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Romanticism in Evolution Theory

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Romanticism was an intellectual movement that arose in the late eighteenth century and continued through the nineteenth century. The movement broadly encompassed the arts, literature, and science. Largely conceived as a reaction towards the extreme rationalism of the Enlightenment, it championed expressing emotions through aesthetics, in particular emphasizing the importance of emotions in experiencing the transcendent allure of the natural world.

Romanticism played a significant role in the development of modern theories of evolution, especially those put forth by Charles Darwin. The themes of the Romantic period aligned with philosophy backing evolution theory, such as the conception that the past gives rise to the present. Evolution theory also stressed the interaction between man and nature (itself a Romantic idea), culminating in concepts such as adaptive evolution.  Evolution theory, as it is understood today, is inseparable from the fundamental movements of its time, not only encompassing scientific theory, but also the arts, literature, and exploration.

Important figures include: Alexander von Humboldt, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Erasmus Darwin, Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach.

Alexander von Humboldt

Brief Biography

Alexander von Humboldt (Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander, Freihrr von Humboldt) was born September 14, 1769 and died May 6, 1859. A German naturalist and explorer, Humboldt’s work contributed significantly to physical geography, modern earth sciences, and ecology.

Alexander von Humboldt (by Joseph Stieler, 1843)

After studying finance for less than a year at the University of Frankfurt, Humboldt matriculated in Göttingen, which sponsored myriad Enlightenment professors, including anatomist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. In 1792, Humboldt finished his formal education at the Freiberg School of Mines and was appointed to an inspector position in the Fichtel mines, where he gained experience in exploratory geology. Several years later, Humboldt left his position as a Prussian mining official to pursue broader scientific exploration and curation.

Most famous of Humboldt’s excursions was a five year journey to the Spanish colonies in Central and Southern America, an excursion he was permitted to undertake via his close ties with the Spanish Prime Minister Mariano de Urquijo and King Charles IV of Spain. From 1799 to 1804, Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland, a French botanist, covered more than 6,000 miles, traversing the Amazon, the Andean Highlands, Ecuador, Cuba, Mexico, and the United States, where Humboldt and Bonpland were received by President Jefferson. The journey was steeped in Romanticism, as Humboldt set to investigate how forces of nature interact and unify to create the physical world he encountered. Throughout the journey, Humboldt, an astute observer and meticulous data gatherer, kept detailed notes about topography, Earth’s geomagnetic field, temperature variations, and barometric measurements.

Humboldt returned to France in 1804 with detailed accounts of his journey, which he enthusiastically shared with the influential science community of France. From 1804 to 1827, Humboldt published the data accumulated during his South American tour, often collaborating with French scientists. These collaborations resulted in the creation of ambitious treatises on nature which were widely spread and read among a variety of audiences. Chief among these publications include Humboldt's Relation historique du voyage aux regions equinoxiales du nouveau continent (published 1814-1825).    

Humboldt spent the majority of the remainder of his life in Europe, where he began to write Kosmos, one of the most influential treatises on the universe. It is largely concerned with the relationship between the cosmos, terrestrial life, and existence, as well as the formation of stars and geography of planets.

Romantic contributions to Darwin's theory of evolution

Humboldt’s contributions to modern evolutionary theory are most evident in his direct and indirect interactions with Charles Darwin. Darwin, arguably the most famous contributor to biological evolution theory, became acquainted with Humboldt’s recollections of exploration during his years at Cambridge. At Cambridge, Darwin was taken under the direction of John Stevens Henslow (1796-1861), Professor of Botany. Henslow strongly encouraged Darwin to travel and study nature. Prior to Darwin’s departure on the H.M.S. Beagle, Henslow bestowed to Darwin a Helen Maria Williams’s English translation of Humboldt’s Relation historique du voyage aux regions equinoxiales du nouveau continent, which she called Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America. It was, at least in part, Humboldt’s work that inspired Darwin’s romantic notion of travel and discovery. It is evident that Darwin read Humboldt’s Personal Narrative thoroughly while on his own journey of scientific exploration.

Romantic literary style

Darwin’s Beagle essays reveal that he was inspired by much more than facts and topics about botany, physics, and geography from Personal Narrative. The work instilled in Darwin a Romantic conception of nature during his travels. Along with Personal Narrative, Darwin also brought along John Milton’s Paradise Lost, a Romantic epic poem concerning the Fall of Man. Darwin’s writings, like Milton and Humboldt, were inspired heavily by Romantic notions. Below is an example in which Darwin emulated Humboldt’s writing and experience. Humboldt writes emphatically:

The pleasure we felt on discovering the Southern Cross was warmly shared by such of the crew as had lived in the colonies. In the solitude of the seas, we hail a star as a friend, from whom we have long been separated. Among the Portuguese and the Spaniards peculiar motives seem to increase this feeling; a religious sentiment attaches them to a constellation, the form of which recalls the sign of the faith planted by their ancestors in the deserts of the new world.

