6 ms·

The French aristocrat who understood evolution 100 years before Darwin

80 points by adrian_mrd 3y ago

derbOac 3y ago
Thanks for posting. Putting the book on my to-read list. I'm now convinced that just about any idea that is put into print has probably crossed at least one other person's mind at one point. The sorts of sociological factors mentioned in the article are important to be mindful of in thinking about why ideas get put forth or spread when they do. My first association with Georges-Louis Leclerc is with Buffon's needle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffon%27s_needle_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffon%27s_needle_problem It's interesting to see his name come up in a different context. I had no idea he was interested in evolution and ecology.
- kergonath 3y ago
  > I had no idea he was interested in evolution and ecology. That’s what he’s most famous for. As the article alludes to, he more or less created ecology as a science. His Natural history is huge as well, this was a milestone in the establishment of zoology as a discipline. It is difficult to overstate how important he was for biology as a whole. The evolution stuff is more or less a consequence of this: he noticed similarities and differences between species living in different places and in what we would now call ecological niches. That said, even though he got some intuition for the concept of evolution, he did not really find a good driving force to explain it (he explained the changes by changes in environment), which is an essential contribution of Darwin. [edit] also, nobody calls him Georges-Louis Leclerc, he is usually referred to as “Buffon”.
ahazred8ta 3y ago
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, d.1788, director of the botanical gardens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges-Louis_Leclerc,_Comte_de_Buffon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges-Louis_Leclerc,_Comte_d...
Georgelemental 3y ago
> But Buffon never figured out how this species change actually took place: it took Darwin, and his theory of natural selection, to shed light on the process. Natural selection is the most important part of Darwin's theory. The title exaggerates
- defrost 3y ago
  Darwin's theory? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Russel_Wallace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Russel_Wallace https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/alfred-wallace/ https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/alfred-wal...
  - graemep 3y ago
    Wallace never gets due credit. Darwin did give him credit - e.g. referring to "our theory" in a letter to him. There are probably multiple reasons for this. I can think of multiple reasons Darwin was more appealing to people. Wallace was religious, and he was not racist (not that Darwin was any worse than most of his time, but Wallace was different). It was not always so: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-21549079 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-21549079 There are a number of people who came close to the idea including Erasmus Darwin, Charles Darwin's grandfather.
    - defrost 3y ago
      Darwin did give him a shout out, the biggest difference here was very likely the levels of self promotion; Wallace failed to promote his role in formulating the theory as effectively as Darwin. ~ your bbc link and Darwin was very much on home ground in the UK actively riding on Wallace's extensive field work and spreading a Darwin flavoured spin on the very material Wallace was writing in from the tropics. Both were very good writers, Darwin had greater visibility during the early days simply by being there to meet, greet, and lecture. Many of the "Darwin" ideas in the popular mind came from elsewhere; Survival of the fittest was Spencer and although later taken up as a phrse by both Darwin and Wallace it's almost the active opposite of the more passive (and more correct) notion of Survival of the best adapted.
adolph 3y ago
The below comes from a a better read than theguardian promo for a new book. According to Buffon, life originated already divided into a number of distinct types—an “internal mould” that organized the organic particles that made up any individual creature. But during migrations, life changed. As a species moved to new habitats, the supply of organic particles that could create new individuals changed, and the particles could thereby change a species’ mould. Buffon was, in other words, proposing a sort of proto-evolution. While he thought that this process couldn’t produce radically new kinds of body plans, he did claim that it could account for the geographical distribution of similar species around the world. https://evolution.berkeley.edu/the-history-of-evolutionary-thought/pre-1800/old-earth-ancient-life-georges-louis-leclerc-comte-de-buffon/ https://evolution.berkeley.edu/the-history-of-evolutionary-t...
spencerchubb 3y ago
This may sound very "hindsight is always 20-20" but why was evolution not always obvious? Traits that help reproduction will increase. Traits that hinder reproduction will decrease. Why was it controversial, and what did people believe before that?
- amscanne 3y ago
  None of that makes sense or works without the idea that traits are the result of continuous random mutations, which is a very non-obvious idea (and very controversial considering the orthodoxy of divine creation — humans were created by god, so what do you mean they are changing?).
  - bubblyworld 3y ago
    And to add to this, it also relies on the fact that inheritance occurs in discrete units (which today we call genes). One of the early criticisms was that mutations would "average out" in a large population, and thus natural selection would never get off the ground!
- itisit 3y ago
  From the annals of scientific discovery, can we point to anything that was "always obvious"?
- roywiggins 3y ago
  For starters, as mentioned in the article, the age of the Earth was far from settled for a long time. If you think the Earth is a few thousand or tens of thousands of years old, evolution can't be right, it is too slow.
- lnxg33k1 3y ago
  [flagged]
- bazoom42 3y ago
  It was commonly believed the species had been created fully formed, like in Genesis. Slective breeding was known, but it was not obvious that entirely new species could be created that way. There is a big step from breeding a bigger dog to breeding a dog into an octupus. Different theories of evolution existed before Charles Darwin, but the mechanism driving the evolution was not understood. Lucrete (Roman writer) had ideas close to Darwins natural selection - he believed the species had been initially created by all kinds of organs and body parts combinimg at random, but only the “fit” ones surviving. But I think Lucrete thought this was a historcal event, not an ongoing process.
poelzi 3y ago
There is always someone 100 years ahead of time: https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1424329112 https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1424329112 These are the ones I'm searching for and if their model is more logical, requires less assumptions, explains more and is more consistent, I change my paradigm. Unfortunately, you then have to either stop writing in forums like this, or get downvoted into oblivion.
kromem 3y ago
That's not all that impressive compared to Lucretius, who writes the following in 50 BCE: > In the beginning, there were many freaks. Earth undertook Experiments - bizarrely put together, weird of look Hermaphrodites, partaking of both sexes, but neither; some Bereft of feet, or orphaned of their hands, and others dumb, Being devoid of mouth; and others yet, with no eyes, blind. Some had their limbs stuck to the body, tightly in a bind, And couldn't do anything, or move, and so could not evade Harm, or forage for bare necessities. And the Earth made Other kinds of monsters too, but in vain, since with each, Nature frowned upon their growth; they were not able to reach The flowering of adulthood, nor find food on which to feed, Nor be joined in the act of Venus. > For all creatures need Many different things, we realize, to multiply And to forge out the links of generations: a supply Of food, first, and a means for the engendering seed to flow Throughout the body and out of the lax limbs; and also so The female and the male can mate, a means they can employ In order to impart and to receive their mutual joy. > Then, many kinds of creatures must have vanished with no trace Because they could not reproduce or hammer out their race. For any beast you look upon that drinks life-giving air, Has either wits, or bravery, or fleetness of foot to spare, Ensuring its survival from its genesis to now.

