A hundred years before Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution, the French researcher Georges-Louis Leclerc recognized that species change. Who was the mysterious aristocrat?
Anyone who deals with the fathers of the theory of evolution will certainly name the Briton Charles Darwin, and most likely his compatriot Alfred Russel Wallace, but probably not: Georges-Louis Leclerc. The French Comte de Buffon had recognized a hundred years before Darwin that nature is not a static construct, but a dynamic system.
He wrote his 36-volume work “Histoire Naturelle” for over 50 years. In it, he suspected, among other things, that species can change, new ones emerge and others die out. This is a process that has spanned millions, if not billions, of years. In the 1740s, this was of course an affront to the church, which was still very dominant at the time. After all, according to the Bible, the world was created by God in seven days and required no evolution to become what it is. It is unthinkable that it is older than the biblical stories.
The Church and Paris University banned Buffon’s (r)evolutionary theories
The University of Paris also forced Buffon to publicly recant what he had postulated in his writings. It sounded something like this: “In order for species to change, one would have to assume that the earth would be millions of years old. But that is of course an outrageous speculation. The Bible says otherwise.”
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“Nevertheless, Buffon’s research paved the way for Darwin and Wallace,” says Diethard Tautz from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön. Darwin himself apparently only studied Leclerc’s work after he had published his books on evolution.
However, Buffon’s inevitably changeable views made Charles Darwin doubt that the French scholar had already laid the foundation for a theory of evolution a century before him, writes British author Jason Roberts. Roberts’ current book “Every living thing” is being published these days, in which he pays tribute to the French pioneer of the theory of evolution who has been forgotten by many.
Polymath with a fat wallet
“Buffon was a typical polymath of his time,” says Tautz. In addition to biology, he also studied mathematics and astronomy, among other things. By today’s standards, Buffon inherited around 28 million pounds sterling from a relative. So he had sufficient resources for a carefree life and time for an extensive research career. He bought a 40-hectare park in Burgundy and left it to its own devices to see how nature developed.
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“Through his observations, Buffon understood that nature was changing, but the mechanisms behind it remained hidden from him,” says Tautz. Darwin and Wallace first postulated natural selection as a controlling element.
Leclerc’s contemporary, the Swede Carl von Linné, was, however, loyal to the church. He recorded and cataloged a large part of the animal and plant world known at the time. It never occurred to him that this could constantly change. Everything was and remained as the Creator had once created it.
Buffon not only described the variability of the species, but also observed them in their natural environment – whether it was foxes mating or birds choosing certain trees for their nests. Author Roberts writes that he was one of the first to become interested in ecology. While other scholars studied dead animals, Buffon paid a lot of money when someone offered him live specimens. He also recognized that humans were only part of the natural system and that they changed it significantly through their actions.
Roberts wants to correct this distorted picture with his book and give Buffon his rightful place in the history of science.