Biologia e Sociedade Na Era Do Esclarescimento Iluminismo

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Biology and Society in the Age of EnlightenmentAuthor(s): Francesca RigottiSource: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 47, No. 2 (Apr. - Jun., 1986), pp. 215-233Published by: University of Pennsylvania PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2709811

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BIOLOGY AND SOCIETY IN THE AGE OFENLIGHTENMENTBY FRANCESCARIGOTTI

I. Introduction. The movement of ideas which evolved and cameto the fore in the eighteenth century under the generic definition ofprogress had many facets. A variety of concepts contributed to the for-mation of an image of progress:temporality, change, development, per-fectibility, transformation.... These concepts were also applied todifferent fields of knowledge within both the study of human behaviorand the study of the phenomena of the material world.

The new hypotheses which arose from the application of these con-cepts to the life sciences and the social sciences interacted and suppliedconceptual models and working tools for both fields. Broadly speaking,in the eighteenth century the view of the history (progress) of mankindthat developed portrayed the various ages linked in a chain of causesand effects such that the condition of mankind appearedas a continuousand logically directed whole. The corresponding picture of nature wascomposed of a continuous sequence of beings located in a hierarchy ofa regular and consistent order. This correspondence was not, however,symmetrical, nor did the processes follow parallel lines; affinities didindeed exist, but there was also a sharpdivision between the "progressive"image in the field of social behavior and in the area of "natural"beings.A political-philosophical approach tended to dominate thinking aboutthe phenomena of the human world, and here a dynamic model tookprecedence over a static one. Within the social world it became accepted,"new" phenomena may occur but not in the natural world. The ideas ofthe natural world remained static for a longer period, and the action ofnaturewas thought only to reproduceand to develop a preordainedorderin which there was no place for either novelty or the unexpected.Throughout the eighteenth century the prevailing idea in the field ofthe life sciences was still that which Arthur O. Lovejoy included in the"great chain of being."' Although eighteenth-centurythinkers tended onthe whole to understand the structure of the universe through this met-aphor, they must nevertheless be credited with having introduced an ideaof capital importance: instead of a descending order of beings from themost perfect to the least developed, the Enlightenment conceived anascending order, that is, from the most primitive to the most perfect.In elaborating this schema of perfectibility in their description ofsocial and natural phenomena, the eighteenth-century naturalistic phi-

'A. O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, Mass., 1936), 64.215

Copyright 1986 by JOURNALOF THEHISTORYOF IDEAS, INC.


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216 FRANCESCA RIGOTTIlosophers took a decisive step forward. In fact their inversion of theclassical model not only led to the theory of evolution in the biologicalsciences but also provided the basis for those political doctrines whichplace the attainmentof man's happinessand his fulfillment in the future.II. The Leibnizian inheritance.-For many eighteenth-century nat-uralists the universe of natural phenomena was a full one, based on theassumption of action by contact. Against the theories of Descartes, whohad offered a plenistic schema of the universe with vortices and who hadalso lateracceptedits behavior as mechanicaland based on purely physicalpredicates, many naturalists preferredLeibniz's paradigm, based on theprinciples of continuity, the plenum, preestablished harmony, and suf-ficient reason. These principles were clearly laid out in those works byLeibniz that had been read by the philosophesbefore the publication in1765 of the Nouveaux essais sur l'entendement humain: the Theodicee,the CorrespondencewithClarke,and the Monadology.2 n the latter work,continuity, the plenum, and harmony in the universe were guaranteedby the principle of sufficient reason. Everything in nature is complete,and everything is connected with all possible order and harmony (thepresent is "gros de l'avenir, charge du passe," each monad is in thepresent "pregnantwith the future,"which can be read in the past, "whatis far off is expressed in what is near"). But since nothing occurs, ac-cording to Leibniz, without a sufficient reason to determine why a thinghas occurred thus and not otherwise, the introduction of a Democriteandiscontinuity and void into the world would constitute a violation ofLeibniz's principle of the need for a sufficient reason and would alsoaccuse God of imperfect creation.3The complete universe is that which contains the highest level ofperfection. Even the divine choice among infinite possible worlds has tobe inspired by the principle of sufficient reason, and the reason for thedivine choice lies in the fitness and the degrees of perfection that theseworlds contain, since each one has the right to claim existence in pro-portion to the perfection it contains. All possible perfection is providedby the principle of the greatest variety and order within the smallestcompass.4The main concern of Leibniz was therefore in conceptual terms toeliminate from the universe every possible source of disorder and im-perfection. Thus, beings and the classes of beings are arranged as theordinates of a single curve, closely joined together in strict observanceof the law of continuity and the plenum. Since the law of continuity

2Y. Belaval,L'Hritage leibnizienau siecle des lumieres, n Leibniz,Aspectsde l'hommeet de l'oeuvre 1646-1716 (Paris, 1968), 253.3 G. W. Leibniz, Correspondencewith Clarke, in Leibniz' Philosophical Writings,ed.M. Morris (London, 1934), 209.4 The Monadology, in PhilosophicalPapers and Letters (Chicago, 1956), II, 1053.


