#georges louis leclerc de buffon

[tenth-sentence]

The earliest scientific observations of animal homosexuality are those of the noted French naturalist (and count) Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon, whose monumental fifteen-volume Histoire naturelle générale et particulière (1749-67) includes observations of same-sex behavior in birds.

"Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity" - Bruce Bagemihl

[clove-pinks]

"The Frigat Pelican": a print from the 1812 Natural History of Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon.

[capitalism-is-parasitism]

“Buffon suspected it was a matter of millions, if not billions, of years,” said Roberts. “He pioneered the idea of time on a geological scale.”

Unlike his contemporary Carl Linnaeus, who believed that nature was static and every species had stayed exactly as God created them, Buffon believed nature was too complex and changeable to be easily categorised.

He was even concerned about the impact of human-caused climate change. “Buffon had enemies, because his message – that nature cannot be conquered, that humans were, in fact, part of nature – was essentially disconcerting to other people.”

[explorerbiogen]

Evolución Biológica. El transformismo

En la foto: los fósiles, una de las evidencias anatómicas y fisiológicas de las especies que permiten vislumbrar los tipos de ambientes a los que se tuvieron que adaptar durante el tiempo. La contradicción al fijismo surgió tras creada esta Teoría donde se señala que las especies cambian a lo largo del tiempo, esto fue planteado en principio por el filósofo, matemático y astrónomo francés,…

[incorrectlooneytunesquotes]

Genius is only a greater aptitude for patience.

Wile E. Coyote 

[xphaiea]

A tenrec. Collection des animaux quadrupèdes de Buffon (Georges-Louis Leclerc Buffon)

[rpirquet]

📷 « Le cheval est la plus noble conquête que l’homme n’ait jamais faite. » — George-Louis Leclerc de Buffon 🐴

[slavicafire]

Histoire naturelle des oiseaux. t. 7 T.2. Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon. 1780.

[queering-ecology]

Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire Chapter 2 : Enemy of the Species by Ladelle McWhorter (prt 1)

McWhorter’s chapter is a critical examination on the concept of ‘diversity’, and the biological implications in the term that lead back to discourse on the idea of ‘species’.

 In recent years, “a common strategy for promoting acceptance of racial, ethnic, and religious minorities in many corporate and educational institutions has been to insist that diversity in any population is superior to homogeneity”(73). homogeneity=stagnation, redundancy of ideas, reduced productivity, healthy development requires diversity. The author asks, WHY? Why does diversity as a concept have such political power?

Because, McWhorter contends, behind the sociological notion of diversity lies biological principles and notions even when not explicitly invoked; “genetic diversity is a species shield against extinction during environmental upheaval and a resource for its evolutionary advancement. If all individuals are alike genetically, everyone is vulnerable to disease or predation in exactly the same ways. A single catastrophe could wipe out the entire line” (74). This is a very common environmental concern. “Genetic diversity enables evolutionary development” and “in short, genetic variation promotes species survival through adaptation across generations” (75). When applied to public discourse, it lends value to diversity—“racial, ethnic, religious, and other forms of diversity are likewise a good thing. They make society more adaptable by increasing the chances that some members of it will understand the problems we face and see solutions even if other members do not. They prevent intellectual, artistic, institutional stagnation. They serve as resources for society as it evolves” (75).

But, as Michel Foucault reminds us, “everything is dangerous” and “knowledge is not made for understanding: it is made for cutting” 1997, 154. We may inadvertently reinforce the concept of ‘species’, a discourse that has historically condemned sexual variation (including interracial heterosexuality). “Human diversity is of value genetically, after all, insofar as species preservation and adaptation are valued managerial goals. Historically, those positioned to manage human populations and human evolution were the ones to define the key terms—such as “human” and “species”’ and they were not good at it.

The scientific term species was invented in the late eighteenth century by naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (75). “But the term has never been free of controversy” (75). During the Nineteenth century, it was used in debates over “whether Negros and Indians were Homo Sapiens or not” and was again destabilized when Charles Darwin released his work, On the Origin of Species.

“Politically charged from its scientific conception, the concept of species has often brought great harm to both racial and sexual minorities over the past two hundred years” (75).

Through the twentieth century, sexologists (physicians, psychiatrists, and criminologists) studied ‘sexual deviance’ and “produced popular images of homosexual and transgendered people as menacing degenerates”, they created ‘therapies’ that destroyed many peoples health and lives, and “public-hygiene policies intended to eliminate or exploit sexual subcultures” (75)

‘Race Hygiene’ and ‘Race Betterment’ movements=species movement predicated on the idea that homo sapiens must be “purged of deviance and thus preserved and enabled to evolve. Queer people—like dark-skinned (savage) people, disabled (defective) people, chronically ill (weak, feeble) people, and so on—were degenerates who might contaminate the bodies and bloodlines of the evolutionary avant-garde and thus derail Homo sapiens’ biological advance” (76) and thus these people were “biological enemies of the human species, pollutants and pathogens whose very presence posed a physical and possibly mortal threat not only to individual but to the species as a whole” and this kind of thinking in a way continues to this very day.

