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''Zoonomia; or the Laws of Organic Life'' (1794-96) is a two-volume medical work by
Erasmus Darwin
Erasmus Robert Darwin (12 December 173118 April 1802) 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.
His poems ...
dealing with
pathology
Pathology is the study of the causes and effects of disease or injury. The word ''pathology'' also refers to the study of disease in general, incorporating a wide range of biology research fields and medical practices. However, when used in ...
,
anatomy
Anatomy () is the branch of biology concerned with the study of the structure of organisms and their parts. Anatomy is a branch of natural science that deals with the structural organization of living things. It is an old science, having its ...
,
psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
, and the functioning of the body. Its primary framework is one of
associationist
Associationism is the idea that mental processes operate by the association of one mental state with its successor states. It holds that all mental processes are made up of discrete psychological elements and their combinations, which are believed ...
psychophysiology
Psychophysiology (from Ancient Greek, Greek , ''psȳkhē'', "breath, life, soul"; , ''physis'', "nature, origin"; and , ''wiktionary:-logia, -logia'') is the branch of psychology that is concerned with the physiology, physiological bases of psych ...
.
The book is now best remembered for its early ideas relating to the
theory of evolution
Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation t ...
, specifically forms of developmentalism similar to
Lamarckism
Lamarckism, also known as Lamarckian inheritance or neo-Lamarckism, is the notion that an organism can pass on to its offspring physical characteristics that the parent organism acquired through use or disuse during its lifetime. It is also calle ...
.
However, despite Erasmus Darwin's familial connection as grandfather to
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended fr ...
, the proto-evolutionary ideas in ''Zoonomia'' did not have a lasting influence.
Summary
The first volume, published in 1794, is divided into 40 sections, on a range of topics related to the body, the senses, and disease. He classifies bodily and sensory motions as "irritative," "sensitive," "voluntary," and "associative." He presents theories on the production and classes of ideas, and seeks to explain the causes and mechanisms of sleep, reverie, vertigo, and drunkenness. He then discusses anatomy, especially the operation of the circulatory system and various glands. Chapter 29, "The Retrograde Motions of the Absorbent Vessels," is Erasmus Darwin's translation of his late son
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended fr ...
's dissertation. These anatomical chapters are followed by four chapters on diseases, which draws on his classification of four types of motion to identify four types of diseases: those of irritation, of sensation, of volition, and of association. Two chapters, "Of the Oxygenation of the Blood in the Lungs and Placenta" and "Of Generation" develop his theories about human reproduction, including observations related to evolution. The final chapter in the first volume is a reprint of a paper by another of Erasmus Darwin's sons,
Robert Darwin
Robert Waring Darwin (30 May 1766 – 13 November 1848) was an English medical doctor, who today is best known as the father of the naturalist Charles Darwin. He was a member of the influential Darwin–Wedgwood family.
Biography
Darwin was bor ...
, about ocular spectra.
The second volume, published in 1796, is focused on classifying diseases into classes, orders, and genera. The book is divided into four major sections, based on his four classes of disease: diseases of irritation, sensation, volition, and association. Encyclopedia-style entries on various diseases explain their symptoms and underlying mechanics, followed by suggestions for treatment. After the fourth class of diseases, Darwin presents a lengthy explanation of his own theory of fever, which he says "may be termed the sympathetic theory of fevers, to distinguish it from the mechanic theory of Boerhaave, the spasmodic theory of Hoffman and of Cullen, and the putrid theory of Pringle."
He then provides a systematic listing of "materia medica," or "substances, which may contribute to the restoration of health."
These substances are divided into seven classes of their own: nutrientia, incitantia, secernentia, sorbentia, invertentia, revertentia, and torpentia.
Relevance to evolution
The historian of science
Stephen Jay Gould
Stephen Jay Gould (; September 10, 1941 – May 20, 2002) was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was one of the most influential and widely read authors of popular science of his generation. Gould sp ...
says that "''Zoonomia'' owes its modern reputation to a few fleeting passages that look upon organic transmutation with favor."
Key quotes
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 above described 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 above described? And that the productive living filament of each of those tribes was different originally 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?
Inheritance of acquired characteristics
In ''Zoonomia'', Erasmus Darwin advocated the
inheritance of acquired characteristics
Lamarckism, also known as Lamarckian inheritance or neo-Lamarckism, is the notion that an organism can pass on to its offspring physical characteristics that the parent organism acquired through use or disuse during its lifetime. It is also calle ...
. He stated, "
om their first rudiment, or primordium, to the termination of their lives, all animals undergo perpetual transformations; which are in part produced by their own exertions in consequence of their desires and aversions, of their pleasures and their pains, or of irritations, or of associations; and many of these acquired forms or propensities are transmitted to their posterity." This statement was similar to
Lamarck's ideas on
evolution
Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...
.
Darwin advocated a hypothesis of
pangenesis
Pangenesis was Charles Darwin's hypothetical mechanism for heredity, in which he proposed that each part of the body continually emitted its own type of small organic particles called gemmules that aggregated in the gonads, contributing herita ...
in the third edition of ''Zoonomia''.
Influence
English Romantic poet
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth (7 April 177023 April 1850) was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication ''Lyrical Ballads'' (1798).
Wordsworth's ' ...
used Darwin's ''Zoonomia'' as a source for "Goody Blake and Harry Gill", a poem published in the ''
Lyrical Ballads
''Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems'' is a collection of poems by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, first published in 1798 and generally considered to have marked the beginning of the English Romantic movement in literatur ...
'' (1798).
[ See also: Averill, james. (1978). "Wordsworth and 'Natural Science': The Poetry of 1798." ''Journal of English and Germanic Philology''. 77(2). 232–46.]
''Zoonomia'' is the project name for a genomic sequence alignment effort, attempting to explore the genetic basis for heritable traits, conservation biodiversity, and human disease.
References
Further reading
*James Harrison. (1971). ''Erasmus Darwin's View of Evolution''. ''
Journal of the History of Ideas
The ''Journal of the History of Ideas'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering intellectual history and the history of ideas, including the histories of philosophy, literature and the arts, natural and social sciences, religion, a ...
'' 32 (2): 247-264.
*
External links
''Zoonomia'' vol. I full text via Project Gutenberg''Zoonomia'' vol. II full text via Project GutenbergGoogle book full text
{{Authority control
Pre-Darwinian publications in evolutionary biology
1794 non-fiction books