Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon

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Portrait of François-Hubert Drouais (1727–1775)signature

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (born September 7, 1707 in Montbard , † April 16, 1788 in Paris ) was a French naturalist in the Age of Enlightenment . Its official botanical author abbreviation is " Buffon ".

Live and act

Origin and education

Georges-Louis Leclerc, later Comte de Buffon, was the first of the five children of Benjamin-François Leclerc (1683–1775) and his first wife Anne-Christine Marlin (1681–1731). His father worked as a lawyer for the Parliament of Burgundy and was responsible for collecting the salt tax . For the wedding, his mother received a sumptuous trousseau from her childless uncle Georges-Louis Blaisot († 1714), who had acquired his fortune as a tax collector for the Duke of Savoy, Viktor Amadeus II . After the death of Blaisot's widow in 1717, the young Buffon inherited the fortune of his godfather. With this money, his father acquired the Seigneurie of Buffon , a small village not far from Montbard , as well as the lordship over the estate of Montbard. In 1720 Buffon's father also bought the office of advisor to the Parliament of Burgundy.

The family had already moved to Dijon in 1717 . Here Buffon received his first training from 1717 to 1723 at the Collège des Godrans , led by the Jesuits , and made friends with the later Abbé Le Blanc (1707–1781). His achievements were not particularly outstanding. However, he developed a keen interest in mathematics. Buffon read Euclid's writings and studied the Marquis de l'Hospitals textbook on differential calculus , published in 1696 . After graduating from school, Buffon enrolled in the law faculty of the recently founded University of Dijon in 1723 . Here he met his former classmate Charles de Brosses again and got to know Gilles-Germain Richard de Ruffey (1706–1794). Buffon had a lifelong friendship with both of them. The friends were given access to the circle of President Jean Bouhier , who invited to his extensive library once a week. The humanist Bouhier was enthusiastic about the philosophical ideas of John Locke and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz . It was probably Bouhier who encouraged Buffon to take an interest in natural science and philosophy.

Buffon decided to turn completely to science. His mathematical knowledge was already at the research level of his time. He himself later stated that he discovered the binomial theorem generalized by Isaac Newton at this time . In 1727 Buffon's correspondence began with the Geneva mathematics professor Gabriel Cramer . Charles-Catherine Loppin de Gemeaux (1714–1805) put him in contact with Cramer . In 1728 Buffon moved to Angers to continue his studies there. The reasons for his choice are unclear. Père de Landreville, a mathematics professor at the College de l'Oratoire, may have played a decisive role. In Angers he studied mathematics, botanized and took various medicine courses. Here he read Newton's writings and Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle's Elements de la geometry de l 'infini from 1727. For reasons unknown, Buffon was involved in a duel as a result of which he was forced to leave Angers in October 1730 and return to Dijon.

On November 3, 1730 Buffon broke with Evelyn Pierrepont (1711-1773), the second Duke of Kingston-upon-Hull, and his teacher Nathan Hickman (around 1695-1746) on an extensive journey through southern France and Italy. It initially led via Nantes , Bordeaux , Toulouse and Montpellier to Lyon , which they reached in May 1731. Buffon had to interrupt the trip because his mother fell ill; she died on August 1, 1731. In October 1731 Buffon was in Geneva and was able to speak to Cramer, who introduced him to the Saint Petersburg paradox . In Geneva he met his traveling companions again. The further journey together led via Turin , Milan , Genoa , Pisa , Florence and ended in Rome . After Shrove Tuesday 1732 Buffon returned to his hometown.

After the death of Buffon's mother, his father married on December 30, 1732 the much younger Antoinette Nadault (1709-1770). Buffon forced his father to surrender the fortune he had inherited from Uncle Blaisot. It is not known whether this resulted in a legal dispute. The relationship with his father remained tense for a long time.

Admission to the Académie des Sciences

In July 1732 Buffon settled in the Parisian district of Faubourg Saint-Germain , today part of the 7th arrondissement , with Gilles-François Boulduc (1675–1741), a pharmacist of King Louis XV. Here he wanted to advance his admission to the Académie des Sciences . Buffon wrote a treatise entitled Mémoire sur le jeu du franc-carreau (Memorandum on the Franc-Carreau game), in which he applied differential calculus to probability calculus and initiated the study of geometric probabilities . In this paper, which he submitted to the Academy for assessment, he also introduced the “ needle problem ” that was later named after him . Émilie du Châtelet and Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis submitted a very benevolent opinion on April 25, 1733. Châtelet read Buffon's paper at the next meeting of the Académie des Sciences .

