The Derby Philosophical Society was a club for gentlemen in Derby founded in 1783 by Erasmus Darwin. The club had many notable members and also offered the first institutional library in Derby that was available to some section of the public.
The Derby Philosophical Society was a club for gentlemen in Derby founded in 1783 by Erasmus Darwin. The club had many notable members and also offered the first institutional library in Derby that was available to some section of the public.
A Derby philosophical club or society met in the mid-18th century: it may have included amongst its members individuals such as John Whitehurst, the Lunar Society member, before he moved to London in 1775. This club continued at least to 1779. Another, earlier coterie involved Whitehurst, and it is assumed the artist Joseph Wright, his friend Peter Perez Burdett and Rev. Joshua Winter of All Saints Church. [1]
The Derby Philosophical Society was founded by Erasmus Darwin and a group of his associates in 1783, soon after he moved to Derby from Lichfield, via Radburn Hall, with his new wife Elizabeth. It was formally inaugurated in 1784 at Darwin's house in Full Street, Derby. He addressed the members, explaining that he hoped the society would build a library and perhaps produce publications. It seems that he also hoped the Derby Society would be able to hold joint meetings with the Lunar Society. [2] [3] The activities of the club were in fact several. [4] It did create a notable collection of books and entertained guests, some of whom are listed in the records. [5] Its members participated in a collective translation of the works of Linnaeus from Latin to English. [6] The translation of A System of Vegetables, annotated by the most eminent of them, was the first book where the name of Erasmus Darwin appeared. [7]
The society met at the King's Head Inn in the Cornmarket in Derby not far from Darwin's house at 3, Full Street. [8] The founding members have at various times said to be seven, eight or ten people listed as Richard French, John Sneyd (1734–1809), Dr John Hollis Pigot, Dr John Beridge, Darwin, Thomas Gisborne, Samuel Fox III and William Strutt. Gisborne and Sneyd did not live in Derby. The records of the club exist, but frequently refer to people only by surname; many of the members, like Darwin, were associated with medicine. [1] [9] [10]
Later members included Josiah Wedgwood, [2] the Rev. William Pickering, the Rev. Charles Hope, Dr Peter Crompton, Erasmus Darwin Jr, Robert Darwin, Richard Leaper and Henry Hadley, Mr Haden, Mr Fowler, Mr Johnson, Sacheverell Pole, William Duesbury jr, Robert Bage and Richard Archdale. About half of the membership was medical like William Brooks Johnson MD, but others included men of great influence like Sir Robert Wilmot, the engineer Jedediah Strutt, the poet and gentleman Sir Brooke Boothby, the chemist Charles Sylvester, and landowners Charles Hurt, Reverend D'Ewes Coke and Thomas Evans. [1] [11] [12] Crompton, Leaper, and C. S. Hope all went on to become Mayor of Derby, and the first Lord Belper was among the later members. [2]
William Strutt and Richard Forester were both presidents of the society after Darwin's death in 1803. Strutt had been a founding member and Forester was the son of Richard French, another founding member. [11] The local schoolmaster and philosopher William George Spencer was secretary of the society from 1815 and his son the philosopher Herbert Spencer gained much inspiration from Derby literary and scientific culture. Significantly it was Spencer who coined the phrase "survival of the fittest", after he read Darwin's grandson's work on evolution. [13] [14] [15] Other notable associates of the society were James Pilkington, the radical minister and the author of A View of Derbyshire; and Abraham Bennet, though he was never a member. [12]
During Darwin's time as the leading light of the society he had a house on Full Street in Derby. Although this house is now demolished a plaque was placed on the site in 2002 to recognise Darwin's contribution and that he had founded the Derby Philosophical Society. [11]
The Derby Philosophical Society was just one of a number of literary and scientific associations that existed in the town during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries reflecting the importance of public scientific culture in the English provinces at this time. Other examples include a Derby Literary and Philosophical Society c1808-1816, the Derby Mechanics' Institute, the Derby Town and County Museum and Natural History Society founded in 1834, and another Literary and Scientific Society that flourished during the 1840s and 1850s. To these should be added the innovative Derbyshire General Infirmary opened in 1810 and John Claudius Loudon's Derby Arboretum opened in 1840, both of which were strongly associated with the activities of the Derby philosophers and helped to create a public platform for science. [3]
In 1858, the Derby Philosophical Society moved to a house on the Wardwick in Derby as it merged with the Derby Town and County Museum and the Natural History Society. This move included the society's library of 4,000 volumes, Mathematical and scientific apparatus and its collection of fossils. [16]
Erasmus Robert 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.
