Zoonomia

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Zoonomia; or the Laws of Organic Life is a two-volume work published in 1794 by the British doctor Erasmus Darwin on pathology , anatomy , psychology and the functioning of the body. The book contains reflections on biological evolution , the mechanisms of which his grandson Charles Darwin later developed and scientifically established. From 1795 to 1799 it appeared in German under the title Zoonomie or Laws of Organic Life .

content

The work Zoonomia mentions an early form of the theory of evolution . These include B. sexual attractiveness as a selection advantage in the competition for sexual partners (Sec. XXXIX, Section 4, Paragraph 8), which was also taken up later in Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. The mutation and natural selection did not occur in Zoonomia as a cause for an evolution, but the inheritance of changes was seen among other things as a result of an idea of ​​the change (mainly of the father, Sec. XXXIX, Section 6, Paragraph 6), which is why Zoonomia also possessed Lamarckian approaches. The book also mentions common ancestors of all animals (Sec. XXXIX, Section 4, Paragraph 7).

Quote

“If one thinks after this about the great similarity of the structure of warm-blooded animals, if one thinks about the great changes which they suffer before and after birth, one remembers how little time some of the changes in the animals described above took place It should then be too bold to imagine that in the great period since which the earth has existed, perhaps millions of ages before the beginning of human history, it should be too bold to imagine that all warm-blooded animals come from a single living filament, which endowed the first great cause with animality, with the power to attain new parts, accompanied by new inclinations, guided by tongues, sensations, will and associations, and which thus possessed the power to implant into it Activity to perfect oneself, to hand over these perfections through procreation to posterity! A world without end! "

"From thus meditating on the great similarity of the structure of the warm-blooded animals, and at the same time of the great changes they undergo both before and after their nativity;" and by considering in how minute a proportion of time many of the changes of animals described above have been produced; would it be too bold to imagine, that in the great length of time, since the earth began to exist, perhaps millions of years […] that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament, which THE GREAT FIRST CAUSE endued with animality […] and thus possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent activity, and of delivering down those improvements by generation to its posterity, world without end? [...]
Shall we then say that the vegetable living filament was originally different from that of each tribe of animals described above? And that the productive living filament of each originally of those tribes was different from the other? Or, as the earth and ocean were probably peopled with vegetable productions long before the existence of animals [...] shall we conjecture that one and the same kind of living filament is and has been the cause of all organic life? "

reception

Erasmus Darwin's work had a profound influence on his contemporaries and subsequent generations. Zoonomia was controversial at the time of its creation (1794). One critic compared the importance of the book with the Principia of Isaac Newton . The English writer George Bernard Shaw referred in the foreword to his work Back to Methuselah with a quote from Zoonomia on the theory of evolution by Erasmus Darwin and referred to him as one of the founders of the theory of evolution.

The English romantic poet William Wordsworth used Darwin's Zoonomia as a source for Goody Blake and Harry Gill, a poem published in 1798 in the Lyrical Ballads.

literature

  • Christopher Smith, Upham Murray, Robert Arnott: The Genius of Erasmus Darwin . Ashgate Publishing, 2005, ISBN 0-7546-3671-2 .
  • Charles Darwin : The Life of My Grandfather Erasmus Darwin . 1st edition. Hellerau-Verlag, Dresden 2010, ISBN 978-3-938122-20-4 .
  • George Henry Lewes: The History of Philosophy: From Thales to Comte . Volume 2, Longmans Green, 1871, pp. 374-382 (on- line ).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Emanuel Rádl: History of biological theories: since the end of the seventeenth century . Volume 1. W. Engelmann, 1905. p. 293. (online) .
  2. ↑ Christopher Upham, Murray Smith, Robert Arnott: The Genius of Erasmus Darwin . Ashgate Publishing, 2005. ISBN 978-0-7546-3671-7 .
  3. ^ University of California at Berkeley, Museum of Paleontology: Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802) . Retrieved November 28, 2013.
  4. ↑ Heinrich Haeser : Textbook of the history of medicine and epidemic diseases: Textbook of the history of medicine . Volume 1. Mauke, 1853. P. 731. (online) .
  5. ↑ Erasmus Darwin: Zoonomy or Laws of Organic Life . 1st part, 2nd section, translation: Joachim Dietrich Brandis. Hahn brothers, Hanover 1795, p. 458 ( online ).
  6. ↑ Zoonomia Sect 39.4.8 of generation
  7. ↑ Desmond King-Hele: Erasmus Darwin, a Life of Unequalled Achievement . Giles de la Mare 1999. ISBN 978-1-900357-08-1 .
  8. ↑ Merriam Webster : Erasmus Darwin . ( Memento of December 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Retrieved November 28, 2013.
  9. ^ William Friedman: Early Evolutionists, Erasmus Darwin ( Memento November 29, 2014 in the Internet Archive ). Retrieved November 28, 2013.
  10. ^ Grant Allen : English Worthies. Edited by Andrew Lang (1885). Retrieved November 28, 2013.
  11. ↑ Erasmus Darwin Museum: Erasmus Darwin . ( Memento of December 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ). Retrieved November 28, 2013.
  12. ↑ George Bernard Shaw: Back to Methuselah . BiblioBazaar 2007. ISBN 978-1-4264-6754-7 . Volume II, xxi.
  13. ↑ Duncan Wu: Wordsworth: An Inner Life . Wiley-Blackwell, 2003, ISBN 1-4051-1369-3 , pp. 97-98. See also: Averill, james. (1978). "Wordsworth and 'Natural Science': The Poetry of 1798." Journal of English and Germanic Philology . 77 (2). 232-246.

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