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18Th Century Natural History the Enlightenment, Linnaeus, and Buffon

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18Th Century Natural History the Enlightenment, Linnaeus, and Buffon 18th Century Natural History The Enlightenment, Linnaeus, and Buffon Waseda University, SILS, History of Modern Earth and Life Sciences The European Enlightenment d’Alembert (1717–1783): “Our century is called … the century of philosophy par excellence… The discovery and application of a new method of philosophizing, the kind of enthusiasm which accompanies discoveries, a certain exaltation of ideas, which the spectacle of the universe produces in us – all these causes have brought about a lively fermentation of minds, spreading through nature in all directions like a river which has burst its dams.” When Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) was asked if he believed he and his contemporaries were living in an enlightened age, replied: “No, we are living in an age of enlightenment.” 18th Century Natural History 1 / 40 Reason and nature The Enlightenment lionized the mathematical sciences – especially as practice by Newton, Leibniz and those who followed their model – and placed a special emphasis on reason. It was widely believed that the model of rational mechanics could be used to improve all of the sciences and human society Enlightenment thinkers and philosophes believed that laws could be found in many areas of the natural and social world, and that finding and understanding these laws was the true goal of philosophy. They placed a high value on studies of the natural world. An important result of this approach was that it made natural history – studies of plants and animals, of rocks and geological formations – into a popular topic among the upper classes. 18th Century Natural History 2 / 40 Dictionnaire raisonné de sciences, des arts et des métiers Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire Raisonné de Sciences, des Arts et des Métiers First published 1751–1766, with later supplements and many translations, etc. Edited by Diderot and to a lesser extent d’Alembert. 35 volumes, 71,818 articles, 3,129 illustrations. The contributors were many of the most important scholars, thinkers and scientists in France. (Louis de Jaucourt wrote 17,266 articles.) 18th Century Natural History 3 / 40 The Goal of l’Encyclopédie Progress was one of the fundamental ideals of the Enlightenment, insofar as it assumed the perfectibility of society and of humankind through a rational, scientific improvement of material culture. Diderot, l’Encyclopédie, Preface (1751) “… to collect all knowledge scattered over the face of the earth, to present its general outlines and structures to the men with whom we live, and to transmit this to those who will come after us, so that the work of the past centuries may be useful to the following centuries, that our children, by becoming more educated, may at the same time become more virtuous and happier, and that we may not die without having deserved well of the human race.” 18th Century Natural History 4 / 40 The Context of l’Encyclopédie The work was a sort of manifesto of the French Enlightenment. It was meant to organize all knowledge and make it available to all people. It presented an optimistic account of the role of science and scientific practitioners in the development of history – based on the ideal of progress. It sought to organize all of human knowledge into a single, hierarchical system – such that each discipline would find its natural place in this system. 18th Century Natural History 5 / 40 Natural History in l’Encyclopédie Here we see the divisions of the “historical sciences” dealing with nature under the branch of “memory.” Under “celestial history” we see, grouped together, “history of minerals,” “history of plants,” and “history of animals.” These are purely descriptive sciences, concerned with detailing the things that exist in the natural world. Detail of the contents, natural history Under these we see differences, or divergences. 18th Century Natural History 6 / 40 The Earth and Life Sciences in l’Encyclopédie Here we see the divisions of the earth and life sciences under the branch of “reason.” Botany and zoology are fundamental categories and that is nothing that corresponds to our biology. Zoology is in fact a different science from what we mean by that term today. Geology finds itself between “aerology” and “hydrology,” as a division of cosmology. Detail of the contents, the physical The entire division of sciences knowledge is different from ours. 18th Century Natural History 7 / 40 18th Century Natural History 8 / 40 18th Century Natural History 9 / 40 18th Century Natural History 10 / 40 18th Century Natural History 11 / 40 18th Century Natural History 12 / 40 18th Century Natural History 13 / 40 18th Century Natural History 14 / 40 18th Century Natural History 15 / 40 18th Century Natural History 16 / 40 Ideas about generation before the 18th century There was a long history of interest in generation before the 17th century. For example, Aristotle (4th c. BCE) and William Harvey (1578–1657) had studied the development of chick embryos and decided that they demonstrate true growth and the spontaneous production of form. On the other hand, Jan Swammerdam (1637–1680) had shown that insect larva, pupa and imago can exist simultaneously, nested inside each other. He had found frogs legs folded up inside young tadpoles. From these findings, he concluded the embryo always contains the full structure of the adult organism. Indeed, depending on what model organism different researchers used, they seemed to come to different conclusions about the nature of generation. 