The Lunar Society of Birmingham was a British dinner club and informal learned society of prominent figures in the Midlands Enlightenment, including industrialists, natural philosophers and intellectuals, who met regularly between 1765 and 1813 in Birmingham. At first called the Lunar Circle, "Lunar Society" became the formal name by 1775. The name arose because the society would meet during the full moon, as the extra light made the journey home easier and safer in the absence of street lighting. The members cheerfully referred to themselves as "lunaticks", a pun on lunatics. Venues included Erasmus Darwin's home in Lichfield, Matthew Boulton's home, Soho House, Bowbridge House in Derbyshire, and Great Barr Hall.
Social Darwinism refers to various theories and societal practices that purport to apply biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology, economics and politics, and which were largely defined by scholars in Western Europe and North America in the 1870s. Social Darwinism holds that the strong see their wealth and power increase while the weak see their wealth and power decrease. Social Darwinist definitions of the strong and the weak vary, and also differ on the precise mechanisms that reward strength and punish weakness. Many such views stress competition between individuals in laissez-faire capitalism, while others, emphasizing struggle between national or racial groups, support eugenics, racism, imperialism and/or fascism.
Herbert Spencer was an English philosopher, psychologist, biologist, anthropologist, and sociologist famous for his hypothesis of social Darwinism. Spencer originated the expression "survival of the fittest", which he coined in Principles of Biology (1864) after reading Charles Darwin's 1859 book On the Origin of Species. The term strongly suggests natural selection, yet Spencer saw evolution as extending into realms of sociology and ethics, so he also supported Lamarckism.
Joseph Wright, styled Joseph Wright of Derby, was an English landscape and portrait painter. He has been acclaimed as "the first professional painter to express the spirit of the Industrial Revolution".
"Survival of the fittest" is a phrase that originated from Darwinian evolutionary theory as a way of describing the mechanism of natural selection. The biological concept of fitness is defined as reproductive success. In Darwinian terms, the phrase is best understood as "Survival of the form that will leave the most copies of itself in successive generations."
Derby Museum and Art Gallery is a museum and art gallery in Derby, England. It was established in 1879, along with Derby Central Library, in a new building designed by Richard Knill Freeman and given to Derby by Michael Thomas Bass. The collection includes a gallery displaying many paintings by Joseph Wright of Derby; there is also a large display of Royal Crown Derby and other porcelain from Derby and the surrounding area. Further displays include archaeology, natural history, geology, military collections and world cultures. The Art Gallery was opened in 1882.
John Whitehurst FRS, born in Cheshire, England, was a clockmaker and scientist, and made significant early contributions to geology. He was an influential member of the Lunar Society.
Richard Lovell Edgeworth was an Anglo-Irish politician, writer and inventor.
William John Coffee (1774–1846) was an internationally renowned English artist and sculptor who worked in porcelain, plaster, and terra cotta. He also worked in oil paint, although this was not the medium for which he became famous. His early career was as a modeller for Duesbury at the china factory on Nottingham Road in Derby, England. The latter part of his life was spent in America.
William Strutt, FRS (1756–1830) was a cotton spinner in Belper, Derbyshire, England, and later a civil engineer and architect, using iron frames in buildings to make them fire-resistant.
