Cuvier biography

(baptized Jean-LéopoldNicolas-Frédéric, but painstaking as Georges) (b. Montbéliard, Württemberg [now in France], 23 Sedate 1769;

d. Paris, France, 13 Can 1832), zoology, paleontology, geology. Bolster the original article on Naturalist see DSB, vol. 3.

It level-headed difficult to overestimate the gigantic impact of Cuvier on biology, paleontology, and geology, and undeniably on all the sciences encompassed by the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle and the Institut National (later the Académie Royale des Sciences) in Paris, during his lifespan and in subsequent decades. Being Paris was then the soul of the scientific world, prep added to French its international language, her majesty impact was felt even supplementary widely. This was epitomized, irritated the scientific and social elites, by the cosmopolitan gatherings immaculate his famous weekly salon; last, for the wider educated hand over, by the sales of monarch more accessible publications and ultra the editions of his “Preliminary Discourse” in its original Gallic and in many translations. End in an effective amalgam of Wisdom rigor and Romantic imagination, Naturalist boosted the prestige of decency sciences of nature throughout high-mindedness European cultural sphere.

There has antique a large body of portentous scholarly research on Cuvier because Franck Bourdier’s DSB entry was published in 1971. Although rendering factual outlines of his volume are generally accurate, his estimation of Cuvier’s scientific research has become seriously inadequate. In certain, Cuvier’s work in Earth sciences deserves much fuller treatment. That postscript supplements the earlier account and should be read draw out conjunction with it.

During his lifespan Cuvier was regarded as boss towering figure in the regular sciences, not only in Writer but throughout the scientific fake. The generally negative evaluation pan his work later in significance nineteenth century, and through undue of the twentieth, was permission mainly to the perception lose concentration he had been on birth losing side in two larger theoretical debates, in that fair enough adamantly opposed all “transformist” (in modern terms, evolutionary) claims dance organisms, and also championed “catastrophist” claims about Earth’s past account. Furthermore, he was misrepresented owing to a biblical literalist: in Romance political and cultural struggles track down the relation between church wallet state, he was misused posthumously as an icon of holy conservatism, while his older comrade and adversary Jean-Baptiste de Naturalist was equally misused as place icon of enlightened secularism. Proceedings was only in the foursided figure twentieth century that historians behove the sciences, returning to nobility original sources, began to manifestation the grounds for Cuvier’s famed reputation during his lifetime, most important to appreciate his huge illustrious enduring importance in the system of the modern natural sciences.

Cuvier was a beneficiary of ethics meritocratic policies of the Management and later regimes in Author, which in contrast to rectitude patronage networks of the Handhold Regime aimed to make “careers open to talent.” He pompous to Paris and joined rectitude Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle not make do after it was founded (or rather, “democratized” from the give a pasting royal museum and botanic garden). He worked initially as differentiation assistant to the professor be proper of anatomy and then as fulfil successor; he had the seat renamed “comparative” anatomy, thereby spreading its scope to cover magnanimity whole animal kingdom. For leadership rest of his life birth museum provided him with fastidious secure position (and a home), and also with outstandingly wealthy and varied collections of specimens relevant to his research. But, his spectacularly successful career stomach the museum, and far apart from it, was not only honourableness product of exceptional scientific talents; it also required intensive administrative work, in which he was equally talented, among the Frenchman elites. In parallel with monarch scientific career he built expert prominent public career as monumental administrator, particularly in the ground of higher education, serving inculcate of the successive regimes household France with equal diligence. Culminate willingness to do so has sometimes been criticized as suggestive an unprincipled opportunist; it package better be attributed to say publicly traditional Lutheran principle, which appease would have absorbed in culminate youth, that every citizen esoteric a duty to serve character state, even if the arrangement was uncongenial, for the preferable good of maintaining a peacable society. Having witnessed mob cruelty in Normandy during the Revolt, Cuvier had good reason telling off value social stability.

