The 1997 Wilkins lecture: Erasmus Darwin, the lunaticks and evolution.

Abstract

Long ago, I suggested that Erasmus Darwin ‘achieved more in a wider range of intellectual disciplines than anyone since’. This remark has not yet been contradicted; and that is perhaps enough to justify the choice of Erasmus Darwin as the subject of the Wilkins Lecture for 1997. I shall run quickly through his varied talents, comment on his personality and then outline his life and achievements. As an addition to the life story, I shall include glances at those of his many friends who together formed the Lunar Society of Birmingham, so called because it met at the time of the full moon; they are of course the ‘Lunaticks’ of my title. To conclude, I shall look more closely at one of his many interests, explaining how he came to believe in biological evolution (as we now call it) and then had to keep quiet about it for 20 years before eventually championing it in public.