Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (French:[ʒɔʁʒlwiləklɛʁkɔ̃tdəbyfɔ̃]; 7 September 1707 – 16 April 1788) was a French naturalist, mathematician, and cosmologist. He held the position ofintendant (director) at theJardin du Roi, now called theJardin des plantes.
Buffon's works influenced the next two generations of naturalists, including two prominent French scientistsJean-Baptiste Lamarck andGeorges Cuvier. Buffon published thirty-sixquarto volumes of hisHistoire Naturelle during his lifetime, with additional volumes based on his notes and further research being published in the two decades following his death.[1]
Ernst Mayr wrote that "Truly, Buffon was the father of all thought in natural history in the second half of the 18th century".[2] Credited with being one of the first naturalists to recognizeecological succession, he was forced by the theology committee at theUniversity of Paris to recant his theories aboutgeological history and animal evolution because they contradicted the biblical narrative of Creation.[3][4]
Georges Louis Leclerc was born atMontbard, in the province ofBurgundy to Benjamin François Leclerc, a minor local official in charge of thegabelle salt tax and Anne-Christine Marlin, also from a family of civil servants. Georges was named after his mother's uncle (andgodfather) Georges Blaisot, thetax-farmer of the Duke of Savoy for all ofSicily. In 1714 Blaisot died childless, leaving a considerable fortune to his seven-year-old godson. Benjamin Leclerc then purchased an estate containing the nearby village ofBuffon and moved the family toDijon acquiring various offices there as well as a seat in the DijonParlement.
Georges attended the Jesuit College of Godrans in Dijon from the age of ten onwards. From 1723 to 1726 he then studied law in Dijon, the prerequisite for continuing the family tradition in civil service. In 1728 Georges left Dijon to study mathematics and medicine at theUniversity of Angers in France. At Angers in 1730 he made the acquaintance of Evelyn Pierrepont, the young EnglishDuke of Kingston, who was on his grand tour of Europe, and traveled with him on a large and expensive entourage for a year and a half through southern France and parts of Italy.[5]
There are persistent undocumented rumors from this period about duels, abductions and secret trips to England. In 1732 after the death of his mother and before the impending remarriage of his father, Georges left Kingston and returned to Dijon to secure his inheritance. Having added 'de Buffon' to his name while traveling with the Duke, he repurchased the village of Buffon, which his father had meanwhile sold off. With a fortune of about 80,000livres (at the time, worth nearly 27 kilograms of gold), Buffon set himself up in Paris to pursue science, at first primarily mathematics and mechanics, and the increase of his fortune.[6]
His protectorMaurepas had asked the Academy of Sciences to do research on wood for the construction of ships in 1733. Soon afterward, Buffon began a long-term study, performing some of the most comprehensive tests to date on the mechanical properties ofwood. Included were a series of tests to compare the properties of small specimens with those of large members. After carefully testing more than a thousand small specimens without knots or other defects, Buffon concluded that it was not possible to extrapolate to the properties of full-size timbers, and he began a series of tests on full-size structural members.
In 1739 he was appointed head of the ParisianJardin du Roi with the help of Maurepas; he held this position to the end of his life. Buffon was instrumental in transforming the Jardin du Roi into a major research center and museum. He also enlarged it, arranging the purchase of adjoining plots of land and acquiring new botanical and zoological specimens from all over the world.
Thanks to his talent as a writer, he was invited to join theAcadémie Française in 1753 and then in 1768 he was elected to theAmerican Philosophical Society.[8] In hisDiscours sur le style ("Discourse on Style"), pronounced before the Académie française, he said, "Writing well consists of thinking, feeling and expressing well, of clarity of mind, soul and taste ... The style is the man himself" ("Le style c'est l'homme même").[9] Unfortunately for him, Buffon's reputation as a literary stylist also gave ammunition to his detractors: the mathematicianJean le Rond d'Alembert, for example, called him "the great phrase-monger".
In 1752 Buffon married Marie-Françoise de Saint-Belin-Malain, the daughter of an impoverished noble family from Burgundy, who had been enrolled in the convent school run by his sister. Madame de Buffon's second child, a son born in 1764, survived childhood; she herself died in 1769. When in 1772 Buffon became seriously ill and the promise that his son (then only 8) should succeed him as director of the Jardin became clearly impracticable and was withdrawn, the King raised Buffon's estates in Burgundy to the status of a county – and thus Buffon (and his son) became acount. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1782.[10] Buffon died in Paris in 1788.
