The Cuvier-Geoffrey Debate: French Biology in the Decades before DarwinFor scientists, no event better represents the contest between form and function as the chief organizing principle of life as the debate between Georges Cuvier and Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. This book presents the first comprehensive study of the celebrated French scientific controversy that focused the attention of naturalists in the first decades of the nineteenth century on the conflicting claims of teleology, morphology, and evolution, which ultimately contributed to the making of Darwin's theory. This history describes not only the scientific dimensions of the controversy and its impact on individuals and institutions, but also examines the meaning of the debate for culture and society in the years before Darwin. |
Contents
| 1 | |
Collaborators on a New Science | 11 |
Cuvier and Functionalist Anatomy | 40 |
Chapter 4 Geoffroy and the Emergence of Philosophical Anatomy | 69 |
18201829 | 105 |
Chapter 6 The Debate before the Académie | 143 |
Other editions - View all
The Cuvier-Geoffroy Debate: French Biology in the Decades Before Darwin Toby A. Appel Limited preview - 1987 |
Common terms and phrases
Académie des Sciences anatomists animal kingdom animaux Annales des sciences Arago Audouin Balzac biology birds Blainville bones Brongniart Buffon career chair classification Collège de France comparative anatomy controversy crustacea Cuvier and Geoffroy Cuvier-Geoffroy debate Darwin Daubenton disciple doctrine Dugès Duméril éloge embryology Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire evolution Faculté des Sciences fishes fossil Frédéric Cuvier French science froy froy's générale Geof Geoffroy's Georges Cuvier Goethe Histoire homologies hyoid Ibid idem insects Institut invertebrates Isidore Geoffroy Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire Jardin Journal l'Académie Lacépède Lamarck Latreille laws mammals memoir Milne Edwards modified mollusks morphology Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle natural history naturalists organs Owen paper Paris philosophical anatomy Philosophie anatomique philosophie zoologique Pierre Flourens political Principes de philosophie Procès-verbaux professor published quotation Raspail Revue savants sciences naturelles scientific scientists Serres Société species structure teleological teratology theory of analogues tion unity of composition unity of plan University vertebrates vols wrote zoologists zoology
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