80 points by adrian_mrd 3y ago

Thanks for posting. Putting the book on my to-read list. I'm now convinced that just about any idea that is put into print has probably crossed at least one other person's mind at one point. The sorts of sociological factors mentioned in the article are important to be mindful of in thinking about why ideas get put forth or spread when they do. My first association with Georges-Louis Leclerc is with Buffon's needle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffon%27s_needle_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffon%27s_needle_problem It's interesting to see his name come up in a different context. I had no idea he was interested in evolution and ecology.

kergonath 3y ago
> I had no idea he was interested in evolution and ecology. That’s what he’s most famous for. As the article alludes to, he more or less created ecology as a science. His Natural history is huge as well, this was a milestone in the establishment of zoology as a discipline. It is difficult to overstate how important he was for biology as a whole. The evolution stuff is more or less a consequence of this: he noticed similarities and differences between species living in different places and in what we would now call ecological niches. That said, even though he got some intuition for the concept of evolution, he did not really find a good driving force to explain it (he explained the changes by changes in environment), which is an essential contribution of Darwin. [edit] also, nobody calls him Georges-Louis Leclerc, he is usually referred to as “Buffon”.

ahazred8ta 3y ago

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, d.1788, director of the botanical gardens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges-Louis_Leclerc,_Comte_de_Buffon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges-Louis_Leclerc,_Comte_d...

Georgelemental 3y ago

> But Buffon never figured out how this species change actually took place: it took Darwin, and his theory of natural selection, to shed light on the process. Natural selection is the most important part of Darwin's theory. The title exaggerates

