Erasmus Darwin: Master of Interdisciplinary Science

Abstract

Dr Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802) was by profession a physician, at Lichfield and later Derby, and was widely regarded as the leading doctor in Britain, author of the massive treatise Zoonomia (1794–6). His many original contributions to science cover a wide range of disciplines, including physics, chemistry, geology, meteorology, plant growth and nutrition and evolutionary biology. He was a prolific inventor, a close friend of Boulton and Watt, and a leading spirit in the ‘Lunar Society’ of Birmingham. In the 1790s he became the most famous poet of the day with his Botanic Garden, which greatly influenced Coleridge, Wordsworth and others.     

Race,Gender, Science and Citizenship

This paper argues that the history of embodiment of human racial and gendered differences must be seen as part of the history of liberal citizenship and its limits. The author suggests that a science of similarity and difference can never be a reliable guide to questions of rights. The consequences of this conclusion for our understanding of science and the gendered body are addressed in the second half of the paper, in an effort to clear the way for a more adequate and inclusionary model of citizenship and rights.     

Darwin Wept: Science and the Sentimental Subject

Could a man of science be sentimental in an age of objectivity, when emotions were largely purged from the field of Victorian science, and feelings themselves defined as animal instincts and reflex mechanisms? This essay addresses the question through Darwin's work on the expression of emotions, and the relationship between his work and his own emotional experience, with particular attention to grief and tears. An old woman in a railway carriage is suddenly overcome with a painful recollection, perhaps that of a long lost child – her mouth becomes ever so slightly contracted, her countenance falls, her eyes suffuse with tears … . An opthalmic surgeon perseveres with his treatise on the physiology of weeping while mourning the loss of his daughter … . With difficulty, a mother prolongs her infant son's screaming in order to record the shape of his mouth for a family friend and famous naturalist … . Her observations later appear in a work on emotional expression (Darwin's), together with photographs of sobbing children, and faces of a psychiatric patient charged with electrodes. Such subject matter, presented in correspondence, private journals, and print, suggest that science and sentimentality could form a more reciprocal pair, where observation was conducted in a sentimental setting, the feelings of observers regulated but not withheld, processed by an experimental regime, and then reinserted in the domain of print, reconfiguring the sentimental for Victorian readers.     

Science and Religion

Abstract

A dialogue between science and religion must supersede the clash of the past, and here the teachings of Christ and Buddha are considered. Modern cosmological theory is contemplated in relation to these two religions and man's insignificance in the Universe accepted. Various theories of evolution, including creationism, are compared with theories of theology; consciousness is discussed and finally it is argued that spiritual experiences could be subject to a scientific analysis.     

The Savage Science: Sigmund Freud,Psychoanalysis, and the History of Religion

This article analyzes how Freud takes issue with the prioritization of the present over and above the historical past. Significantly, Freud's understanding of history is closely related to his interest in Christianity's historical dependence on Jewish antiquity. He emphasizes the common sources of both religions: both are shaped by the experience of guilt. Christianity, however, relegates the historical past to the realm of the “old Adam.” According to Freud, Jewish culture, by contrast, revolves around the commemoration of a “savage” (i.e. pre‐modern) past. This article thus focuses on how Freud combines his analysis of onto‐genesis (in his psychoanalytical case studies) with a discussion of phylogeny. The manifestation of psychic illness gives body to the unconscious remembrance of phylogenetic history. Thanks to religious and literary documents an irrational past has been put down in writing. According to Freud, this characterizes their historical truth value.     

土族农业生产中的科技和宗教--互助东沟乡大庄村调查记

东沟乡大庄村位于互助土族自治县东部,是一个典型的土族村落。全村总面积9.68平方公里,平均海拔2600米左右,年平均气温2—3摄氏度,年平均降水量550毫米左右。大庄村属于浅山地区,农业条件次于川水地区而优于脑山地区。该地区又宜于林业和牧业,且平大公路从村中通过,距县城仅5公里路,总体上是互助县经济发展状况比较好的村庄之一。其农业生产中的科技与宗教的状况对我们了解土族农村的相关问题是具有典型意义的。同时也可为学术界进行的关于科技和宗教关系的讨论提供一些个案支持。传统农业及相关的主要宗教习俗建国前,大庄种植的农作物主要…