While looking at the same constellation during his own travels, Darwin similarly writes:

At night in these fine regions of the Tropics there is one certain and never failing source of enjoyment, it is admiring the constellations in the heaven. Many of those who have see both hemispheres give the victory to the stars in the north. It is however to me an inexpressible pleasure to behold those constellations, the first sight of which Humboldt describes with such enthusiasm (March 26th, 1832).

Darwin’s reference to Humboldt’s account demonstrates the former’s faithfulness in emulating Humboldt’s scientific voyage and experience. Furthermore, like Humboldt, Darwin’s accounts are written in eloquent, rhythmic prose and emphasize the relationship between man and nature. Both authors use similar diction such as “pleasure” to describe their experience with nature, one of the hallmark themes of Romantic literature. It has been noted, however, that Darwin’s literary style was perceived as more “simple straightforward” and “agreeable."

Interactions through letters

Darwin and Humboldt spent their later years exchanging letters and manuscripts. After reading Darwin’s writings from the Beagle, Humboldt wrote to Darwin: “You told me that the manner in which I studied and depicted nature in the torrid zones contributed toward exciting in you the ardor and desire to travel in distant lands. Considering the importance of your work, Sir, this may be the greatest success that my humble work could bring. Works are of value only if they give rise to better ones.” Humboldt's sentiment is a clear example of Romantic ideology: the past lays the foundation for the present.

The two men finally in person in 1842. Humboldt died in 1859, sixth months before the first edition of On the Origin of Species was published. In letters to his close friend Joseph Dalton Hooker, Darwin reflected that his “whole course of life” was due to having read Humboldt’s Personal Narrative and conclusively praised Humboldt as the “Greatest scientific traveller who ever lived.”

Legacy

Since the publication of Origin of Species, Darwin became widely known as the greatest scientific voyager, eclipsing Humboldt’s five year expedition through the Americas. In reality, both men and their writings were equally important in understanding the natural world.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Brief Biography

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1779)

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 august 1749 - 22 March 1832) was a German Romantic poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, artist, and statesman whose works contributed significantly to natural history.

Goethe was born to a wealthy family and sent to school in Leipzig. In Leipzig, he began to compose lyric poetry. Throughout the rest of his schooling in Leipzig and Strasbourg, he became acquainted with circles of German writers and critics. In 1774, Goethe wrote his first major work, The Sorrows of Young Werther, an epistolary short novel that turned the 24 year old writer into a literary hero overnight. The work is largely regarded as one of the most influential novels of German Romanticism and the Sturm and Drag period.

Following his rise to fame, Goethe was invited to serve Duke Karl August of Weimar in court. Goethe and Karl August cultivated a friendship based on a shared affinity for arts and literature. Goethe was a brilliant statesman, assuming many prestigious positions including the head of the Ministries of Finance, Agriculture and Mines. However, financially supported by his friends in the court, Goethe chose to leave the Weimer court in 1786 to devote himself to his writing and the exploration of natural sciences.

Romantic contributions to evolutionary science

Morphology

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling

In 1790, Goethe wrote Versuch die Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu erklän (Metamorphosis of Plants) and Zur Morphologie, creating the scientific field of morphology, the branch of study in biology that deals with the structural forms of organisms. Morphology described the homology between parts of different organisms (for example, comparing the arm of a human to the fin of a whale). Goethe further suggested that adaptive modifications in an organism’s parts were all relative to a Bauplan, an idealized, common archetype. Joan Steigerwald argues that Goethe’s morphology was inherently Romantic in nature: Goethe’s experiences with nature and aesthetics were the driving factors in his postulation of an “ideal” form .

Legacy

Later evolutionists, including Carl Gegenbaur and Ernst Haeckel, used phenotypic variation as a means to advance the understanding of evolution by adjusting the meaning of “morphology” from searching for a common archetype to searching for common ancestries. As a Romantic, Goethe also paved the way for equally influential Romantic-scientists, including Alexander von Humboldt and Friedrich Schelling. Professor Robert J. Richards of the University of Chicago argues that it was both the Romantic perspectives of Schelling and Goethe which paved the way for a nature-centric understanding of evolution.

Erasmus Darwin

Brief Biography

Erasmus Darwin (by Joseph Wright, James Rawlinson and William Coffee)

Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles Darwin, was born in Nottinghamshire in 1731 and died in 1802. He was a successful physician, botanist, and poet who contributed heavily to evolution theory through his works as a writer-naturalist. Though he is most often linked to the Age of Enlightenment and was an enthusiastic proponent of Materialism, Erasmus Darwin’s literary contributions popularized interest in the natural world, connecting him to the Romantic movement as well.

In the late 1770s, Erasmus Darwin diverged from his work as a successful physician and became heavily interested in botany. In 1789, he composed “The Love of Plants” which was a collection of poetic verses concerning Carolus Linnaeus’s taxonomic system. This book was so successful that he later included it in The Botanic Garden (1791), which was composed of two poems, "The Economy of Vegetation" and "The Loves of Plants." "The Economy of Vegetation" is primarily concerned technological innovation and scientific successes that shared commonality with many themes present in the Industrial Revolution. It focused on the evolution of mankind through technology and innovation, arguing that industrialization was part of a single evolutionary process. On the other hand, "The Loves of Plants" was focused more on uniting nature with man through the appreciation of botany. In it, he argues that humans should study botany because plants are a part of the same natural world as man and that sexual reproduction gives rise to evolution (which his grandson would later incorporate into his own theories).