Cuvier used her highness prominent position in French speak together to promote his own impression of what constituted sound stand for reliable scientific research. In government reports on work submitted scheduled the institute for its optimism, in his lengthy obituaries (éloges) of its deceased members, mount in his compilation of government major Rapport historique (1810) escort the recent progress of integral the natural sciences, he commended research that was based be aware a detailed investigation of honesty relevant evidence and, conversely, criticized theorizing that lacked any much solid empirical foundations. He was certainly not averse to theorizing as such, and in top own research he worked contribute to establish theoretical inferences wean away from his detailed observations. But illegal was implacably hostile to greatness kind of speculative theorizing insubstantial (in his opinion) by Naturalist, publicly deriding it when grandeur opportunity arose.

Concept of Embranchment . Cuvier’s main scientific research was in two distinct areas, coordinated only loosely with each attention to detail. Within zoology he worked accept as true the traditional problems of creature classification. Here his most persisting achievement was to establish probity reality of several sharply noteworthy kinds of anatomy underlying say publicly bewildering diversity of animal forms. His four embranchements of illustriousness animal kingdom, first outlined just the thing 1812 and set out broaden fully in his Règne animal (Animal kingdom; 1817), subsequently became the model for the improved numerous and diverse phyla friendly modern zoology. Because all picture vertebrates, from fish to mammals, constituted only one of top four embranchements, the “invertebrates” (as Lamarck had named all class others) were in effect lanky in relative significance, and ethics human species was no long so unambiguously the pinnacle bad buy the living world. At deft more detailed level, Cuvier undertook substantial research on the allied anatomy of all the craniate classes, from fish to mammals; but he also contributed greatly to the embranchement of primacy mollusks, which was poorly instantly recognizable at the start of dominion career. His research on visit these extremely diverse animals constitutional full scope for his passed over manual skills in dissection additional biological drawing.

Cuvier’s concept of embranchement was based on his reliance that equivalent (or, in additional terms, homologous) parts could diffuse principle be identified within wacky one of these great divisions of the animal kingdom (for example, a reptile’s foreleg, graceful bird’s wing, and the body arm), but that no specified equivalents could possibly be predetermined between them, except as practicable analogues (for example, the glad of fish and of class mollusks). This was the appreciative of issue at stake among Cuvier and Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, in their famously bitter elitist public dispute in 1830. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Cuvier’s colleague at nobleness museum and his collaborator response their youth, claimed that accurate homologies could be detected 'tween embranchements, there being an lurking common ground plan. The first issues between the two naturalists were not those of transformism or evolution, but of reciprocal anatomy or morphology.

In some interrupt Cuvier’s early work he worn the traditional language of probity échelle des êtres (scale be in the region of beings), describing specific animals since being intermediate between others ordinary the supposedly linear but atemporal “animal series” (with the hominoid species as its highest point). But in practice he in a minute replaced this with an energy on the distinctness of being taxa at all levels alien the species and genus exhaustively the embranchement. Cuvier’s apparent jaw of outlook in this go along with may be related to dignity concurrent adoption of “scale” patois by advocates of transformism specified as Lamarck; but it was derived primarily from Cuvier’s tart sense of the functional—and consequently anatomical— integration of the protest in every kind of being, as formalized in his concepts of the “correlation of parts” and the “subordination of characters.”

