Species

Species and the Birth of Modern Science 85

His pupil and later associate was the famous early evolutionist Lamarck, but Buffon
was not what we would understand to be an evolutionist himself.
Buffon strongly disapproved of Linnaeus’ binomial system and particularly of his
use of sexual characters in discriminating plants. As a result, he and his followers
were often in argument and political maneuverings against the Linnaeans. He was the
primary author of the 44-volume Natural history, with particular reference to the
Cabinet of the King (Histoire naturelle^167 ) of which he issued 36 volumes, and in
the course of this stylistically elegant but often confusing and sometimes contradic-
tory series he made a number of passing comments regarding species, which inu-
enced many later ideas on the subject.
Buffon was a relatively standard adherent to the Great Chain—he adopted the
“law of continuity” (lex continua) of Leibniz and his followers, but he did not nec-
essarily accept the Principle of Plenitude, and so did not expect that every possible
kind of species would necessarily exist. He wrote that it was an error in metaphysics
trying to nd a natural denition of species.

The error consists in a failure to understand nature’s processes (marche), which always

take place by gradations (nuances). ... It is possible to descend by almost insensible

degrees from the most perfect creature to the most formless matter. ... These imper-

ceptible shadings are the great work of nature; they are to be found not only in the sizes

and forms, but also in the movements, the generations and the successions of every

species. ... [Thus] nature, proceeding by unknown gradations, cannot wholly lend her-

self to these divisions [into genera and species]. ... There will be found a great number

of intermediate species, and of objects belonging half in one class and half in another.

Objects of this sort, to which it is impossible to assign a place, necessarily render vain

the attempt at a universal system. ...

In general, the more one increases the number of one’s divisions, in the case of the

products of nature, the nearer one comes to the truth; since in reality individuals alone

exist in nature.^168

In his opinion, the boundaries between species were arbitrarily drawn—species

grade into each other. However, this was not a statement about transmutation. He

merely thought that the variation between species was continuous, not that species

continuously arose from prior species. That idea was left to his student Lamarck to

elaborate (although Darwin’s grandfather Erasmus independently trumped Lamarck

by several years with a similar approach). However, Buffon did allow that some

change was possible. He thought that there were “types” of organisms roughly equiv-

alent to Linnaeus’ genera. The original type was the “true” form, and various species

could degrade from that type to become a kind of “monster.” Again, the inuence

of Aristotle is apparent, but there were limits to the sort of change species could

undergo.

Two animals are of the same species, he wrote in the second volume of the

Histoire naturelle,

(^167) Bu f fon 1749 –1789. See Sloan 1979, Eddy 1994, Roger 1997.
(^168) Histoire naturelle, Tome I (1749, 12, 13, 20, 38) quoted in Lovejoy 1936, 230. For a complete transla-
tion of the “Premiere Discours,” see Lyon 1976.