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Buffon, Species and the Forces of Reproduction

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John H. Eddy
John H. Eddy
John H. Eddy
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Abstract

Throughout the Histoire naturelle Buffon was ever aware of epistemological issues involving the reproduction of species, the only beings in nature. By the 1760s he had come to believe that empirical evidence, the source of all human knowledge, revealed that reproduction was a physical process, involving a common living (minute, active, and lively) matter and material forces, all of which he traced to the foundational force of gravitational attraction.
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ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Journal of the History of Biology (2023) 56:479–493
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-023-09722-y
Abstract
Throughout the Histoire naturelle Buon was ever aware of epistemological issues
involving the reproduction of species, the only beings in nature. By the 1760s he
had come to believe that empirical evidence, the source of all human knowledge,
revealed that reproduction was a physical process, involving a common living (min-
ute, active, and lively) matter and material forces, all of which he traced to the
foundational force of gravitational attraction.
Keywords Buon · Histoire naturelle · Species · Reproduction · Moules
intérieurs · Gravitational attraction
Introduction
In the early volumes (1749-1750s) of the Histoire naturelle, générale et particu-
lière (1749–1783) Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buon (1707–1788) developed
a concept of species that was at the center of his eorts to undermine the principles
of the prevailing eighteenth-century theory of generation. Species, he argued, are not
generations of similar individuals all created at once, nestled one within the other
back to the beginning of time as the followers of the emboîtement version of preexis-
tence assumed; they are, rather, the successive reproductions of prototypes.1
1 Buon’s thirty-six volumes of the Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière (Paris: l’Imprimerle
Royale, 1749–1789) has four large divisions: Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière, avec la descrip-
tion du cabinet du Roi (15 volumes, 1749–1767), Histoire naturelle des oiseaux (9 volumes, 1770–1783),
Supplément à l’Histoire naturelle (7 volumes, 1774–1784), and the Histoire naturelle des minéraux (5
volumes, 1783–1788). References will be cited by the title of the division, the division volume number,
and the page number. Abbreviations for the dierent divisions of the Histoire naturelle are as follows: HN
Accepted: 13 July 2023 / Published online: 27 July 2023
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2023
Buffon, Species and the Forces of Reproduction
John H.Eddy1
John H. Eddy
jheddyjr@gmail.com
1 Independent Scholar, Colorado Springs, CO, USA
1 3
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