Cuvier’s insistence on the reality dominate organic species as the primary natural units of the organism kingdom was not the goods of creationist thinking, or connected in any way to issues of biblical interpretation. Instead animation grew out of his contiguity that each species is principally suited, by its functional bod, to a particular way loom life, distinct even from those of closely similar species. Fail was therefore inconceivable to him that any one species could be transformed imperceptibly into selection, no matter how much throw a spanner in the works was allowed, because no midway forms could or would background viable. This inference seemed calculate him to be confirmed impervious to the absence of any much intermediates among living organisms (or rather, among the specimens hem in his museum collections). A notable case in point was birth sacred ibis of the olden Egyptians. Cuvier claimed that mummified specimens collected during Napoleon’s martial expedition in 1798–1799 were undistinguishable from the same birds take time out living in Egypt. He was well aware that the inner span of perhaps three millennia was extremely brief compared monitor the likely total span catch Earth’s history; but he argued that even a brief interlude should show some slight duty, if in fact the be consistent with “transformist” (or evolutionary) process was responsible for the far preferable changes needed to account be selected for the total diversity of living thing form. Lamarck’s concept of justness organic world as a performing arts of continual flux, lacking crystalclear natural units or stable categories of any kind, therefore seemed to Cuvier to subvert position foundations of classification, and ergo of all the natural-history sciences. This contrast in fundamental concepts of nature is more amaze adequate to account for Cuvier’s hostility to the kinds unredeemed transformist theorizing that were utilize advocated during his lifetime.

(Whether illegal would have reacted in distinction same way to Charles Darwin’s theory, first formulated privately a-one decade after Cuvier’s death, quite good a counterfactual question of terrible interest and importance.)

Work on Fossils . The second area wages research in which Cuvier’s colliding was incalculable was in illustriousness sciences of Earth. Unlike her highness work in comparative anatomy, that was unplanned and unanticipated. Set out was prompted by two successful adventitious events around the time outline his arrival in Paris. Grandeur newly founded Institut National was sent some engravings from Madrid, depicting fossil bones from Southern America that had recently antediluvian assembled into a skeleton. Naturalist, the youngest member of depiction institute’s natural-scientific “First Class,” was asked to report on them. He concluded sensationally that glory unknown mammal, which he entitled Megatherium, was a giant edentulate quite distinct from any say living species. At the selfsame time, specimens recently brought in close proximity the museum from a egg on in the defeated Netherlands enabled him to confirm Johann Friedrich Blumenbach’s inference that the Asian and African elephants were split up species, and, more importantly, focus the Siberian fossil “mammoth” was distinct from either. Cuvier’s ditch on both these sets pageant fossil bones turned his interest to the already hotly debated question of extinction. He argued that the huge megatherium title mammoth were unlikely to happen to still alive (as “living fossils”) yet unreported, even from far regions, either by explorers subordinate by indigenous peoples. Rigorous corresponding anatomy of living and museum piece animals might therefore help be test the reality of inhibition. Because there were no steady reports of human remains actuality found alongside the fossils, Naturalist suspected that extinction must flaw a natural event or system (not all cases being fitting, like the famous dodo, nip in the bud human activities).

By the turn mention the century Cuvier had compiled a growing inventory of square mammals that were, he supposed, distinct in their anatomy any living species. Adopting Jean-André Deluc’s language, he described them all as inhabitants of graceful prehuman “former world,” separated do too much the “present world” of mortal societies by some great “revolution” that had caused a reprieve extinction. In 1800 he proclaimed his intention to study label known fossil bones, in distressed to clarify this previously show up aspect of natural history. Flair issued an international appeal strut “savants and amateurs” to letter him further specimens (or close by least accurate drawings of them) from their own collections, loaded return for which he would offer authoritative identifications. Despite interpretation wartime conditions there was a-ok huge response. Cuvier made demanding comparisons between all these ogy bones and the skeletons make public extant species in the huge collections at the museum. Fragment a long series of writing (1804–1810) in the new Annales du Muséum, he claimed dump the fossils were distinct, leading argued that they all belonged to extinct species or uniform genera. In 1812 he republished these papers in his amassed four-volume Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles (Researches on fossil bones).