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BIOLOGY AND SOCIETY 217requires that, when the essential determinations of one being resemblethose of another, all the propertiesof the first must draw close to thoseof the other;and all the order of naturalbeings must form a single chain,in which the different classes are so closely joined to one another thatthe senses and the imagination cannot distinguish the exact point atwhich one begins or ends. All the species alongisde or inside the borderregions must be equivocal and endowed with characteristics that can beequally attributedto the neighboring species.5The law of continuity holds a central place in the methodologicalinterestsof Leibniz.6The schema of the structure of the universe derivedfrom it is seemingly of a static type, in which the aspiration of potentialbeings to existence is fulfilled in the perfection of the present world andwhere the only dynamic process permittedis the developmentof an orderpreordainedab initio by God.Leibniz's belief in preformation,so far as the reproduction of livingbeings is concerned, seems to contribute to the static nature of thisstructure. Preformation is the doctrine which held that animal seed isencapsulated in the loins of the first progenitor,7as in a Russian dollenclosinga seriesof similar dolls. The notion of preformation,or evolutionof the preformed, that is, the development of what is enveloped, theunwinding of what is wound up, in fact ensures that once the divine actof creation has taken place, nothing new will be added to the creatednature. This is opposed to the epigenesist doctrine, which held that theliving being grows from the germ to the acquisition and subsequentformation of new parts.The reproductivemechanism must therefore, for Leibniz, admit thepreformationof the seeds in the bodies that are born, contained in thosefrom which they have been born, right back to the first seeds. Thus,excluding miracles and chaos and in order to maintain the principles ofharmony and the plenum, it must be concluded that God preformedthings so that new organizationsshould be only an automaticconsequenceof a previous organic constitution.8A hypothesisthat explainsnature'sbecomingas a successive unfoldingof a predeterminedorder, and not as an autonomous generation of anorder through the iteration and temporal continuity of the processes, isbound to a static model of nature in which individuals and species aregranteddevelopmentbut not a suddentransformation rom the embryonicto the adult condition, according to the preestablishedschema.The perfectionof the presentworld and preformisthypotheses might

5Letter to Varignon of 2nd February 1702, ibid, II, 886.6 G. Tonelli, "The Law of Continuity in the Eighteenth Century,"Studies on Voltaireand the Eighteenth Century (1963), 1621.7 G. W. Leibniz, The Principlesof Nature and of Grace, Based on Reason, in Philo-

sophical Papers, II, 1037.8 Essais de theodicee, in PhilosophischenSchriften, ed. Gerhardt (Berlin, 1885), VI.


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218 FRANCESCA RIGOTTIseem to be a sufficient foundation on which to base an indestructiblystatic view of nature;but there is, at least to my knowledge, one pointwhere the Leibnizianphilosophy seems to waver and to be open to otherhypotheses.Between the spring and summer of 1715, a year before his death,Leibniz began to correspond with Louis Bourguet (1678-1742), a phi-losopher, man of letters, and naturalist of Geneva, on the question ofthe perfectionof nature. In his meditation on nature,Bourguet had cometo wonder whether it was possible to think of succession without con-ceiving an initial point from which all the successive states derive. Per-plexed by the problem, he asked Leibniz for clarification. The replyarrived after some months and was slightly ambiguous.Since in nature there is no term which is fundamental for all theothers, no seat of God so to speak, there is no reason why it should benecessary to conceive an initial principal instant. Even if a differencebetweenthe instantsand the terms does exist, Leibnizcontinued, a primalinstant does not necessarily exist, in that one term in the universe doesnot have priority in nature over the other terms, whereas a precedinginstant always has priority over the following instant, not only in timebut also in nature. If it is true that the primarynotion of a unit-class isresolvable in the notion of units, which can be considered as a primary,it does not follow that the notion of different instants must be resolvedin a primal instant. Nevertheless, even if we may not affirmthe existenceof a primal instant, we cannot deny it either. Leibniz formulated twohypotheses: either nature is already perfect, or it grows continually inperfection.The first case is shown by rectangle A (fig. 1) which represents thehypothesis of equal perfection, in which it is more probablethat there isno beginning:

A IL I(fig. 1)

The second case (that nature always grows in perfection, supposingthat it is not possible for it to be endowed contemporaneously with allperfection) is further divided by Leibniz in two ways, with the ordinatesof hyperbola B or with those of triangle C (fig. 2). ,-

(fig. 2)(fig.2)


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BIOLOGY AND SOCIETY 219According to the hypothesis of hyperbola B, the world would haveno beginning, and the instants would be growing in perfection frometernity. But in the hypothesis of triangle C, there would have been a

beginning. Mere reason, Leibniz went on to say, does not enable us tomake a definite choice. The only conclusion he felt able to draw wasthat, though according to the hypothesis of growth the state of the worldat any given instant could never be absolutely perfect, yet the existingsuccession would be the most perfect of all possible successions becauseGod always chooses the best possible.9Leibniz retained divine choice in any case as the best possible; but,while not making too apodictic a declaration, he did not reject the ideaof nature'sgrowth in perfection, leaving room in his construction (whichfor this reason we have regarded as apparentlystatic) for the idea ofperfection in time and therefore of change for the better.The theoretical foundation inherited from Leibniz by the Frenchbiologists thus consisted of something more than a "panpsychism" ac-cording to which living nature is the sum and substance of infiniteindividual beings (the original monads) endowed with autonomous ac-tivity and sensitivity. It also provided a structured scale of perfectibilityascending from the embryo, which left room for transformist interpre-tations.III. The continuum theorist: Bourguet, Plouquet, Kdstner, Boscov-ich.-Leibniz's reply caused Bourguet some perplexity at the time, butthe following year he decided to make a definite statement on the trianglehypothesis,10 ven though he never fully realized the importanceof Leib-niz's intuitions.Louis Bourguet, who conceived and contributed to the Bibliothequeitalique, for which he was best known, was the author of several workson geology written over the 1720s and '30s.1 In these works his technicalanalysisand classification of fossils and crystals followed a logical schemabased on the scale of beings. Apparently unaware of the illustrious tra-dition that had precededhim on this subject,Bourguet claimed to be thefirst to set up the hypothesis of the scale of beings, although he admittedhaving been influenced by Leibniz.12His aim was to show the gradationof beings, even in the mineral kingdom, from the most simple to the

