Georges-Louis Leclerc: biography and contributions of this naturalist.
A summary of the life of Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon, one of the precursors of evolutionism.
When we talk about evolutionism, most people think of Charles Darwin and, to a lesser extent, of Lamarck. These two are the most prominent figures in the beginnings of evolutionism, but to be fair they are not the forerunners.
There have been others who have presented the idea that species can change over time, either by environmental factors or by the simple passing of generations.
One of the most curious precursors of evolutionism, without being a recognized evolutionary biologist, is Georges-Louis Leclerc, Count of Buffon. Here we will learn about his life and work, as well as deepen about his particular idea of the origin of the human being and the races that according to him make it up, through a biography of Georges-Louis Leclerc.
Brief biography of Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon
Georges-Louis Leclerc was a French naturalist, botanist, biologist, cosmologist, mathematician and writer.. Also known as Comte de Buffon, he sought to summarize all human knowledge about the natural world of his time in his 36-volume work "Histoire naturelle", in addition to other volumes produced posthumously. It is said that his approach influenced Diderot's Encyclopédie and that his ideas on the transformation of species were revelatory for the following generations of naturalists, especially Georges Cuvier, Jean Baptiste Lamarck and Charles Darwin.
Leclerc's childhood and adolescence
Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, was born in Montbard, Burgundy, on September 7, 1707.. He was the son of François Leclerc, a minor local official in charge of the salt tax, and Anne-Christine Marlin. Georges was named after his mother's uncle Georges Blaisot. In 1714 Blaisot died childless, leaving a generous fortune to Georges-Louis Leclerc at the age of only seven. Benjamin Leclerc decided to buy an estate containing the neighboring village of Buffon and moved with his family to Dijon and took up various trades.
Georges attended the Jesuit College in Dijon at the age of ten. From 1723 to 1726 he studied law in Dijon, a prerequisite for continuing the family tradition of public service.. However, in 1728 Georges left Dijon to study mathematics and medicine at the University of Angers. There, in 1730 he met the young Duke of Kingston, who was touring Europe, which Leclerc joined and traveled with him on a long and expensive year-long voyage through the southern half of France and parts of Italy.
There are many rumors about what he did around this time, hearsay from that time claiming that the young Georges-Louis Leclerc spent his time between duels and secret trips to England. In 1732, after his mother's death and before his father's imminent remarriage, Georges separated from Kingston and returned to Dijon to receive his inheritance.
The "de Buffon" he had put on during his crossing with the Duke of Kingston; he bought back the villa at Buffon that his father had previously sold. With a fortune of about 80,000 pounds, Georges-Louis Leclerc went to Paris to make a place for himself in the science of the time.He first devoted himself to mathematics and mechanics, and also with the intention of increasing his fortune.
First scientific works
In 1732 he moved to Paris. In the French capital he had the opportunity to meet Voltaire himself and other outstanding intellectuals of the Enlightenment.. His first known work was mathematical entitled "Sur le jeu de franc-carreau", in which he introduced differential and integral calculus applied to the theory of probability.
In fact, as a result of this work, a mathematical concept was named after him: Buffon's needle. In 1734 he was admitted to the French Academy of Sciences. During this period he met the Swiss mathematician Gabriel Cramer.
Consolidation of his career as a researcher
In 1739 he was appointed director of the Parisian Jardin du Roi (King's Garden) with the help of Jean-Frédéric Phélypeaux, Count of Maurepas. with the help of Jean-Frédéric Phélypeaux, Count of Maurepas, a position Leclerc held until the end of his life. Georges-Louis Leclerc excelled in transforming this garden into one of the major research centers of the time. He also expanded it, buying new plots and acquiring new specimens, both plant and animal, from the most remote parts of the world.
Thanks to his gifts as a prolific writer, in 1753 he was invited to the Académie Française and, in 1768, he was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society, was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society.. In his "Discours sur le style" ("Discourse on style"), delivered before the members of the Académie Française he said:
"Writing well consists in thinking, feeling and expressing oneself well, of clarity of mind, soul and taste... The style of the man himself."
Unfortunately for him, Leclerc's reputation as a literary stylist fueled his detractors' critical zeal, including Jean le Rond D'Alembert, who called him "the great phrase-monger.among them Jean le Rond D'Alembert who called him "the great phrase-monger".
In 1752 Georges-Louis Leclerc married Marie-Françoise de Saint-Belin-Malain, the daughter of a noble emperor family.the daughter of an impoverished noble family from Burgundy. His second son, born in 1764, survived infancy and, in 1769, his wife died.
Last years of life
In 1772 Leclerc fell seriously ill.. He made his son, who was then only 8 years old, promise to succeed him as director of the Jardin du Roi, a promise that became clearly impracticable. The king, Louis XV of France, elevated Buffon's properties in Burgundy to the status of a county, making him and his son full counts in their own right.
Georges-Louis Leclerc died on April 16, 1788, in Paris. He was buried in a chapel of the church of Sainte-Urse Montbard. During the French Revolution (1789-1799) his tomb was desecrated and the lead covering the coffin was torn off to make bullets. His Heart was initially kept, and was preserved by Suzanne Necker, Jacques Necker's wife, but was eventually lost. What is preserved of Mr. Leclerc is his cerebellum, kept at the base of the statue in his honor in 1776, at the Museum of Natural History in Paris.
