Art. Evolutionism in The Enlightenment

Hist.
s«, xii (1974), 159-183
EVOLUTIONISM IN TIlE ENLIGHTENMENT
Peter J. Bowler
Unioersiti Sains Malaysia
Historians of science have devoted a great deal of attention to the emergence

of the modern theory of evolution during the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. On the whole it would probably be agreed that the main outlines
of this process are well understood, although even in such a well-worked
area there are still some points which can lead to major disagreements. A
number of more general works have also attempted to trace evolutionary
ideas back into the eighteenth century. In English these include John C.
Greene's The death of Adam, the introductory chapters of Loren Eiseley's
Darwin's century and the collection of essays edited by Bentley Glass et ale
under the title Forerunners of Darunn» French writers in the field have also
turned their attention to this period (perhaps because here, at least, they
find their own countrymen well represented) and we have works such as
Jean Rostand's L'evolution des especes, Emile Guyenot's Les sciences de la
vie aux XVII" et XVIII" siecles and P. Ostoya's Les theories d'evolution. 2 All
are agreed that in some ways the naturalists and philosophers of the period
we call the Enlightenment had moved toward an evolutionary, or at least
a more dynamic view of nature. But here, far more than with the nineteenth
century, there is a disparity among the different accounts that leads one to
suspect that the contributions of the period have not been properly under-
stood. The writings of eighteenth century figures such as Buffon have some-
times been presented as though they were perfect anticipations of the modern
theories of evolution and heredity. This in itself is not a serious problem,
since most experienced historians are capable of recognizing this kind of
over-enthusiastic precursor hunting when they see it. Of the works men-
tioned above, John Greene's in particular has already gone a long way towards
dispelling such naive interpretations of a number of Enlightenment figures.
But more subtle problems emerge when we compare the better modern
works in an attempt to build up a balanced picture of eighteenth century
evolutionism. The contributions of the more philosophical writers are
especially subject to confusing differences of interpretation. Diderot's
materialist philosophy of nature, for example, is discussed at some length
by Lester G. Crocker in the Forerunners of Darwin volume and its similarity
to the modern viewpoint noted, yet this philosophy is hardly mentioned at
all in Greene's book. When such a variation occurs in the study of a major
Enlightenment thinker, one can be forgiven for suspecting that something
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160 HISTORY OF SCIENCE
is missing from the attempts which have been made so far to present a general
survey of evolutionary developments in this period. A new approach is needed
if we are to create an acceptable picture of Enlightenment evolutionism and its
relationship to the development of the modern theory in the following century.
The first problem encountered here is that of defining exactly what we
are to mean by 'evolutionism' in an eighteenth century, or indeed in any
other context. Basically, the rise of evolutionary theories has modified our
view of the world in two ways: we have moved from a static to a dynamic
concept of nature, and at the same time we have abandoned the belief that
the universe was designed in all its details by an intelligent Creator, accepting
instead a developmental process that exhibits no evidence of direct design.
In terms of its general effect on Western thought, the rejection of design
is perhaps even more significant than the rise of the dynamic viewpoint.
But it is a historical fact that evolutionary theories based on the concept
of design have been proposed and have sometimes exerted a significant
degree of influence. To give a familiar nineteenth century example, Robert
Chambers's anonymously published Vestiges of the natural history of creation
(1844) presented the development of life as a divinely planned progression,
yet even Darwin admitted that the popularity of this book helped to prepare
the way for the acceptance of his own work. It thus seems necessary to
accept that anything contributing to the growth of a dynamic view of nature
should be counted as 'evolutionary', although the theological implications
of each contribution must be carefully assessed. In adopting this very broad
definition it will also be appropriate to admit that an idea can contribute
to the general development of the evolutionary world-picture even though
it involves a system widely different from that of the modern theory. Thus
we should not ignore Diderot's discussion of organic change simply because
he was prepared to admit the spontaneous generation of even the higher
forms of life. Perhaps the only serious limitation which it may be advisable
to place on our definition of evolutionism concerns the ultimate effect of the
changes envisaged. It was possible in the eighteenth century to postulate
a world-view in which there was constant but limited change in the form
of minor fluctuations about a mean point. This steady-state approach was
characteristic of the early development of uniformitarian geology, for in-
stance, and when applied rigorously admitted only a limited amount of
dynamism in order to preserve a basically static world-picture. The general
development of the evolutionary outlook, however, has tended instead to
promote the belief that there has been a significant amount of change in
the course of the earth's history, i.e. a directional change or development
of which the progressive advance of life is but one example. The steady-state
approach cannot be ignored and certainly represents at least a partial break-
down of the static view of nature, but its overall position in the growth of
evolutionism must be evaluated with some care.

ENLIGHTENMENT EVOLUTIONISM • 161
The main purpose of the present paper is to study the extent to which
the Enlightenment began to adopt a more dynamic view of nature and the
factors which helped or hindered this trend. Within the broad definition of
evolutionism proposed above it is possible to discover evidences of such a
trend in the work of a wide range of thinkers, often from opposite philoso-
phical backgrounds. This is true of the nineteenth as well as the eighteenth
century, but it can reasonably be argued that philosophical factors were even
more important in the earlier period. Since there was little knowledge of the
fossil record to provide more or less objective evidence for organic change,
a man's willingness to accept a dynamic view of nature was conditioned far
more strongly by the wider background of his thought. It thus becomes
vitally necessary for us to build up a comprehensive picture of Enlightenment
philosophy, especially as it relates to the question of the nature of life, so
that we can understand the ways in which each position might promote or
hinder the growth of evolutionism. Fortunately, there is a good deal of
material available in this field to which we can turn. Well-known surveys of
the intellectual life of the period by writers such as Paul Hazard, Ernst
Cassirer, Peter Gay and Norman Hampson introduce scientific developments
as part of the broad picture they wish to paint," At a more immediately
relevant level are specific attempts to analyze the Enlightenment's attitudes
toward nature, of which the most obvious examples in English are Aram
Vartanian's Diderot and Descartes and the same author's studies of La
Mettrie.s In French, we have Jacques Roger's classic Les sciences de la vie
dans la pensee francoise du XVIII" siecle and Emile Callot's La philosophie
de la vie au XVIII" siecle.1> Such works inevitably touch on the topic of
eighteenth century evolutionism. Vartanian stresses the extent to which the
evolutionary speculations of the period were dependent upon philosophical
convictions, but the value of his analysis is limited by his lack of appreciation
of the main theme of Roger's study: theories of generation. Roger has shown
the importance of a full understanding of the rise and fall of the theory of
pre-existent germs (the so-called 'preformation theory') for any attempt to
understand the eighteenth century's views on the nature and origin of life.
His accounts of workers such as Buffon, Diderot, La Mettrie and Maupertuis
are of enormous help to the historian of evolution because they place evolu-
tionary or pseudo-evolutionary ideas so clearly against the background of
more general philosophical interests in the nature of life. None of the workers
mentioned here is concerned specifically with estimating the extent of the
Enlightenment's commitment to evolutionism, but their work cannot be
ignored by anyone wishing to make a proper study of this issue.
One of the most important factors in Enlightenment thought was a growing
hostility to Christianity which drove many into deism and some into outright
materialism and atheism. There are complications here, since most authorities
have accepted that materialism became widely prevalent toward the end of