defrost 3y ago
Darwin's theory? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Russel_Wallace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Russel_Wallace https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/alfred-wallace/ https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/alfred-wal...
- graemep 3y ago
  Wallace never gets due credit. Darwin did give him credit - e.g. referring to "our theory" in a letter to him. There are probably multiple reasons for this. I can think of multiple reasons Darwin was more appealing to people. Wallace was religious, and he was not racist (not that Darwin was any worse than most of his time, but Wallace was different). It was not always so: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-21549079 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-21549079 There are a number of people who came close to the idea including Erasmus Darwin, Charles Darwin's grandfather.
  - defrost 3y ago
    Darwin did give him a shout out, the biggest difference here was very likely the levels of self promotion; Wallace failed to promote his role in formulating the theory as effectively as Darwin. ~ your bbc link and Darwin was very much on home ground in the UK actively riding on Wallace's extensive field work and spreading a Darwin flavoured spin on the very material Wallace was writing in from the tropics. Both were very good writers, Darwin had greater visibility during the early days simply by being there to meet, greet, and lecture. Many of the "Darwin" ideas in the popular mind came from elsewhere; Survival of the fittest was Spencer and although later taken up as a phrse by both Darwin and Wallace it's almost the active opposite of the more passive (and more correct) notion of Survival of the best adapted.

adolph 3y ago

The below comes from a a better read than theguardian promo for a new book. According to Buffon, life originated already divided into a number of distinct types—an “internal mould” that organized the organic particles that made up any individual creature. But during migrations, life changed. As a species moved to new habitats, the supply of organic particles that could create new individuals changed, and the particles could thereby change a species’ mould. Buffon was, in other words, proposing a sort of proto-evolution. While he thought that this process couldn’t produce radically new kinds of body plans, he did claim that it could account for the geographical distribution of similar species around the world. https://evolution.berkeley.edu/the-history-of-evolutionary-thought/pre-1800/old-earth-ancient-life-georges-louis-leclerc-comte-de-buffon/ https://evolution.berkeley.edu/the-history-of-evolutionary-t...

spencerchubb 3y ago

This may sound very "hindsight is always 20-20" but why was evolution not always obvious? Traits that help reproduction will increase. Traits that hinder reproduction will decrease. Why was it controversial, and what did people believe before that?

amscanne 3y ago
None of that makes sense or works without the idea that traits are the result of continuous random mutations, which is a very non-obvious idea (and very controversial considering the orthodoxy of divine creation — humans were created by god, so what do you mean they are changing?).
- bubblyworld 3y ago
  And to add to this, it also relies on the fact that inheritance occurs in discrete units (which today we call genes). One of the early criticisms was that mutations would "average out" in a large population, and thus natural selection would never get off the ground!
itisit 3y ago
From the annals of scientific discovery, can we point to anything that was "always obvious"?
roywiggins 3y ago
For starters, as mentioned in the article, the age of the Earth was far from settled for a long time. If you think the Earth is a few thousand or tens of thousands of years old, evolution can't be right, it is too slow.
lnxg33k1 3y ago
[flagged]
bazoom42 3y ago
It was commonly believed the species had been created fully formed, like in Genesis. Slective breeding was known, but it was not obvious that entirely new species could be created that way. There is a big step from breeding a bigger dog to breeding a dog into an octupus. Different theories of evolution existed before Charles Darwin, but the mechanism driving the evolution was not understood. Lucrete (Roman writer) had ideas close to Darwins natural selection - he believed the species had been initially created by all kinds of organs and body parts combinimg at random, but only the “fit” ones surviving. But I think Lucrete thought this was a historcal event, not an ongoing process.

poelzi 3y ago

There is always someone 100 years ahead of time: https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1424329112 https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1424329112 These are the ones I'm searching for and if their model is more logical, requires less assumptions, explains more and is more consistent, I change my paradigm. Unfortunately, you then have to either stop writing in forums like this, or get downvoted into oblivion.

kromem 3y ago

That's not all that impressive compared to Lucretius, who writes the following in 50 BCE: > In the beginning, there were many freaks. Earth undertook Experiments - bizarrely put together, weird of look Hermaphrodites, partaking of both sexes, but neither; some Bereft of feet, or orphaned of their hands, and others dumb, Being devoid of mouth; and others yet, with no eyes, blind. Some had their limbs stuck to the body, tightly in a bind, And couldn't do anything, or move, and so could not evade Harm, or forage for bare necessities. And the Earth made Other kinds of monsters too, but in vain, since with each, Nature frowned upon their growth; they were not able to reach The flowering of adulthood, nor find food on which to feed, Nor be joined in the act of Venus. > For all creatures need Many different things, we realize, to multiply And to forge out the links of generations: a supply Of food, first, and a means for the engendering seed to flow Throughout the body and out of the lax limbs; and also so The female and the male can mate, a means they can employ In order to impart and to receive their mutual joy. > Then, many kinds of creatures must have vanished with no trace Because they could not reproduce or hammer out their race. For any beast you look upon that drinks life-giving air, Has either wits, or bravery, or fleetness of foot to spare, Ensuring its survival from its genesis to now.