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George Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon Biography

George Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon Image

BUFFON, George Louis Leclerc, Comte de (1707–88). A French naturalist and philosopher. He was born in Montbard, Sept. 7, 1707, and died in Paris, April 16, 1788. He received a liberal education and traveled in Italy and England. His father was an eminent lawyer and wished his son to follow his profession; but the boy evinced a stronger liking for the sciences and devoted all his earlier life to studies in mathematics, physics, and agriculture. In 1739 he was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences and also appointed keeper of the Royal Gardens and Museum in Paris, out of which were subsequently formed the Jardin des Plantes and the Museum of Natural History. Here he lived for several months of each year, in a large house, which is still standing, and which after his death became successively the lodging place of many famous naturalists. The remainder of the time he lived in the rural village of Montbard, where, and not in the presence of the specimens in the museum in Paris, his Natural History was written. His position, personal influence, and wealth enabled him to be of great service to several students who became eminent investigators, the most important of whom was Lamarck. Buffon himself was never an investigator nor even an observer. He was a compiler and popularizer of scientific matters, which he presented in an attractive, even brilliant, way, and upon which he framed theories and generalizations, some of which were notable as foreshadowing the evolutionary notions of the succeeding generation. "His single positive addition to zoölogical science," says Packard, "was generalizations on the geographical distribution of animals." His elaborate and picturesque theories in respect to the geological history of the earth were erroneous and fantastic, yet had the virtue, as was pointed out by Cuvier, of calling attention clearly to the fact that the history of life upon the globe was the history of a succession of advancing changes. Soon after taking charge of the museum he began the great work upon natural history, Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière (44 vols., quarto, Paris, 1749–1804), with which his name is most commonly associated, and which was completed by Lacépède after his death. It passed through several editions and was the first work which brought together the information of the time in a manner interesting and intelligible to the general reader, illustrated by really good pictures.

Scattered through this work are passages of speculation and suggestion, which seem accidentally thrown out rather than carefully considered, and which are often so tinged with irony as to make it difficult for the modern critic to determine whether their author really believed what he said—an effect in part due, no doubt, to the danger of uttering new ideas in the political and social atmosphere of his time. Some of these suggestions seem definitely to anticipate the evolutionary ideas of Lamarck and the two Darwins, and to assert the mutability of species, but they are rarely complete in statement. He seems to have been most impressed with the influence of climate as a factor compelling variation in animals and species, and hints that thus many species in the past may have been extinguished or created. He even asserts, in a hypothetical way, the idea of the derivation of species by descent and variation from earlier forms, but follows it by a denial. Dr. A. S. Packard, who collected all the views of Buffon bearing upon biological, evolution, as the term is now understood, concludes an examination of them as follows: "The tentative views of Buffon . . . would now be regarded as in a degree superficial and valueless. But they appeared 34 years before Lamarck’s theory, and, though not epoch-making, they are such as will render Buffon's name memorable for all time."

Buffon was admitted to the French Academy in 1753, when he delivered as his inaugural address the famous Discours sur le style. He was also perpetual treasurer of the Academy of Sciences, fellow of the Royal Society of London, and member of all the prominent scientific societies of Europe. He married in 1752, and his son became an officer of the French army and was executed in 1793 for political reasons.

The New International Encyclopaedia Vol IV. (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 118.