He was born 196 years ago today; I'm glad today is NOT my birthday.
His Grandfather conducted experiments to shock stuff 'to life', and Mary Shelly witnessed those experiments.
His Grandfather wrote the poem "Temple of Nature".
It is only natural that what we are witnessing .... keeps saying the same ol same ol ...
More silly nonsense, easily disproven just by glancing at the 1831 'standard' introduction to Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley.
They talked of the experiments of Dr. Darwin (I speak not of what the doctor really did or said that he did, but, as more to my purpose, of what was then spoken of as having been done by him), who preserved a piece of vermicelli in a glass case till by some extraordinary means it began to move with voluntary motion.
Clearly, Mary Shelley did not herself witness whatever the experiment in question, but rather speaks of hearsay description regarding Erasmus Darwin's experiment. In fact, she explicitly specifies that she speaks "not of what the Doctor really did" but rather of what was said about him.
In any case, Mary Shelley is evidently referring to a passage from The Temple of Nature where Erasmus Darwin writes of vorticellae (the ciliate protozoan), and not vermicelli (the pasta), where E. Darwin accurately recounts that the microbe lies dormant for lengthy periods of time until reanimated by water ("it discovers no sign of life except when in the water, yet it is capable of continuing alive for many months though kept in a dry state").
In an earlier passage, E. Darwin also writes of how adding water to flour paste can seem to reanimate life (try leaving some flour out for a long while and then add water to it and see what critters swim up out of it - probably a common occurrence in 1802..) and accurately concludes: "even the organic particles of dead animals may, when exposed to a due degree of warmth and moisture, regain some degree of vitality." This may also have been referred to by Mary Shelley, though clearly she primarily refers to the vorticellae that she misreads as vermicelli.
PS. Your credibility is about nonexistent as it is, but I'm curious where you picked up this latest bit of tripe? Oh, and what do you mean to have one infer from your cite of "Temple of Nature"? Have you taken even a cursory glance at the work, or are you just fantasizing whatever ominous signification you think it might have?
PS. I forgot to mention that if Mary Shelley had in fact witnessed any of E. Darwin's experiments she must've been a remarkable infant, because E. Darwin died when Mrs. Shelley was 4 years old.....
yep!