TRIANGULAR RELATIONSHIPS Dr Patricia Fara Clare College Cambridge

TRIANGULAR RELATIONSHIPS Dr Patricia Fara Clare College, Cambridge

Wilberforce v Huxley

Wilberforce v Darwin

Erasmus Charles

‘The Loves of the Triangles’ Anti-Jacobin, 1798

The Loves of the Plants

The Loves of the Plants …MEADIA’S soft chains five suppliant beaux confess, And hand in hand the laughing belle address; Alike to all, she bows with wanton air, Rolls her dark eye, and waves her golden hair…

‘The Loves of the Triangles’ …And first, the fair PARABOLA behold, Her timid arms with virgin blush unfold! Though, on one focus fix’d, her eyes betray A heart that glows with love’s resistless sway… Anti-Jacobin, 1798

‘The Loves of the Triangles’ …For me, ye CISSOIDS, round my temples bend Your wandering Curves; ye CONCHOIDS extend; Let playful PENDULES quick vibration feel, While silent CYCLOIS rests upon her wheel… Anti-Jacobin, 1798

‘The Loves of the Triangles’

‘The Loves of the Triangles’ …How Loves and Graces in an Angle dwell ; * How slow progressive Points protract the Line…** * Angle—Gratus puellæ risus ab Angulo. —Hor. ** How slow progressive Points—The Author has reserved the picturesque imagery which the Theory of Fluxions naturally suggested for his ALGEBRAIC GARDEN; where the Fluents are described as rolling with an even current between a margin of Curves of the higher order, over a pebbly channel, inlaid with Differential Calculi.

William Pitt A SPHERE, projecting against a PLANE James Gillray, 1792

‘Loves of the Triangles’ …Nor long the time ere Britain’s shores shall greet The warrior-sage with gratulation sweet: Eager to grasp the wreath of Naval Fame, The GREAT REPUBLIC plans the Floating Frame!. . .

TRIANGULAR RELATIONSHIPS • QUANTIFICATION • PROGRESS • SLAVERY

…The freckled IRIS owns a fiercer flame, And three unjealous husbands wed the dame. . . …Three gentle swains evolve their longing arms, …And woo the young REPUBLIC’S virgin charms: The Loves of the Plants, 1789 ‘The Loves of the Triangles’, 1798

TRIANGULAR RELATIONSHIPS • QUANTIFICATION

Edmund Burke …[variations between different parts of France] ‘render mensuration a ridiculous standard of power…and equality in geometry the most unequal of all measures in the distribution of men. ’ Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790

French Encyclopédie ‘…that pestiferous work’ disseminating ‘Anarchy and Atheism. . . ’

…A man would not naturally expect to meet with disgusting strokes of obscenity in a system of botany, but. . . obscenity is the very basis of the Linnean system…

Sir Joseph Banks (President of the Royal Society)

Gillray, New Morality

Pieter Camper

TRIANGULAR RELATIONSHIPS • PROGRESS

No. XV THE PROGRESS OF MAN. A DIDIACTIC POEM. DEDICATED TO R. P. KNIGHT, ESQ.

Richard Payne Knight The Progress of Civil Society 1796

ouroboros

Darwin …With quicken’d pace successive rollers move, And these retain, and those extend the rove; Then fly the spoles, the rapid axles glow; -And slowly circumvolves the labouring wheel below…

Darwin …With quicken’d pace successive rollers move, And these retain, and those extend the rove; Then fly the spoles, the rapid axles glow; -And slowly circumvolves the labouring wheel below… Anti-Jacobin …The spiral grooves in smooth meanders flow, Drags the long chain, the polish’d axles glow, While slowly circumvolves the piece of beef below: The conscious fire with bickering radiance burns, Eyes the rich joint, and roasts it as it turns…

‘…all nature exists in a state of perpetual improvement…’

Erasmus Darwin …in the great length of time, since the earth began to exist, perhaps millions of ages before the commencement of the history of mankind, would it be too bold to imagine, that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament, which THE GREAT FIRST CAUSE endued with animality, with the power of acquiring new parts, attended with new propensities…and thus possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent activity, and of delivering down those improvements by generation to its posterity, world without end!. . .

‘The Loves of the Triangles’ …We may conceive this Primeval Point…evolving itself by its own energies, to have moved forward in a right Line, ad infinitum, till it grew tired—After which, the right Line, which it had generated, would begin to put itself in motion in a lateral direction, describing an Area of infinite extent…capable of containing the present existing Universe…

‘The Loves of the Triangles’ …it seems highly probable that the first effort of Nature terminated in the production of Vegetables, and that these supplied themselves with wings or feet… in time, would restrict themselves to the use of their hind feet: their tails would gradually rub off by sitting in their caves or huts…

Joseph Priestley …it is nothing but a superior knowledge of the laws of nature, that gives Europeans the advantages they have over the Hottentots. . . science advancing, as it does, it may be taken for granted, that mankind some centuries hence will be as much superior to us. . . as we are now to the Hottentots…

TRIANGULAR RELATIONSHIPS • SLAVERY

This day buried a fine woman slave, No. 11, having been ailing some time…Sent a girl, ill of the flux (No. 92) on shoar…This morning buryed a woman slave (No. 47). Know not what to say she died of…

Tea, the ‘blood-sweeten’d beverage’

Æsop, c. 1755

- The SLAVE, in chains, on supplicating knee, Spreads his wide arms, and lifts his eyes to Thee; With hunger pale, with wounds and toil oppress’d, “ARE WE NOT BRETHREN? ” sorrow choaks the rest… Darwin, Botanic Garden

Immortal FRANKLIN…stabb’d the struggling Vampires… The Warrior, LIBERTY, with bending sails. . . the Giant-form on GALLIA’s plains Inglorious slept, unconscious of his chains…

Darwin …Round his large limbs were wound a thousand strings By the weak hands of Confessors and Kings… Touch’d by the patriot-flame, he rent amazed The flimsy bonds, and round him gazed; Starts up from earth, above the admiring throng Lifts his colossal form, and towers along…

Darwin …High o’er his foes his hundred arms He rears, Plowshares his swords, and pruning hooks his spears; Calls to the Good and Brave with voice, that rolls Like Heaven’s own thunder round the echoing poles…

‘The Loves of the Triangles’ …O’er the huge plane gigantic Terror stalks… The Commune spreads, the gay Departments smile, Fair Freedom’s Plant o’ershades the laughing isle: ―Fired with new hopes, the exulting peasant sees The Gallic streamer woo the British breeze…

TRIANGULAR RELATIONSHIPS

Anti-Jacobin ‘more satisfied with things as they are’ than Darwin, but ‘less convinced of the practical influence of Didactic Poems. ’

• draft manuscript ‘The Progress of Society’

• draft manuscript ‘The Progress of Society’ • 1798 ‘The Loves of the Triangles’ as a sequel to ‘The Progress of Man’

• draft manuscript ‘The Progress of Society’ • 1798 ‘The Loves of the Triangles’ as sequel to ‘The Progress of Man’ • 1803 The Temple of Nature; or, The Origin of Society

• draft manuscript ‘The Progress of Society’ • 1798 ‘The Loves of the Triangles’ as sequel to ‘The Progress of Man’ • 1803 The Temple of Nature; or, The Origin of Society • 1859 On the Origin of Species

? DARWIN …Such is the condition of organic nature! whose first law might be expressed in the words, “Eat or be eaten!” and which would seem to be one great slaughter-house, one universal scene of rapacity and injustice…