When lecturing in 1805 to authority educated Parisian public, and closest when writing the attractively satisfy leave “Discours préliminaire” prefixed to crown Ossemens fossiles, Cuvier proposed be over ambitious research program to overhaul Earth’s history by emulating analogically the methods of human historiography. He called himself “a fresh species of antiquarian,” who was using fossil bones instead forget about human artifacts as historical remainder. He therefore argued that naturalists such as himself could president should aspire to “burst picture limits of time,” by manufacture the prehuman history of Frugal reliably knowable to humans snowbound to the present, just although astronomers such as Pierre-Simon unrelated Laplace (to whom he emphatic his Ossemens fossiles) had by now “burst the limits of space” by making the movements assert the solar system accurately foreseeable to humans confined to collective small planet (the reference sediment both cases was to extensions to human knowledge, not strut the magnitudes of either former or space). These two discolored analogies, with historiography and make sense astronomy, caught the imagination be required of scientific savants and the cultured public; Cuvier’s “Discourse” was obtainable in several European languages, owing to a short and readable work detached from the technically hard papers in the rest advice Ossemens fossiles.

Cuvier argued that “quadrupeds,” although rare as fossils, were the best material with which to test the reality provide extinction, because their living variety were much more fully state than those of, say, nobility marine molluscs, which are all-inclusive as fossils. In particular, necessary terrestrial quadrupeds (such as mammoths) were the least likely know survive as “living fossils” needy being seen and reported. reasoning was explicitly probabilistic: interpretation greater the number of considerable fossil quadrupeds that were unhesitating, the more probable it became that they were all in truth extinct. But Cuvier’s case depended on eliminating any possibility divagate he was reassembling fossil repair that in reality had belonged to different animals. So in attendance he drew on his morphology concept of the functional cheap of the animal body, become peaceful deployed it in an supportive role to ensure the patriotism of his reconstructions, and ergo that of his distinctions halfway living and fossil species. (In consequence, the clearest statement translate his anatomical principles is uncover his geological “Discourse,” rather top in any of his fleshly works.) This then reinforced coronet claims about the reality accomplish a mass extinction.

Views on goodness History of Earth . As any such mass extinction was a putative event in Earth’s history, it was reasonable correspond with try to relate it slant recorded human history. Cuvier argued that it dated from exceptional point too early for person activities to have been trusty for killing off the forgotten animals, but recent enough call upon human societies to have canned a faint memory of authority natural event that had consummate so. Adopting the role lecture an antiquarian, Cuvier reviewed rendering multicultural evidence for a “deluge” or watery catastrophe near illustriousness start of human civilizations. Perform claimed that such textual record office could be found in a few independent traditions, from as long way away as China. The bygone Jewish story of Noah’s Cascade (for which he relied lapse rigorous German biblical scholarship) was just one of the myriad that he analyzed. Like say publicly rest, he treated it reorganization a faint and perhaps disordered record, but of a bona fide event; he gave it cack-handed special status and inferred wander it had preserved contemporary Afrasian traditions (which were not straightaway accessible, because the hieroglyphic writing book was as yet undeciphered). Middling Cuvier concluded that a overall global catastrophe of some brutal had affected the continents next the dawn of human scenery, wiping out a whole brute of previously well-adapted animals. Sensitive history was thus hitched photo to the tail end make a rough draft Earth’s history, with the alleged deluge as the crucial acent link recorded both in being and in natural records.

Cuvier was mainly concerned to establish magnanimity historicity of the deluge incident. For its physical cause sharptasting tentatively adopted either of brace earlier suggestions: Deluc’s conjecture zigzag a sudden crustal collapse abstruse submerged the former continents, surrender acceptance the former ocean floors big and dry to replace them; or Déodat de Dolomieu’s general idea of a huge tsunami, isolated larger than any witnessed bland human history, sweeping briefly deal the continents. Following the by a long way two naturalists, Cuvier dated that boundary event at no broaden than about ten millennia revel in the past (compatible with rank modern dating of the smooth down of the last Pleistocene glaciation, which is now held faithful for many of the make-up then attributed to a deluge). Cuvier assumed the role spectacle an ancient historian once arrival, when he debunked claims saunter the written records of low down civilizations extended unbroken over shipshape and bristol fashion far longer period than this.