162 • HISTORY OF SCIENCE
the period, while Cassirer's interest in Kant has led him to minimize the
effect of this movement. But whatever the problems of assessing the spread
of atheism and its influence on the study of natural history, the move away
from Christianity is plain enough and has often been taken as the main
driving force behind the development of evolutionary ideas. But deeper
knowledge of the period's philosophy confirms that here, perhaps even more
than in the nineteenth century, the change of theological opinions was far
too complex a phenomenon for it to serve as an axis against which to plot
the growth of a more dynamic world-view. At a very basic level it is true
that the rejection of fundamentalist Christianity freed European thought from
the myth of a comparatively recent creation. Similarly the most extreme
opponents of religion of necessity had to develop a dynamic and naturalistic
account of the origin of life in order to counter the argument from design.
But there are other factors which complicate any attempt to treat evolutionary
ideas mainly as a product of the opposition to Christianity. Bonnet, for
instance, developed a system of the progressive development of life from
speculations about the resurrection of the body inspired by the teachings of
Christianity to which he, at least, still adhered. The intermediate position
of deism also exerted an influence both for and against the evolutionary
viewpoint. The more radical deists went almost as far as the materialists
in rejecting the argument from design and hence were often led into some
form of evolutionism. But many retained the belief that the universe is the
product of intelligent design and held that it has been established to continue
indefinitely in a state essentially similar to that in which we see it today.
Deists of this kind could imagine a much older universe, but their residual
belief in a Creator prevented the acceptance of a really developmental view
of nature almost as effectively as fundamentalist Christianity. In at least one
important case-that of Buffon-we find a leading figure in the move toward
adopting an evolutionary and naturalistic viewpoint still unable to free him-
self from the feeling that some sort of limit must have been imposed on the
way in which the organic world can develop. Cases such as this force us to
recognize the complexity of the relationship between theological opinions
and the breakdown of the old, static world-view. The rest of this study will
be devoted to a brief survey of Enlightenment evolutionary theories with the
aim of substantiating this point. Limitations of space will prevent detailed
reference to the primary sources, but in fact another aim of the survey is
to show that in many cases the historian of evolution has already been
provided with many of the necessities for a more sophisticated study by
writers such as Roger.
Looking first at the Enlightenment's most extreme opponents of religion,
the materialists, we can recognize several characteristics of their viewpoint
which led inevitably toward a more dynamic concept of nature. For them
there was no God, no designer and creator of the universe, so that all forms

ENLIGHTENMENT EVOLUTIONISM 163
of life had to be treated as natural products of the material world. Spon-

taneous generation became a necessary assumption, along with some means
of explaining the structural perfection and adaptation of living organisms,
either a 'trial and error' process or the inheritance of acquired characteristics.
Early attempts in this direction were made by J. O. de La Mettrie, whose
Systeme de I'Epicure of 1750 proposed that all life develops from germs which
have existed throughout the universe for all eternity, an idea borrowed from
Benoit de Maillet's geological treatise Telliamed, published in 1748 but written
much earlier." At a certain point in the earth's history the germs were sup-
posed to develop and produce the first living organisms by a sort of spon-
taneous generation, after which they formed the basis of the normal means
of generation. Both writers seem to imply that the germs define the basic
structures of all forms of life, although de Maillet allowed each species a
transition from an aquatic form to a terrestrial one and La Mettrie spoke
of a gradual perfection of the details of each form's structure. These two very
limited ideas of transmutation illustrate how strong was the connection
between the theory of pre-existent germs and the belief in the fundamental
stability of the organic world. La Mettrie could avoid the full implications
of the argument from design by postulating his gradual process of perfection,
but the fact that all organisms were supposed to come from germs imposed
a basically fixed structure on all species. Claiming that the universe and the
germs were eternal did not really solve the problem of the origin of organic
structure, and later materialists such as Denis Diderot and the baron
d'Holbach realized that the germ theory would have to be replaced by a
belief in complete spontaneous generation from undifferentiated matter.
In his Lettre sur les aveugles of 1749 Diderot proposed an initial trial and
error spontaneous generation of all living forms. Le reve de d'Alembert, written
much later in 1769, proposed instead a more or less continuous form of
generation that could produce complex organic structures directly from matter
at almost any time. His fascination with the subject of monstrosities allowed
Diderot to regard species as very ill-defined entities which could change
constantly after their first production, and he also believed that acquired
characters can be inherited. D'Holbach's Systeme de la nature of 1770
presents a very similar picture in which a totally dynamic nature constantly
produces new forms of life or changes those that already exist.'
A good picture of the ideas developed by Diderot and his circle can be
obtained from the works by Roger and Vartanian cited above, supplemented
by a number of relevant papers by these and other authors." On d'Holbach
there is an excellent chapter in Callot's book and a detailed biography by
Naville," The most consistent attempt to relate the materialists' speculations
to the general development of evolutionary thought, however, is Crocker's
paper in Forerunners of Darwin,1° an account which raises a problem of
interpretation which we shall have to discuss both here and again, more

generally, in conclusion. Crocker argues that Diderot must be considered

a major figure in the move to replace static creationism with dynamic
naturalism, a point which is certainly valid in an eighteenth century context.
But he also points out that this naturalistic approach resembles that of later
theories and that the ideas of 'transformism' or transmutation proposed by
the materialists also anticipate some features of the modern evolutionary
theory. The implication seems to be that there is some degree of continuity
between the naturalistic evolutionism of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. Some of Diderot's suggestions do seem to bear out this inter-
preatation, for instance when he observes in his De L'interpretation de La nature
of 1753 that the fundamental similarity of all vertebrates implies community
of descent. But it is difficult to accept that the final development of En-
lightenment materialist thought can lie directly on the line leading toward
later evolutionism. One immediate problem is that Diderot's interest in
actual transmutation must be set against his idea of continuous random
spontaneous generation, acceptance of which would exclude all hope of
discovering any coherent pattern in the evolution of the organic world. This
is not in itself a reason to neglect his contribution to the Enlightenment's
break with the static world-view-many other eighteenth century figures
accepted spontaneous generation in something like this sense and we should
be wary of neglecting a contribution just because it does not correspond
directly with our own beliefs. But factors such as this make it difficult to
imagine that the materialists' writings could have meant very much to the
more sober naturalists of nineteenth century Britain, and presumably account
for the fact that Diderot and his colleagues are hardly mentioned in the
general histories of evolutionism by Greene and Eiseley. In one sense,
Crocker does his job too well: he makes us see Diderot's ideas so clearly in
their own context that we become suspicious of the claim that they contributed
directly toward the rise of evolutionism in the nineteenth century, even
though they had the same effect of destroying the argument from design.
But there is another, more fundamental sense in which it can be said that
the materialists eventually ran completely off the track of later evolutionary
thought. In the end their vision of nature as a totally dynamic chaos
denied not only the existence of a pattern of organic development but also
the whole concept of a meaningful direction in the history of life. Living
forms are generated, change and may ultimately die off, but there is little in
Diderot's later work, or in that of d'Holbach, to suggest that the general
picture of life on the earth has changed very much with time. A
steady-state viewpoint replaced the developmental one and d'Holbach in fact
developed his geology along uniformitarian lines. His system resembled that
proposed by James Hutton in its acceptance only of non-directional change,
although it was built on quite different foundations-Hutton's world was
designed to be stable, whereas d'Holbach's remained the same because all

changes occur at random and ultimately cancel out. For this reason, far
more justifiably than because of the technicality of spontaneous generation,
the historian of evolution may have to regard the materialists as a false start
as far as the later developments are concerned. Their work cannot be ignored,
either as an influence on those who did retain a directional view of the earth's
development or as an indication of the extent to which the most extreme
branch of eighteenth century thought broke away from the static world-
picture of an earlier period. But their final concept of nature was so dynamic
that it became a perpetual chaos rather than a developing system, and this
should caution us to proceed very slowly when we try to connect their ideas
with those of later evolutionists.
Most of the Enlightenment philosophes started out as deists and one
suspects that very few working naturalists ever broke away from this position
toward complete atheism. The contributions of the deists to the development
of evolutionary thought are also difficult to assess, this time because their
general outlook allowed them a great deal of flexibility in their approach to
the idea of design in nature. One basic limitation they all imposed on their
Deity-He was not allowed to interfere with the universe once He had
created it. This arose partly from the increasing popularity of the 'clockwork'
view of the universe but was also an inevitable consequence of the attack
on the biblical miracles launched by the English deists and later taken up
by Voltaire and his continental followers.P It seemed inevitable that if God
could not interfere to communicate His intentions to man, He could not
be supposed to have created new species in the course of the earth's history,
however much evidence might be brought forward to show that the ancient
populations were not the same as those of today. As a matter of fact, this
unwillingness to think in terms of direct creation affected even some of the
earlier Christian naturalists-John Ray, for example, avoided the full impli-
cations of Genesis by proposing that in the beginning God created 'seminal
principles' which later developed into the first living organisms.P Ray's
argument that God was nevertheless directly responsible for the adaptation
of each individual species to its environment was the most extreme religious
viewpoint adopted by the naturalists of this period and represents a con-
sistent thread running through to Paley and beyond. Usually adopted by
those who retained at least a superficial connection with Christianity, this
view of the relationship of God to nature nevertheless involved a considerable
modification of the traditional Christian concern with sin, suffering and
redemption. The true deists were usually critical of this simple version of
the argument from design and generally preferred the much more abstract
belief that nature operates within certain basic limitations imposed on it
presumably by the Creator. However much further back in time they pushed
the origin of life on the earth, the deists tended to retain the belief that
the essential properties of life are somehow built into the material of which

