THIS CHAPTER, more than any other, is a response to a challenge—to Charles C. Gillispie’s original and provocative formula that the philosophes loved nature and hated science. Gillispie argues that the men of the Enlightenment (with the notable exception of Voltaire) had a romantic, anthropomorphic conception of the place of science in their philosophical scheme: see his “The Encyclopédie and the Jacobin Philosophy of Science,” in Critical Problems in the History of Science, ed. Marshall Clagett (1959), 255–89; “Science in the French Revolution,” Behavioral Science, IV, 1 (January 1959), 67–73; and his chapter on “Science and the Enlightenment,” in The Edge of Objectivity: An Essay in the History of Scientific Ideas (1960). I regard this idea as the most interesting contribution to the study of the Enlightenment offered in recent decades. As my chaps. iv to viii suggest, I do not wholly accept it; the philosophes found a way out of the dilemma that “value-free” science posed.
A critical figure in Gillispie’s account of the rise of “romantic science” is Goethe. Barker Fairley: A Study of Goethe (1947) is indispensable to an understanding of Goethe’s search for scientific objectivity as a search for health. Rudolf Magnus: Goethe as a Scientist (1906; tr. Heinz Norden, 1949) is a comprehensive, well-informed, and admiring survey of Goethe’s wide range of scientific activities. Karl Viëtor, a celebrated Goethe specialist, has a section on “The Student of Nature,” in his Goethe the Thinker (1950; tr. Bayard Q. Morgan, 1950). See also René Berthelot: Science et philosophie chez Goethe (1932). But the particular emphasis on the “romantic” bearing of Goethe’s scientific inclinations is largely Gillispie’s contribution.
The language of science and its influence on poetry and culture generally has been thoroughly investigated. I am indebted to W. K. Wimsatt, Jr.: Philosophic Words (1948), Donald Davie: The Language of Science and the Language of Literature: 1700–1740 (1963), William Powell Jones: The Rhetoric of Science (1966), Alan Dugald McKillop: The Background of Thomson’s “Seasons” (1942), and Marjorie Hope Nicolson: Newton Demands the Muse: Newton’s “Opticks” and the Eighteenth Century Poets (1946), all highly instructive, all demonstrating that science did not kill eighteenth-century poetry. Hoxie Neale Fairchild: Religious Trends in English Poetry, I, 1700–1740: Protestantism and the Cult of Sentiment (1939), has indispensable material on the relation of Newtonianism to poetic performance. For d’Alembert’s view of metaphysics as a form of science, see Grimsley: D’Alembert (see above, 600), 226–7.
For the style and organization of eighteenth-century science a close look at seventeenth-century science is essential; here Martha Ornstein: The Rôle of Scientific Societies in the Seventeenth Century (3rd edn., 1938), [I, 525], remains the indispensable monograph. Chap. vii of Hall: The Scientific Revolution (1954), and chap. v of Hall: From Galileo to Newton, 1630–1720 (1963), are excellent studies of scientific organization. Thomas Sprat’s famous History of the Royal Society, first published in 1667 as a tract in behalf of the new learning, has recently been edited by J. I. Cope and H. W. Jones (1958); it may be supplemented, but has not been superseded, by recent popular accounts of the Royal Society like Dorothy Stimson’s Scientists and Amateurs (1948). See also Sir Henry Lyons: The Royal Society, 1660–1940 (1944). For the French academy of science the old book by J. Bertrand: L’Académie des Sciences et les Académiciens de 1666 à 1793 (1869) is still useful; it is to be read in conjunction with Harcourt Brown: Scientific Organizations in Seventeenth-Century France (1934).