9Letterfrom Bourguetto Leibnizof 15thApril 1715, in L. Isely, "Leibnizet Bourguet.Correspondance scientifique et philosophique (1707-1716),"Bulletin de la Societe neu-chatelaise des sciences naturelles (1903-04), 202-05, and letter from Leibniz to Bourguetof 5th August, 1715, in G. W. Leibniz, PhilosophischenSchriften, III, 282-83.10Letter from Bourguet to Leibniz of 16th March, 1716 in L. Isely, op. cit., 207." L. Bourguet, Lettresphilosophiquessur la formation des sels et des cristaux et surla generationet le mechanismedesplantes et des animaux a I'occasionde lapierre belemniteet de la pierre lenticulaire (Amsterdam, 1729); Memoire sur la theorie de la terre (Am-sterdam, 1729); with P. Cartier, Traite des petrifications (Paris, 1742).12"Lettre de M. L. B. P. a Monsieur Antoine Vallisnieri premier professeur de lamedecine theoretique a Padoue, sur la gradation et l'echelle des fossiles," Bibliothequeitalique, II (1728), 102-03.


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220 FRANCESCA RIGOTTImost complex, from the least to the most perfect. In his writings Bourguettried to avoid theological discussion, excluding God from his scale asbeing too far above limited beings to be considered on the same level.Despite the benefits of his correspondencewith Leibniz (they wroteto each other from June 1709 to July 1716), Bourguet was still tooconditionedby the creationistway of thinking to accept a single directionin the movementof nature.Sayingthat nature ascendsby degreestowardsmore perfect creations is only one way of interpretinggradation, whichmay just as easily be depicted going in the other direction, as a scalethat descends from the most perfect beings to the coarsest of natures.

Other authors were, however, much more critical of the possibilityof applying the continuity principle to the study of the natural world.During the middle of the century these writers were concerned with thelaw of continuity in mathematics and physics in relation to the problemof hard bodies. Bourguet's doubt as to whether it might be possible tocompose a gradationincluding immaterialbeings more perfect than manand beings whose soul is tied to a body appears many years later in thewritings of Plouquet (1716-1790). But whereas Bourguet's answer wasaffirmative, Plouquet's was entirely negative. On the very basis of thelex continui, it is illogical to formulate a continuous sequence with non-homogeneous elements like spirit and matter. For the same reason it isnot possible to fit God into the same continuous scale (although Bourguethad already thought of leaving God out), since the Deity is infinite, andeverythingthat exists apart from God is by definitionfinite. In this casealso the lack of homogeneity mars the continuity of the gradation. Ifunlike is comparedwith unlike, we cannot free ourselvesof contradiction.But difficulties also arise from the comparison of like with like and arenot easily overcome, for if it is possible for the species to be plotted asthe ordinates of a single curve, as Leibniz maintained, there must neverbe an intermediary discrete species between two others. But the verynature of the continuum forbids absolute proximity.13The error lies inthe fact that the gradation of being takes on the category of the discrete,which is confused with that of the continuous. Plouquet's conclusion inthe name of the defense of the law of continuity is categorical. This lawcannot be transferred from the physical world to the behavior of thespecies for the two above-mentioned reasons: 1) It is impossible to con-struct a perfect system with dissimilarbeings, to say nothing of irregularand "eccentric" beings, in it. 2) It is equally impossible to imagine anabsolute similarity between two species. Both these conditions would bein contradiction to the law of continuity.14

13 G. Plouquet, Dissertatiohistorico-cosmologica e lege continuitatissivegradationibusleibnitiana(Tiibingen, 1761), 64. Analogous questions are discussed also in De Corporumorganisatorumgenerationedisquisitiophilosophice .. (Berlin, 1749).14G. Plouquet, Dissertatiohistorico-cosmologica,65.


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BIOLOGY AND SOCIETY 221Towards the middle of the eighteenth century A. G. Kistner (1719-1800) expressed a similar perplexity in his De Lege continui in natura.l5When applied to changes in nature, "lex continui" means that anythingthat changes must go through all the changes necessary to reach theultimate; in reality, Kistner observed, not only is it impossible to set upa chain without interruptions (since the distancebetweenthe most perfectcreated being and its creator is greater than that existing between themost perfect and the lowest of creatures, and since, above all, the gapbetween creature and creator is unbridgeable);but it is contrary to Leib-niz's view that nature makes no leaps (natura non facit saltus). Theserigorous defenders of the law of continuity in mathematics and physicsthen maintained its inapplicability to the scale of nature and especiallymade use of it in the analysis of generation and of the development ofthe embryo into the adult individual.IV. CharlesBonnet.-Bonnet and Robinet, however, declared them-selves faithful disciples of Leibniz and champions of a law of continuitystrictly applied to both the physical and the living world. They wereeccentric characters,half naturalists, half philosophers;but their contri-butions to the reversal of the model of nature going from descending toascendingand to the conception of the perfectibilityof nature, individuals,and society, were of lasting influence.Charles Bonnet (1770-1793), a Genevan, biologist and strong sup-porter of the performist thesis, tells in his memoires how he came intocontact with Leibniz's thinking. In the winter of 1748 he first readLeibniz's Theodicee,and from that moment he referred to the event asone of the most important in his intellectual life.16His enthusiastic state-ments should not be taken too literally, since a few lines later, Bonnethimself candidly confesses that he had not understood either the mo-

nadology or the doctrine of preordainedharmony. His Leibnizian inspi-ration can therefore be reduced to the doctrine of the preexistence ofgerms and souls in particular, as well as to the hypothesis of the chainof being and the principle of continuity.The enchanting prospect opened up by Leibniz's philosophy wasrather one of natureproceeding by degrees from one creation to another,without gaps on its way. Bonnet's universe is systematic: everythingcontained in it is arranged,related, linked, chained together. Every singlething is the immediate effect of something that has preceded it and inturn determines the existence of what follows.17Nature does not proceedby leaps and bounds;everythingthat exists has a sufficient reason, whichfor Bonnet was identified with the proximate and immediate cause. The15Leipzig, 1750.16 Ch. Bonnet, Memoirs autobiographiques, d. R. Savioz (Paris, 1948), 100.17 Contemplationde la nature, in Oeuvresd'histoire naturelle et de philosophie (Neu-chatel, 1779-1783), VII, 36.