the universe is constructed. The flexibility of their position was derived from
the fact that it was possible to suppose that in thus defining the nature of
life, God could either have stamped it with some form of fixed design or
could have left it free to develop more or less as circumstances demanded.
A few workers certainly adopted this latter alternative and thus came fairly
close to the spirit of modern evolutionism, while at the other extreme it was
possible to suppose that the Creator has imposed either a completely fixed
plan or one designed to produce a succession of different populations. The
majority of deists seem to have accepted some form of fixed design in nature
and found it difficult to reconcile this with the possibility that there has been
a drastic change in the nature of the earth's inhabitants. To an extent un-
recognized, or at least unpublicized, by some historians of evolution, the
Enlightenment deists were unable to shake off the belief that the basic
structure of the organic world has been eternally fixed by the Creator. Their
view of God, in fact, could impose even more restrictions on the history
of life than that of the Christians, since it excluded the easy way out of the
situation offered by the possibility of successive miraculous creations and
made it difficult to construct an alternative theory of evolution or of the
spontaneous generation of new forms of life.
The two deists who were most successful in breaking out of the concept
of a fixed design in nature were P. L. M. de Maupertuis and Erasmus Darwin.
Both seem to have accepted that the basic properties of living matter were
designed by the Creator, but were able to combine this with a critique of
the normal version of the argument from design which allowed them to
believe that the development of life on the earth has followed no fixed plan.
Maupertuis's Essai de cosmologie expounded such a critique, and in his
Systeme de la nature of 1751 he brought out the evolutionary implications
of the theory of generation proposed earlier in his Venus physique.I3 He sug-
gested that a series of mutations could account for the production of all the
various forms of life from a single original, although at this point he did not
introduce the idea of selection which had been used to explain the origin
of varieties in the Venus physique. Elsewhere in the Systeme de la nature
Maupertuis put foward the apparently contradictory suggestion that the
various forms were all produced together by spontaneous generation at some
time in the past. The problem of development and adaptation was tackled
rather more consistently by Erasmus Darwin, who held that it was possible
for characteristics acquired by an organism to be passed on to its offspring.
In his Zoonomia of 1794 Darwin was thus able to make out a far more con-
vincing case for believing that all forms of life have arisen from a single
'filament' which was forced to adapt itself to changing conditions. He main-
tained very forcibly that this situation was arranged by the Creator, although
the only way in which the actual paths of development could be said to be
designed was through a provision that each must advance in its own way

toward increasing complexity of structure. Both Maupertuis and Darwin

have been the subject of enthusiastic accounts by historians who have hailed
their ideas as complete anticipations of the modern theory: the writings of
Guyenot and Bentley Glass in the case of Maupertuis'" and of Desmond
King-Hele in the case of Darwin." Fortunately we do not have to rely on
such exaggerations, since we have the biography of Maupertuis by Pierre
Brunet-s and a detailed account of his views on life by Roger, while for
Erasmus Darwin there is, for instance, the recent study by James Harrison.l?
Although they broke with the' traditional argument from design almost as
completely as the materialists, Maupertuis and Darwin seem to have restrained
themselves within limits which make their evolutionary hypotheses far more
comprehensible to the modern reader. This renders the possibility that their
work had some permanent significance far more likely, and in the case of
Darwin a very obvious connection can be made with the evolutionism of
his grandson. The basic idea of transmutation was certainly established as
a factor that no future naturalist could ignore. But the more sophisticated
studies mentioned above show how careful we still must be in attempting
to trace out a really deep intellectual continuity through into the nineteenth
century. Thus Erasmus Darwin's writings include references to the concept
of the 'balance of nature' which can easily be confused with Charles Darwin's
'struggle for existence', but which is in fact an indication of the quite different
framework within which their theories were conceived.
At the opposite intellectual extreme, some thinkers preferred to retain the
belief that God is directly in control of the succession of living organisms.
The theory of pre-existent germs was the mainstay of this approach, since
it held that every organism develops from a germ or miniature originally
formed by God at the creation. Normally this theory was used to back up
an absolutely static view of the organic world-since all the germs had been
created in accordance with a fixed series of forms, their development in
successive generations could do no more than perpetuate the series. Yet,
paradoxically, two workers at least managed to adapt this theory to the
developmental world-view by supposing that the germs were created in such
a way that a succession of different forms was produced. Charles Bonnet
was a leading exponent of the version of the pre-existence theory known as
ovist emboitement, where all the germs were held to be stored up one within
the other inside the female eggs. In works such as his Contemplation de la
nature he used this to support the belief that the species must remain eternally
unchanging. But in his Palingenesie philosophique of 1779 he suggested a modi-
fication of the germ theory which would allow a series of quite different
populations to emerge in the course of the earth's history. Technically,
Bonnet was a Christian rather than a deist, since his theory was elaborated
out of his speculations on the means by which God may have provided for
the future resurrection of the body. But his Christianity suffered from a

168 . HISTORY OF SCIENCE
positively startling lack of orthodoxy which allowed him to claim that animals
have souls equal to those of human beings, souls which gradually realize
their potential by being reborn in a series of improved bodies adapted to
the conditions of successive geological periods. Since the series of populations
thus derived from a predesigned set of germs with which the Creator provided
each soul, Bonnet's approach favoured the deist trend towards the elimination
of miracles rather than the more Christian idea of special creation. The other
worker to suggest a developmental version of pre-existence was J. B. Robinet,
whose view of God was uncompromisingly deist. Robinet preferred the
panspermist version of the theory in which the germs were supposed to be
spread throughout the universe, and at first he too supported a static view
of nature based on his belief in the existence of a complete and continuous
chain of being. But in the fourth volume of his De la nature of 1776 he
postulated that the germs corresponding to the successive points on the chain
have developed in sequence over a long period of time, with man being the
last stage to appear. Both Bonnet and Robinet were thus led to a theory
of predesigned progression, which in its theological implications resembles
the system of evolution proposed later in Chambers's Vestiges of creation. Far
from diminishing the Creator's responsibility for the development of life
on the earth, these theories actually depended upon the Deity having planned
the whole process.
There are no modern editions of the works of Bonnet and Robinet, and
adequate discussions of their ideas are difficult to find in the literature. Both
are ignored by Greene and Eiseley, and although French writers on the
history of evolution such as Rostand have mentioned their work it is still
difficult to get a sense of where they might fit in to the general growth of
evolutionism. Roger has a short section on each, but these are not as thorough
as the rest of his work. Both writers are discussed in the chapter of A. O.
Lovejoy's The great chain of being devoted to the temporalization of the
chain," but this account does not even help us to picture their relationship
to eighteenth century thought as a whole. Despite Daudin's far more technical
account of the influence of the chain of being on taxonomy during this
period.P one could be forgiven for suspecting that Lovejoy seriously over-
emphasizes its role in Enlightenment thought, although it is true that in the
case of Bonnet and Robinet the chain was an important factor leading toward
the idea of organic progress. An account of Bonnet's system by Bentley
Glass follows C. O. Whitman into an extravagant denunciation which presents
it as a major obstacle to the growth of the evolutionary point of view.20
Such a judgment makes no attempt to assess Bonnet's real influence in the
eighteenth century and ignores the fact that the idea of predesigned evolution
was also important in a later period. At the opposite extreme we have the
work of Raymond Savioz, who provides a valuable analysis of Bonnet's
psychological theories but whose account of the biological speculations

