Part of our conversation on
Thursday was on the capacity of human thought.
In this discussion we noted the abilities of reason and imagination, which
is a largely inflated though useful binary opposition. It is clear that Erasmus Darwin is endowed
with both of these faculties and put both of them to great use in his
works. E. Darwin’s reason for writing
poetry was “to enlist imagination under the banner of science and lead her
votaries from the looser analogies, which dress out the imagery of poetry, to
the stricter ones which form the ratiocination of philosophy”(The Botanic Garden. II
“Advertisement”). The imagery in the
poetry of E. Darwin is quite imaginative, and furthermore the foundations of
principals that he outlines in his theories are astoundingly imaginative.
In Canto I Production
of Life E. Darwin describes the foundation of life as in the lines “Press drop to drop, to atom
atom bind/ Link sex to sex, or rivet mind to mind”(E. Darwin, 28). This an
elegant description of life from a scientific stand point as we no accept it.
However, as E. Darwin wrote it, it the principal on which he is basing it is
also brilliantly imaginative. In Zoonomia
E. Darwin uses the same principals, and less colorful imagery to describe a
fetus or zygote as a filliamnt that “possesses a power of repulsing the particles
applied to certain parts of it as well as of embracing other which stimulate
other parts of it; as these powers exist in different pats of a the mature
animal”(E. Darwin, 525). While most enlightenment thinkers would claim that
this is well reasoned scientific argument, I see it as a testament to the
ability of thinkers of time make observations that are quite limited by the
technology of the time and imagine highly complex descriptions, more than a testament
to reason.
Erasmus Darwin's description of the genetic (although he would not have used that term) background of any individual person in Zoonomia seems to further back up your claim. He declares that a person's properties, propensities, and appetencies are all determined by the makeup of the father, or his "filament" (Darwin 526). The only genetic input that comes from the mother is the first "nutriment," and as these particles have been used also for her own nutriment, the offspring takes some part of the mother's likeness (Darwin 527).
ReplyDeleteThis is of course not the accepted standard in today's scientific community, but Darwin's idea, limited as you said by the technology of the time, is nonetheless extremely imaginative and descriptive. While his contemporaries would have appreciated his ideas on generation as well-reasoned facts, today they cannot serve that purpose as they have been disproven. This calls into question why his ideas are worth studying at all, except perhaps as a lens into the scientific thoughts of the time. While this itself is a valid reason to study them, I believe the true benefit that comes from studying these texts is rooted in their imaginativeness.
Like Kathleen, I agree that Darwin's theory is limited by the technology of the time. But I also agree that his approach is imaginative, and I want to add a little bit more to this discussion. It seems as though Darwin is advancing an almost biophysical perspective; his talk of attraction and repulsion calls to mind principles in electromagnetism and gravitation. With that in mind, I would not want to dismiss his theory entirely, especially since this kind of language does exist in studies that link biology and physics. And even discussions of light have been historically imbued with a teleological or anthropomorphized tone; Newton's particle theory spoke of light as having "tendencies" and needing to avoid obstacles. Other physicists noted that nature, in the way it behaves, is not "wasteful," and that it is always seeking to expend the least amount of energy. (Interestingly, Darwin fails to mention Aristotle's "final cause," which is the cause that is actually *determined* by the projected end.) All of this makes me think that, although "unscientific" in the modern sense, Darwin's imaginative thinking is not totally useless. It brings to the subject of reproduction a literary feel in its mention of "idea, perception, sensation, recollection, suggestion, and association" (Zoonomia, Preface, 2). He claims that the "original living filament" has selective powers, as Todd noted, and meanwhile, "the outline or miniature of the new animal is produced gradually, but in no great length of time" (Zoonomia, 526). This way of phrasing it reminds me of, again, a literary comparison - that is, the creation of ideas and structures before filling in the details.
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