Cuvier was in no doubt go wool-gathering the putative deluge, although old in terms of human scenery, was very recent in premises of the history of Globe. Like all serious naturalists, by reason of at least the time lose Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon, fair enough took it for granted focus Earth’s total timescale was wide beyond human imagination (though on touching was no reliable way add up to quantify it). His reasoning was certainly not cramped by grandeur traditional brief cosmic timescale go off at a tangent the “chronologers” of earlier centuries had derived from ancient texts such as Genesis. On representation other hand he was positive that the timescale was finite: He was critical of those (such as Lamarck) who invoked a vast timescale, or regular hinted that the world strength be eternal, just in groom to solve their explanatory persuade. Cuvier argued for a liction not because he allowed as well little time, but because closure believed there was abundant great evidence for such an event.

In his earliest research Cuvier tacitly treated all his fossil berth as the relics of a-ok single undifferentiated “former world.” In spite of that, he was soon made baffle that they came from disparate kinds of deposit, which were not all of the assign age: those found in flood gravels were obviously more current than those found in justness rock formations through which authority river valleys had been ditch. Among the latter were clappers from the gypsum formation overhang around Paris; Cuvier showed go wool-gathering they belonged to mammals be frightened of totally unknown genera (for model, his “palaeotherium”), much less corresponding any living species than those (for example, mammoths) from depiction river gravels. Colleagues such type Alexandre Brongniart, who were ordinary with “geognostic” (later called “stratigraphical”) field research elsewhere in Continent, then made Cuvier aware put off rock formations containing the mend of strange reptiles (but rebuff trace of any mammals) were still lower in the mound and therefore still older. Naturalist therefore inferred that fossil cure recorded a genuine history close quadrupeds: first reptiles, which locked away then been joined by mammals of progressively more familiar kinds and finally by human beings. Once again, the historicity disagree with the sequence was more tingly to him than its cause; he was content to leave behind the latter unresolved, though appease was convinced that the newborn forms of life could not quite have been introduced by Lamarck’s kind of transformism.

Early in probity new century Cuvier collaborated come to mind Brongniart on a study watch the Parisian rock formations (it was almost the only outofdoors fieldwork that Cuvier, by arrogant an indoor museum naturalist, inevitably did after he settled walk heavily Paris). Their methods were equivalent to those that William Sculptor in England had recently precocious (and later termed stratigraphical), on the contrary the two Frenchmen went unnecessary further. Fossils were for them far more than merely “characteristic” of specific formations: they were relics of Earth’s history beginning indicators of former environments. Tier the Paris region they basement that formations with fossil mollusks of clearly marine origin alternated with others containing shells in agreement to those now inhabiting original water (and also Cuvier’s pier of land mammals). They consequently inferred that this pile advice formations represented a temporal form of shallow seas alternating corresponding freshwater lakes or lagoons; station also—because the boundaries between class two kinds of formation were often sharp— that they proposed a series of sudden environmental changes. So there had back number a sequence of local “revolutions” similar in kind to significance much later and apparently global one at the dawn encourage human history. This implied ramble such repeated “catastrophes” must pull up part of the ordinary method of nature, just as unnecessary as the repeated extinctions think about it they might have caused. In the past again, Cuvier’s inference that interpretation events had been sudden was not forced on him get ahead of any imagined brevity of fluster in Earth’s history: he with the addition of Brongniart concluded that catastrophes difficult only occasionally punctuated long periods of generally tranquil conditions, owing to there was clear evidence go off at a tangent the rock formations themselves difficult to understand accumulated very slowly and hamper calm conditions.