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222 FRANCESCA RIGOTTIpresent state of a body is the result or product of its antecedent's state,for as there is a gradation in the growth of beings, so there is betweenone being and another. Bonnet wholly accepted the concept of the uni-versal chain (from which its creator is excluded) that unites all beings,joins all worlds, and embraces all spheres from the lowest to the highestdegree of bodily or spiritual perfection. Just as Tremblay's (1700-1784)polyp had come to fill the apparent void between the animal and theplant world, so sooner or later, Bonnet concluded, some other beingwould be discovered that bridges the gap that nature seems to have leftin passing from plants to minerals. Our knowledge, Bonnet stated, is onlyjust beginning to scratch the surface of the realm of nature, for naturehas infinite creations about whose existence we know nothing and whoseexact nomenclature we do not even possess. Here Bonnet formed a hy-pothesis: the intermediarybetween plants and minerals might be fossils,even though there is still a vast gulf between the most regularand plant-like fossil and the least organized plant, for fossils do not grow, feed orreproduce.However this might be, the void between plants and mineralswould one day be filled, corroboratingthe wonderful gradation existingbetween all beings.18On this subjectBonnet engagedin controversywith Maupertuis (1698-1759). In his Essai de cosmologie(1751) Maupertuishad in fact hypoth-esized that a natural catastrophe, such as a collision with a comet, couldhave destroyed a part of the species. Thus Maupertuis offered an expla-nation for the disappearanceof certain naturalspecies for whose previousexistence there was clear evidence. As far as Bonnet was concerned,however, it was only a question of ignorance when anyone believed therewere breaks in the great chain of being. When natural history, still in itsinfancy, reached maturity and when we had the exact nomenclature forall the species contained in our globe, then and only then would we beable to state whether the scale of beings is really interrupted. It is truethat Bonnet admitted that the state of the present natural world mightbe different from the originalone. But insteadof imagining,as Maupertuisdid, some catastrophic, destructive intervention, or even, as the latterseems to have intuited, a real and natural filiation of living beings, Bonnetsimply attributedthe differentiationof beingsand their increase in numberwith respect to their original state to climate or diet, or to hybridization.This differentiation of the species due to external climatic or envi-ronmentalfactors did not, however, alter the performistbeliefsof Bonnet.Whether he was speaking in terms of evolution or preformation,preex-istenceof germsor preordination,his thinkingremaineddevelopmentalist.He held that everythinghad been formed ab initio, nothing is generated.What we improperly call generation is only the beginning of a devel-

18 Considerations ur les corpsorganises,in Oeuvresd'histoirenaturelle, V, 87-88; 191-96.


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BIOLOGY AND SOCIETY 223opment which will make visible and palpable what is invisible and im-palpable.This is the only certitude deducible from the occurrenceof twodifferent orders of causation, emboltementor panspermia (original dis-semination of germs in all the parts of nature), and to neither of thesetwo ideas did Bonnet adhere, although he tended towards the first.19Bonnet's schema seems to deny all sudden evolution, all creativespontaneity, every break or interruptionin continuity. Thus in the realmof immobilism the only change he permittedwas a quite particular "per-fectibility,"in which progress,conservation,and gradationwere included.The premise set out in the Palingenesie rests on the belief in thelimitless perfectibility of animals, together with the character of divinegoodness that cannot but desire the growth of happiness of its creatures.Since this growth is inseparablefrom bodily and spiritual perfection, wemay infer, Bonnet concluded, that each animal species is ordained toattaina perfectionwhose organic principleswere foreseen at the beginningbut whose development (which could rise to the knowledge of God) isordained according to the future state of the globe. In perfecting its ownlimbs, its own senses, its own intellectual faculties, every animal specieswill achieve a step forward in quality which will enable it to go up onestep in the scale of nature, allowing the species immediately below it,which in the meantime will have undergone an analogous process, tooccupy the step previously filled by the first species. As the scale andthe linearityremainintact, this metaphoricmovement will allow a processof perfecting in time which is real even if imperceptible,so that the verygradation of beings will be maintained in the future but according toother degrees of proportion, determined by the grade of perfectibilityreached by each species.20

Amusement over the idea of monkey-likeNewtons and Leibnizes andideas such as Robinet's fish-men have often sidetracked us from graspinghow great was the affinity between this chain of beings, quivering withlife and pointing towards a future perfection, and contemporary phi-losophies of history focussing on the triumph of mankind in constantprogress towards betterment. If the evolution-epigenesist movement(Maupertuis-Buffon-Diderot)gave history that dynamicand genetic sensethat was to find full developmentin the nineteenthcentury,the foundationof that striving towards perfection,or at least the image of a better futurethan the present, is to be found in the naturalistic movement foundedon continuity.V. Robinet or "la nature qui apprend a faire l'homme".-Similaropinions were expressedby another naturalist-philosopherof the secondhalf of the eighteenth century, J. B. Robinet (1735-1820), whose writings

19La Palingenesiephilosophique,ou idees sur l'tat passe et sur l'tat futur des etresvivans etc. (Geneve, 1769), I, t.I, 204-05.