occasionally sinks to the level of hailing brief anticipations of modern ideas

with an enthusiasm that Bentley Glass reserves only for Maupertuis." Such
a conflict of opinions does not help the historian of evolution; this is, in
fact, one of the few areas in which we are only just beginning to acquire
the material necessary to begin a serious analysis.. 22 Bonnet and Robinet
certainly indicate how all shades of opinion could adapt themselves to the
dynamic world-view and their idea of progress may have influenced Lamarck,
who also retained the chain of being concept to a certain extent. But their
extensive theologizing, coupled with the rapid rejection of the theory of pre-
existent germs in the nineteenth century, can hardly have encouraged later
evolutionists to turn back to their writings for inspiration, even those who
actually continued the system of designed evolution.
All of the workers described above sensed the need for an alternative to
the old .static view of nature and elaborated a system of organic change from
their own philosophical preconceptions. Apart from the general feeling against
fundamental Christianity, they were also driven by the new evidence from
geology indicating the great age of the earth and the extent of the changes
it has undergone. The more extreme thinkers, however, tended to develop
their ideas in directions which were incompatible with what was even then
regarded as the more obvious evidence in favour of transmutation. The
systems proposed by Bonnet and Robinet certainly ignored the evidence of
community of descent among the vertebrates provided by comparative
anatomy, and at the other extreme Diderot's acceptance of spontaneous
generation would also have negated the value of this kind of evidence, even
though Diderot himself had drawn attention to it at an earlier stage in his
career. It was the more moderate thinkers such as Maupertuis and Erasmus
Darwin who continued to stress the importance of such factors and who
made sure that they described the possibility of transmutation in a way that
was compatible with it. But even these workers belonged to the more liberal
extreme of the deist movement and many of their more conservative colleagues
were unable completely to emancipate themselves from the old static view
of nature. The ordinary deist could accept a greater age for the earth and
even a certain amount of physical and organic change in the course of its
history, but retained the belief that the Creator has imposed some form of
basic and permanent structure on the universe. This is true of those who
proposed the uniformitarian world-picture, of the taxonomists who derived
their inspiration from Linnaeus, and to a limited extent even of Buffon,
whose work in many other respects would have entitled him to be classed
along with Maupertuis and Erasmus Darwin above.
The most obvious example of this desire to recognize an element of
stability in the universe is the rise of uniformitarian geology, based on the
belief that the earth and its inhabitants have been maintained in a steady-state
condition over an indefinitely long period of time. A similar view of the solar

system was popular in celestial mechanics (although Kant and Laplace pro-
posed the 'evolutionary' nebular hypothesis) and it may easily be forgotten
that Voltaire, perhaps the Enlightenment's most effective spokesman,
staunchly defended a uniformitarian view of the earth against the opposing
developmental theories. Voltaire not only claimed that the earth has been
designed as a permanent habitat for living things but also used the theory
of pre-existing germs to argue that the Creator has guaranteed the permanent
stability of all species. The system described in works such as his Des
singularites de la nature has been discussed by Francis C. Haber,23 but here
Voltaire is presented as a rather reactionary figure because of his refusal to
accept that fossils might be the remains of once living species. It is true that
in this respect his opinions seem to count against the rise of evolutionism,
but it should not be forgotten that his basic position parallels that of the
century's most famous uniformitarian, James Hutton. Although Hutton did
not deny the reality of fossils, his Theory of the earth of 1795 at one point
very clearly defends the belief that the earth's population has not changed
significantly over a vast period of time. 24 His system is important because of
its account of geological dynamics, but Greene and others have emphasized
the extent to which his world-view was dependent upon theological considera-
tions and was, in fact, a complete expression of the deists' conception of the
universe as a perfectly designed machine created to run for an indefinitely
long period of time to provide an abode for life. R. Hooykaas has drawn
attention to the work of Toulmin, another writer of this period who similarly
maintained a steady-state view of the world and argued explicitly for the
immense antiquity of even the human race.25 This kind of uniformitarianism
was just as natural a product of the deist philosophy as evolutionism, and
when applied rigorously allowed only cyclic geological change and no organic
change at all. In the nineteenth century, of course, uniformitarianism is
regarded as a leading factor promoting the growth of evolutionism, but this
is a connection which must be analyzed with some care. It is true that once
the fossil record had demonstrated that organic change has occurred, then
the element of continuity inherent in uniformitarianism became a factor
encouraging acceptance of transmutation as an explanation of that change.
But this kind of evidence was not always accepted in the eighteenth century
and only became really demonstrative in the decades after 1800. Hutton
could cheerfully ignore it, although his interpreter, John Playfair, could not
altogether escape from the implications of extinction when he wrote his
Illustrations of the Huttonian theory of the earth in 1802.26 Even when the
uniformitarians had to accept a good deal of organic change, as was the case
when Charles Lyell revived the theory in the 1830s, their basic philosophy
still tended to make them minimize its overall extent. Lyell's continuing
opposition to the theory of the progressive development of life provides a
clear indication of how his basic world-view, even if it did promote trans-

mutation, denied the factor of development which was to become an important

part of evolutionary theory.
With the work of Carl von Linne or Linnaeus the Enlightenment saw
the establishment of the first really widely used system of biological classi-
fication. In his geological thinking Linnaeus wall certainly not a uniformi-
tarian, since he accepted a gradual decline in the level of the oceans, but
it is significant that he never found it necessary to inquire deeply into the
question of the earth's origin. It is also evident that his concept of organic
nature grew out of a deist rather than a Christian view of creation and still
included a strong element of stability imposed by the supposition that the
whole was governed by a fixed plan. God was the rational and benevolent
designer who had imposed a basic structure on nature so that man would
be able to understand it and had guaranteed the perpetuation of the system
by arranging the self-correcting 'balance of nature'. The search for a natural
classification was essentially a search for the divine plan, which was of
necessity held to have an irreducibly stable foundation.F There was some
degree of change with time, since the species had spread out from an original
island on which they were created. In an even more significant development
which has been described by a number of modern authors, Linnaeus even-
tually gave up his original belief in the fixity of species and proposed a
mechanism whereby the individual species within each genus could have
been formed through hybridization." But the amount of change was still
limited to a comparatively superficial level : the basic categories of the plant
kingdom were always supposed to have been fixed by the Creator, who had
merely allowed for a certain degree of multiplication of forms through the
hybridization of the originals. Thus Linnaeus never moved too far toward
a developmental view of nature. It was almost certainly his religious feelings
which prevented him from abandoning the belief that the organic world
had some form of basic plan imposed on it from the beginning, and one
suspects that many of his followers retained this belief even more strictly
than the master himself.
Of all the Enlightenment evolutionists, the comte de Buffon is perhaps
the most difficult to come to grips with, if only because of the sheer number
of historians who have given us their opinions about him. Some have main-
tained that he was a complete evolutionist in the modern sense, dismissing
occasional contradictory passages in his writings as mere irony. The most
famous example of this approach is to be found in Samuel Butler's Eoolution
old and new, and although Butler's attitude was clearly motivated by a
personal desire to deny Charles Darwin's originality, the same opinion has
been voiced more recently by Guyenot.P Most modern historians have been
more cautious in their judgment, but Buffon has remained a leading candidate
for study because of his consideration of the evolutionary implications of
factors that are still held to be important-geographical distribution, for