The general character of eighteenth-century science is laid out in the contributions to Allan Ferguson, ed.: Natural Philosophy Through the Eighteenth Century and Allied Topics (Anniversary Number of the Philosophical Magazine, 1948), and A. Wolf: A History of Science, Technology and Philosophy in the 18th Century (2d rev. edn. by D. McKie, 1952), which is very comprehensive and remains useful, although it often degenerates into a mere catalogue of names, books, and specific experiments. The Voltaire letter of 1735 I quote in the text is often cited; I had drafted this chapter when I came upon it once again in an interesting essay by Henry Guerlac: “Where the Statue Stood: Divergent Loyalties to Newton in the Eighteenth Century,” in Earl R. Wasserman, ed.: Aspects of the Eighteenth Century (1965), 317–34. Diderot as scientist has been discussed by Dieckmann, Proust (for both, see above, 587), and in great detail by Jean Mayer: Diderot: Homme de science (1959); for Diderot’s competence in mathematics, see his Correspondance, IX, 198 and n. On the whole question of “humanism” in the scientific thinking of philosophes like Diderot, and its relation to antiquity, my Rise of Modern Paganism offers plentiful evidence.
The fullest life of Sir Isaac Newton is by Louis Trenchard More: Isaac Newton, A Biography (1934), [I, 529]. It has been highly praised, and has great merit, exploiting as it does much unpublished material, but it is sometimes grossly inaccurate in its historical detail (thus, for example, it places the beginning of Voltaire’s visit to England a year too early, in 1725, and the publication of Voltaire’s Lettres philosophiques in 1765 instead of 1734), and must therefore be used with caution. The great edition of Newton’s Correspondence now under way, eds. H. W. Turnbull et al., I–IV (1959–67), covering the years 1661 to 1709, will make possible a new comprehensive biography soon. Meanwhile, Frank E. Manuel: “Newton as Autocrat of Science,” Daedalus (Summer 1968), 969–1001, is an interesting study of Newton in a position of dominance, while Manuel: A Portrait of Isaac Newton (1968) offers a penetrating analysis of Newton’s personality in relation to his work from a psychoanalytical point of view. Ferdinand Rosenberger: Isaac Newton und seine physikalischen Principien: Ein Hauptstück aus der Entwicklungsgeschichte der modernen Physik (1895) is an excellent general survey of Newton’s achievement and influence. I first learned about Rosenberger’s book through a reference in Alexandre Koyré’s posthumous Newtonian Studies (1965), a splendidly informative collection of essays emphasizing Koyré’s opposition to both the Marxist and the sociological interpretations of the scientific revolution. For the same point, see the recent collection of six essays by Koyré: Metaphysics and Measurement: Essays in the Scientific Revolution (tr. R. E. W. Maddison, 1966). Koyré’s set of lectures, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe (1957), [I, 525], is a moving and suggestive essay on the philosophical meaning of the scientific revolution. A very important, though still controversial, corrective to the traditional notion that Newton and Newton alone governed eighteenth-century science, insisting that the Bernoullis, Euler, and others made important independent contributions, especially in mechanics, is C. Truesdell: “A Program toward Rediscovering the Rational Mechanics of the Age of Reason,” Archive for History of Exact Sciences, I, 1 (1960), 3–36. The best representative of the sociological school remains Robert K. Merton: Science, Technology, and Society in Seventeenth-Century England (1938), while the most persuasive (though obviously to me not persuasive) representative of the Marxist school is Franz Borkenau: Der Übergang vom feudalen zum bürgerlichen Weltbild (1934). Sir Isaac Newton, 1727–1927: A