This thesis examines Erasmus Darwin's poem The Loves of the Plants (1789) for its boundary crossing expression of ecological theory that takes into consideration the influence of religious cosmology on our understanding of the natural world. Darwin (1731-1802) was the grandfather of naturalist Charles Darwin, whose theories we recognize now as the foundation of an entire field of biological study. But Darwin harboured his own beliefs of evolutionary theory long before his grandson was born, those which asserted a relatedness of all forms of life and pressed against the conceptions of existence that were so deeply rooted in the Euro-Western mind. I intend to demonstrate here the originality and complexity of Darwin's work as an exploration of cosmology, wherein the animation of his vegetal world invites readers to consider both the continuities between states of organic existence and the categories which were established in an attempt to keep them apart. By investigating the origins of these conceptions, from biblical creation to the Aristotelean tradition into the time in which Darwin wrote, I explore the ways in which these ideologies pertaining to the natural order of being have come to be and continue to be. Based on his interpretation of Carl Linnaeus' system of taxonomic classification, a system which remains in use to this day, Darwin's Loves manipulates a structure shaped by European religious and ideological assumptions to unravel the binding understanding of a separate and distant nature, one that has been implemented to discourage ways of perceiving otherwise. Because of its incorporation of Linnaean thought, this early work of Darwin's is often disregarded by scholars in conversations of innovative natural philosophy. Yet, in employing a historicist rhetorical and cultural analysis, this thesis examines Darwin's botanical poem inclusively, engaging with his decentering of the Christian understanding of the hierarchy of species that has been maintained for centuries, to illustrate that in composing a realm of personified flora he is melding the believed to be distinct worlds of the human and nonhuman to unite our species with an all-encompassing naturalism. Though this research is culturally specific, its sentiment may be carried forward to acknowledge the ideological histories and inheritances that influence our conceptions of other biological beings and our understandings of our own species as well. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA) / This project focuses on a reading of Erasmus Darwin's The Loves of the Plants (1789) that emphasizes its purpose as an exploration of cosmology and the influence of ideological histories. Taking inspiration from the metaphors of Carl Linnaeus' system of plant classification, Darwin is able to introduce his readers to the world of botany, all the while pointing to the implications of following approaches to understanding the natural world that rely on religious conceptions. Looking specifically at Darwin's manipulation of the origins of Euro-Western ideas pertaining to our planetary natural order, those which stem from the creation myths of Genesis and were passed on through antiquity into the Age of Reason, I intend for this thesis to demonstrate how Darwin's reimagining of nonhuman beings serves to illustrate the ways in which our cosmologies, even those we believe to be removed from, are able to affect our understandings of the worlds around us and all the beings within them.