example. In principle, Buffon certainly wanted to provide a complete and

naturalistic account of the world's development based on Newtonian princi-
ples,30 and in his theory of the earth he was successful in satisfying these
requirements. He suggested that the earth was struck from the sun by a
comet and has subsequently cooled down to its present state over a long
period of time. To parallel this, he also investigated spontaneous generation
and some form of transmutation as possible explanations of how the organic
world has come to develop into the form in which we know it today. He had
always been suspicious of Linnaeus's taxonomy, regarding his method of
arranging the supposedly fixed species as purely arbitrary. Eventually he
came to accept that the species within each genus have evolved from a
common ancestor, driven by the pressure of the environment. A. O. Lovejoy's
article in Forerunners of Darwin gives a detailed picture of this aspect of his
work, but uncharacteristically says little about the philosophical background
to his later views about nature." Greene's Death of Adam helps to fill in this
background by describing Buffon's theory of generation, and a recent account
by Paul Farber emphasizes the need to interpret his philosophy of nature
in the light of this theory.32 All of these studies, however, treat the develop-
ment of a limited version of evolution based on the geographical distribution
of life around the world as the most significant aspect of his ideas. There
is some justification for this, since here Buffon was exploring for the first
time a clue which was to remain important for later evolutionists. But it is
all too easy to overestimate the significance of this at the expense of noting
the very limited scope of the evolutionary system proposed. Roger's extremely
thorough study of Buffon's thought shows that despite his enthusiasm for
naturalistic explanations he was unable to break completely with the belief
that the animal kingdom is based on a fixed plan. Although no sympathizer
with the normal argument from design by adaptation, he was convinced that
the Creator has somehow ensured that life within the universe must always
appear in only a limited series of basic forms. 33 The only way this could be
adapted to the theory of the cooling earth was to suppose that the basic
forms have somehow been spontaneously generated at certain points in the
planet's history, as described in Les epoques de la nature of 1779. Ostoya
and Wilkie have drawn attention to this as Buffon's 'alternative' to evolution,
yet they leave us with the impression that this was the materialists' kind of
random spontaneous generation because they do not stress that he held the
products of the process to be predetermined.ss I have myself tried to elucidate
how Buffon reconciled this theory of generation with his belief that the
'internal mould' of each genus is eternally fixed.36 I still maintain that this
commitment to fixity was the backbone of his thought about species, so that
the development of the limited version of transmutation was only a com-
paratively minor modification of a basically static view of organic nature.
The element of fixity arises because of Buffon's essentially deist commitment

to the idea of a Creator who has imposed some sort of structure on the
universe. He may well have become an atheist at the very end of his career,
and Roger argues (not altogether convincingly) that Diderot's influence
brought him close to this in 1749, but most authorities agree that throughout
the bulk of his career he accepted the deist view of a Creator." The element
of organic stability that he derived from this was a basic limitation on his
evolutionary tendencies, and may account for the fact that it was only at
the expense of great artificiality that he was able to formulate a system that
would allow the spontaneous generation of just two fundamentally different
populations in the course of the earth's history.
All of the problems associated with the interpretation of eighteenth century
evolutionism come to a head when we turn to the theory proposed by
J. B. P. A. de Monet, chevalier de Lamarck. Technically this theory belongs
to the nineteenth century, but unless we follow Gillispie in treating Lamarck
as a 'romantic' nature philosopher" we must look for the origins of his ideas
in the various strands of Enlightenment thought. As expounded in the
Philosophie zoologique of 1807 and the introduction to the Histoire naturelle
des animaux sans oertebres, the theory is certainly the most thorough of the
early attempts to envisage the operation of transmutation, but it is also the
most original and the most confusing in its basic principles. Nevertheless,
there are three strands of Lamarck's thought which may reflect earlier trends.
In his own way he developed a view of matter and life in which nature
emerges as an essentially dynamic system, much as the materialists had
imagined it. The activity of the various subtle fluids constantly carves out
new, but simple, living structures and then proceeds to render them more
complex. His belief that these structures, if left to themselves, would gradually
ascend a linear chain of being seems to reflect one aspect of the thought of
Bonnet and perhaps indicates some remnant of the old conviction that the
development of the organic world is predesigned by its Creator. Finally, his
acceptance that this linear process would be disturbed by the effect of the
constantly changing environment, producing modifications through the in-
heritance of acquired characteristics, may have been derived from Buffon's
earlier, more limited study of transmutation. Each of these connections,
however, is distorted through its incorporation into Lamarck's own complex
and original whole, the true nature of which is still being discussed, as in
the recent papers by M. J. S. Hodge, Ernst Mayr, and R. W. Burkhardt, Jr. 38
In concluding with Lamarck's theory, we are led once again to a problem
which has arisen a number of times in the course of this survey. In the later
part of his life, Lamarck was excluded from the French scientific community
through the activity of Georges Cuvier." This in itself is symptomatic of
a general change in attitudes, but of all the early evolutionists Lamarck was
the best known to the workers of later generations and we cannot avoid
asking: exactly what did he (or any of the others) contribute toward the

final triumph of the evolutionary viewpoint in the late nineteenth century?

This question has been put off until now to allow a concentration on the
quite different topic of determining the extent to which the Enlightenment
as a whole was converted to a dynamic or developmental concept of nature.
Following the style of historians such as Roger and Vartanian we have looked
at the eighteenth century in its own context and have seen how thinkers
from almost all philosophical backgrounds tried in their own way to accom-
modate themselves to the growing sense that the world has not always been
the same as it is today. But it is impossible now to avoid the problem of
assessing how much continuing influence these workers can have had on
later developments. Instead of presenting a 'cross-section' of eighteenth
century thought we must conclude by asking what are the implications of
our survey for the work of the historian who studies the general growth of
evolutionary ideas over a wider time scale. Since many of these historians
have, in fact, discussed the eighteenth century, it must be presumed that
they believe its achievements to have been of some permanent value. Writers
such as Greene and Eiseley very clearly imply that this is so, and the belief
that early figures such as Lamarck were grappling with the same issues that
Darwin later solved successfully is also implicit in a study of the background
to evolutionary theory by Mandelbaum.w But a trend is discernible in many
of the closer studies of the Enlightenment's concepts of nature which must
throw doubts on the wisdom of treating the development of evolutionary
thought as a continuous intellectual process. These studies have been written
on the assumption that the eighteenth century can only be understood within
its own context and that this context is quite different from the Darwinian
one. Implicitly, and often even explicitly, their authors are saying that if
you try to understand the theory of Lamarck (or of any other worker) as
though it were just a primitive version of Darwin's, you will almost certainly
misunderstand or distort it. Whatever the superficial similarities, the earlier
theory will be found to be based on totally different assumptions about the
nature of matter, life, species, development and the general aims of the
naturalist. Gillispie has made this point very forcibly in a comparison of
the world-views of Lamarck and Darwin.P and even though many would
now reject his interpretation of the former's position the sense of sheer
difference still rings true. At an even more fundamental level, Michel
Foucault's Les mots et leschoses argued that the nineteenth century introduced
new ways of representing nature quite different from those of the previous
age.42 Of course, this does not mean that we have to dismiss the eighteenth
century altogether, since specific techniques developed within one intellectual
context may still have relevance within another. Thus in their eagerness to
destroy the traditional Christian world-view the philosophes created a climate
of opinion free enough to allow the early growth of geology and palaeontology,
studies which were eventually to provide fairly clear evidence of significant

organic development in the course of the earth's history. But the eighteenth
century's own attempts to come to grips with the concept of universal change
were restricted by a much smaller amount of geological and palaeontological
evidence and took place against a background of other, equally fundamental
issues which had ceased to be relevant in the following century-the debate
over the pre-existence of germs, for instance. IIi one sense it is true that
the Darwinians faced up to the same philosophical issues as the more extreme
of the Enlightenment's critics of the argument from design. But these issues
were debated within an intellectual framework which had emerged in the
course of an intervening period during which the eighteenth century's
philosophies of nature had been almost totally repudiated. It is thus necessary
to proceed with great caution in trying to argue that the Darwinians owed
any serious intellectual debt to the Enlightenment. The significant connections
are almost certain to be the indirect ones.
It has been argued that it must have been of some importance for Charles
Darwin to know that earlier figures such as Lamarck and his own grand-
father had already attempted to provide naturalistic explanations of the
development of life. Darwin admitted as much himself, but argued that this
was a superficial connection because none of the details of his own explanation
was derived from such earlier attempts. Although Darwin did read his
grandfather's Zoonomia, it is not clear whether he ever went far beyond the
account and refutation of Lamarck's theory provided in Charles Lyell's
Principles of geology. He certainly did not read Buffon, since he developed
his own theory of 'pangenesis' quite unaware of its similarity to the mechanism
of generation proposed in the Histoire naturelle. T. H. Huxley, who pointed
out the resemblance to Buffon, seems to have been the only one of the British
evolutionists who read widely in the eighteenth century, and he shared
Darwin's low opinion of the earlier writers' efforts. 43 Evidently the Darwinists
themselves did not want to admit a debt to the early evolutionists, but what
is far more significant for our present purpose is the fact that their reading
was always superficial, confined only to a search for anticipations of those
ideas which seemed reasonable in the nineteenth century context. No effort
was made to understand the Enlightenment's view of nature, and it now
seems evident that even had the Darwinists been in a position to conduct
such research it would only have made them more puzzled and contemptuous.
Their attitude was the same as that which motivates the worst kind of modern
historical writing, except that the precursor-hunter of today will give as
much credit as possible for the superficial anticipations he discovers. It is
perhaps only natural that the historian concerned with the overall growth of
evolutionism should concern himself more with those workers who proposed
ideas or studied lines of evidence which could have interested their later
counterparts. But if the study is not to result in a caricature, such factors
must be presented against the background from which they emerged and