20 Op. cit., 198-99 and 203-04.


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224 FRANCESCA RIGOTTIBonnet knew, although he did not share his opinions. For Robinet thehierarchic order of the scale of nature had its counterpartin the hierarchicorder of society. The harmony of the latter had to correspond to theharmony of the former. Robinet was very concerned with a possibledisturbance of the social order which might affect the equilibrium ofgood and evil which regulated the efficient working of society, and hetried to face the problem by tackling it from a metaphysical point ofview. He seemed in fact even more obsessed by the problem of evil thanBonnet was,21and he tried to justify and offset its presence in the worldby establishingthe existence of an exactly equivalent proportion of good.The harmony of nature is the perfect equilibrium of good and evil. Itsvariety equals the sum of the combinations of these two essences, whichareopposite yet always united.The quantityof evil is equalto the quantityof good. Pure, absolute evil cannot exist because it would be an imper-fection in the total good, which cannot be infinite, at least in the finitefield.22 n nature there exists a precisegradationof the species, but despitethe subordinationwhich places, the lowest below the highest, the equi-librium of good and evil present in each species guarantees its perfectequality.

Comparingthese pages of De la Naturewith those in the same volumeconcernedwith the study of society, we find a perfect parallelismbetweennatural species and social ranks. When writing of nature, however, Ro-binet was descriptive, whereas when dealing with society, he becameprescriptive. If every social state possessed pleasure and pain in likemeasure, a preferablecondition would not exist. The inequality of ranks,Robinet explained, did not consist in an excess of good in the highestranks nor in a great amount of evil in the lowest but rather in the factthat the lowest classes are such because they are less "fortunate" as wellas less "unfortunate" than the higher ones. Following the graduatedarrangementof the ranks, it could easily be noted that growth occurredaccording to a proportionate increase of good and some evils (the shiftfrom singular to plural here is significant). Because of the acquisition ofboth in equal amounts, it might be concluded that no condition existedwhich could really be defined as better or worse than another, whateverthe distancebetween the two might be. In concretetermsit was importantfor the happiness of society that its humble components remained in thecondition in which they were born. If they had a less ignoble soul andif society contrived to increase their sensitivity and their education, theywould realize the degradation in which they lived and would no longerenjoy the simple pleasures with which they were content; they wouldrefuse heavy work, the only thing they enjoyed. The same thing would

21See J. Marx, "CharlesBonnet contre les lumieres (1738-1850)," Studies on Voltaireand the Eighteenth Century (1976), 145.22 J. B. Robinet, De la Nature, I, 97, 182.


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BIOLOGY AND SOCIETY 225happen to the negro slaves, strong and stupid as Robinet assumed theywere. Anyone awakening their sensitivity, their knowledge, and theirgood sense would be doing them a great disservice, for their conditionwould soon become unbearable for them. They would no longer carryout humble tasks and hard work, and they would stop at nothing toharm their masters. Anyone thinking of bettering the French peasant orthe American Negro would be upsettingthe equilibriumof the individualand disturbing the harmony of the State, preventing the happiness ofboth. But who indeed, concluded Robinet, could possibly be so crazy asto wish to exchange the healthy life of the strong peasant, content in hisvulgar pleasures, for the dramatic existence of the lord whose excess ofsensual pleasures prevented him from enjoying even the sweetness oflove? 3The scala naturae set up by Robinet, which reflects the hierarchicalorganization of society, had the normal requisites of classical Greekthinking, which had been reaffirmedby Leibniz. Robinet acknowledgedthat it had been Leibniz who firstdiscussedthe importanceof the principleof continuity,24as well as the description of nature as an infinite scalebounded at one end by nothing and at the other by infinite existence.Comparing the construction of Robinet with that conceived in thesame period by Bonnet, it may be noted that the hypothesis of a unityof design which directs the general plan of creation is very similar inboth. Although Bonnet'sacceptanceof it was cautious, Robinet embracedit more enthusiastically. For Bonnet the various productions of natureare only different sections of the same general design, which embracesall the parts of earthly creation, or rather different points of a singlesection which, with its infinitelyvariedcircumvolutions,tracesthe shapes,proportions, and the linking of all terrestial beings.25The unity of thedesign is revealed first when the design itself is traced and then at themoment of deciphering,which can only be completely carried out by thesame hand that traced it. For Robinet the unity is even stronger, sinceit appearsnot only at the moment of the composition and description ofthe design but also, and particularly, in the behavior of nature. Natureis a unique activity which comprises past, present,and future phenomenaand ensures in its permanence the duration of things. Creation is anoriginal but permanent impulse which makes the universe and the im-mense chain of differentbeings which compose it live and move eternally.Everything operates according to this single creative act, and everythingwould cease if this act were to end. For Robinet the whole stands, exists,

23Op. cit., 114ff.24 J. B. Robinet, Considerationsphilosophiquesde la gradation naturelle des formesde l'etre, ou les essais de la nature qui apprenda faire l'homme (Paris, 1768), 7. See alsoDe la Nature, IV, 8-9.25 Ch. Bonnet, Contemplationde la nature, VIII, 214-15.


