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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 ot

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”.