due allowance made for the fact that this is quite a different background to
that of Darwinism. Pioneers such as John Greene have already gone a long
way towards achieving this goal, but further steps still need to be taken in
the light of some of the studies of Enlightenment thought described above.
We must become more willing to take into account the influence of workers
whose ideas seemed reasonable in the eighteenth century but sound out-
landish to our modern ears. We must also be still on our guard that we do
not over-emphasize those aspects of the more 'promising' evolutionists' work
which anticipate later ideas. The best way of ensuring that this is done will
be a more thorough combination of general evolutionary history with the
attitude prevailing among those writers who are specifically concerned with
understanding the Enlightenment in its own terms.
The policy of considering the Enlightenment's break with the static world-
picture without restricting ourselves to transmutation theories has also
reinforced another point introduced at the beginning of the present paper.
When we survey the range of philosophical positions which gave rise to more
dynamic views of nature in the eighteenth century, the difficulty of relating
the history of evolutionary thought to the decline of religion becomes evident.
This difficulty affects not only our interpretation of early evolutionism but
also the broader picture which emerges when we discuss the relationship of
early developments to the general growth of the modern viewpoint. The claim
that the rise of evolutionism can be understood largely in terms of the
replacement of a religious view of nature with a more materialistic approach
has been supported in particular by John Greene, both in his Death of Adam
and in a more recent paper which examines the applicability of T. S. Kuhn's
analysis to this area of the history of science.w Greene is doubtful about the
value of treating the development of evolutionary theory as the emergence
of a new paradigm through a scientific revolution, suggesting instead that
two traditions co-existed in natural history through until the mid-nineteenth
century when one finally ousted the other. One tradition is that adopted by
the Linnaean school, committed to the belief in a static, designed universe.
In the nineteenth century this approach underwent a comparatively super-
ficial change to give the catastrophists' theory of a series of distinct miraculous
creations in the course ofthe earth's history. The other tradition is exemplified
in the writings of Buffon and the other Enlightenment figures who wished
to find a naturalistic explanation of universal development to replace the
concept of design. This tradition eventually triumphed with the emergence
of Darwinism. The survey of eighteenth century thought given above, how-
ever, throws grave doubts on the value of this interpretation, since some
who promoted the mechanical view of nature saw their mechanisms as means
by which the Creator's designs could be perpetuated, while others actually
argued for a designed organic development. Similar difficulties arise in the
study of the nineteenth century and lead to the suspicion that this inter-

pretation is perhaps the most subtle perpetuation of the tendency to see the
history of evolutionism only in Darwinian terms. However sympathetically
the background to early evolutionary ideas is examined-and Greene himself
has made great advances here-distortions of emphasis are bound to creep
in if it is not fully recognized that the concept of designed development was
a complete and often influential alternative to the materialist trend.
The greatest difficulty of the interpretation we are discussing, however,
lies in its inability to deal effectively with the period separating the Enlighten-
ment from the Darwinian debate. Here was a time in which the extremes of
eighteenth century speculation were repudiated and replaced, in Britain
especially, with a profoundly religious approach to the study of nature, as
described in C. C. Gillispie's Genesis and geology.45 Can this period be
treated as a kind of anomaly, in which the inevitable de-Christianization of
the universe begun by some of the Enlightenment evolutionists received a
temporary set-back before being triumphantly completed by Darwin? This
would be implied by the suggestion that the theory of successive creations
can be seen as only a minor modification of the old, static world-view. Yet
it was by means of this theory that the palaeontologists of the early nineteenth
century made some of the most important advances in our knowledge of
the general development of life on the earth. To claim that such achievements
have no integral place in the rise of the evolutionary viewpoint simply because
the succession of populations was held to have been produced directly by
the Creator seems quite unreasonable. The dilemma may be resolved by
extending the approach adopted in the present paper into the post-Enlighten-
ment period. The eighteenth century's escape from the static view of nature
produced many ideas of organic change which did not depend on trans-
mutation and some which related the changes to a specific plan imposed
by the Creator. If such ideas can be regarded as in some meaningful sense
'evolutionary', there is no reason why the theory of successive creations
cannot be accommodated and treated not as an anomaly in the rise of the
developmental world-view but as a very positive step which exploited in its
own way a line of inquiry which the Enlightenment had begun but had not
time to continue. In other words, while continuing to stress the general
cultural changes which separate the Enlightenment's view of nature from
that of the Darwinists, we may still see a form of continuity in the growing
willingness of naturalists to admit that (whatever its cause) the organic world
has undergone a series of major developments over a vast period of time.
A few vestiges of Enlightenment thought survived the cultural upheaval
which followed the French revolution. In France itself, Georges Cuvier's
more sober approach to natural history led him to reject speculative attempts
to account for the origin of new species, Lamarck's in particular. But Cuvier
was not interested in the idea of miraculous creations and his attempt to
argue that there was no need to assume such creations to explain the sue-

cession of forms he unearthed from the Tertiary rocks can be seen as one
of the last occasions on which the spirit of Enlightenment deism acted against
the developmental implications of the new geology and palaeontology. Many
other naturalists, however, adopted a far more religious view of their work
and openly accepted the concept of successive miraculous creations to account
for the series of fossil populations now being discovered. Already in the late
eighteenth century the theory of the earth proposed by the German mineralo-
gist A. G. Werner was appealing to more conservative elements. Werner's
system of the deposition of strata from a primeval ocean was by no means
an attempt to provide a mechanical theory of the actual origin of the earth
and had some superficial resemblances to the Genesis account of creation.
But the theory certainly encouraged a directional view of the earth's history
and its early emphasis on the importance of stratigraphy encouraged its
adherents to recognize the existence of a series of distinct fossil populations.
Wernerians such as J. A. Deluc could ridicule the artificiality of the materialis-
tic attempts to explain the origin of living things while at the same time
introducing the idea of a succession of populations quite naturally into their
own work because of their willingness to accept miraculous creations.w Even
that eminently pragmatic stratigrapher William Smith argued openly for
successive creations'" and the same is true of all of the British geologists
who followed in his footsteps to unravel the story of life as revealed by the
fossil record. The theory of special creations cannot altogether be considered
a retrogressive step in the development of evolutionary thought, still less a
minor modification of the old static world-view. It was a necessary vehicle
by means of which the early palaeontologists visualized the process they were
charting among the rocks. None of the Enlightenment's speculations could
have provided them with as satisfactory a vehicle. Buffon had only with
difficulty accepted the spontaneous generation of two distinct populations,
the materialists' approach would have conflicted with the obvious pattern
that soon began to emerge in the process, and the true theories of trans-
mutation by their very nature denied the element of discontinuity which was
so important in the recognition of fossils as a stratigraphical tool. Far from
holding back the growth of the developmental view of the earth's history,
the cultural changes which replaced the Enlightenment philosophies of nature
with a more openly religious approach allowed the construction of the first
comprehensive view of the history of life. Within the new creationist frame-
work emerged a series of theories relating the development of life to the
general changes undergone by the earth or to the idea of a progressive plan
of creation. Eventually the religious school of thought even evolved its own
kind of transmutation theory-it was a short step (logically, at least) from
Louis Agassiz's series of miraculous increases in the level of living organiza-
tion to Robert Chambers's theory of progress through predesigned trans-
mutation and the similar view accepted by as high an authority as Richard