Bicentenary Evaluation of His Work (1928), is a collection of papers, most of them—on Newton’s Opticks, dynamics, experiments, chemistry, alchemy, and so forth—helpful but not extensive enough to be really searching or profound. The general histories of science, above all by Hall (just cited), and E. J. Dijksterhuis: The Mechanization of the World Picture (1950; tr. C. Dikshoorn, 1961), naturally give abundant space to what Hall has felicitously called “The Principate of Newton.” Hélène Metzger: Newton, Stahl, Boerhaave et la doctrine chimique (1930) may be read in conjunction with her earlier treatment of chemistry in France: Les Doctrines chimiques en France du début du 17e à la fin du 18e siècle (1923). To these may be added H. W. Turnbull: Mathematical Discoveries of Newton (1945); G. N. Clark: Science and Social Welfare in the Age of Newton (1949), an original brief essay; A. R. and M. B. Hall: Unpublished Scientific Papers of Isaac Newton (1962); and A. C. Crombie: “Newton’s Conception of Scientific Method,” Bulletin of the Institute of Physics (November 1957), reprinted in Norman Clarke, ed.: A Physics Anthology (1960), 80–104. I. B. Cohen et al.: Isaac Newton’s Papers and Letters on Natural Philosophy, and Related Documents (1958), makes available a number of Newton’s hitherto inaccessible writings. I have also learned from J. E. McGuire: “Body and Void and Newton’s De Mundi Systemate: Some New Sources,” Archive for History of Exact Sciences, III, 3 (1966), 206–48; and a fascinating reading of the meaning of Newton’s work by McGuire and P. M. Rattansi, “Newton and the ‘Pipes of Pan,’ ” Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, XXI, 2 (December 1966), 108–43. Newton’s leading contemporaries have also been studied with care; among the best volumes are A. E. Bell: Christian Huygens and the Development of Science in the Seventeenth Century (1947); E. F. MacPike: Hevelius, Flamsteed and Halley (1937); and Margaret ’Espinasse: Robert Hooke (1956). Marie Boas: “The Establishment of the Mechanical Philosophy,” Osiris, X (1952), 412–541, is an instructive general survey. Fontenelle’s Éloge to Newton is an important document, showing Fontenelle’s sympathetic awareness of Newton (reprinted in Œuvres de Fontenelle, II [1825], 181–207). Leonard M. Marsak has demonstrated Fontenelle’s openness to Newtonian doctrines in his “Bernard de Fontenelle: The Idea of Science in the French Enlightenment,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, IL, 7 (December 1959), and his conclusive Two Papers on Bernard de Fontenelle (1959), [both I, 530]. Roger Hahn’s little pamphlet, Laplace as a Newtonian Scientist (1967), is an intelligent introduction. Cassirer has well discussed Kant’s Newtonianism in his Kants Leben und Lehre (1918), (especially 23); so has A. D. Lindsay in his Kant (1934), (15–24), [both I, 441]. For Newton in Scotland, see Gladys Bryson: Man and Society (see above, 597), 7–8, 18.
The students of scientific language in the age of Newton have also paid close attention to the literary worship of Newton—largely because the two phenomena were substantially the same. In addition to Thomson, Prior was another poet in whom the Newtonian strain can be traced without difficulty; see the new edition of his poetry, The Literary Works of Matthew Prior, eds. H. Bunker Wright and Monroe Spears, 2 vols. (1959). Ruth Murdock has continued Marjorie Nicolson’s researches for France in her “Newton and the French Muse,” JHI, XIX, 3 (June, 1958), 323–34, to which I am indebted. See also Murdock’s dissertation, “Newton’s Law of Attraction and the French Enlightenment” (1950). For Haller and Newton, see Howard Mumford Jones: “Albrecht von Haller and English Philosophy,” PMLA, XL, 1 (March 1925), 103–27. I learned that the knighting of Newton the scientist was unprecedented in England from More’s Newton, p. 522.
