Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon

Georges Louis Leclerc, Count of Buffon (Montbard, September 7, 1707 – Paris, April 16, 1788) was a French naturalist, botanist, biologist, cosmologist, mathematician, and writer.

Buffon sought to abridge all human knowledge about the natural world in his 44-volume work Histoire naturelle. His approach influenced Diderot's Encyclopedia and his ideas also influenced the following generations of naturalists and in particular Lamarck, Cuvier and Darwin.

Biography

Buffon Statue at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris

He was born in the castle of Montbard, in 1707, into a family of rich and high officials. After studying at the Jesuit college in Dijon, he graduated in law in 1726. Preferring the sciences, to the discontent of his family, he left to study mathematics and botany at Angers (1728). There he also read Newton and took medical courses, but, having murdered a young Croatian officer in a duel, he was forced to leave the university and take refuge in Dijon and Nantes, where he met Evelyn Pierrepont, Duke of Kingston, again. a young English aristocrat who was touring Europe as a graduate trip with his tutor Nathaniel Hickman; he established a close friendship with him and decided to follow them on their journey, which took them to La Rochelle, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Béziers and Montpellier and then to Italy through Turin, Milan, Genoa, Florence and Rome, taking the opportunity to accumulate books and mathematical theories. Back, he was elected a member of the French Academy of Sciences at just twenty-seven years old and then guardian of the Royal Gardens (later Jardin des Plantes) in Paris from 1739. Then, counting thirty-two years, He was asked to make a methodical description of the collections kept in the royal cabinet, which prompted his dedication to Natural History for the remaining forty-nine years of his life, dividing his time between Paris and Montbard. During this period he transformed the royal gardens into a museum and research center, greatly expanding the park with the inclusion of numerous plants and trees from around the world. In 1773 he was awarded the title of Count of Buffon. He died in Paris in 1788.

Work

Buffon's most famous work is his Natural History, General and Particular (L'Histoire Naturelle, générale et particulière, avec la description du Cabinet du Roi, 1749 -1788) presented in 36 volumes with 8 additional volumes published at his death (by Lacepede). This work encompasses knowledge of the natural world to date, excluding plants, insects, fish, and molluscs. The descriptions of animals were probably not written by him, since these descriptions bored him and he often entrusted them to his collaborators: he reserved for himself the great overviews and the hypotheses about the structure of the world and the gradual organization and the successive transformations of inanimate or living matter. The true Buffon must be sought in the Epoches of Nature.

History of the Earth

Buffon set out his ideas on Geology in History and Theory of the Earth, published in 1744, a treatise that came to constitute the beginning of his Natural History. This speech, not very long, is followed by Evidence distributed in nineteen articles that constitute a kind of justifying file, since Buffon distinguishes between theory (history where only proven facts appear and duly verified) and system (unverifiable hypothesis about the origins). He pretends to write only theory. Regarding geological matter, the disorder of the earth is only apparent, since the earth is deposited in the form of strata; He attributes this stratification to the work of water, both from the sea and from the sky, which, through erosion, undoes the order stratified by seawater. This explanation, which attributes the changes in the landscape to the exclusive work of water, is called neptunism. But from 1745, the date on which the first of the Proofs is dated, he adds to this explanation the formation by fire, a hypothesis called Vulcanian or volcanism. He later recognized that fire was the main agent of geological transformations and magnificently developed this hypothesis in his Époques de la Nature (1778).

The Times of Nature

When Buffon published Les époques de la Nature (1778) he was already seventy-one years old, which is why it constitutes his intellectual testament and a synthesis of all his works. In the introduction he states that he wants to record the successive changes of Nature. He establishes seven epochs according to the facts, the monuments and the traditions:

• In the first, the matter of the globe was melted by fire and the Earth acquired its form, it rose in Ecuador and fell down by the poles because of the rotation movement.
• In the second, the matter was already consolidated by forming large masses of vitrescible matter.
• In the third, the sea, which covered the land currently inhabited, fed the animals with shell or molluscs, whose stripes have formed the calcareous substances.
• In the fourth was the retreat of the seas that covered the continents.
• In the fifth, the elephants, hippos and other animals from the South inhabited the lands of the North.
• In the sixth, the two continents were separated and the man appeared.
• At the seventh time, man developed.