An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump is a 1768 oil-on-canvas painting by Joseph Wright of Derby, one of a number of candlelit scenes that Wright painted during the 1760s. The painting departed from convention of the time by depicting a scientific subject in the reverential manner formerly reserved for scenes of historical or religious significance. Wright was intimately involved in depicting the Industrial Revolution and the scientific advances of the Enlightenment. While his paintings were recognized as exceptional by his contemporaries, his provincial status and choice of subjects meant the style was never widely imitated. The picture has been owned by the National Gallery in London since 1863 and is regarded as a masterpiece of British art.
Wrightson Mundy was an English landowner, member of parliament for the Leicestershire constituency and, in 1737, Sheriff of Derbyshire.
Derby is a city and unitary authority area in Derbyshire, England. It lies on the banks of the River Derwent in the south of Derbyshire, which is in the East Midlands Region. It was traditionally the county town of Derbyshire. Derby gained city status in 1977. The last decade has seen the population increase by 5.1%, from around 248,800 in 2011 to 261,400 in 2021.
Exeter Bridge is a bridge in the centre of Derby spanning the River Derwent 200 metres south of the more modern Cathedral Green Footbridge.
The Midlands Enlightenment, also known as the West Midlands Enlightenment or the Birmingham Enlightenment, was a scientific, economic, political, cultural and legal manifestation of the Age of Enlightenment that developed in Birmingham and the wider English Midlands during the second half of the eighteenth century.
A Philosopher by lamplight is a painting by Joseph Wright of Derby. It is not known when Wright painted the picture, but it was first exhibited in 1769 in London with the Society of Artists. This was one of the earliest of many lamplight or candlelight paintings and portraits for which Wright is famed.
Charles Sylvester (1774–1828) was a chemist and inventor born in Sheffield, in the Kingdom of Great Britain. He worked on galvanization, public building heating and sanitation, and railroad friction amongst other things. A book, Industrial Man: The Life and Works of Charles Sylvester by Ian Inkster, Ph.D., of Nottingham University, and Maureen S. Bryson, B.S., published in 1999 is a comprehensive work covering his life, his extended family and pedigree, and his published works; including Poems on Various Subjects, 1797; The Epitome of Galvanism, 1804; Appendix of the Elementary Treatise on Chemistry, 1809; Philosophy of Domestic Economy, 1819; On a Method of expressing Chemical Compounds by Algebraic Characters, 1821; On the Motions produced by the Difference in the Specific Gravity of Bodies, 1822; Report on Rail-roads and Locomotive Engines, 1825; and On the best method of Warming and Ventilating Houses and other Buildings, 1829.
Honora Edgeworth was an eighteenth-century English writer, mainly known for her associations with literary figures of the day particularly Anna Seward and the Lunar Society, and for her work on children's education. Sneyd was born in Bath in 1751, and following the death of her mother in 1756 was raised by Canon Thomas Seward and his wife Elizabeth in Lichfield, Staffordshire until she returned to her father's house in 1771. There, she formed a close friendship with their daughter, Anna Seward. Having had a romantic engagement to John André and having declined the hand of Thomas Day, she married Richard Edgeworth as his second wife in 1773, living on the family estate in Ireland till 1776. There she helped raise his children from his first marriage, including Maria Edgeworth, and two children of her own. Returning to England she fell ill with tuberculosis, which was incurable, dying at Weston in Staffordshire in 1780. She is the subject of a number of Anna Seward's poems, and with her husband developed concepts of childhood education, resulting in a series of books, such as Practical Education, based on her observations of the Edgeworth children. She is known for her stand on women's rights through her vigorous rejection of the proposal by Day, in which she outlined her views on equality in marriage.
Peter Crompton (1765–1833) was an English physician, political radical and brewer.
Herbert Spencer in his Principles of Biology of 1864, vol. 1, p. 444, wrote "This survival of the fittest, which I have here sought to express in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. Darwin has called 'natural selection', or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life."
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