components of our present science were known and developed by Darwin’ (p. 236). The achievements these varied authors credit to Darwin include influencing photography, predicting air travel and launching Australian literature.
Nevertheless, it appears that Darwin did not always successfully foresee later developments or even behave with appropriately scientific demeanour. In a comparative case study, the psychologist Nicholas Wade examines in some detail Darwin’s conflict over the cause of vertigo with a London physician, who although more obscure has been judged by posterity to have been nearer the right answer. This example of Darwinian error, concludes Wade, reflects ‘the reluctance of Erasmus to accept experimental evidence that questioned his medical speculations’ (p. 97). Tim Carter, a specialist in occupational medicine, asks why Darwin, despite being renowned as a sympathetic doctor, failed to comment that work can have adverse effects on health. Carter presents a range of evidence about Darwin’s familiarity with industrial processes, although he skims over Maureen McNeil’s influential insistence on the eloquence of Darwin’s silence about the labouring classes (an analytical approach also used by Janet Browne in her discussions of Darwin and gender), amiably opining that in Darwin’s view, ‘society and its progress depend on cheerful acquiescence to one’s station in life’ (p. 300).
Historians of science may well be most interested in the two essays on education, which describe attitudes towards science rather than its contents. Jenny Uglow, whose The Lunar Men (London, 2002) aroused widespread fascination in this previously understudied group, examines female education and the Lunar Society’s womenfolk. As in her book, Uglow’s great strengths are her narrative style and the use she makes of her extensive archival research, reproducing quotations that reveal the inner thoughts and social constraints binding these men who boasted about their progressiveness. Paul Elliott, an academic geographer, also places Darwin within a wider context, exploring how his activities at the Derby Philosophical Society influenced provincial urban society and hence the evolutionary ideas of Herbert Spencer. As well as broadening knowledge of Darwin himself, this essay illustrates how meticulous local research can illuminate national patterns of change.
Since the Erasmus Darwin Foundation was established in 1994, Darwin’s status has escalated and his Lichfield house has been restored. This volume will reinforce the foundation’s aim ‘to share Darwin’s genius with the public and try to relate his work to the present day’ (p. 374).
PATRICIA PARA
University of Cambridge
Copyright Cambridge University Press, Publishing Division Mar 2007
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