18th Century Natural History 17 / 40 Epigenesis and Preformation Throughout the 18th century, naturalists were engaged in an ongoing debate about whether generation and development were primarily the result of epigenesis or preformation. Epigenesis This was the claim that generation and development are the result of true grown through the production of new forms – or rather forms that are not already present in the originating matter. Preformation This was the position that the final form of the organism was already present in some way in the original matter, the germ – that is, either the sperm or the egg, or perhaps both. 18th Century Natural History 18 / 40 Leeuwenhoek and the animaculists Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (1632 - 1723), built his own single lens microscopes and studied many different microscopic phenomena. Following the suggestion of a colleague, he began to study sperm under the microscope – his own, and that of some 30 other animals. He concluded that sperm was filled with “animalcules” or tiny “worms,” and it was these worms that reached the uterus and began the process of germination. The animaculists believed that the organism was preformed in the sperm, and some believed that all future generations were already present – panspermism. 18th Century Natural History 19 / 40 Trembley’s polyps In the 1740s, Abraham Trembley (1710–1784) published a number of works on the hydra, or fresh-water polyp. He observed it catching prey with tendrils and moving it to a central cavity – which lead him to believe the hydra is an animal. He cut hydra in half, into several pieces, turned them inside out, and found that they always generated complete organisms. It was difficult for naturalists to understand what was controlling this growth, and, in particular, what was the locus of this control. 18th Century Natural History 20 / 40 Parthenogenesis and ovum preformationists Charles Bonnet (1720–1793) observed that in aphids the females hatched and gave birth without fertilization. He separated the females and males and was able to raise 30 generations from a pure female line. Bonnet, Contemplation de la nature (1764): “I understand by the word ‘germ’ every pre-ordination, every preformation of parts capable by itself of determining the existence of a plant or animal.” Bonnet proposed that the first female of each species contained in her ovaries all future members of her line. Parthenogenesis A natural form of asexual reproduction in which growth and development of embryos occur from an ovum without fertilization. 18th Century Natural History 21 / 40 Spallanzani’s frogs Lazaro Spallanzani (1729–1799) – working on the amphibians such as frogs for his model system – became the world’s foremost expert on sperm. By making tiny taffeta pants for male frogs, and letting them mate normally, he was able to demonstrate that there must be some sort of mixture of the germ cells of both male and female frogs to produce growth – since fertilization happens outside the female’s body. He then put sperm and eggs near each other in glass jars to rule out action at a distance – aura seminalis. He then performed artificial insemination, by bringing the sperm into contact with the eggs. In the end, however, he decided that the fermentation was due to contact between the seminal fluid and the egg – claiming that the “worms” in the semen were a parasite. 18th Century Natural History 22 / 40 Wolff’s growth and embriogenesis Caspar Wolff (1734–1794) studied the growth and development of embryos, intestinal tissues, and plants. Because microscopy was still not able to make detailed observational studies of complex tissue, he settled on plants as his model system. He observed that structure in plants appears to be produced spontaneously and he could not find any evidence for a miniature plan, or structure, in the seed that developed into the mature plant. Wolff, “De formatione intestinarum,” 1768: “We may conclude that the organs of the body have not always existed, but have been formed successively – no matter how this formation has been brought about. I do not say that it has been brought about by a fortuitous combination of particles, a kind of fermentation, through mechanical causes, through the the activity of the soul, but only that it has been brought about.” 18th Century Natural History 23 / 40 Wolff on plant growth and development Plant organs appear progressively from amorphous masses of tissue.
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