The diffusion of Newton’s ideas in England and on the Continent is of such importance to the history of science that all general histories devote ample space to it. Rosenberger is excellent, as are Koyré: Newtonian Studies, and Hall: From Galileo to Newton (cited above, 611). E. W. Strong: “Newtonian Explications of Natural Philosophy,” JHI, XVIII, 1 (January 1957), 49–83, is a comprehensive article. For the spread of Newtonianism to the Dutch physicians and to France, the work of Pierre Brunet is indispensable. See Les physiciens hollandais (above, 586); La vie et l’œuvre de Clairaut (1713–1765), (1952), and, of course, L’Introduction des théories de Newton en France au XVIIIe siècle (1931), [I, 530], which takes the struggle down to 1738, the year that Voltaire published his influential book on Newton (see immediately below). Grimsley: D’Alembert is also most helpful here. Among the continental Newtonians was the Genevan mathematician Gabriel Cramer; Condillac’s letters to him have been edited by Georges Le Roy in Condillac, Lettres inédites à Gabriel Cramer (1953). Brunet’s work on the Dutch Newtonians can be supplemented with an interesting short article by C. A. Crommelin: “Die holländische Physik im 18ten Jahrhundert mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Entwicklung der Feinmechanik,” Sudhoffs Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin und der Naturwissenschaften, XXVIII, 3 (December 1935), 129–42. I have already lamented in The Rise of Modern Paganism (443) that Gustav Zart: Einfluss der englischen Philosophie auf die deutsche im 18ten Jahrhundert (1881) is little more than a catalogue; here is a fascinating subject calling for a good monograph. See for now, Erich Adickes: Kant als Naturforscher (1924–5). For the American colonies, I. B. Cohen: Franklin and Newton (1956) is of value. As for Voltaire’s gradual appropriation of Newton, see Henry Guerlac’s article cited above (612), Brunet, as well as Léon Bloch: La philosophie de Newton (1908). See Robert L. Walters: “Chemistry at Cirey,” VS, LVIII (1967), 1807–27, for a judicious study of Voltaire’s scientific collaboration with Madame du Châtelet. On the same subject, see also Sir Gavin de Beer: “Voltaire et les sciences naturelles,” in The Age of the Enlightenment: Studies Presented to Theodore Besterman, eds. W. H. Barber et al. (1967), 35–50. Charles Gillispie’s account (in The Edge of Objectivity, 157–9) of Voltaire’s uncertainty in the Lettres philosophiques of 1734, followed by his unqualified adoption of Newtonianism four years later, in the Éléments, is perceptive as always, but in view of the last part of Lettre XV, which is highly critical of Descartes’s method, a little too schematic; even in the early 1730s, I am convinced, Voltaire was far more a Newtonian than a Cartesian.
That this should have been so (as I indicate in the text) was largely the work of Maupertuis, a remarkable scientist who was long unduly neglected, thanks in part to Voltaire’s witty malice. This has now been rectified by some excellent monographs, especially Pierre Brunet: Maupertuis, 2 vols. (1929), and some recent articles—Harcourt Brown: “Maupertuis-philosophe: the Enlightenment and the Berlin Academy,” VS, XXV (1963), 255–69; and Marie Louise Dufrenoy: “Maupertuis et le progrès scientifique,” ibid., 519–87 [see I, 437–8]. Émile Callot: Maupertuis: Le Savant et le philosophe, présentation et extraits (1964), has an introduction and collection of texts. (See also below, section 3, on Maupertuis as biologist.)
The Encyclopédie was, of course, filled with articles on the sciences, and their collective attitude is of great interest. They have been analyzed by students of Diderot, like Proust; there are also articles by Gerard Vassails on “L’Encyclopédie et la physique,” Revue d’histoire des sciences, IV (July–December 1951), 294–323 (from a Marxist perspective); by Charles Bedel on “L’avènement de la chimie moderne,” ibid., 324–33; by Maurice Daumas on “La chimie dans l’Encyclopédie et dans l’Encyclopédie méthodique,” ibid., 334–43.
While it is undeniable that Newton was a “modern,” his ties to antiquity remain close and deserve to be even more carefully traced than they have so far; see The Rise of Modern Paganism, chap. v. In his The Newtonian System of the World, the prolific popularizer J. T. Desaguliers wrote: “The System of the Universe, as taught by Pythagoras, Philolaus, and others of the Ancients, is the same, which was since reviv’d by Copernicus, allowed by all the unprejudiced of the Moderns, and at last demonstrated by Sir Isaac Newton.” (Quoted in McKillop: Background of Thomson’s “Seasons,” 35.) Voltaire certainly knew this: “Newton,” he wrote in the first book of his Éléments de la philosophie de Newton, “followed the ancient views of Democritus, Epicurus, and a crowd of philosophers corrected by our celebrated Gassendi” (Œuvres, XXII, 410). There is room for exploration here.
