Charles Darwin is today best remembered as the careful
observer of nature who proposed the theory of evolution by natural
selection, now widely accepted as the basis of our understanding
of life.
Charles was born into a large and successful family with
a history of achievement. On the Darwin side, his father Robert
and grandfather Erasmus were well-respected physicians. On his
mother's side, the Wedgwood family had built a respectable estate
on the basis of Josiah Wedgwood's successful pottery business.
Erasmus Darwin, Charles's grandfather, was a physician,
poet and biologist. He studied medicine at the University of Cambridge, took
additional courses at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, and
then set up a successful medical practice in Lichfield. Later in life,
after his first wife died and he remarried and moved to Derby, he
turned away from medicine and towards science and poetry. He was
most renowned for his long poem on life, Zoonomia (1794, 1796),
and for his poetry on botany (e.g. The Loves of the Plants), which,
though now mostly forgotten, was quite popular in its time. Zoonomia is
of particular interest because it contains a long section on the
evolution of species that foreshadows the theory that was to bring
Erasmus's grandson Charles renown some seventy years later.
Robert Darwin, Charles's father, was born in 1766. He
was an enormous man both physically and in personality. Charles described
him as the largest man he had ever seen and compared his return
to the family home at the end of the day to the coming in of the
tide. Robert was a very successful physician; Charles recalls in his Autobiography that
he frequently consulted his patients for their emotional problems
as much as for their physical ones. He regularly took his carriage
on long trips to visit his patients, sometimes crossing the border
into Wales.
Charles's mother, Susannah, was from the Wedgwood family. The
Wedgwoods had been good friends of the Darwins since Josiah Wedgwood
had turned to Erasmus Darwin for medical advice. It was only natural
that their children, Robert and Susannah, should get married and
thereby bring the two families closer together. Josiah had started
a partnership to create high-quality pottery in the 1750's. By
1758 he was ready to start his own company using techniques he had
discovered through experimentation with glazes and firing techniques.
In 1803, with the fortune made by the success of Josiah's pottery,
the Wedgwood family acquired an estate called Maer, with a large
house and ample hunting grounds.
Erasmus, Josiah, and their children and friends all shared,
to a greater or lesser extent, political and religious leanings.
They were in favor of economic competition and against what they
saw as the stranglehold of the Anglican Church over the intellectual
life of England. Erasmus Darwin was known both for his radical
politics and religion. Erasmus and Josiah actually participated
in a monthly radical discussion group called the Lunar Society
that consisted mostly of scientists, inventors, and manufacturers.
By the time Charles was old enough to read Zoonomia, the
Lunar Society had long been dissolved and the politics of the Darwin
family had become more moderate. But the influence of Erasmus's
ideas should not be ignored: he created an environment in which
the questioning of established ideas, particularly religious ones,
was highly valued.
