In existographies, Robert Grant (1793-1874) (EvT:14|21+) (CR:1) was a Scottish physician, characterized an “outspoken pre-Darwinian materialist transformist” (Hecht, 2003), noted for []
Overview
In 1826, Grant publicly announced his speculation that ‘transformation’ might affect all organisms; noted that successive strata seemed to show a progressive, natural succession of fossil animals; that these forms ‘have evolved from a primitive model’ by ‘external circumstances’; he accepted a common origin for plants and animals, and the basic units of life (‘monads’), he proposed, were spontaneously generated.
Darwin
In 1826, Charles Darwin, then a second-year medical student at Edinburgh University, became a pupil of Grant, via his Plinian Society for student naturalists, and therein became Grant’s keenest student and assisted him with collecting specimens. (Ѻ) Grant’s “transformism” version of species origins was concerned with spontaneous generation, proving that life could get started with no god, and with radical politics. Darwin, supposedly, rejected Grant’s transformism ideas, from some time, i.e. until he came under the influence of Thomas Malthus’s economic theories about population growth under limited land size theories. [1]
Quotes | On
The following are quotes on Grant:
“Darwin was coming under the wing of an uncompromising evolutionist. Nothing was sacred for Grant. As a free-thinker, Grant saw no spiritual power behind nature’s throne. The origin and evolution of life were due simply to physical and chemical forces, all obeying natural laws.”
— Adrian Desmond (1994), Darwin: the Life of a Tormented Genius (Ѻ)
References
1. Hecht, Jennifer M. (2003). Doubt: A History: The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas (pg. 403). HarperOne.
External links
● Robert Edmond Grant – Wikipedia.