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226 FRANCESCA RIGOTTIand acts only by virtue of the mutual connection of its parts; and it isinconceivable that one phenomenon be detached from the whole or onetruth be affirmed independently of it.26A closer study of this unitarydesign leads us, however, to understandthe differencebetween Bonnet's and Robinet's standpoints. On one pointin particular the divergence is "abysmal."27Bonnet in fact, after ques-tioning the validity of the methodical classifications based on the hy-pothesis of a real and absolute separation of the different orders whichmake up the scale of beings, puts forward in his turn a classification byclasses. This aroused Robinet's profound indignation. It mattered verylittle if Bonnet's taxonomy was based on a new criterion (the "organi-zation" of beings). Even if one single essential quality, in Bonnet's caseorganization,or any other qualitybelongingto a certainnumber of beingswere assumed to the exclusion of the others, this would be sufficient forthe isolated class, defined on the basis of any qualitative criterion, tobreak the chain and violate the law of continuity.Robinet's objection was far from superficial. To be able to upholdthe division into classes and at the same time maintain the principle ofcontinuity, links would have to be set up between non-homogeneouscategories, such as organized and nonorganized, animate and inanimate.But the intermediarybeings linking the two ought to be part of the twocontraries which mutually exclude each other, and this is impossible. Theprinciple was stated several times in De la Nature, in which Bonnet wasthe antagonist.The process of nature'sbecoming, in Robinet's schema, could be seenas a dialectic process which places importance on the element of conti-nuity and unity over oppositions. Each of the moments forming theprocess must be connected to the others, must indeed involve the othersto be able to permit, in their unwinding (in the literal sense of unravellingsomething previouslywound up), a continuous and unitaryprocesswhichaffirms the principle of the organic whole at every moment.The cornerstones of Robinet's doctrine, from that aforementionedsingle act of nature to the concept of the prototype,all aim at assuringthe process of becoming that is connected to the substantial unity andidentity of nature.The prototype,a concept which Robinet introduced and discussed inthe Considerationsphilosophiques, s essentially a primitive design on thebasis of which all beings are conceived, formed, and graduated to in-finity.28Moreover, the prototype is a principle of force that manifests

26J. B. Robinet, De la Nature, I, 24; Considerationsphilosophiques,2. See also J.Marx, op.cit., I, 355-56.27 As Paolo Rossi rightly points out in I Segni del tempo. Storia della terra e storiadelle nazioni da Hooke a Vico(Milano, 1979), 123.28 J. B. Robinet, Considerationsphilosophiques,6.


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BIOLOGY AND SOCIETY 227itself as a tendency to change which is continuously and necessarilyexerted. The unitary nature of this principle and the presence of this"quality," which is common to all beings, enabled Robinet to presenthis strict affirmation of the fundamental law of continuity.Nature works on the original prototype, which is altered, modified,and enriched as it is realized in matter. Every variation of the prototypegives rise to a new being; and nature itself, in its progress, grows perfect,so to speak, in the elaboration of its most perfect creation, man, so thatevery variation of the prototype seems to be a study carried out by naturein order to learn how to create man. Man will thus be composed fromthe prototype plus, not all of the qualities of the other beings but theresult-compatible in one essence-of all the combinations that the pro-totype has undergone in passing through all the degrees of the universalprogression of being.And what else can we learn from fossils, asked Robinet, if not thatthey are the first attempts of nature to express the human form? Naturehas sowed the human form everywhere along the scale of beings toannouncein an intelligibleway in which directionthe firstmetamorphosesof being are moving.

Robinet was faithful to the principleof the presenceof a single qualitypossessed to a greater or lesser degree in all things. As a guarantee ofthe law of continuity, he considered fossils and in general minerals asendowed with an organization and a level of life, even if minimal; thus,they may possess the same property as animals and plants. In so doing,Robinet was merelydrawingextremeconsequencesfrom principleswhichwere almost universally accepted. Proceeding by analogy on the basis ofthat philosophical apriorismwhich was characteristicof all his research,Robinet conjectured that minerals, whose life is undeniable, reproducethemselves through a fusion of male and female seed and thus undergoa process of growth from being soft to becoming gradually harder.His opinion on caudate men or sirens was even more implausible.They were supposed to representthe beings that link inferior animals tomen in the same way that the "fibrous stones"form the transitionbetweenminerals and plants. Not content with basing this hypothesis on his apriori method founded on a strict espritde systeme, Robinet supportedhis reasoning with dozens of accounts of fishermen and sailors who hadwitnessed amazing catches of mermen and mermaids;29he also resortedto the authority of writers such as Pliny, La Mothe le Vayer, AthanasiusKircher, and Benoit de Maillet.These eccentricities,however, cannot relegateRobinet to the band ofdreamers or failures. We are not concerned, in our study of eighteenth-century naturalists, with yet another application of an evolutionistic cri-terion such as natural selection, which considers the legacy of Leibniz's

29 Op.cit., 112, and passim.


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228 FRANCESCA RIGOTTIlex continui as the blind alley in which the reproduction of a speciesincapable of adapting to its environment comes to an end. It is pointlessto look for a true transformism arranged in chronological series in thebiological writers of the second half of the eighteenth century. But itwould be wrong to deny their positive contributionor fail to acknowledgethe step forward from the simple to the complex by seeing their repre-sentation of the world as fixed and unchangeable.30In Robinet as in Bonnet, the static concept of the chain of beingbecame dynamic.31Nature moves forwardslowly and gradually, Robinetexplained, in a fashion analogous to art (which proceeds from the mostprimitive representationsto our masterpieces)or to the series of naturalnumbers(which startsfrom a unit and increasesby addition). It is evident,especially in the example of numbers, that there is no hypothesis ofautogeneration. But it is likewise evident that in Robinet the principleof perfectibility plays the central role, according to which living formsare created through a progressive process of development which goesfrom the simple to the complex. Everything begins its existence in itssimplest and smallest form and grows larger by means of a uniformgradation until it reaches the point of perfection.VI. De Beaurieu, Delille, Delisle de Sales.-The theme of the chainof being and of its unity of plan was continually taken up in the secondhalf of the eighteenth century by writers who were more like Robinet inadopting literary-political-philosophicalclaims than like Bonnet in hisexperimentalisticattitude,32but who were nevertheless inspired by bothand achieved a notable success with their works, which were intendedfor a wide reading public.Gaspard-Guillardde Beaurieu(1728-1795) was the author of L'Elevede la nature (1766), a book written for young people, which tells thestory of a young boy's acquisition of sense and reasoning, when, afterhaving lived for fifteen years in a cave where he never saw the light ofday nor spoke or heard people speak, he began to be aware of the worldon a desert island. De Beaurieu also wrote a lengthy Cours d'histoirenaturelle ou tableau de la nature, published in seven volumes in 1770.Whereas the first work reveals the writer's admiration for Locke andRousseau (L'Eleve de la nature was often attributed to the latter), theTableau de la nature displays his acceptance of Bonnet's finalism. DeBeaurieu, in fact, adopted the schema of the scale of beings and repre-sented it as a pyramid whose base is formed by the minerals, the centerby plants, and the top by animals. Within this pyramid the level of