For the general background to Newton’s religion, E. A. Burtt: Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (2d edn., 1932), [I, 529], is indispensable. E. W. Strong has dealt with Newton’s religion in a series of articles, most notably in “Newton and God,” JHI, XIII, 2 (April 1952), 146–67; and “Newton’s ‘Mathematical Way,’ ” ibid., XII, 1 (January 1951), 90–110; see also “Newtonian Explications” cited above (615). Richard S. Westfall: Science and Religion in 17th Century England (1958) is a sensible general survey, while Westfall’s brief discussion, “Isaac Newton: Religious Rationalist or Mystic?,” Review of Religion, XXII, 3–4 (March 1958), 155–70, concentrates on the point at issue here. Hélène Metzger: Attraction universelle et religion naturelle chez quelques commentateurs anglais de Newton (1938) is a splendid survey of Newtonian religious and scientific thought from Bentley and Toland to Derham and Priestley. There is much of value on Newton’s religion in Frank Manuel: Isaac Newton Historian (1963). For Newton’s Unitarianism, see Herbert McLachlan: The Religious Opinions of Milton, Locke, and Newton (1941). Herbert H. Odom: “The Estrangement of Celestial Mechanics and Religion,” JHI, XXVII, 4 (October–December 1966), 533–48, surveys the gradual secularization of science intelligently but with no surprises.
The controversy between the Newtonians and Leibniz over natural religion has been much discussed, and the correspondence printed several times, most recently and most adequately by H. G. Alexander: The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence (1956), [see I, 530]. Among several instructive discussions of this controversy, see above all Koyré: From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe (cited above, 612–13), chap. xi; Koyré and I. B. Cohen: “Newton and the Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence,” Archives Internationales d’histoire des sciences, XV (1962), 63–126; and Ernst Cassirer: “Newton and Leibniz,” Philosophical Review, LII, 4 (July 1943), 366–91.
The precise influence of Descartes on the Enlightenment (especially in France) remains a matter of debate. Aram Vartanian, himself a participant in that debate, has lucidly delineated the competing parties: Francisque Bouillier: Histoire de la philosophie cartésienne, 2 vols. (3rd edn., 1868), was among the first to argue that the French philosophes were in no way the heirs of Descartes, but rather the followers of Bacon, Newton, and Locke (a view rather generally accepted today); the view has the prestige of Cassirer’s Philosophy of the Enlightenment. The opposing camp was led by Hippolyte Taine, whose Les Origines de la France contemporaine: L’Ancien régime, 6 vols. (1884–94), portrays the philosophes as the unhappy inheritors of a mixture of classicism and Cartesian rationalism. There is a third, compromise, party, led by Fernand Brunetière: see especially his “Jansénistes et Cartésiens,” in Études critiques sur l’histoire de la littérature française (fourth series), (1889), 111–78, followed and carefully documented by Gustave Lanson in several essays, most notably “Origines et premières manifestations de l’esprit philosophique dans la littérature française de 1675 à 1748,” Revue des cours et conférences, XVII (1908–9), 61–74, 113–26, 145–57, 210–23, and 259–71; and the important early article, “L’influence de la philosophie cartésienne sur la littérature française,” Revue de métaphysique et morale, IV (1896), 517–50, which holds that the philosophes accepted only part of Descartes’s philosophy—his radical skepticism—but rejected the rest; this school, Vartanian notes, takes the word of the philosophes without question (see Aram Vartanian: Diderot and Descartes: A Study of Scientific Naturalism in the Enlightenment [1953], chap. i). Vartanian belongs to a fourth school: he holds that the French philosophes who all imbibed Cartesianism early and thoroughly were far more deeply in his debt than they found it politic to say, for polemical reasons, and especially the important