He was buried in a chapel adjacent to the church of Sainte-Urse Montbard; during theFrench Revolution, his tomb was broken into and the lead that covered the coffin was ransacked to produce bullets. His son, George-Louie-Marie Buffon (often called Buffonet) was guillotined on July 10, 1794.[11] Buffon'sheart was initially saved, as it was guarded bySuzanne Necker (wife ofJacques Necker), but was later lost. Today, only Buffon'scerebellum remains, as it is kept in the base of the statue byPajou thatLouis XVI had commissioned in his honor in 1776, located at theMuseum of Natural History inParis.
HisHistoire naturelle was a source of inspiration for the painters of theSèvres factory, giving rise to porcelain services called Buffon. The name of the different species is inscribed on the back of each piece. Several "Buffon services" were produced during the reign of Louis XVI; the first was intended for theCount of Artois, in 1782.
Buffon'sHistoire naturelle, générale et particulière (1749–1788: in 36 volumes; an additional volume based on his notes appeared in 1789) was originally intended to cover all three "kingdoms" of nature but theHistoire naturelle ended up being limited to the animal and mineral kingdoms, and the animals covered were only the birds and quadrupeds. "Written in a brilliant style, this work was read ... by every educated person in Europe".[2] Those who assisted him in the production of this great work includedLouis Jean-Marie Daubenton, Philibert Guéneau de Montbeillard, and Gabriel-Léopold Bexon, along with numerous artists. Buffon'sHistoire naturelle was translated into many different languages, making him one of the most widely read authors of the day, a rival toMontesquieu,Rousseau, andVoltaire.[12]
In the opening volumes of theHistoire naturelle Buffon questioned the usefulness of mathematics, criticizedCarl Linnaeus's taxonomical approach to natural history, outlined a history of the Earth with little relation to the Biblical account, and proposed a theory of reproduction that ran counter to the prevailing theory ofpre-existence. The early volumes were condemned by the Faculty of Theology at the Sorbonne. Buffon published a retraction, but he continued publishing the offending volumes without any change.
In the course of his examination of the animal world, Buffon noted that different regions have distinct plants and animals despite similar environments, a concept later known as Buffon's Law. This is considered to be the first principle ofbiogeography. He made the suggestion that species may have both "improved" and "degenerated" after dispersing from a center of creation. In volume 14 he argued that all the world'squadrupeds had developed from an original set of just thirty-eight quadrupeds.[13] On this basis, he is sometimes considered a "transformist" and a precursor ofDarwin. He also asserted thatclimate change may have facilitated the worldwide spread of species from their centers of origin. Still, interpreting his ideas on the subject is not simple, for he returned to topics many times in the course of his work.
Volumes 1–12 of a 1774 edition ofSupplement to Histoire Naturelle, Générale et Particulière
Buffon originally held that "the animals common both to the old and new world are smaller in the latter,"[14] ascribing this to environmental conditions. Upon meeting Buffon,Thomas Jefferson attempted "to convince him of his error," noting that "the reindeer could walk under the belly of our moose." Buffon, who was "absolutely unacquainted" with the moose, asked for a specimen.[15] Jefferson dispatched twenty soldiers to theNew Hampshire woods to find a bullmoose for Buffon as proof of the "stature and majesty of American quadrupeds".[16] According to Jefferson, the specimen "convinced Mr. Buffon. He promised in his next volume to set these things right."[17]
InLes époques de la nature (1778) Buffon discussed the origins of theSolar System, speculating that the planets had been created by acomet's collision with the Sun.[18] He also suggested that theEarth originated much earlier than 4004 BC, the date determined by ArchbishopJames Ussher. Basing his figures on the cooling rate ofiron tested at his Laboratory thePetit Fontenet atMontbard, he calculated that the Earth was at least 75,000 years old. Once again, his ideas were condemned by theSorbonne, and once again he issued a retraction to avoid further problems.[19]
Buffon knew of the existence of extinct species asmammoths or Europeanrhinos. And some of his assumptions have inspired current models, such ascontinental drift.
Buffon believed inmonogenism, the concept that all humanity has a single origin, and that physical differences arose from adaptation to environmental factors, including climate and diet. He speculated on the possibility that the first humans were dark-skinned Africans,[20] but did not pinpoint the area of human origin beyond delineating it as "the most temperate climate [that] lies between the 40th and 50th degree of latitude."[21] This geophysical band encompasses portions of Europe, North America, North Africa, Mongolia, and China.
Controversially for a European of his era, Buffon did not believe that Europe was the cradle of human civilization. Instead he stated that Japanese and Chinese culture were "of a very ancient date," and that Europe "only much later received the light from the East…it is thus in the northern countries of Asia that the stem of human knowledge grew."[22]
Buffon thought that skin color could change in a single lifetime, depending on the conditions of climate and diet.[23] Clarence Glacken suggests that "The environmental changes through human agency described by Buffon were those which were familiar and traditional in the history of Western civilization".[24] However, Buffon also challenged Carl Linnaeus' conceptualization of the fixed division of race. In this sense, Buffon expands his perspective on monogenism that associating these dissimilar traits and features into one larger category rather than in a fixed division.This brought to his conceptualization on distinguishing race in a broad and narrow sense[clarification needed]; in a broad sense, race means larger groups of people who inhabit a huge region known as a continent; while in a narrow sense, it denotes equivalently with "nation".[25] With this, he implies his ambivalence in defining race by looking at specific traits to differenciate them but at the same time he rejects the idea of categorizing race in a specific fixed division. Therefore, because Buffon seems to favor in working on gerealization and marking the similarities rather than the difference in the race categorization.
