October 2

Sir Patrick Geddes (1854)

It was on this date, October 2, 1854, that the "father of town planning," Scottish biologist Sir Patrick Geddes was born in Ballater in Aberdeenshire. He grew up in Perthshire, and studied variously at London, Paris, Edinburgh, and Montpellier Universities. Geddes traveled widely and taught physiology, zoology, botany, sociology, civics and natural history — becoming a radical only in the sense that unlike his contemporaries, Geddes believed humans prospered where there was fresh air, gardens and good housing.

His idealism — he envisioned a kind of European Union — led him to design many cities, frequently in India (1915-1929), and spread his ideas in the US and across Europe. Geddes was knighted in 1931. He died on 17 April 1932 in Montpellier, France. Sir Patrick Geddes was a Freethinker and an Honorary Associate of the British Rationalist Press Association (RPA).*

* Amelia D. Defries, The Interpreter Geddes, the Man and His Gospel. London: G. Routledge and Sons, 1927.

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Sir William Ramsay (1852)

It was also on this date, October 2, 1852, that British inorganic chemist and Nobel Laureate Sir William Ramsay was born in Glasgow, Scotland. He learned his Rationalism at Tübingen University, Germany and, after publishing several notable papers between 1885 and 1890, Ramsay co-discovered the elements argon (Ar 1894), helium (He 1895), krypton (Kr 1898), neon (Ne 1898) and xenon (Xe 1898).

Ramsay found a home at London's University College, where other Freethinking professors taught, and even his Christian biographer, W.A. Tilden, has to admit that Ramsay was an Agnostic. He tended to use theistic turns of phrase — in a 1908 letter, he wrote, "Life has been pretty good to us — perhaps I should say God. I feel inclined to."* — but Ramsay did not believe in a future life.

Sir William Ramsay received the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1904, "in recognition of his services in the discovery of the inert gaseous elements in air, and his determination of their place in the periodic system." Ramsay was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1888 and was knighted in 1902. He died at High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, on 23 July 1916.

* William A. Tilden, Sir William Ramsay, K.C.B., F.R.S; Memorials of His Life and Work. London: Macmillan, 1918.

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Sir Edward Burnett Tylor (1832)

Finally, it was on this date, October 2, 1832, that British anthropologist Sir Edward Burnett Tylor, regarded as the father of cultural anthropology, was born in London, the son of a Quaker. Tylor's 1865 Researches into the Early History of Mankind first proposed that Animism is the basis for all religious systems, and that therefore all religion has a natural rather than a supernatural origin. His most famous work, Primitive Culture (1871), was influenced by Darwin's theory of biological evolution. In that same year, Tylor was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. He published a pioneering book on Anthropology in 1881.

Although he never attended a university as a student, Tylor became professor of anthropology at Oxford from 1896 to 1909 and was knighted in 1912. In his writing and teaching career Tylor further developed his theory of Animism, in which everything has a soul, not just living things, and that there is an upward evolutionary relationship between primitive and modern cultures, without a supernatural element. Sir Edward Burnett Tylor died in Wellington on 2 January 1917. Like Sir James George Frazer and others, Tylor never directly admitted his Rationalism, but there was no need, and perhaps some danger of losing his position.

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