materialist strain in French Enlightenment philosophy is largely Cartesian. I do not accept Vartanian’s thesis, though I hasten to add that I have learned much from his refreshing and contentious book; it is rich in apt quotations and suggestive ideas. I agree in principle that one should not take one’s sources on trust; as I say in the text, the philosophes were “ungenerous in acknowledging, and hasty to minimize” the power of Descartes’s ideas (146). But, as Vartanian himself shows with abundant quotations, the philosophes quite openly acknowledged the merits of at least parts of Descartes’s thought; besides, there is no logical necessity why for polemical reasons they should have denied Descartes’s influence. Quite the contrary, anxious as they were to acquire respectable ancestors and to avoid trouble with the authorities, it would have been far more logical for them to adopt and even exaggerate Descartes’s influence than to deny it. It seems to me unquestionable that the discrediting of Descartes’s physics dragged Descartes’s philosophical method into disaster, and that Newtonian empiricism struck the philosophes—even the materialists, who were much indebted to Descartes—as the only true philosophy, leading to agreement and action.
For the influence of Descartes in England, see Sterling Lamprecht: “The Role of Descartes in 17th-Century England,” in Studies in the History of Ideas, III (1935), 181–240, and Marjorie H. Nicolson: “The Early Stage of Cartesianism in England,” Studies in Philology, XXVI, 3 (July 1929), 356–74, which offers good evidence for the early influence of Descartes, especially among the Cambridge Platonists. On the same subject, the older book by John Tulloch: Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy in England in the Seventeenth Century, 2 vols. (1872), especially II, remains valuable. See now Rosalie L. Colie: Light and Enlightenment (1957), [I, 534]; Ernst Cassirer: The Platonic Renaissance in England (1932; tr. James P. Pettegrove, 1953), [I, 533]; and J. A. Passmore: Ralph Cudworth, An Interpretation (1951). For the complexity of what I have called the “victimization” of Descartes, see the excellent pages in Rosenberger: Isaac Newton (see above, 612), 224–48, 342–3.
In addition to these titles, I have drawn heavily upon Koyré’s independent estimate of the relation of “Newton and Descartes,” (in Newtonian Studies, 53–114). Koyré quotes (63–4 n.) a fascinating passage from William Whiston’s Autobiography which shows the clash of Newtonian and Cartesian ideas in the English universities.
The retreat of God before science is, of course, one of the Enlightenment’s central themes and has been touched upon in all the studies of the philosophes and all major histories of the time. Roger Mercier: La réhabilitation de la nature humaine (1700–1750) (1960) is a bulky French thesis, full of good material. A. Dupront: Les lettres, les sciences, la religion et les arts dans la société française de la deuxième moitié du XVIIIe siècle (1963) takes up where Mercier left off. Stromberg: Religious Liberalism in Eighteenth-Century England (see above, 591), devotes a number of pages, notably 27 ff., to the subject. Sometimes the secularization of ideas is palpable in one man: “In 1762, Linnaeus conjectures that the work of God in the Creation stopped at providing the common source of each genus, or maybe only of each order.… In 1766, he omits from the final edition of the Systema Naturae his famous dictum that there are no new species. Finally, in 1779, he expresses the view that ‘species are the work of time,’ and that one of the great scientific enterprises of the future will consist in demonstrating this truth.” Bentley Glass: “Heredity and Variation in the Eighteenth Century Concept of the Species,” Forerunners of Darwin: 1745–1859, eds. Bentley Glass, Oswei Temkin, William L. Straus, Jr. (1959), 150. I trust that nothing I have said in the text, or in this bibliography, will lead anyone to saddle me with the opinion that religion was dead by the end of the