Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière - 1802
1/13/2024 - I call this the “French Fish Exhibit.” Beautiful and intricate fish images. Turns out that the author, Buffon, is renowned and wrote 36 volumes of natural history. This was volume 6. Sadly, Buffon had to recant his views on evolution because they cotradictsd prevailing views of creation. TMPBuffon's Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière (1749–1788: in 36 volumes; an additional volume based on his notes appeared in 1789) was originally intended to cover all three "kingdoms" of nature but the Histoire naturelle ended up being limited to the animal and mineral kingdoms, and the animals covered were only the birds and quadrupeds.Buffon's works influenced the next two generations of naturalists, including two prominent French scientists Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Georges Cuvier. Buffon published thirty-six quarto volumes of his Histoire Naturelle during his lifetime, with additional volumes based on his notes and further research being published in the two decades following his death.[1]Ernst Mayr wrote that "Truly, Buffon was the father of all thought in natural history in the second half of the 18th century".[2] Credited with being one of the first naturalists to recognize ecological succession, he was later forced by the theology committee at the University of Paris to recant his theories about geological history and animal evolution because they contradicted the biblical narrative of Creation.[3][4]Source: WikipediaSee also: Histoire NaturelleTurns out one of the illustrators was a woman. Of course!