He avoids the stumbling blocks that religious texts offered him, affirming that the interpretation of Genesis should not be literal and the six days of which Moses speaks are precisely the six epochs he discovered. "The true glory of man is science, and peace his true happiness."

Biology

• In embryology, Buffon defended an epigenetist theory. In the face of dominant preformism at the time, Buffon postulated the existence of “organic molecules”, primitive and incorruptible entities that would constitute all living beings, joining by “intussception” throughout embryogenesis.
• As for his conception of the organism, Discours sur la Nature des Animaux Buffon distinguishes between the animal and plant parts of the animals, a distinction that would later be developed by Xavier Bichat and Cuvier: the vegetative or organic functions are always performed and are performed by the internal organs, of which the heart is the main organ; the animal functions are performed by the external parts (the organs of the senses and the extremities). Thus, it could be said that an animal is a complex of organs that fulfill the vegetative functions (asimilation, growth and reproduction) covered by a wrapping formed by the extremities, organs of the senses, nerves and brain, which would be the center of this wrapping. Animals may differ from each other in their external parts, without showing large differences in the management of their internal parts. However, if the internal organs change, the external parts will change infinitely.
• Buffon is one of the great exponents of the idea of scala naturae. Thus, Buffon orders organic beings gradually, although gradation is not morphological, but functional.
• Buffon was also a firm believer in the unity of the structural plan of the vertebrates. For the first time, and even as a hypothesis, the unit of plan per unit of origin is explained.
• Buffon rejects the objectivity of the systematic, especially the linneana, to which it considers totally artificial. However, it proposes a concept of species very close to the modern biological concept, based on the permanence of the characters throughout the generations and the impossibility of obtaining fruitful descendants between two different species. In Buffon's opinion, the gaps between species are the only discontinuity shown by Nature.
• Buffon's transformation is limited to the inside of the species. While Buffon speculates on the possibility of an original type of where the rest of the animals would have descended through morphological transformations:

We can also say that man and monkey, as a horse and ass, have a common origin; that in every family, both animal and vegetable there is a single trunk, and even that all animals come from one only that with the passing of time, by perfecting or degenerating, has given origin to all other animal races.

He finally rejects this hypothesis based on the constancy of the species and the infertility of the hybrids:

But no! By revelation we know with certainty that all animals are equally the result of the act of creation; that the first couple of each gender and of all genres came out in their total perfection from the hands of the creator. And we must believe that then they were almost equal to the way they present themselves to us today in their descendants.

The thesis that Buffon was a convinced evolutionist who corrected his opinions out of fear of the Church, is no longer accepted by any of the experts on Buffon's work. As Russell points out, Buffon refutes the transformist possibility by appealing to rational criteria and not to an leap of faith: How could it happen that two individuals "degenerate" in the same direction? How come we don't find intermediate links between species? For Buffon, the "degenerations" have only been able to affect the original type of a species, especially due to the influence of climate. However, his questioning of the absolute constancy of the species, his reflections on the history of the Earth, the fecundity of hybrids, the role of the environment and biogeography, will open the way to Lamarckian biology.

• In a comparative anatomy, his work does not stand out for his detailed observations, but offers a research program that will show a strong influence. On the one hand, he insists on the importance of studying internal structures (and not just external morphology) for understanding the functioning of the organisms. This project will be launched by Daubeton and Vicq d'Azyr and will lead to the great synthesis of Georges Cuvier. On the other hand, Buffon, distrusting the ultimate causality, tends to adopt a purely morphological approach, considering the forms regardless of their function. This route will lead to the works of Goethe and Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire.

However, Buffon's ideas were not without controversy. In particular his long dispute with Thomas Jefferson and other North American scholars when he was convinced that a state of retarded evolution prevailed in America both for plants and animals and for the natives. He also had a curious polemic by correspondence with Lord Monboddo, who, contrary to Buffon's opinion, insisted on the close kinship of men and apes.

Astronomy

In Les époques de la nature (1778) Buffon studies the origin of the Solar System suggesting that the planets could have been formed by the successive collision of comets against the Sun.

