Erasmus Darwin Quotes
All animals undergo perpetual transformations; which are in part produced by their own exertions... and many of these acquired forms or propensities are transmitted to their posterity.
Erasmus Darwin, 1731-1802, English philosopher, botanist, and naturalist, Grandfather of Charles Darwin, Zoonomia, 1794
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As early as this was in scientific history, he essentially described the process whereby new species are formed by the mutation from the old series.
Darwin did not develop an interest in the origin of life in a vacuum. His grandfather and many other scientists and naturalists had realized that species evolved and improved over tome and generations. What Charles Darwin added was the principles of the mechanism of how it all worked.
He was commenting on the seemingly brilliant designs of organisms that evolution has brought about, so sophisticated, that planners could hardly have conceived of them. His point is that those organisms are the great successes which the failures have become extinct and the moderate successes have constantly gotten better.
This is a very important quotation in the history of science. Note that he has the concept of evolution and mutation before Darwin published his his Origin of Species. Darwin had probably come to these conclusions at the time that Lawrence gave this lecture. And of course Darwin had a much broader concept and much data to back it up. But this was one of the great insights in science.
Erasmus Darwin was an English physician. One of the key thinkers of the Midlands Enlightenment, he was also a natural philosopher, physiologist, slave-trade abolitionist, inventor, and poet.