Buffon had already returned to Montbard, where he wanted to establish his main residence. He had his modest birthplace demolished, bought a few neighboring buildings and had an extensive mansion built. On the surrounding hilltop he had some of the medieval fortifications torn down. In their place an extensive, terraced park with a menagerie , a laboratory and a work place was created. Jean-Frédéric Phélypeaux, comte de Maurepas , State Secretary for the Royal Household and the Navy, had already approached the Academy in 1731 with a request to develop methods that could improve the strength and longevity of the wood used in shipbuilding. However, the Academy did not have the resources to carry out the necessary investigations. Buffon, who owned the forests near Montbard, began experiments in this area in May 1733.

In the fall of 1733 Buffon was back in Paris. The Academy invited him to read a paper on geometry on November 25th, which eventually dealt with a problem of mechanics. On December 12, 1733 it was announced that the position of Associé astronome was to be filled in the Académie des sciences . The academy suggested Giovanni Domenico Maraldi , who was already Adjoint mécanicien , and Buffon for the vacant position. The king decided that Maraldi should get the position and at the same time Jean-Paul Grandjean de Fouchy (1707–1788) should take his old position. This vacated the position of Adjoint mécanicien , for which Buffon, among others, was proposed on December 23. On January 9, 1734 Buffon had achieved his goal of admission to the Académie des Sciences .

Further career

1739 he was by King Louis XV. appointed director of the Royal Botanical Garden, today Jardin des Plantes , in Paris and later elevated to the rank of count.

After Buffon became a member of the Académie des sciences in 1734, he also became a member of the Académie française in 1753 . With his inaugural address Discours sur le style , he also made a name for himself as a literary theorist and founded his own theory of style , which aptly characterized the spirit of the Ancien Régime . The phrase Le style est l'homme même (“The style is the person himself”) has become famous . This sentence was paraphrased by other authors in Latin as Stilo primus, doctrina ultimus ("First comes the style, then the teaching" or, ironically, according to Jean Paul, "Well-being instead of truth"), with which his scientific habitus should be opposed to that of Linnaeus . The inaugural address is considered to be one of the best ever given at the Académie and has appeared in more than 60 editions.

Buffon also made a different contribution: in 1768, not far from Montbard, he had the Forges de Buffon built , one of the most efficient steel works of its time. For the first time in the area, the three stages of iron making were carried out in the same place:

  • In the blast furnace which found reduction of iron ore held in a melting process at 1200 ° C.
  • In the middle workshop, the brittle pig iron was refined to obtain steel .
  • In the last workshop, the iron bars were transformed into semi-finished products thanks to a water-powered hammer .

On September 21, 1752 Buffon married Marie-Françoise de Saint-Belin-Malain (1732–1769). With her he had the daughter Marie-Henriette (1758-1759) and the son Georges Louis Marie (1764-1794), who was guillotined on June 10, 1794 .

In 1782 Buffon was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Buffon's scientific research

Biological Research - Natural History

Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis helped to make Newtonian thinking better known in France, but he also clearly saw the limits of simple Newtonian paradigms for chemistry and especially for biology. For this reason he included the ideas of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in his conceptual construct. It was through him and Émilie du Châtelet that Buffon was also inspired by Leibniz's ideas.

For Buffon nature always remains the same, but changes in its substantial order and form always produce new formations. In 1742 Buffon succeeded in winning over the trained physician Louis Jean-Marie Daubenton , who also came from Montbard, to work on his Histoire naturelle générale et particulière . Buffon found in him a skilled taxidermist for his anatomical studies. In 1745 he became an overseer and declarer, garde-demonstrateur at the natural history cabinet in Paris, Cabinet du roi , later the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle .

The nose horn . Engraving from Buffon, Allgemeine Historie der Natur . Holle: Leipzig 1767; Sixth part, first volume, plate VII, p. 110 f. The picture shows the rhinoceros Clara , who became famous in Europe in the 18th century .

