Lunar Society
The Lunar Society ( English for Moon Society ) was a private society founded by Erasmus Darwin in Birmingham in 1765 of people interested in science in Great Britain , consisting of poets , theologians , inventors , doctors , writers , physicists , chemists and industrialists .
It got its name because the members met once a month under a full moon so that they could go home after the meeting in the evening in natural light, since there were no street lights at that time; the members called themselves Lunatics ("moonstruck" or "sleepwalker"). At a time when communication and the exchange of knowledge was otherwise difficult, the participants discussed their latest research results and findings in order to learn from and inspire one another.
Matthew Boulton , Thomas Day , Richard Lovell Edgeworth , Samuel John Galton , Robert Augustus Johnson (1745–1799), James Keir , Joseph Priestley , who discovered oxygen in 1771 , William Small , Jonathan Stokes , James Watt , Josiah Wedgwood , John Whitehurst and William Withering were members of the influential society alongside the founder Erasmus Darwin. Antoine Lavoisier corresponded with various group members and Benjamin Franklin visited the association several times.
The long-time organizer and main actor of society was Erasmus Darwin. In 1813, eleven years after Darwin's death, the society dissolved. To commemorate, there are moonstones for Watt and Boulton in Birmingham and a museum in Matthew Boulton's Soho home .
A Modern Lunar Society is now concerned with urban development in England . Under the name Lunar Republic Society there is also a company in the USA that sells lunar properties.
See also
literature
- Robert E. Schofield: The Lunar Society of Birmingham: A Social History of Provincial Science and Industry in Eighteenth-Century England . Oxford University Press / Clarendon Press, London 1963, OCLC 1058174 ( books.google ).
- Robert E. Schofield: The Industrial Orientation of Science in the Lunar Society of Birmingham . In: ISIS . tape 48 , no. 4 . University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Il 1957, pp. 408-415 , doi : 10.1086 / 348607 , JSTOR : 227513 .
- Robert E. Schofield: Science, Technology and Economic Growth in the Eighteenth Century . Methuen & Co., London 1972, ISBN 0-416-08010-3 , pp. 139 ff . (New edition edited and edited by Albert Edward Musson).
- Jenny Uglow : The Lunar Men: A Story of Science, Art, Invention and Passion . 2nd Edition. Faber & Faber, 2003, ISBN 0-571-21610-2 .