Owen. 48 One could perhaps justify relegating the Enlightenment's theories

of predesigned development to a comparatively minor place, since they had
little direct influence. But it would be totally unrealistic to deny the evolu-
tionary significance of the corresponding movement in the nineteenth century
simply because it understood the development of life in terms different from
those we now accept. Once it is realized that the breakdown of the old static
world-picture was not simply a product of the reaction against Christianity
and was not promoted purely by means of naturalistic theories of trans-
mutation, the early nineteenth century falls into place as a vital step in the
history of evolutionary thought. Darwin's naturalistic theory may have des-
troyed the concept of design and reintroduced the materialistic attitude
favoured by some Enlightenment thinkers, but there was little intellectual
continuity because the intervening period had, within its own totally different
context, established new lines of evidence for the development of life which
no-one could ignore.
These last paragraphs have taken us far beyond the survey of Enlighten-
ment evolutionism which makes up the bulk of this paper. But the issues
they discuss are implicit in any attempt to understand what the pre-Dar-
winian workers can have contributed to the general rise of the evolutionary
viewpoint. Detailed study of the eighteenth century's philosophy of nature
shows how artificial it is to regard the move away from the static world-
picture either as a simple product of materialism or as something promoted
only through theories of the transmutation of species. This must change our
attitude toward Enlightenment evolutionism, and similar changes will follow
when the same points are taken into account in a discussion of the continuing
development of evolutionary thought. The religious attitudes of the early
nineteenth century are already well understood; what has been suggested
here is that we must become more flexible in our approach to the relationship
between science and religion both in this period and in the preceding century.
The Enlightenment poses special problems because its view of nature was
so different to that with which we are now familiar. But if the contributions
of the period are to be evaluated meaningfully this earlier viewpoint must
be understood and taken more fully into consideration. Studies of the
Enlightenment's intellectual background are becoming increasingly more
readily available; the historian of evolution ignores them at his peril.
REFERENCES
1. John C. Greene, The death of Adam. Evolution and its impact on Western thought
(Iowa, 1959); Loren Eiseley, Darwin's century. Evolution and the men who
discovered it (New York, 1958); Bentley Glass et al. (eds), Forerunners of
Darwin, 1745-1859 (Baltimore, 1959; reprinted 1968).

2. Jean Rostand, L'evolution des especes. Histoire des idees transformistes (Paris, 1932);
Emile Guyenot, Les sciences de la vie aux XVII" et XVIII" siecles : l'idee
d'eoolution (Paris, 1941); P. Ostoya, Les theories d'eoolution (Paris, 1951).
3. Paul Hazard, European thought in the eighteenth century. From Montesquieu to
Lessing (translated by J. Lewis May, Cleveland and New York, 1963); Ernst
Cassirer, The philosophy of the Enlightenment (translated by Fritz C. A. Koelln
and James P. Pettegrove, Princeton, 1951); Peter Gay, The Enlightenment:
an interpretation. The rise of modern paganism (New York, 1966); Norman
Hampson, The Enlightenment (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1968).
4. Aram Vartanian, Diderot and Descartes, a study of scientific naturalism in the
Enlightenment (Princeton, 1953); idem, "Trembley's polyp, La Mettrie and
eighteenth century French materialism", Journal of the history of ideas, xi
(1953),259-86; idem, introduction to J. O. de La Mettrie, L'homme machine
(Princeton, 1960).
5. Jacques Roger, Les sciences de la vie dans la pensee francoise du XVIII" siecle
(Paris, 1963; 2nd edn, 1972); Emile Callot, La philosophie de la vie au XVIII"
siecle (Paris, 1965).
6. De Maillet's treatise has recently been translated by Albert V. Carozzi, Telliamed,
or conversations between an Indian philosopher and a French missionary on the
dimunition of the sea . . . (Urbana, Illinois, 1968). The only modern printing
of La Mettrie's work with which I am familiar is Vartanian's edition of
L'homme machine.
7. D'Holbach's Systeme de la nature has recently been reprinted with an introduc-
tion by Yvon Belavelle (Hildesheim, 1966, 2 vols). The most easily available
edition of the relevant works by Diderot is the one edited by Paul Verniere,
Oeuvres philosophiques (Paris, 1966). There is a translation of D' Alembert's
dream along with Rameau's nephew by L. W. Tancock (Harmondsworth,
Middlesex, 1966).
8. See J. Roger, "Diderot et Buffon en 1749", Diderot studies, iv (1963),221-36;
A. Vartanian, "From deist to atheist", Diderot studies, i (1949),46-61, and "The
enigma of Diderot's Elements de physiologie", Diderot studies, x (1968), 285-
301 ; Emita Hill, "Materialism and monsters in Le reve de d' Alembert", Diderot
studies, x (1968), 67-94; Jean A. Perkins, "Diderot and La Mettrie", Studies
in Voltaire and the eighteenth century, x (1959), 49-100.
9. Pierre Naville, D'Holbach et la philosophie scientifique au XVIII" siecle (new
edition, Paris, 1967).
10. Lester G. Crocker, "Diderot and eighteenth century French transformism", in
Glass, Forerunners of Darwin, 114-43.
11. There is a detailed study of this connection by Norman L. Torrey, Voltaire
and the English deists (New Haven, 1930).
12. See John Ray, Miscellaneous discourses concerning the dissolution and changes of
the world (London, 1692), 170.
13. The Systeme de la nature was originally published under the name of Baumann.
The 1768 edition of Maupertuis's Oeuvres has recently been reprinted (4 vols,
Hildesheim, 1965). There is a translation of The earthly Venus by Simone
Brangier Boas (New York and London, 1968) which occasionally contributes
to the precursor hunting tradition by using modern-sounding phrases to
translate expressions for which they are hardly appropriate.
14. See the section on Maupertuis in Guyenot, Les sciences de la vie and Bentley
Glass, "Maupertuis, pioneer of genetics and evolution", in Forerunners of
Darwin, 51-83.

15. Desmond King-Hele, Erasmus Darwin (New York, 1963). King-Hele attempts
to back up his opinion with extensive passages reproduced in his The essential
writings of Erasmus Darwin (London, 1968), but the resemblances to modem
views which he points out are often superficial. In an earlier period Samuel
Butler attempted to belittle Charles Darwin by claiming that his ideas were
anticipated by his grandfather; on this episode, see "The Darwin-Butler
controversy" in Nora Barlow (ed.), The autobiography of Charles Darwin (New
York, 1958), 167-219. For a more reasonable assessment of the relationship,
see "On Charles Darwin and his grandfather, Dr Erasmus Darwin", ibid.,
149-66.
16. Pierre Brunet, Maupertuis (2 vols, Paris, 1929).
17. James Harrison, "Erasmus Darwin's views on evolution", Journal of the history
of ideas, xxxii (1972), 247-64.
18. Arthur O. Lovejoy, The great chain of being. A study in the history of an idea
(reprinted, New York, 1960), lecture IX.
19. Henri Daudin, Etudes d'histoire des sciences naturelles, I, De Linne a Jussieu;
methodes de la classification et l'idee de serie en botanique et en zoologie. II, Cuvier
et Lamarck; les classes zoologiques et l'idee de serie animale (Paris, 1926).
20. Bentley Glass, "Heredity and variation in the eighteenth century concept of
species", in Forerunners of Darwin, 144-72; C. O. Whitman, "Bonnet's theory
of evolution", and "The Palingenesia and the germ theory of Bonnet", in
Biological lectures delivered at the Marine Biological Laboratory of Wood's
Hole, 1894 (Boston, 1895), 225-40 and 241-72.
21. Raymond Savioz, La philosophie de Charles Bonnet de Geneoe (Paris, 1948). A
useful addition to Bonnet's published works is Savioz's edition of the Memoires
autobiographiques de Charles Bonnet (Paris, 1948).
22. I have attempted a brief analysis of Bonnet's thought in my "Buffon and
Bonnet: theories of generation and the problem of species", Journal of the
history of biology, vi (1973), 259-81.
23. See Francis C. Haber, "Fossils and the idea of a process of time in natural
history", in Forerunners of Darwin, 222-64 and the same author's The age of
the earth: Moses to Darwin (Baltimore, 1959). The works in which Voltaire
discusses these issues directly have not been translated into English, but see
the first chapter of his The philosophy of history (ed. Thomas Kierman, New
York, 1965) where he argues for quite large revolutions in the history of the
globe.
24. See James Hutton, Theory of the earth, with proofs and illustrations (2 vols,
1795; reprinted Weinheim/Bergstr. and Codicote, Herts, 1960), 175-6, where
it is claimed that the inhabitants of the ocean, at least, have remained un-
changed since the first rocks of the present continents were laid down.
25. R. Hooykaas, "Geological uniformitarianism and evolution", Archives inter-
nationales d'histoire des sciences, xix (1966), 3-19. On somewhat similar lines
M. J. S. Rudwick has argued that the real difference between Charles Lyell's
uniformitarianism and the catastrophist theory depended not so much on the
rate of geological change as upon the difference between a steady-state view
of the world and a directional or developmental picture in which the earth's
history has a definite beginning and (presumably) end: see his "The strategy
of Lyell's Principles of geology", Isis, lxi (1970), 5-33, and "Uniformity and
progression; reflections of the structure of geological theory in the age of
Lyell", in Duane H. D. Roller (ed.), Perspectives in the history of science and
technology (Oklahoma, 1971), 209-27.

