Tag: Erasmus Darwin
With “Fluctuating” Convictions, Darwin Faced a Threefold Challenge
In what follows I pose the question of how Darwin fell subject to such wide “fluctuations” in his beliefs and how he came to resolve those tensions.
Darwin’s Science and Storytelling
His five-year voyage was undoubtedly an eye-opening rite of passage but perhaps not as foundational to his intellectual development as is sometimes proposed.
Poet and Scientist, Goethe Offered an Enlightenment Theodicy
Like Erasmus Darwin, Goethe was both poet and scientist and had himself at one time speculated on ideas of evolution.
Shelley, Darwin, and the 19th-Century God Debate
The poet Percy Bysshe Shelley threw down the gauntlet for what was effectively to become the great Victorian dispute about religious faith.
Richard Dawkins and the Law of Unintended Consequences
The New Atheists’ failure to understand the nuanced way that “ordinary people” think was a profound strategic error.