Charles Darwin wrote in his preliminary historical sketch added to the third edition ofOn the Origin of Species: "Passing over ... Buffon, with whose writings I am not familiar". Then, from the fourth edition onwards, he amended this to say that "the first author who in modern times has treated it [evolution] in a scientific spirit was Buffon. But as his opinions fluctuated greatly at different periods, and as he does not enter on the causes or means of the transformation of species, I need not here enter on details".[26] Buffon's work on degeneration, however, was immensely influential on later scholars but was overshadowed by strong moral overtones.[27]
The paradox of Buffon is that, according toErnst Mayr:
He was not an evolutionary biologist, yet he was the father of evolutionism. He was the first person to discuss a large number of evolutionary problems, problems that before Buffon had not been raised by anybody ... he brought them to the attention of the scientific world.
Except for Aristotle and Darwin, no other student of organisms [whole animals and plants] has had as far-reaching an influence.
He brought the idea of evolution into the realm of science. He developed a concept of the "unity of type", a precursor ofcomparative anatomy. More than anyone else, he was responsible for the acceptance of a long-time scale for the history of the earth. He was one of the first to imply that you get inheritance from your parents, in a description based on similarities between elephants and mammoths. And yet, he hindered evolution by his frequent endorsement of the immutability of species. He provided a criterion of species, fertility among members of a species, that was thought impregnable.[2]
Buffon wrote about the concept ofstruggle for existence.[28] He developed a system ofheredity which was similar to Darwin's hypothesis ofpangenesis.[29] Commenting on Buffon's views, Darwin stated, "If Buffon had assumed that his organic molecules had been formed by each separate unit throughout the body, his view and mine would have been very closely similar."[30]
"Buffon asked most all of the questions that science has since been striving to answer," the historianOtis Fellows wrote in 1970.
His glory lies in what he prepared for his successors: bold and seminal views on the common characters of life's origin, laws of geographical distribution, a geological record of the earth's evolution, extinction of old species, the successive appearance of new species, the unity of the human race.[31]
Buffon,Œuvres, ed. S. Schmitt and C. Crémière, Paris: Gallimard, 2007.
Complete works
Vol 1.Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière, avec la description du Cabinet du Roy. Tome I (1749). Texte établi, introduit et annoté par Stéphane Schmitt avec la collaboration de Cédric Crémière, Paris: Honoré Champion, 2007, 1376 p. (ISBN978-2-7453-1601-1)
Vol 2.Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière avec la participation du Cabinet du Roy. Tome II. Texte établi, introduit et annoté par Stéphane Schmitt, avec la collaboration de Cédric Crémière, Paris: Honoré Champion, 2008, 808 p. (ISBN978-2-7453-1729-2)
Vol 3.Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière, avec la description du Cabinet du Roy. Texte établi, introduit et annoté par Stéphane Schmitt avec la collaboration de Cédric Crémière. Tome III (1749), Paris: Honoré Champion, 2009, 776 p. (ISBN978-2-7453-1730-8)
Vol 4.Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière, avec la description du Cabinet du Roi. Texte établi, introduit et annoté par Stéphane Schmitt avec la collaboration de Cédric Crémière. Tome IV (1753), Paris: Honoré Champion, 2010. 1 vol., 864 p. (ISBN978-2-7453-1928-9)
Vol 5.Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière, avec la description du Cabinet du Roi. Texte établi, introduit et annoté par Stéphane Schmitt avec la collaboration de Cédric Crémière. Tome V (1755), Paris: Honoré Champion, 2010. 1 vol., 536 p. (ISBN978-2-7453-2057-5)
Vol 6.Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière, avec la description du Cabinet du Roi. Texte établi, introduit et annoté par Stéphane Schmitt avec la collaboration de Cédric Crémière. Tome VI (1756), Paris: Honoré Champion, 2011. 1 vol., 504 p. (ISBN978-2-7453-2150-3)
Vol. 7.Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière, avec la description du Cabinet du Roi. Texte établi, introduit et annoté par Stéphane Schmitt avec la collaboration de Cédric Crémière. Tome VII (1758), Paris: Honoré Champion, 2011. 1 vol., 544 p. (ISBN978-2-7453-2239-5)
