Internalism and Laws of Form 309
Furthermore, and in a curious sense, the debate didn't seem so tumultuous,
fierce, or epochal at the moment of its actual unfolding—six meetings, two misses,
and an abrupt, unfinished ending. This incident became central to the later history
of biology largely through machinations and unplanned consequences of its
aftermath, and primarily because a mixture of good luck and a special kind of
insight allowed the dreamer Geoffroy to recoup everything he had lost in
immediate debate to the magisterial Cuvier, and to attain some sort of victory in
retrospect, or at least a "draw" with great advantages.
On the ledger of luck, Geoffroy gained history's greatest and most
conventional form of advantage when Cuvier died in 1832, thus awarding
Geoffroy 12 additional years to reconstruct the incident, unopposed and in his
fashion (a kind of poetic justice in this case, since Cuvier had so adroitly used the
same power with such effect—as in his infamous eloge of Lamarck, see pp. 170-
173). Secondly, Geoffroy obtained the finest free publicity conceivable when
Europe's greatest literary figure, the aged Goethe, expressed such