Geology

He also suggested that the age of the Earth was much older than what some Christian theologians thought they could deduce from the Bible (the first to make a calculation was James Ussher, in "Annals of the Old Testament" (1650), specifying its origin in 4004 BC.Based on the rhythm of iron, he calculated that the age of the Earth was at least 50,000 years.Theologians at the Sorbonne Faculty of Theology did not like these assertions., who sent him a letter demanding his retraction on January 15, 1751. To avoid trouble, he apologized by letter, explaining that it had been a "pure philosophical assumption. " This letter and the one from the Sorbonne were included in 1753 at the beginning of the fourth volume of his Histoire Naturelle.He continued his investigations, refining his calculations and arriving at a figure for the age of the Earth of 75,000 years, and published his results at an advanced age and without fear of ecclesiastical censures, even so the Count de Buffon is he favored a longer age, even up to 168,000 years, based on the imprecise fossil record.

Math

In mathematics Buffon is remembered for his theory of probability and the classic problem of the Buffon needle, raised in 1733 and reproduced by himself already solved in 1757. It is a matter of throwing a needle on a paper in which parallel straights have been drawn apart uniformly. It can be shown that if the distance between the lines is equal to the length of the needle, the probability that the needle crosses any of the lines is of 2/π π {displaystyle 2/pi }.

Literature

On literature, Buffon wrote an essay, the Discourse on Style, composed for his admission to the French Academy, for which he was elected without presenting his candidacy. He praises the intellectual qualities of the style: unity, plan, clarity. He distinguishes the style of the orator, who is eloquent and tries to animate the passions, from the writer who addresses the spirit, for whom the style must be "order and movement in thought." Order matters above all else and you always have to follow some plan or method; It even seems that the movement itself is born from order, and everything that is search or affectation must be avoided, choosing expressions with delicacy and taste and rejecting technicalities, adjusting the tone to the nature of the subject. «Writing well is at the same time thinking well, feeling well and expressing yourself well; it is to possess wit, soul, and taste at the same time.” Only style can save a work from oblivion, because knowledge and discoveries are easily transported: "These things are outside of man, but style is man himself: style cannot be stolen or transported."

Some posts

• Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière, avec la description du Cabinet du Roy, understanding:
  • De la manière d’étudier l’histoire naturellefollowed by Théorie de la Terre, 1749
  • Histoire générale des animaux, 1749
  • Histoire naturelle de l’homme, 1749
  • Les quadrupèdes, 1753-1767
  • Histoire naturelle des oiseaux, 1770-1783
  • Histoire naturelle des minéraux1783-1788, containing the Traité de l’aimant et de ses usages
  • Les suppléments, 1774 - 1789, dont les Époques de la naturefrom 1778
• Discours sur le style, speech delivered at the Académie française the day of his reception, on August 25, 1753
• Mémoires de mathématique et de physique, tirés des registres de l’Académie Royale des Sciences:
  • De la cause de l’excentricité des couches ligneuses qu’on apperçoit quand on coupe horizontalement le Tronc d’un Arbre; de l’inégalité d’épaisseur, & du différent nombre de ces couches, tant dans le bois formé que dans l’aubier, 1737
  • Des différents effets que produisent sur les Végétaux, les grandes gelées d’Hiver & les petites gelées du Printemp, 1737
  • Moyen facile d’augmenter la solidité, la force et la durée du bois, 1738
  • Mémoire sur la conservation et le rétablissement des forests, 1739
  • Expériences sur la force du bois, 1740
  • Expériences sur la force du bois, 1741
  • Dissertation sur les couleurs accidentlles, 1743
  • Mémoire sur la culture des forests, 1745
  • Réflexions sur la loi de l’attraction, 1745
  • Addition au mémoire qui a pour titre: Réflexions sur la Loi de l’Attraction, 1745
  • Seconde Addition au Mémoire qui a pour titre: Réflexions sur la Loi de l’Attraction, 1745
  • Invention des miroirs ardens, pour brusler à une large distance, 1747
  • Découverte de la liqueur séminale dans les femelles vivipares et du réservoir qui la contient, 1748
  • Nouvelle invention de miroirs ardens, 1748
• Translations
  • Stephan Hales, La Statique des végétaux, 1735
  • Isaac Newton, La Méthode des fluxions et des suites infinies, 1740

Astronomical nomenclature

• Moon crater Buffon bears this name in his honor.
• The asteroid (7420) Buffon also commemorates its name.