[monochrom] Buffon, the Enlightenment sensation

[das ende der nahrungskette]

The finest pen of his age, a giant of natural 
history, geometry and art: Buffon deserves to be restored.

This year marked the tercentenary of the birth of 
two of the greatest naturalists of the eighteenth 
century – the Swede Carl Linnaeus (1707–78) and 
the Frenchman Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte de 
Buffon (1707–88). In April, Linnaeus’s 300th 
birthday was celebrated in the scientific 
journals, museums put on special exhibits, 
newspapers published articles about his 
influence. But for Buffon’s birthday, in 
September, there were no candles on the cake. 
Even in France, not much fuss was made – a 
conference in Dijon, a few displays at the Muséum 
national d’Histoire naturelle, a flurry of publishing; and that was it.

Fame is relative – Buffon has a crater on the 
Moon named after him, Linnaeus does not – but 
while the name of the Swedish thinker should 
provoke a glimmer of recognition in most biology 
students, that of Buffon is more likely to 
conjure up the athletic Italian goalkeeper than 
the father of French natural history. This is 
unfortunate, as Buffon was one of the great 
figures of biology, and one of the publishing 
sensations of the Enlightenment. Buffon’s 
ambition was astonishing: he wanted to summarize 
all human knowledge about the natural world, 
under the title L’Histoire naturelle, which began 
to appear in 1749. Not surprisingly, he did not 
complete this mammoth exercise – he managed to 
publish "only" thirty-six volumes in the space of 
thirty-nine years, limiting his focus to mammals, 
birds and minerals, while a further eight volumes appeared after his death.

<http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article3073600.ece>Link 


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Posted By johannes to 
<http://www.monochrom.at/english/2008/03/buffon-enlightenment-sensation.htm>monochrom 
at 3/21/2008 05:56:00 PM