Main scientific contributions by Georges-Louis Leclerc
One of Buffon's most remarkable works is his "Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière" (Natural History, General and Particular) written since 1749, consisting of 36 original volumes plus additional volumes made from Leclerc's notes found after his death.
Originally, this work was intended to discuss the three kingdoms of nature that were believed to exist at the time: animal, vegetable and mineral. However, in the end these volumes were limited to covering the animal and mineral kingdoms, and the animals he spoke of were mostly birds and quadrupeds.
Despite not being the most detailed of the time, his work was written in such a brilliant style that every educated person in Europe got hold of a copy, and he had the collaboration of great figures of his time. Louis-Jean-Marie Daubenton, Philibert Guéneau de Montbeillard and Gabriel-Léopold Bexon were among those who helped him in its publication.. Leclerc's "Histoire naturelle" was translated into many languages, making him one of the most widely read authors of his time, rivaling illustrious contemporaries such as Montesquieu, Rousseau and Voltaire.
In the early volumes of his Histoire naturelle, criticized Carl von Linné's taxonomic approach to natural history, and emphasized a history of the Earth with little relationship to biblical theory. These volumes were condemned by the Faculty of Theology at the Sorbonne. Buffon published a retraction, although he continued to publish the religiously offensive volumes without any remorse.
Throughout his investigation of the animal world, Georges-Louis Leclerc realized that, even having similar climates, regions have distinctive plants and animals, a concept that would later become known as Buffon's Lawwhich is considered to be the first principle of biogeography. Leclerc made the suggestion that species had "improved" or "worsened" since they dispersed from the center of creation.
In his volume 14 argues that all quadrupeds on Earth have evolved from an original set of quadrupeds consisting of about 38 species.. Based on this assertion, he is considered by many to be a "transformist", an advocate of the idea that organisms change over time, and therefore could also be considered a precursor of Darwin. He also commented that climate change could have made it easier for certain species to spread to new places far from their place of origin.
One of Buffon's most controversial theories was when he asserted that the nature of the New World was inferior to that of Eurasia. He explained that the species in America were smaller and less strong than in the rest of the planet. He also claimed that men in America were less virile than Europeans. He attributed this "inferiority" to the stench of the swamps and dense forests of the American continent.
These claims were so controversial that they even irritated Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States, who ordered twenty soldiers to go to the forests of New Hampshire to hunt a moose to send to Leclerc as proof of the grandiose size and majesty of the American quadrupeds.
In his work "Les époques de la nature" (1778), Georges-Louis Leclerc discusses the origins of the Solar System, and speculates that the planets were created from the collision of a comet with the Sun. He also suggested that the Earth originated much earlier than 4004 B.C., the date established by Archbishop James Ussher for the creation of the world according to biblical theory.
De Buffon calculated that the Earth had to be at least 75,000 years old, a statement that caused him to be condemned again by the Sorbonne and had to make him retract it to avoid major problems. Today we know that he was wrong, for the age of the Earth is believed to be 4.543 billion years.
Race studies
Georges-Louis Leclerc and Johann Blumenbach were firm believers in monogenism, the idea that all races had a single origin.. They also believed in the theory of degeneration, that the first human beings, Adam and Eve, were Caucasian and that the other races arose as a product of the degeneration of their offspring, influenced by environmental factors such as the sun or diet. They thought that this "degeneration" could be reversed if the environmental conditions were propitious to "correct" the defects of the other races.
Buffon and Blumenbach related the high pigmentation of people living in tropical environments not to the sun per se, but to the heat. They also believed that the cold wind caused the skin to have an allooned appearance, as was the case with the Inuit peoples. They thought that the relatively white skin of the Chinese was because they lived in villages with houses well protected from environmental conditions. Buffon suggested that diet and lifestyle could also contribute to the races "degenerating" and distinguishing themselves from the original Caucasian race.
Buffon Buffon was in favor of the hypothesis that the origin of the human species was in Asia, considering that the place of appearance of the human race was in Asia.Buffon believed that the place where our species first appeared was in an area with high temperatures. Believing that good climatic conditions make healthy humans grow, he hypothesized that the most logical place had to be in Asia, probably in the Caspian Sea area.
Its relevance to modern biology
With its chiaroscuros, the figure of Georges-Louis Leclerc has great relevance in modern biology as he comes very close to the idea that species change with the passage of time. In fact, Charles Darwin himself commented in his well-known book "The Origin of Species", specifically from the fourth edition onwards, that Buffon was the first author in modern times who had treated evolution with a scientific perspective..
And it is that the theory of degeneration proposed by Leclerc greatly influenced the biologists of the time, despite its moral controversies and obvious scientific racism.
Leclerc cannot be considered as an evolutionary biologist, although it could be said that he was the father of evolutionism.. He was the first person to discuss a large number of questions related to evolution, questions that had not occurred to anyone before Buffon's appearance. He brought the idea of evolution into the realm of science, without even using that word.
Leclerc proposed the concept of "unity of type", a precursor idea of comparative anatomy. He is also notable for rejecting the age of the biblical Earth and proposing a greater antiquity for the planet. His idea of the "struggle for existence", similar to the Darwinian struggle for survival and natural selection, is noteworthy.
(Updated at Apr 13 / 2024)