26. John Playfair, Illustrations of the Huttonian theory of the earth (1802, reprinted
New York, 1964), 469-70.
27. There is a recent study of Linnaeus's views on the structure of nature by James
L. Larson, Reason and experience. The representation of natural order in the
work of Carl von Linne (Berkeley, 1971). There are a number of modern
reprints of Linnaeus's writings: Systema naturae (1735; reprinted Nieuwkoop,
1964; Fundamenta botanica and Bibliotheca botanica (1736; reprinted Munich,
1968) and Philosophia botanica (1751; reprinted Codicote, Herts, and New
York, 1966). The Systema naturae reprint contains a translation into
English.
28. These include John Greene's The death of Adam; Bentley Glass, "Heredity
and variation in the eighteenth century concept of species", in Forerunners
of Darwin, and F. J. Roberts, Plant hybridization before Mendel (Princeton,
1929), 15-33.
29. See Guyenot, Les sciences de la vie, especially 397. There are no extensive trans-
lations from Buffon's great Histoire naturelle available, but a modern edition
of the works has been prepared by Jean Piveteau, Oeuvres philosophiques de
Buffon (Paris, 1964). J. Roger has edited Les epoques de la nature and supplied
a valuable introduction, Memoires du Museum d'Histoire Naturelle, n.s.,
series c, x (1962).
30. See R. Wohl, "Buffon and his project for a new science", Isis, li (1960),186-99.
On Buffon's early development see Lesley Hanks, Buffon avant l'Histoire
naturelle (Paris, 1966).
31. A. O. Lovejoy, "Buffon and the problem of species", in Forerunners of Darwin,
84--113.
32. Paul L. Farber, "Buffon and the concept of species", Journal of the history of
biology, v (1972), 259-84.
33. See Roger, Les sciences de la vie, especially 578-81. Roger emphasizes the im-
portance of a passage in the fourth supplementary volume to the Histoire
naturelle (Paris, 1775), 509.
34. Ostoya, Les theories d'eoolution, 54--55, and J. S. Wilkie, "The idea of evolution
in the writings of Buffon", Annals of science, xii (1956), 48-62, 212-27 and
255-66, especially 220-5.
35. See the article "Buffon and Bonnet: theories of generation and the problem of
species", Journal of the history of biology, vi (1973), 259-81.
36. On Buffon's religious views, see J. Piveteau, "La pensee religieuse de Buffon",
in Roger Heim (ed.), Buffon (Paris, 1952).
37. Charles C. Gillispie, "The formation of Lamarck's evolutionary theory", Archives
internationales d'histoire des sciences, ix (1956), 323-38.
38. M. J. S. Hodge, "Lamarck's science of living bodies", British journal for the
history of science, v (1971), 323-52; Ernst Mayr, "Lamarck revisited", Journal
of the history of biology, v (1972), 55-94; Richard W. Burckhardt, Jr, "The
inspiration of Lamarck's belief in evolution", ibid., 413-38. A translation of
Lamarck's Zoological philosophy by Hugh Eliot is available (1914; reprinted
New York, 1963), and his essentially uniformitarian Hydrogeology has been
translated by Albert V. Carozzi (Urbana, Illinois, 1964). The latter work
illustrates how uniformitarianism could serve as the background for a
transmutation theory once the conviction that organic change has taken place
was provided from some other source.
39. See R. W. Burckhardt, Jr, "Lamarck, evolution and the politics of science",
Journal of the history of biology, iii (1970), 275-96.

40. Maurice Mandelbaum, "The scientific background to evolutionary theory in

biology", reprinted from Journal of the history of ideas (1957) in P. P. Wiener
and A. Noland (eds), Roots of scientific thought (New York, 1957), 517-36.
41. C. C. Gillispie, "Lamarck and Darwin in the history of science", in Forerunners
of Darwin, 265-90.
42. Michel Foucault, Les mots et les choses (Paris, 1966), translated as The nature
of things (London, 1970).
43. Huxley discussed the eighteenth century in general in his article "Evolution
in biology", Essays, ii, 'Darwiniana' (London, 1893), 187-226, and gave his
opinion of Lamarck in particular in his "On the reception of The origin of
species", in Francis Darwin (ed.), The life andletters of Charles Darwin (London,
1887), ii, 189. On Darwin's ignorance of Buffon's theory, see the letters, ibid., iii,
44-45. In 1844 he described Lamarck's theory as "veritable rubbish": see the
letter to J. D. Hooker, ibid., ii, 29. The "historical sketch" added to later
editions of the Origin of species makes only a passing reference to Buffon and
Erasmus Darwin, and includes only a superficial outline of Lamarck's views.
44. J. C. Greene, "The Kuhnian paradigm and the Darwinian revolution in natural
history", in Roller (ed.), Perspectives in the history of science, 3-25.
45. C. C. Gillispie, Genesis and geology. A study in the relations of scientific thought,
natural theology, and social opinion in Great Britain, 1790-1850 (Harvard, 1951).
This work concentrates only on the eighteenth century thinkers who retained
a more orthodox view of religion, and this limits its value to the historian
concerned with the collapse of Enlightenment thought.
46. For Deluc's ridicule of the eighteenth century speculations see his Lettres sur
a
l'histoire physique de la terre, addressees M. le professeur Blumenbach (Paris,
1798), lettre vii. Note how the same work takes it for granted at many points
that new species have been introduced at different points in the earth's history.
47. Smith speaks openly of special creations in his Stratigraphical system of organized
fossils (London, 1817), vii.
48. The persistent myth that Owen was totally opposed to evolution is an obvious
case in which the tendency to see the nineteenth century in Darwinian terms
has produced a major historical distortion. As early as 1849 Owen was writing
of a continuous progression of life brought about by secondary causes; for a
survey of his opinions, see Roy M. MacLeod, "Evolutionism and Richard
Owen", Isis, lvi (1965), 259-80. In a somewhat similar vein, M. J. S. Hodge has
recently pointed out the distortions which have been produced by treating
Chambers's theory as a primitive version of Darwin's; see his "The universal
gestation of nature: Chambers' Vestiges and Explanations", Journal of the
history of biology, v (1972), 127-52. Essentially, the problem here was that
the whole idea of a miracle became hazy and was incorporated into a somewhat
unusual concept of natural law; on the origins of this issue, see Walter F.
Cannon, "The problem of miracles in the 1830s", Victorian studies, iv (1960),
5-32.

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Hist.

s«, xii (1974), 159-183

EVOLUTIONISM IN TIlE ENLIGHTENMENT

Historians of science have devoted a great deal of attention to the emergence

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of life had to be treated as natural products of the material world. Spon-

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generally, in conclusion. Crocker argues that Diderot must be considered

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toward increasing complexity of structure. Both Maupertuis and Darwin

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occasionally sinks to the level of hailing brief anticipations of modern ideas

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mutation, denied the factor of development which was to become an important

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example. In principle, Buffon certainly wanted to provide a complete and

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final triumph of the evolutionary viewpoint in the late nineteenth century?

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Owen. 48 One could perhaps justify relegating the Enlightenment's theories

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40. Maurice Mandelbaum, "The scientific background to evolutionary theory in

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