Buffon's main work is the general and special history of nature ( Histoire naturelle générale et particulière ), which he wrote in collaboration with Louis Jean-Marie Daubenton and which should originally comprise fifty volumes. From 1749 until his death in 1788, 36 volumes were published. A further eight volumes have been published under the direction of the Comte de Lacépède Bernard Germain Lacépède . In France, the work, which has been translated into many languages, earned its author great scientific recognition and popularity. A German edition ( Allgemeine Historie der Natur ), with a foreword by Albrecht von Haller , appeared from 1752 by Grund and Holle in Hamburg, from 1766 also by Holle in Leipzig. Joachim Pauli obtained a Berlin edition from 1771 onwards. The Histoire naturelle had been published by Buffon as a continuous edition of individual articles and volumes, the compilation of which differs in the systematics in the German editions. The Hamburg / Leipzig edition has a different structure than the Berlin edition.

Contrary to the opinion held by his contemporary Carl von Linné that all of nature can be captured by means of a taxonomy , Buffon took the view that nature was too diverse and too rich to adapt to such a strict framework. Buffon's scientific work was based on the methods of observation and experiment . He tried to explain the origin of living beings through spontaneous generation from the smallest particles and their development as a result of climatic changes, and countered Linnaeus' hierarchical system with the idea of ​​an evolutionary ladder. Buffon based his theory through comparative anatomical studies. He explained useless body parts by the regression of previously useful parts of an ancestor. Buffon believed that all members of a family of species descended from the same ancestor, from whom some perfected and others degenerated. Buffon, for example, saw an incomplete or regressive human being in a monkey .

Buffon did not carry out all the work alone, rather he had a number of partners, such as Philippe Guéneau de Montbeillard , Barthélemy Faujas de Saint-Fond , Gabriel Bexon and Charles-Nicolas-Sigisbert Sonnini de Manoncourt (1751-1812).

Development of life

Buffon's stepladder idea had a very great influence on the natural sciences of his time and continued into the 19th century. (The step ladder idea, scala naturae , is a Neoplatonic idea that goes back much further and that became very popular especially through Leibniz in the 18th century, see: Arthur O. Lovejoy : The Great Chain of Beings .) It is of great importance that Buffon assumed long periods of time for the gradual development of living things . He divided the development of the earth into seven epochs . Based on the thesis that the earth was formed by the collision of a comet with the sun and that the first life developed in the sea , Buffon assumed the earth's age to be 75,000 years. To do this, he carried out experiments with balls made of iron and other materials of different volumes, heated them and measured the cooling time (published in the Supplément à l'histoire naturelle 1774). With this he dared, if not the first, to exceed the limit of 6000 years calculated by theologians on the basis of biblical information. Buffon tried to avoid the resistance caused by his theses by changing particularly controversial views.

He explained his theories and his methodology of natural research in detail in the first three volumes of his Histoire naturelle . The main part of the work consists of descriptions of the individual animal and plant species. The skeletal anatomy of the animals was also presented for the first time, creating the basis for comparative anatomy .

Buffon went down in French literary history. His Discours du style and excerpts from the Histoire naturelle were to be found in reading books for high schools for a long time.

Thesis of the degeneration of America

In the Histoire Naturelle , Buffon took the view on America that all things on the continent America would "shrink and wither under a barren sky and on barren land". He saw animals and plants, who had never set foot on the continent himself, smaller and weaker in the New World. Since Buffon's work was widespread, he achieved that the cultural and political strength and superiority of the old world and the inferiority of the new world were justified in a figurative sense solely with the size of the living beings, which he used as the only standard. The degeneration thesis challenged the resistance of Thomas Jefferson , who for years defied Buffon's views and even sent an expedition into the New Hampshire forests to find an elk powerful enough to refute Buffon's statements. Alexander von Humboldt also opposed Buffon when it came to South America, and stated with reference to the beauty and strength of the indigenous people of the Orinoco that Buffon had judged some things “completely wrong”. Humboldt was of the opinion that Buffon's degeneration theory was only so popular “because it flattered the vanity of Europeans”. Buffon later admitted his mistake.