30 They are all thesis of Francois Jacob presentedin La Logiquedu vivant:une histoirede l'heredite (Paris, 1970).31 See L. G. Crocker,Diderot and Eighteenth-CenturyFrench Transformism, n Fore-runnersof Darwin:1745-1859, eds. B. Glass, O. Temkin, and W. L. Strauss,Jr. (Baltimore,

1959), 135.32 See J. Marx, op.cit., I, 357-58.


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BIOLOGY AND SOCIETY 229organizationand the espritde vie gradually increase from the base to thetop, while the quantity of materia bruta decreases. The universe is com-posed of two elements, living matter and dead matter. From the differentcombinations of these two elements all possible beings are born. Theunity of design and of action intended by the divine order and wisdomis revealed in the general resemblanceof creatures,just as their infinitevariety of forms testifies to the omnipotence of divine performance.Theharmony of the universe, reflecting the eternal order which is divine,produces the immense chain of the whole universe which is perpetuallyin motion and whose links are never jumbled or crossed.If a debt to Robinet can be discerned in de Beaurieu's insistence onthe harmony of the universe, his influence is even more evident in hispositioning of man in the scale of beings. The human body can begraduatedin its internal economy like the model that nature followed inthe formation of all the other animals, so that anything said of its mech-anism, its senses, and its other parts is a necessary introduction to thehistory of the other animals.33Another bio-philosopher and author, writing under the pseudonymof Delisle de Sales, was as well-known during his lifetime as he waspresumptuous:Jean Baptiste Claude Isoard (1743?-1816) was the authorof the Histoirephilosophiquedu mondeprimitif in seven volumes (1780),and the author of the De la Philosophiede la nature(1766), which becamethe object of scandal and was burnt but which was nevertheless reprintedright up to the beginning of the nineteenth century. In this study herecognizedthat natureproceedsby imperceptible changes and gradations,moving from the simple to the complex; he postulated the need for theexistence of an intermediaryorganizationbetween the one realm and thenext. He maintained no doubts about the immense lengths of time whichmust have passed between the first developments of organized nature inmarine life and the birth of vegetation on the land after emerging fromthe sea, and between the developmentof plant life on earth and the birthof man.

Like Bonnet, Delisle de Sales denied that the scale of beings couldcover, in his hierarchy, the entire range of existence up to divinity, sincebetween a created intelligence and infinite intelligence there exists notonly an interval of space too vast to be filled with a series of gradationsbut a real qualitative gap which demonstrates the disparity of the two.God is "chained" to the world, Delisle explained, only in the sense thathe holds the chain in his hands, but the divinity cannot properly besubmitted to the eternal laws of nature.34Unlike Bonnet, he did denythe permanentlydynamiccharacter of the scale of beings. The vital thrust33 G. G. de Beaurieu, Cours d'histoirenaturelle ou tableau de la nature (Paris, 1770),

I, 45-46.34 J. B. Delisle de Sales, De la Philosophiede la nature (Amsterdam, 1770), I, 7.


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230 FRANCESCA RIGOTTIof nature, which brought about the development and the perfectioningof the world, will sooner or later come to an end when the internal energyis exhausted, and the universewill move in downward gradationtowardsits end. The process through which the organizationof nature has passedfrom the simple to the complex will one day be repeated in reverse, andwith imperceptible gradationsthe scale will descend again from the mostcomplex to the simplest being endowed with the most elementary struc-ture.In the portrayal of Jacques Delille (1738-1813), however, nature'sactivity is much more reassuring.The most famous of his poetic works,Les troisRegnes de la nature (1803), proclaimed in verse the continuityand the gradationof the scala naturae, the quality of the "fibrousstones"which representthe link between the mineral realm and the plant world,and the triumphof the polyp. The poetry of this French Alexander Popedisplayed before his readers'eyes the fluid unwinding of the great chainof being in its reassuringcontinuity.VII. The encounter with Newtonianism. In order to meet the re-quirementsof gradationand continuity, the chain of being had to operatewithin a full universe characterizedby action through contact, of Carte-sian-Leibnizian derivation. The mathematiciansand philosophers of con-tinuity (Plouquet, Kastner, Boscovich) upheld this concept of action bycontact, and Bonnet, Robinet, Delille, and Delisle de Sales modelled theirscalae naturaeon this assumption.But an opposing movement of thinkingwas being elaborated at the same time during the eighteenth century,namely, the Newtonian model of the void universe and action at a dis-tance. What were the consequencesof the introductionof these principleson the questions concerning us here?One example may be taken from the application of Newtonianism tobiology made by Maupertuis.Reason and experience,stated Maupertuis,prove that, as opposed to the opinion that the whole of matter forms acontinuum without interruptionsbetween the parts, there is, on the con-trary, a void in nature, and that the bodies are scatteredin space withoutany need for reciprocalcontact.35The same force of gravitation-attractionwhich controls the behavior of bodies in space governs the formation oforganic bodies. However, as the force of attraction is transformed, inMaupertuis's terminology, into affinity, it loses the characteristicsof thesimplemechanicalphenomenonof the Newtonian model and gains "Leib-nizian" qualities. A uniform, blind attraction spread over the parts ofmatter would not explain how these parts are arrangedto form the mostrudimentaryorganized bodies. If they all possess the same tendency andthe same force to join them together, why then do some go to form theeye and others the ear?Why is there this wonderful arrangement?Why