Vol. 8.Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière, avec la description du Cabinet du Roi. Texte établi, introduit et annoté par Stéphane Schmitt avec la collaboration de Cédric Crémière. Tome VIII (1760), Paris: Honoré Champion, 2014, 640 p. (ISBN978-2-7453-2615-7)
Vol. 9.Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière, avec la description du Cabinet du Roi. Texte établi, introduit et annoté par Stéphane Schmitt avec la collaboration de Cédric Crémière. Tome IX (1761), Paris: Honoré Champion, 2016, 720 p. (ISBN978-2-7453-2994-3)
Vol. 10.Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière, avec la description du Cabinet du Roi. Texte établi, introduit et annoté par Stéphane Schmitt avec la collaboration de Cédric Crémière. Tome X (1763), Paris: Honoré Champion, 2017, 814 p. (ISBN978-2-7453-3456-5)
Vol. 11.Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière, avec la description du Cabinet du Roi. Texte établi, introduit et annoté par Stéphane Schmitt avec la collaboration de Cédric Crémière. Tome XI (1764), Paris: Honoré Champion, 2018, 724 p. (ISBN978-2-7453-4730-5)
Vol. 12.Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière, avec la description du Cabinet du Roi. Texte établi, introduit et annoté par Stéphane Schmitt avec la collaboration de Cédric Crémière. Tome XII (1764), Paris: Honoré Champion, 2018, 810 p. (ISBN978-2-7453-4732-9)
Vol. 13.Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière, avec la description du Cabinet du Roi. Texte établi, introduit et annoté par Stéphane Schmitt avec la collaboration de Cédric Crémière. Tome XIII (1765), Paris: Honoré Champion, 2019, 887 p.
Vol. 14.Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière, avec la description du Cabinet du Roi. Texte établi, introduit et annoté par Stéphane Schmitt avec la collaboration de Cédric Crémière. Tome XIV (1768), Paris: Honoré Champion, 2020, 605 p.
Vol. 15.Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière, avec la description du Cabinet du Roi. Texte établi, introduit et annoté par Stéphane Schmitt avec la collaboration de Cédric Crémière. Tome XV (1767), Paris: Honoré Champion, 2021, 764 p.
1774 edition ofHistoire Naturelle, Générale et Particulière
Frontispiece of a 1774 edition ofHistoire Naturelle, Générale et Particulière
Table of contents of a 1774 edition ofHistoire Naturelle, Générale et Particulière
1792 English translation ofBuffon's Natural History
Title page of a 1792 English translation ofBuffon's Natural History
Table of contents page of a 1792 English translation ofBuffon's Natural History
Preface for a 1792 English translation ofBuffon's Natural History
^Bell, Whitfield J., and Charles Greifenstein, Jr. Patriot-Improvers: Biographical Sketches of Members of the American Philosophical Society. 3 vols. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1997, 3:569–572.
^Fellows, Otis E. and Stephen F. Milliken 1972.Buffon. New York: Twayne. pp 149–54
^Roberts, Jason,Every Living Thing (New York, Random House, 2024), p. 263
^Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de",Encyclopedia of Life Sciences. Biographies Plus Illustrated, H.W. Wilson Company, 2001.vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com (Accessed December 26, 2005)
^Roger, Jacques 1989.Buffon: un philosophe au Jardin du Roi Paris: Fayard. pp 434–5
^Jefferson, Thomas,Notes on the State of Virginia (Boston, Wells and Lilly, 1829), p. 47
^Jefferson, Thomas,The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: 1816–1826 (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1899), p. 331
^Bryson, Bill 2004.A Short History of Nearly Everything. New York: Broadway Books. p 81
^Dugatkin, Lee Alan,Mr. Jefferson and the Giant Moose: Natural History in Early America (University of Chicago Press, 2019), p. 99
^Jean Stengers 1974. "Buffon et la Sorbonne" inÉtudes sur le XVIIIe siecle, ed. Roland Mortier and Hervé Hasquin. Brussels: Université de Bruxelles. pp 113–24
^Buffon, George-Louis de,Supplément à l’Histoire Naturelle (Paris, L’Imprimerie Royale, 1775), p 564
^Gould, Stephen J,The Mismeasure of Man (New York, W.W. Norton, 1996), p. 71
^Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc de,Buffon’s Natural History (Barr’s Buffon), (London, J.S. Barr, 1792), p. 213
^Harris, Rise of Anthropological Theory, 2001, p. 86
^Hull, David L. (1988).Science as a Process: An Evolutionary Account of the Social and Conceptual Development of Science. University of Chicago Press. p. 86.ISBN0-226-36051-2 "As Darwin was to discover many years later, Buffon had devised a system of heredity not all that different from his own theory of pangenesis."