The geological-cosmological considerations

As early as 1745, de Buffon had claimed that the earth was formed when a comet collided with the sun.

It was the section of the second discours of the Histoire Naturelle from 1749, in which he explained his thoughts on the origin of the earth, preuves de la théorie de la terre . However, in 1779 he assumed an earth age of at least 75,000 to 80,000 years. This represents the first known dating within modern science that no longer assumed the six thousand years calculated from the Bible. Because of the objection of the clergy at the Sorbonne , Buffon did not publish his writings.

First, Buffon was a staunch Neptunist through the teachings of Abraham Gottlob Werner , which is clear in his General Natural History of 1746. Buffon saw the ocean currents under the sea as the main reason for the changes in land masses. Under the influence of the earth's rotation and currents, Buffon assumed, the sediments on the sea floor would pile up to form huge mountain ranges. These mountains rose to the surface and became mainland when masses of water penetrated the large, occasionally collapsing cavities in the earth's crust and the sea level fell as a result.

Only later in his Epoque de la nature (1778) did he come to a cautious approach to the considerations of the Plutonists . On the basis of geological facts and evidence, he makes reflections on the structure of the earth. Time and again in the “epochs of nature” there is a description of “peculiar warmth”. Buffon said that this is independent of solar radiation, because it would only be able to penetrate a maximum of 15 to 20 feet into the earth's surface. He therefore assumed that the “peculiar warmth” comes from the interior of the earth, that rocks are initially liquid before they crystallize or solidify. As proof of the “peculiar warmth” he cited the observations of miners who reported different underground pit temperatures, what is now known as the geothermal depth.

Honors

Carl von Linné named the genus Bufonia of the carnation family (Caryophyllaceae) in his honor . Buffonia Adans. (1763), Buffona Cothen. (1790) and Buffonea W.DJKoch (1836) are further (invalid) spellings of the scientific name of the genus.

The lunar crater Buffon and the asteroid (7420) Buffon were also named after him. The same applies to the Buffon Islands in Antarctica.

Fonts (selection)

General natural history

French original editions
  • Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière . Imprimerie Royale, later Plassan, Paris 1749–1804, 44 volumes in quart format
    • Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière, avec la description du Cabinet du Roy . 15 volumes, Imprimerie Royale, Paris 1749–1767 (by Buffon and Daubenton).
    • Histoire naturelle des oiseaux . 9 volumes, Imprimerie Royale, Paris 1770–1783 (by Buffon, Guéneau de Montbeillard and Abbé Bexon). doi : 10.3931 / e-rara-7296
    • Supplément à l'Histoire naturelle . 7 volumes, Imprimerie Royale, Paris 1774–1789 (by Buffon).
    • Histoire naturelle des minéraux (et traité de l'aimant) . 5 volumes, Imprimerie Royale, Paris 1783–1788 (by Buffon).
    • Histoire des quadrupèdes ovipares et des serpents . 2 volumes, Hôtel de Thou, Paris 1788–1789 (by Lacépède).
    • Histoire naturelle des poissons . 5 volumes, Plassan, Paris 1798–1803 (by Lacépède).
    • Histoire naturelle des cétacés . 1 volume, Plassan, Paris 1804 (by Lacépède).
Modern French edition
  • Stéphane Schmitt, Cédric Crémière (ed.): Oeuvres Complètes . 36 volumes (planned), Honoré Champion, 2007–
    • Volume 1: Histoire naturelle, generale et particulière, avec la description du cabinet du Roy . 2007, ISBN 978-2-7453-1601-1 .
    • Volume 2: Histoire naturelle, generale et particulière, avec la description du cabinet du Roy . 2008, ISBN 978-2-7453-1729-2 .
    • Volume 3: Histoire naturelle, generale et particulière, avec la description du cabinet du Roy . 2009, ISBN 978-2-7453-1730-8 .
    • Volume 4: Histoire naturelle, generale et particulière, avec la description du cabinet du Roi . 2010, ISBN 978-2-7453-1928-9 .
    • Volume 5: Histoire naturelle, generale et particulière, avec la description du cabinet du Roi . 2010, ISBN 978-2-7453-2057-5 .
    • Volume 6: Histoire Naturelle, generale et particulière, avec la Description du Cabinet du Roi . 2011, ISBN 978-2-7453-2150-3 .
    • Volume 7: Histoire Naturelle, generale et particulière, avec la Description du Cabinet du Roi . 2011, ISBN 978-2-7453-2239-5 .
German translations
  • General history of nature dealt with according to all its particular parts; together with a description of the natural history chamber of Sr. Majesty the King of France. With a preface by Doctor Albrecht von Haller […] Grund and Holle, Hamburg / Leipzig 1750–1774.
  • Lord von Buffon's General Natural History. A freye translation increased with a few additions according to the latest French. Issued in 1769 by FHW Martini . 7 volumes, Joachim Pauli bookseller, Berlin 1771–1774.
  • All of Buffon's works, including their additions, are based on the classification of G. Cuvier . Translated by Heinrich J. Schaltbrand, 9 volumes, Expedition from Büffons Natural History, Cologne 1836–1840.
German reading edition
  • General natural history. Modernized reprint of the seven-volume Berlin edition in one volume. Zweiausendeins Frankfurt am Main, 2008, ISBN 978-3-86150-879-3 .

