Species

94 Species

Lovejoy notes wryly, “[t]hus the general habit of thinking in terms of species,
as well as the sense of separation of man from the rest of the animal creation, was
beginning to break down in the eighteenth century.” However, in the same century in
which the notion of species had acquired a biological sense distinct from the philo-
sophical and logical tradition, it is highly signicant that this “nominalism” occurs
so early, and remains contentious from that day until this.
It is sometimes held that Bonnet would permit changes to species over time as
germ lines ascended the scale, but in fact, he seemed to waver on this. To under-
stand why, it is important to understand his preformationist doctrine of emboîte-
ment. Preformationism in Bonnet’s view was the theory (he explicitly called it a
hypothesis) that all the seeds needed for future generations were created in the rst
organism of the species by God, and that these seeds were activated at reproduction.
Bonnet held that while conditions, mostly the environment, could produce variation
within a species so great that two conspecics could be more different than they
were from members of other species, nevertheless, the preformed seed would prevent
the species from changing.
Nevertheless, he seems also to say in places that as the higher species were
removed, other species would move into that level of sophistication. Again, though,
this was chosen and preformed at creation by the good God.
It is signicant that Bonnet did not see any gap between humans and apes.
Anderson writes,

The ape is brought so near to man in order to leave no doubt that they touch within

their adjacent space. Thus Bonnet prefaced his remarks on the orang by writing:

“It is here especially that one cannot fail to recognize the graduated progression

and nd verication for the famous Platonic axiom that nature goes nowhere by

leaps.”^210

Donati in 1750 extended this view, says Stresemann, and “therefore conceived

the notion that every being is a knot in the web of nature, and its resemblance to

other forms may be compared to the threads between the knots,”^211 which may

have inuenced Linnaeus’ conception of analogies between orders. Such ideas

recur in the work of Johann Hermann,^212 and Jean Baptiste Robinet,^213 who pro-

duced a three-dimensional lattice in which species were nodes in the lattice.

Stresemann traces this view through Schelling, Spix, Oken, and others through to

William Swainson.^214 Swainson’s view on classication led to a particular account

of species as formal ideas. For him, following the ideas of William Macleay pub-

lished in 1819, all taxa had to be organized in circles that touched (“osculating

circles,” Figure 3.6A),^215 and species were arranged at the rim of these circles

and were analogous to the species in the adjacent circle. Swainson also had an

(^210) Anderson 1976, 46. The quote is from the Contemplation III, chapter XXX [Bonnet 1764].
(^211) Stresemann 1975, 172f.
(^212) Her ma n n 1783.
(^213) Robinet 1768.
(^214) St resema n n 1975, 174 –177.
(^215) Macleay 1819; cf. Hull 1988, 92–96.