Queer people and our advocates are drawn into the argument, and we defend sexual diversity as an integral aspect of the species—natural variation rather than cancer, evolutionarily beneficial rather than a sterile dead end.

We must question these assumptions.

[kemetic-dreams]

                              What 'Caucasian' means

Why do people in the US and UK (unlike in most of Europe) refer to European people as Caucasian?

The term "Caucasian" was introduced by the German anthropologist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, who was busy measuring skulls in Georgia in the 19th century, and for no good reason decided that the Caucasus was the birthplace of mankind. He made division of Aryan, Semitic (Jews) and Hamitic (north Africans), just as it was written in Genesis.

We Europeans did not, of course, wish to be seen as having racial connections with Jews or Africans, and German Nazi extermination policies gave the term "Aryan" a bad name.

Blumenbach's theories have long been discounted in modern anthropology, yet his term lives on. This classification of white non-Jewish European was adopted by US immigration control, who needed to keep a check on the races coming in that were not black, brown or Jewish. "Caucasian" is just an illogical yet convenient category, and so it lives on, whenever we have to fill in an identity form: even if it is just an online dating site.

David Bye, Göd, Hungary

Whites tan to get brown, but naturally brown people stay out of the sun if they can in order to get whiter. Now "white" is a term of abuse, and "Caucasian" is a more innocuous way to describe us.

The paradigm of the “typically Jewish” nose originates in the craniological studies of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840). Blumenbach claimed to have evidence that Jews had an especially prominent nasal bone. Der Giftpilz (The Poisonous Mushroom), a Nazi schoolbook published by the Stürmer Verlag in 1938, provides an example of how such anti-Semitic clichés about body shapes were spread. It was printed in a first edition of 60,000 copies.

Blumenbach assumed that all morphological differences between the varieties were induced by the climate and the way of living and he emphasized that the differences in morphology were so small, gradual and transiently connected that it was not possible to separate these varieties clearly. 

Although Blumenbach did not propose any hierarchy among the five varieties, he placed the Caucasian form in the center of his description as being the most "primitive" or "primeval" one from which the other forms "degenerated".

 In the 18th century, however, these terms did not have the negative connotations they possess today. 

At the time, "primitive" or "primeval" described the ancestral form, while "degeneration" was understood to be the process of change leading to a variety adapted to a new environment by being exposed to a different climate and diet.

 Hence, he argued that physical characteristics like skin color, cranial profile, etc., depended on geography, diet, and mannerism. Further anatomical study led him to the conclusion that 'individual Africans differ as much, or even more, from other Africans as from Europeans'.

Like other monogenists such as Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, Blumenbach held to the "degenerative hypothesis" of racial origins. 

Blumenbach claimed that Adam and Eve were Caucasian inhabitants of Asia, and that other races came about by degeneration from environmental factors such as the sun and poor diet.

Thus, he claimed, Negroid pigmentation arose because of the result of the heat of the tropical sun, while the cold wind caused the tawny colour of the Eskimos, and the Chinese were fair-skinned compared to the other Asian stocks because they kept mostly in towns protected from environmental factors. 

He believed that the degeneration could be reversed in a proper environmental control and that all contemporary forms of man could revert to the original Caucasian race.

Blumenbach was regarded as a leading light of German science by his contemporaries. Kant and Friedrich Schelling both called him "one of the most profound biological theorists of the modern era.

 In the words of science historian Peter Watson, "roughly half the German biologists during the early nineteenth century studied under him or were inspired by him:

[ceekbee]

Xtra Thoughts

August 15

Never think that God’s delays are God’s denials. Hold on; hold fast; hold out. Patience is genius.

–George-Louis Leclerc de Buffon

The greatest power is often simple patience.

–E. Joseph Cossman

I look at the world with gratitude, down to the smallest thing, as it is all a gift from God.

–Shelley

Life is everything YOU put into it.

–unknown

Kindness from your heart can only bring you blessings.

–unknown

“Something must die in order to grow – your old habits, your old self image, your old thinking, your old life – must be weeded out for the seeds of success to grow.”

–Doug Firebaugh

[a-book-of-creatures]

I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean, but the Cape rain frog (Breviceps gibbosus) was described by Linnaeus himself in 1758 (as Rana gibbosa). And this rendition was published in 1788.

Incidentally I'd like to point out that Buffon is not the artist... and not really the author either! Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, published thirty-six volumes of his encyclopedia. The remaining volumes on reptiles (including the one from which this one was taken), fish, and whales were completed by Lacépède.