35 P. L. M. de Maupertuis, Systeme de la nature in Oeuvres(Hildesheim, 1965), II,174-75.


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BIOLOGY AND SOCIETY 231do they not join haphazardly?If an explanation is to be attempted, evenif founded entirely on analogy, some principle of intelligence must beapplied, something similar to what we call desire, aversion, memory.Thus, for Maupertuis, in order to explain the formation of organizedbodies, psychic properties must be added to the physical properties ofmatter;and he takes from Leibniz the consciousness and the will of thesimple substances that make up the world. By endowing the "livingparticles"-which in Maupertuis'ssystem representthe elementaryunitsthat make up living beings-with a kind of memory, the regularity ofthe unfoldingof organicprocessesand even the existence of that otherwiseinexplicable phenomenon, the heredity of character, can be explained.36The arrangementof the parts is not made, according to this model,by an external order but by an internal one within the parts themselves.Each of them "knows" (so to speak) how and where it must join theothers because it preserves a kind of memory of its previous situation.A process is generated from the old one, which may preserve somecharacteristicof the previous one but which is new and different.The role played by Maupertuis's "particles" in the world of livingbeings is similar to that of Buffon's "organic molecules," although forBuffon the power of Newtonian mechanics over the ambit of the orga-nization of the living beings is even more explicit.37In formulating atheory of generation, Buffon took as a model the Newtonian idea of asystem of matter in motion in a void. The living organic molecules whichanimate all organizedbodies and which are used to nourish and generateall beings are controlled in their movements by forces that, having thecapacity to permeate them thoroughly, are comparable to the force ofattraction. The molecules are indestructible and always active; they arecontinually joining to form organized bodies,38 ontrolled in their distri-bution and behaviorby that principleof force which Buffon called mouleinterieur. In Buffon's case also we may notice how his rejection of theplenistic assumption led him to make formulations of a dynamic naturewhich can also be found in his account of the formation of an inhabitableworld.

The theories of generation by epigenesis gave fundamental impetusto the developmentof a dynamic and transformist doctrine in eighteenth-century biological science. Moreover, epigenism helped to modify theo-logical-philosophical thinking by enriching it with the notion of creationextended in time, while the doctrine of preexistence implied the singleand simultaneous creation of all beings.It was Diderot who seemed especially to have given the concept ofnaturethe qualitiesof dynamismand individuality,of self-generatingand

36 Op.cit., 146-47, 179.37 G. Canguilhem, La Connaissancede la vie (Paris, 1952).38 G. L. L. de Buffon, Les Epoquesde la nature, ed. J. Roger (Paris, 1962).


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232 FRANCESCA RIGOTTItemporal process, subsuming concepts of both the Leibnizian and theNewtonian world systems in his thinking. His idea of nature can in factbe defined as unifying, continuistic, and also dynamic. Nature performeda single act, in virtue of which it continuously recreates ("nature is stillat work") and the results of which can be seen in the continuity of thegreat chain.39But in his chain of being the links have become degrees;the process of temporalization has been fully completed.VIII. Biology and society.-In a period when biological questionswere treated within philosophy, it was easy to move from theories aboutthe natural world to ideas of the social world and vice versa. For instance,it was natural for Robinet to move from the analysis of the hierarchy ofnatural beings to that of the human races. Voltaire was fully aware ofthis tendency and was, much like Johnson and Blumenbach, one of theharshest critics of the theory of the perfect continuity of the scale ofnature. Voltaire believed that the series of forms was interrupted andrealized that the concept of the unbrokenchain of being seemed designedto impressand pleasepublic imagination."Good people"like to recognizein this hierarchy "the pope and cardinals, followed by the archbishopsand bishops, after whom are the vicars, curates and priests, the deaconsand subdeacons, then come the monks and the capuchins bring up therear."40 t must indeed be asked whether this emphasis on the definitionof the world as an entity under the aegis of an overall providentialharmony, where a rigidly continuistic interpretation of phenomena ex-cludes the least overlap, was not in fact deliberately aimed at directingthe behavior of a society which was in conflict-a society which was inconflict but which saw itself as immovable in its vertical cross-section,or within which at most a sideways movement might be possible alongan axis, so that the distances between classes might be strictly retained,while the classes themselves improved their position without any of themtaking an inferior role or advancing at the expense of another. In thissense the metaphor of the chain of being as applied to society is slightlyaltered to show a reality without conflicts or problems-certainly not atrue image, particularly at that time, when society was preparing for arevolution.

We may thus ask whether this metaphorical portrayal was not in-tended to describe the world as it is but rather to suggest how it shouldbe. The prescriptiveaim seems to appearinsistently whenever natural orscientific models are applied to the sphere of social behavior. This purelydescriptive value when limited to the biological sphere changes into aspecifically normative one when grafted onto the social sphere. Descrip-tion is formalizedin norm. If naturedoes not change, neither does societychange, nor must it. The maintenance of equilibriumand social harmony39D. Diderot, De l'Interpretationde la nature (Paris, 1753), 31-33.40Voltaire, A PhilosophicalDictionary (London, s.d.), I, 255.


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BIOLOGY AND SOCIETY 233is attainable only when nature's example is followed. God, providence,or nature has already arrangedfor all beings the best condition for theirexistence, in which perfectibility is also possible. Living beings settle inthe lines of the natural plot, where they find equilibrium and the pos-sibility of fulfillment. The social beings must do likewise.

Georg-August-Universitat,Gottingen.

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