items

  • Bernard le Bouyer de Fontenelle : Solutions deproblemèmes sur le jeu du franc-carreau. Analysis de ce mémoire. In: Histoire de l'Académie royale des sciences. Année 1733. Paris 1735, pp. 43-45 ( online , PDF ).
  • Bernard le Bouyer de Fontenelle: Sur unproblemème de méchanique. In: Histoire de l'Académie royale des sciences. Année 1733. Paris 1735, pp. 95-98 ( online , PDF ).
  • Bernard le Bouyer de Fontenelle: Observation de méchanique où Buffon propose de tanner les cuirs avec le bois du chesne. In: Histoire de l'Académie royale des sciences. Année 1736. Paris 1739, pp. 119-120 ( online , PDF ).
  • Recherches de la cause de l'excentricité des couches ligneuses qu'on apperçoit quand on coupe horizontalement le tronc d'un arbre; de l'inégalité d'épaisseur et du different nombre de ces couches tant dans le bois formé que dans l'aubier . In: Mémoire de l'Académie royale des sciences. Année 1737 . Paris 1740, pp. 121-134 ( PDF - with Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau).
  • Observations des différents effets que produisent sur les végétaux les grandes gelées d'hyver et les petites gelées du printemps . In: Mémoire de l'Académie royale des sciences. Année 1737 . Paris 1740, pp. 273-298 ( PDF - with Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau).
  • Bernard le Bouyer de Fontenelle: Sur la manière dont les arbres croissent et sur les dommages que la gelée leur fait . In: Histoire de l'Académie royale des sciences. Année 1737 . Paris 1740, pp. 65-71 ( PDF ).
  • Mémoire sur un moyen facile d'augmenter la solidité, la force et la durée du bois . In: Mémoire de l'Académie royale des sciences. Année 1738 . Paris 1740, pp. 169-184 ( PDF ).
  • Mémoire sur la conservation et le rétablissement des forêts . In: Mémoire de l'Académie royale des sciences. Année 1739 . Paris 1741, pp. 140-156 PDF .
  • Experience sur la force du bois . In: Mémoire de l'Académie royale des sciences. Année 1740 . Paris 1742, pp. 453-467 ( PDF ).
  • Experience sur la force du bois. Second memoire . In: Mémoire de l'Académie royale des sciences. Année 1741 . Paris 1744, pp. 292-334 ( PDF ).
  • Bernard le Bouyer de Fontenelle: Théorie des fusées volantes, et moyen de les rendres plus parfaites . In: Histoire de l'Académie royale des sciences. Année 1740 . Paris 1742, pp. 105-110 ( PDF ).
  • Formules sur les échelles arithmétiques où l'on indique le moyen de ramener promptement de grands nombres à l'expression de l'espèce de progression dont on s'est servi. louches . In: Mémoire de l'Académie royale des sciences. Année 1741 . Paris 1741, pp. 219-221 ( PDF ).
  • Mémoire sur la culture des forêts . In: Mémoire de l'Académie royale des sciences. Année 1742 . Paris 1745, pp. 233-246 ( PDF ).
  • Dissertation sur les couleurs accidentelles . In: Mémoire de l'Académie royale des sciences. Année 1743 . Paris 1746, pp. 147–158 ( PDF ).
  • Dissertation on the cause you strabisme ou des yeux louches . In: Mémoire de l'Académie royale des sciences. Année 1743 . Paris 1746, pp. 231-248 ( PDF ).
  • Jean-Paul Grandjean de Fouchy: Buffon fait voir à l'Académie un petit veau mort-né monstrueux . In: Histoire de l'Académie royale des sciences. Année 1744 . Paris 1748, p. 12 ( PDF ).
  • Reflections on the loi d'attraction . In: Mémoire de l'Académie royale des sciences. Année 1745 . Paris 1749, pp. 493-500 ( online , PDF ).
  • Addition au mémoire qui a pour titre: Reflections on the loi d'attraction . In: Mémoire de l'Académie royale des sciences. Année 1745 . Paris 1749, pp. 551–552 ( online ),
  • Seconde addition au mémoire qui a pour titre: Reflections on the loi d'attraction . In: Mémoire de l'Académie royale des sciences. Année 1745 . Paris 1749, pp. 580-583 ( online ).
  • Invention des miroirs ardens, pour brûler à une grande distance . In: Mémoire de l'Académie royale des sciences. Année 1747 . Paris 1751, pp. 82-101 ( PDF ).
  • Decouverte de la liqueur séminale dans les femelles vivipares, et you réservoir qui la contient . In: Mémoire de l'Académie royale des sciences. Année 1748 . Paris 1752, pp. 211-228 ( PDF ).
  • Nouvelle invention des miroirs ardens . In: Mémoire de l'Académie royale des sciences. Année 1748 . Paris 1752, pp. 305-312 ( PDF ).
  • Discours sur le style, discours prononcé à l'Académie française le jour de sa réception, le 25 août 1753. Avec une notice biographique, un examen critique et des notes explicatives par AD Hatzfeld, Paris 1872. [1]