The uncropped image refers to it as le crapaud bossu, "the humpbacked toad".

And here's what was known about it at the time, including having a head that is "very small, obtuse, and sunk into its chest", a "very convex" body, and its habitat being the oriental Indies and Africa, of which this specimen from Senegal.

References

Lacépède, B. G. (1788) Histoire Naturelle des Quadrupèdes Ovipares et des Serpens, v. I. Hôtel de Thou, Paris.

Art by Georges Louis Leclerc Buffon, (1707 - 1788)

[fouldchildtiger]

"A stílus maga az ember” – mondta Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon 1753-ban, az akadémiai székfoglalójában. A francia természettudós szerint „a stílus nem más, mint a rend és a lendület, melyet az ember gondolataiba belevisz”. Egy másik híres mondása, hogy „a zseni nem más, mint nagyobb képesség a türelemre”.

[odkrycia-nauce-i-foldery-online]

chacal-adive

[explorerbiogen]

Evolución Biológica. Un mundo inmutable (fijismo y catastrofismo)

Construir y explicar un fenómeno no siempre resulta tan fácil, tomando en consideración todo lo que implica, para el caso de la evolución explicar cómo se dio el origen de las especies, la relación estrecha que existe entre ellas y su gran diversidad a través de los años, requiere de un estudio exhaustivo, meticuloso y de mucha paciencia para ser construida. No de menos continuamos manteniendo…

[custosdefabulas]

Okay, so judging by the fact that you put the timeperiod as Georgian/Regency, I'm guessing that you are primarily interested in the British or at least English-speaking world?

If so, the first thing to remember is that "zoology" is not really a thing yet as its own dicipline – instead everyone is talking about "natural history", which is kind of a catch-all term for anything from what is today botany, zoology, entomology and geology to anthropology and ethnology etc. Really, anything that could be seen as "the study of the natural world". (If you already know this I am sorry for the lecture)

Anyway! Book recs (don't read every chapter, just what seems fun/relevant). Unfortunately I don't know much about zoology specifically, so these are about natural history:

MacGregor, Arthur (Eds.). (2018). Naturalists in the Field : Collecting, Recording and Preserving the Natural World from the Fifteenth to the Twenty-First Century. Brill.

Holmes, J., & Ruston, S. (Eds.). (2017). The Routledge research companion to nineteenth-century British literature and science. Taylor & Francis Ltd. (has a chapter on women & science)

Emling, Shelly. (2009). The fossil hunter : dinosaurs, evolution, and the woman whose discoveries changed the world. Palgrave Macmillan. (About Mary Anning, the paleontologist)

Taylor, Michael. (2024). Impossible Monsters: Dinosaurs, Darwin and the War Between Science and Religion. The Bodley Head. (Talks about Mary Anning, among other things)

Hill, Kate. (2016). Women and museums, 1850-1914 : modernity and the gendering of knowledge. Manchester University Press. https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526100313

Musgrave, Toby. (2021). The multifarious Mr. Banks : from Botany Bay to Kew, the natural historian who shaped the world. Yale University Press. https://doi.org/10.12987/9780300252132

Broberg, Gunnar. (2023). The man who organized nature: the life of Linnaeus. Princeton: Princeton University Press. (This book is very long and not all will be relevant for you)

Academic history nowadays is very much trying to get away from the "great men" type of history, but the fact remains that a few people (mostly men) were very influential and are worth looking into (especially if you want to understand the historiography of the field). There are usually easy to read biographies of them that provide an overview of the time period, so they are usually a good jumping-of point, though you do of course need to go beyond them. I would recommend looking into Joseph Banks (British naturalist), Carl Linnaeus (Swedish naturalist, "Father of modern taxonomy"), maybe Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon (French naturalist), and of course Charles Darwin, as well as the history of the Royal Society in London in general.

Unfortunately I am not specialised in zoology nor women in science, but hopefully these books prove useful as jumping of points! From my understanding, women during this period were often in the very important but somewhat invisible roles of collectors, illustrators, patorns, and the like during this time. Collecting was VERY important for science during this time – really, it was what science was all about. You needed to collect things so you could categorise and study them, and then write papers on them. Rich women - sometimes with their husbands, sometimes alone - were very much involved in developing these collections. More lower-class women were more likely to be involved in the actual finding of these objects – Mary Anning is a good example.

Sorry if this is not what you wanted, this got away from me.

Friends! Once again I am looking for BOOKS. HISTORY BOOKS!!

I want to look into the word of Georgian/Regency era zoology, but I've no idea where to start. Does anyone have any recs for books on the topic, or more broadly on women in science in this era?

I'd quite like something like an overview, or even recs for studies/books/articles from the time. THANKS Y'ALL.