eighteenth century; it did not “revive” early in the nineteenth century, for it had always been alive. The final blow probably came with Darwin. On this question, though perhaps inclined to overestimate the power of Christian belief on thought, see the able dissertation by Charles C. Gillispie: Genesis and Geology; A Study in the Relations of Scientific Thought, Natural Theology, and Social Opinion in Great Britain, 1790–1850 (1951). One excellent instance of deep inner religious conflict suffered by a leading scientist is Albrecht von Haller. See the collection of his essays, reviews, diaries, Tagebuch seiner Beobachtungen über Schriftsteller und über sich selbst, 2 vols. (1787); Margarete Hochdoerfer: The Conflict between the Religious and the Scientific Views of Albrecht von Haller (1708–1777) (1932), a thoughtful survey; Stephen d’Irsay: Albrecht von Haller, Eine Studie zur Geistesgeschichte der Aufklärung (1930), a good general analysis, if a little vulgar in tone; Heinrich Ernst Jenny: Haller als Philosoph (1902), short, much too partisan; Hans Stahlmann: A. v. Hallers Welt- und Lebensanschauung, Nach seinen Gedichten (1928) does what its title says—it is economical; and Eduard Stäuble: Albrecht von Haller, “Über den Ursprung des Übels” (1952), a short dissertation, a critical edition of Haller’s poem with extended comment.
The development of the biological sciences in the eighteenth century has received much good treatment recently. Jacques Roger: Les sciences de la vie dans la pensée française du XVIIIe siècle (1963), [I, 438], is a rich and enormously bulky survey ranging from seventeenth-century French speculation to, and beyond, d’Alembert; I have used it with great profit. Jean Éhrard: L’idée de la nature en France dans la première moitié du XVIIIe siècle, 2 vols. (1963), is also excellent. Once again I found Hall: The Scientific Revolution (cited above, 611) most useful, especially chap. x, “Descriptive Biology and Systematics.” Philip C. Ritterbush: Overtures to Biology: The Speculations of Eighteenth-Century Naturalists (1964) surveys the transfer of “Newtonian” ideas into other sciences, and deals with electricity, speculations on plant generation, and botanical classification. Elizabeth Gasking: Investigations into Generation, 1651–1828 (1967), is highly instructive; her book lucidly discusses the vehement debates among eighteenth-century biologists over preformation; Gasking should be read in conjunction with relevant articles in Bentley Glass et al.: Forerunners of Darwin (cited above, 620), particularly Francis C. Haber: “Fossils and Early Cosmology,” 3–29; and Bentley Glass: “The Germination of the Idea of Biological Species,” 30–48, and “Heredity and Variation in the Eighteenth Century Concept of the Species,” 144–72.
The most remarkable biologist of the century was, of course, “the eloquent and philosophic Buffon,” as an admiring Gibbon called him (Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, VII, 308 n.). In view of Buffon’s versatility and originality, the scarcity of good work on him is surprising. There is Jean Pivoteau’s intelligent “Introduction” to Buffon’s Œuvres philosophiques (1954), a bulky volume that also includes excellent short essays by other scholars on particular aspects of Buffon’s work [I, 438]; there are the instructive pages in Roger’s Sciences de la vie (527–84); and there is Arthur O. Lovejoy’s “Buffon and the Problem of Species,” in Glass: Forerunners of Darwin, 84–113. See also the brief article by Franck Bourdier and Yves François: “Buffon et les Encyclopédistes,” Revue d’histoire des sciences, IV (1951), 228–32; Otis Fellows: “Buffon and Rousseau: Aspects of a Relationship,” PMLA, LXXV, 3 (June 1960), 184–96, and “Buffon’s Place in the Enlightenment,” VS, XXV (1963), 603–29 [I, 438]; and Robert Wohl: “Buffon and his Project for a New Science,” Isis, LI, part 2, No. 164 (1960), 186–99.
For Maupertuis in general, see above, 616, and, in addition, Paul Ostoya: “Maupertuis et la Biologie,” Revue d’histoire des sciences, VII (1954), 60–78.