Translations

  • Stephan Hales: La statique des végétaux, et l'analyse de l'air. Experiences nouvelles lûes à la Société royale de Londres . Debure, Paris 1735 ( online ).
  • Isaac Newton : La Méthode des fluxions et des suites infinies . Debure, Paris 1740 ( online ).

literature

  • Henri Nadault de Buffon: Buffon, sa famille, ses callaborateurs et ses familiers. Mémoires par M. Humbert-Bazile, son secrétaire, mis en ordre, annotés et augmentés de documents inédits . J. Renouard, Paris 1863 ( online ).
  • Frank N. Egerton: A History of the Ecological Sciences, Part 24: Buffon and Environmental Influences on Animals . In: Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America . Volume 88, 2007, number 2, pp. 146-159 ( doi : 10.1890 / 0012-9623 (2007) 88 [146: AHOTES] 2.0.CO; 2 ).
  • Émilienne Genet-Varcin, Jacques Roger : Bibliography de Buffon. In: Oeuvres philosophiques de Buffon. Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1954, pp. 516-575 ( PDF ).
  • Wolf Lepenies : Authors and Scientists in the 18th Century. Linné, Buffon, Winckelmann, Georg Forster, Erasmus Darwin. Munich 1988, ISBN 3-446-15160-5 .
  • Lydia Meisen: The characterization of the animals in Buffon's Histoire naturelle. Königshausen & Neumann, 2007, ISBN 3-8260-3735-9 .
  • Jacques Roger : Buffon. Un philosophe au Jardin du Roi. Paris 1989, ISBN 2-213-02265-8 .
  • Emma C. Spary: Utopia's Garden. French Natural History from Old Regime to Revolution. University of Chicago Press, 2000, ISBN 0-226-76863-5 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Henri Nadault de Buffon: Buffon, sa famille, ses callaborateurs et ses familiers. Mémoires par M. Humbert-Bazile, son secrétaire, mis en ordre, annotés et augmentés de documents inédits . J. Renouard, Paris 1863, p. 3 ( online ).
  2. ^ A b François Weil: La correspondance Buffon-Cramer . In: Revue d'histoire des sciences et de leurs applications . Volume 14, Number 2, 1961, pp. 97-136 ( online ).
  3. ↑ Henri Nadault de Buffon: Buffon, sa famille, ses callaborateurs et ses familiers. Mémoires par M. Humbert-Bazile, son secrétaire, mis en ordre, annotés et augmentés de documents inédits . J. Renouard, Paris 1863, p. 4 ( online ).
  4. ^ Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelles: Solutions de probèmes sur le jeu du franc-carreau. Analysis de ce mémoire . In: Histoire de l'Académie royale des sciences. Année 1733 . Paris 1735, pp. 43-45 ( online , PDF ).
  5. ↑ Sur unproblemème de méchanique . In: Histoire de l'Académie royale des sciences. Année 1733 . Paris 1735, pp. 95-98 ( online , PDF ).
  6. ↑ Procès-verbaux . Volume 52, Académie royale des sciences, 1733, p. [237] ( online ).
  7. ↑ Procès-verbaux . Volume 53, Académie royale des sciences, 1734, p. [1] ( online ).
  8. ↑ Wolf Lepenies: He put on cuffs to write . In: THE WORLD . September 6, 2007 ( welt.de [accessed November 10, 2018]).
