Tag Archives: science

Backgrounds: From Aristotle to Erasmus Darwin

Posted on June 7, 2011 by BSL

For the ancients, mythology suggested powerful interconnections among the natural, the human, and the imaginary. Gods were like humans, humans were like animals, animals were like plants, plants were like humans, and vice versa. Spontaneous generation, parthenogenesis by fire, impregnation … Continue reading →

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Why a “Romantic” Natural History?

Posted on June 7, 2011 by BSL

“Nature’s vast frame, the web of human things, Birth and the Grave, that are not as they were” (Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Alastor”, 1816: ll. 719-20) We often assume that Charles Darwin announced a new era in the scientific understanding of … Continue reading →

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Carolus Linnaeus

Posted on June 7, 2011 by BSL

Carolus Linnaeus is the Latinized form of Carl von Linne, the Swedish botanist whose systems of classification and nomenclature had a revolutionary effect on the study of all living things. He originally intended to become a doctor, but gradually shifted his … Continue reading →

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Erasmus Darwin

Posted on June 7, 2011 by BSL

Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles Darwin, was born near Nottingham on December 12, 1731. He was educated at Cambridge and Edinburgh and settled first near Lichfield and later at Derby. A remarkable polymath, he became a best selling poet during … Continue reading →

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Benjamin Rush

Posted on June 7, 2011 by BSL

Jennifer Lindbeck, Class of ’98, Dickinson College   As one of the leading American physicians of the late 1700’s and early 1800’s, and an influential social and political thinker, Benjamin Rush was full of curiosity about nature and the workings … Continue reading →

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Charles Darwin

Posted on June 7, 2011 by BSL

Charles Darwin was perhaps the naturalist most responsible for altering humanity’s view of nature (and human nature) over the past two centuries. Darwin’s main idea was not new, nor was it complete, but his belief that species evolved over time … Continue reading →

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Percy Bysshe Shelley

Posted on June 7, 2011 by BSL

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822). The quote in the picture caption–at left: “I wish no living thing to suffer pain”–suggests precisely the shift embodied in the idea of Romantic natural history. The poet exhibited a fascination with natural phenomena from his early … Continue reading →

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Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Posted on June 7, 2011 by BSL

Tennyson (1809-1892) is not the last Romantic, but he is the last poet of the nineteenth-century to fully capture, in his early poems, the lyrical spirit of his great predecessors. An early poem like “Timbuctoo” echoes the naturalistic cadences of … Continue reading →

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Joseph Wright of Derby

Posted on June 7, 2011 by BSL

Wright of Derby (1734-1792) was one of the most important English painters of the eighteenth century. He linked elements of Romanticism with powerful images of science and technology. His depictions of artificial light on the faces of experimenters and their … Continue reading →

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