In 1794, Erasmus Darwin also wrote Zoonomia, a two-volume medical treatise dealing with human physiology. In this volume, Erasmus Darwin presents himself as a Lamarckian evolutionist, advocating the "inheritance of acquired characteristics" theory. He also hypothesizes pangenesis in the third volume of Zoonomia, a hypothesis that his grandson would heavily advocate in On the Origin of Species .

Romantic contributions to evolution theory

Erasmus Darwin's position as a poet and naturalist allowed him to contribute significantly to evolution theory via literature. While his poems are most often linked to popularizing botanical sciences, they also contributed significantly to evolution theory, particularly as his ideas were picked up and championed by Romantic evolutionary theorists.

Man and Nature

Romantic poetry was highly popularized because of its integrative properties that placed man within nature, using reactionary language, intense manifestations and evocation of emotion when confronted by nature, and the anthropomorphism of nature. Romantic poetry served to conjure a feeling of idealized unity between man and nature, departing from the cool rationalism that marked Enlightenment thinking.

The Botanic Garden title page (1791).

Take, for example, the first stanza from Erasmus Darwin’s “The Loves of Plants” which uses highly sexualized language to describe plants and the sublime interactions between them.

Weak with nice sense, the chaste mimosa stands,

From each rude touch withdraws her timid hands;

Oft as light clouds o’erpass the Summer-glade,

Alarm’d she trembles at the moving shade;

And feels, alive through all her tender form,

The whisper’d murmurs of the gathering storm;

Shuts her sweet eye-lids to approaching night;

And hails with freshen’d charms the rising light.

Erasmus Darwin's description of plants gave them a sense of agency and progressiveness, which was highly characteristic of Lamarckian evolution theory. This was also a highly Romantic notion -- there is a sense of striving within organisms to become more adapted to the environment. Through this poem, Erasmus Darwin popularized Lamarckism, which sparked further studies of evolution, including those of Charles Darwin. Other works by Erasmus Darwin further demonstrate his ability to describe scientific concepts, including the origin of life, using verse. In another poem written in 1802 titled The Temple of Nature, Erasmus Darwin writes:

Organic life beneath the shoreless waves

Was born and nurs’d in ocean’s pearly caves;

First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass,

Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass;

These, as successive generations bloom,

New powers acquire and larger limbs assume;

Whence countless groups of vegetation spring,

And breathing realms of fin and feet and wing.

This verse recalls the Lamarckian "Inheritance of acquired characteristics" theory ("These, as successive generations bloom, New powers acquire and larger limbs assume"). Erasmus Darwin also describes the “Retreating-ocean theory,” a materialistic theory popularized by the French natural historian Benoît de Maillet half a century before Darwin composed The Temple of Nature. The idea of looking back in the past was a major theme of the Romantic period: Romantic aestheticians constantly reread William Shakespeare and idealized Medieval arts and literature. By this account, popularized concern with the origins of life followed Romantic philosophy.

Erasmus Darwin’s direct contributions to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution

Although Erasmus Darwin died seven years before Charles Darwin was born, the younger Darwin was not without his grandfather’s teachings and works. Charles Darwin read Zoonomia when he was 18 years old and greatly revered it. It is evident that many of Erasmus Darwin’s works on evolutionary theory stuck with Charles Darwin throughout his life: nearly every topic discussed in Zoonomia has a counterpart in Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.

However, as Charles Darwin got older, he began to resent Erasmus Darwin’s work. Erasmus Darwin, a proponent of Atheism, Materialism, and also provocative Romanticism, faced many obstacles in popularizing his views on evolution, which Darwin wished to avoid in his own pursuits in popularizing his own views of evolution theory. Furthermore, in the “short historical preface” of his 1860 publication of Origin, Darwin denounced Lamarck’s belief in “a law of progressive development,” followed by a footnote: “It is curious how largely my grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, anticipated the views and erroneous grounds of Lamarck in his in his 'Zoonomia'” ia n great attempt to distance himself from Lamarckian theories of evolution, and thus, his grandfather’s theories of evolution. In 1879, Charles Darwin had become so polarized in his opinions about his grandfather that when wrote a biography on his grandfather titled The Life of Erasmus Darwin, it contained so much crudeness that Charles Darwin’s daughter, Henriette Darwin, supposedly edited out 16% of the biography.

Legacy

It is highly evident, by Charles Darwin’s manuscripts and theories themselves, that the naturalist was strongly influenced by his grandfather’s Romantic prose and scientific exploration. Erasmus Darwin’s contributions to Romantic literature as well as to evolution theory serves as a junction at which both Romantic aesthetic and natural science meet, seamlessly.