  9. ^ R. Dujarric de la Rivière: Buffon, sa vie, ses œuvres. Pages choisies, Éditions J. Peyronnet et Cie: Paris, 1971, p. 46.
  10. ^ Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon: Mémoire sur le traitement des bois. Académie des Sciences,
  11. ↑ Henri Nadault de Buffon: Buffon, sa famille, ses callaborateurs et ses familiers. Mémoires par M. Humbert-Bazile, son secrétaire, mis en ordre, annotés et augmentés de documents inédits . J. Renouard, Paris 1863, p. 7. 179, p. 7. 191 ( online ).
  12. ↑ Luitfried Salvini-Plawen : To the history of the biological theory of evolution. Biology Center Linz, download from www.biologiezentrum.at p.11 (PDF; 6.72 MB)
  13. ↑ Ernst Mayr: The development of the biological world of thought: Diversity, evolution and inheritance. Springer 2002, ISBN 3-540-43213-2 , p. 261
  14. ↑ Paul Lawrence Farbee: Buffon and Daubenton: Divergent Traditions within the Histoire Naturelle Department of General Science, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon (1973) pp. 63-74, online
  15. ↑ Michel Foucault : The order of things . An archeology of the human sciences. 14th edition, Frankfurt a. M. 1997, p. 166, ISBN 3-518-27696-4
  16. ^ Sally Newcomb: The world in a crucible: laboratory praxis and geological theory at the beginning of geology , Geological Society of America Special Publications 443, 2009
  17. ↑ Quotation reproduced from: Andrea Wulf: Alexander von Humboldt and the invention of nature. Bertelsmann 2016, ISBN 978-3-570-10206-0 , p. 206
  18. ↑ Andrea Wulf: Alexander von Humboldt and the invention of nature. Bertelsmann 2016, ISBN 978-3-570-10206-0 , p. 206
  19. ↑ Quotation reproduced from: Andrea Wulf: Alexander von Humboldt and the invention of nature. Bertelsmann 2016, ISBN 978-3-570-10206-0 , pp. 207f
  20. ^ Wilhelm Heinse: The records: Frankfurter Nachlass. Records 1784-1803. Volume 4, Carl Hanser Verlag 2005, ISBN 3-446-20400-8 , p. 113
  21. ↑ Carl von Linné: Hortus Upsaliensis . Stockholm 1748, p. 12 ( online - still in the correct spelling Buffonia )
  22. ↑ Carl von Linné: Species Plantarum . Stockholm 1753, Volume 1, p. 123 ( online )
  23. ^ Frans Antonie Stafleu , Richard Sumner Cowan: Taxonomic literature . A selective guide to botanical publications and collections with dates, commentaries and types. Volume 1: A – G, 2nd edition. Utrecht 1976, ISBN 90-313-0225-2 , p. 400 ( online ).

Web links

Commons : Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon  - Sources and full texts (French)
personal data
SURNAME Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc Comte de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French naturalist
DATE OF BIRTH September 7, 1707
PLACE OF BIRTH Montbard near Dijon
DATE OF DEATH April 16, 1788
Place of death Paris