Georges-Louis Leclerc: biography and contributions of this naturalist

When we talk about evolutionism, most people come to mind the face of Charles Darwin and, to a lesser extent, that of Lamarck. The two of them are the most remarkable figures in the beginnings of evolutionism, but being fair they are not the precursors.

There have been others who have put forward 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, Comte de Buffon. Next we are going to learn about his life and his work, in addition to delving into 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.

• Related article: "The 10 branches of Biology: their objectives and characteristics"

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 work in 36 volumes "Histoire naturelle", in addition to other volumes made posthumously. It is said that his approach influenced Diderot's Encyclopedia and that his ideas on the transformation of species were revealing to subsequent generations of naturalists, especially Georges Cuvier, Jean Baptiste Lamarck, and Charles Darwin.

Leclerc's childhood and adolescence

Georges Louis Leclerc, Earl of 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 an uncle of his mother Georges Blaisot. In 1714 Blaisot died childless, leaving a generous fortune to Georges-Louis Leclerc when he was only seven years old. Benjamin Leclerc decided to buy a farm containing the neighboring town of Buffon and moved with his family to Dijon in 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 dedicating himself to 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 costly year-long journey through the southern half of France and some parts of Italy.

There are many rumors about what he did around this time, hearsay from that time that the young Georges-Louis Leclerc spent it between duels and secret trips to England. In 1732, after the death of his mother and before his father's impending remarriage, Georges separated from Kingston and returned to Dijon to receive his inheritance.

The "de Buffon" thing he had put on his journey with the Duke of Kingston; he bought back the Buffon villa that his father had previously sold. With a fortune of about 80,000 pounds, Georges-Louis Leclerc traveled to Paris to make a place in the science of the moment, dedicating himself first to mathematics and mechanics, and also with the intention of increasing his fortune.

• You may be interested in: "Theodosius Dobzhansky: biography and contributions of this Ukrainian geneticist"

First scientific works

In 1732 he moved to Paris. In the French capital he would have the opportunity to meet Voltaire himself and other notable intellectuals of the Enlightenment. His first known work was a mathematician entitled "Sur le jeu de franc-carreau", in which he introduced differential and integral calculus applied to probability theory.

In fact, as a result of this work, he named after him a mathematical concept: the Buffon needle. In 1734 he was admitted by the French Academy of Sciences. During this period he met the Swiss mathematician Gabriel Cramer.

• Related article: "Gregor Mendel: Biography of the Father of Modern Genetics"

Consolidation of your 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, a position that Leclerc held until the end of his life. Georges-Louis Leclerc stood out for transforming this garden into one of the largest research centers of the moment. 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, was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society. In his “Discours sur le style” (“Speech of the style”), delivered before the members of the Académie Française he said:

"Writing well consists of thinking, feeling and expressing yourself 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 the critical cravings of his detractors, 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 an impoverished noble family from Burgundy. His second child, born in 1764, survived infancy and, in 1769, his wife died.

• You may be interested in: "The theory of biological evolution: what it is and what it explains"

Last years of life

In 1772 Leclerc fell seriously ill. He made his son, who was only 8 years old at the time, promise to succeed him as director of the Jardin du Roi, a promise that became clearly unworkable. The king, Louis XV of France, elevated Buffon's estates in Burgundy to county status, making him and his son full-fledged earls.

Georges-Louis Leclerc died on April 16, 1788, in Paris. He was buried in a chapel of the Sainte-Urse Montbard church. During the French Revolution (1789-1799) his grave was desecrated and the lead covering the coffin was torn off to make bullets. His heart was initially saved, and was kept by Suzanne Necker, Jacques Necker's wife, but it was eventually lost. What is preserved of Mr. Leclerc is his cerebellum, kept at the base of the statue in his honor in 1776, in the Museum of Natural History in Paris.

Main scientific contributions of Georges-Louis Leclerc

One of Buffon's most notable works is his "Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière" written since 1749, consisting of 36 original volumes plus additional additional ones made from notes by Leclerc found after his death.

Originally, in this work it was planned to talk about the three kingdoms of nature that at that time were believed to exist: animal, vegetable and mineral. However, in the end these volumes were limited to covering the animal and mineral kingdom, and the animals he spoke of were mostly birds and quadrupeds.

Despite not being the most detailed of the moment, his work was written in such a brilliant style that all educated person from Europe got some specimen and had the collaboration of great characters of his weather. Among the people who helped him in his publication are Louis-Jean-Marie Daubenton, Philibert Guéneau de Montbeillard and Gabriel-Léopold Bexon. Leclerc's "Histoire naturelle" was translated into many languages, making it one of the most widely read authors of his time, rivaling illustrious contemporary figures such as Montesquieu, Rousseau and Voltaire.

In the first volumes of his Histoire naturelle, criticized Carl von Linné's taxonomic approach to natural history, and highlighted a history of the Earth with little relation 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 later became known as Buffon's Law., which is considered as the first principle of biogeography. Leclerc made the suggestion that the species had "improved" or "worsened" since they dispersed from the center of creation.

In its volume 14 He argues that all quadrupeds on Earth have developed from an original set of quadrupeds made up of some 38 species. Based on this statement, he is considered by many to be a "transformista", a defender 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 claimed 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 stenches of the swamps and dense forests of the American continent.

These claims were so controversial that they irritated Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, who ordered twenty soldiers that they went to the forests of New Hampshire to hunt a moose to send to Leclerc as proof of the grandiose size and majesty of the quadrupeds American people.

In his work "Les époques de la nature" (1778), Georges-Louis Leclerc talks about the origins of the Solar System, and speculates that the planets were created from the collision of a comet with the Sun. Too he suggested that the Earth originated long before 4004 BC. 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 claim that he made that he was again sentenced by the Sorbonne and had to make him recant to avoid problems greater. Today we know that it was wrong, as the age of the Earth is believed to be 4.543 billion years.

Studies on races

Georges-Louis Leclerc and Johann Blumenbach firmly believed in monogenism, the idea that all races had the same and unique 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 descendants, influenced by environmental factors such as the sun or the diet. They thought that this "degeneration" could be reversed if the favorable environmental conditions were given to "correct" the defects of the other races.

Buffon and Blumenbach related the high pigmentation of people living in tropical settings not to the sun itself, but to heat. They also believed that the cold wind caused the skin to have an aleonated appearance, as was the case with the Inuit peoples. They thought that the relatively white skin of the Chinese was that they lived in villages with houses well protected from environmental conditions. Buffon indicated that diet and lifestyle could also contribute to races "degenerating" and distinguishing themselves from the original Caucasian race.

Buffon he was in favor of the hypothesis that the origin of the human species was in Asia, considering that the place of appearance of our species for the first time was in an area with high temperatures. Believing that good weather conditions make healthy humans grow, he hypothesized that the most logical place had to be in Asia, probably in the Caspian Sea area.

The relevance of him in modern Biology

With the chiaroscuro of him, the figure of Georges-Louis Leclerc has great relevance in modern biology as it comes quite close to the idea that species change over time. In fact, Charles Darwin himself commented in his well-known book "The Origin of Species", specifically from the fourth edition, that Buffon was the first author in modern times to have treated evolution from 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 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 before Buffon's appearance had not occurred to anyone. He brought the idea of ​​evolution into the field of science, without even using that word.

Leclerc proposed the concept of "unit of type", a precursor idea of ​​comparative anatomy. He also stands out for rejecting the age of the biblical Earth and proposing a greater antiquity for the planet. He highlights his idea of ​​the "struggle for existence" similar to the struggle for survival and Darwinian natural selection.