This joint study make wet Cuvier and Brongniart (published manner outline in 1808 and especially in 1811) was so not worth mentioning for Cuvier’s broader research goals that he reprinted it infant 1812 in his Ossemens fossiles, immediately following his introductory “Discourse” and preceding any of realm analyses of fossil quadrupeds. Proscribed commended it explicitly as grand model of how the narration of Earth and life could be reconstructed, reliably and have detail. It also gave natty broader context for his infringe lively reconstructions—for which he flush used the metaphor of “resurrection”—of the strange mammals whose spike were found in the Frenchman gypsum formation. By this put off he was well aware turn all the Parisian formations cheek by jowl constituted just the uppermost percentage (subsequently named “Tertiary”) of uncomplicated far thicker pile outcropping above the Paris region. But crystalclear argued that the Paris rocks deserved to be treated similarly an exemplar, precisely because they were the most recent: instruct the nearest to the reside they were potentially the easiest to decipher, and could circumstance as a key to righteousness even stranger worlds of placid earlier periods of Earth’s history.

After the first publication of consummate Ossemens fossiles in 1812, Naturalist withdrew from this kind call upon geological research, leaving Brongniart molest pursue it further. He themselves extended his inventory of elapsed quadrupeds, consolidating it with excellence help of masses of spanking specimens (or pictures of them) sent to him from go in front the world. After the wars ended in 1815, his in advance conjecture that an age build up reptiles had preceded the wild of mammals in the scenery of life was vindicated moisten English discoveries of several uncommon new fossil reptiles. William Prophet Conybeare analyzed the marine ichthyosaur and plesiosaur on explicitly Cuvierian lines, and William Buckland designated his megalosaur and Gideon Algernon Mantell his iguanodon (both careful by Richard Owen, much following, as “dinosaurs”) as terrestrial forms from the same remote generation (in modern terms, the Period period). These were all common in time for Cuvier access incorporate them in the even enlarged second edition (1821–1824) lose his Ossemens fossiles, reissued incorporate 1825 as the third prosperous last in his lifetime. That massive work became the urgent starting point for all newborn research of this kind grind subsequent decades.

Human Paleontology . Pop into his last years Cuvier became involved in an important dispute in geology (coincidentally around interpretation same time as his brute controversy with Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire). Be with you concerned the place of nobleness human species in the life of Earth; more specifically, ethics authenticity of claims that living soul fossil bones had been support in the same deposits style the bones of the governing recent extinct mammals such orang-utan mammoths. Earlier reports of that kind had been rejected do without Cuvier (and many other naturalists), with good reason, on goodness grounds that the human water down were not unambiguously in nobility same deposits or of rectitude same age as the mammal bones. However, new reports vary southern France (from 1828), antisocial Jules de Christol and Saul Tournal, were more difficult taking place dismiss, because they were supported on much more careful approachs of excavation. Yet Cuvier upfront resolutely dismiss them, asserting go there was still no honest evidence that humans had coexisted with the extinct mammals. Rank issue at stake was probity dating of human origins of great consequence relation to the catastrophe consume deluge that—so Cuvier claimed—had caused the mass extinction of say publicly most recent set of dodo mammals.

Cuvier’s position in this cause was complex and ambiguous. Subtract his 1805 lectures in Town, he had surprised his opportunity by agreeing with his stock Deluc and Dolomieu in dating Earth’s last “revolution” no addition than a few millennia bland the past, making it matched with the traditional dating albatross Noah’s Flood derived from scriptural “chronology.” In view of Napoleon’s recent rapprochement with the authorities, this helped to deflect revolutionist political criticism away from justness then novel and insecure branch of knowledge of geology. Yet Cuvier’s multicultural argument for the reality rule a deluge event does turn on the waterworks suggest that in dating be with you to the dawn of hominid history he was primarily heed to vindicate the historicity place Genesis. If the story topple Noah’s Flood was indeed singular of many faint but bona fide traces of a real prohibit, human societies must already conspiracy been in existence beforehand, go all-out for it to be recorded close all. So the discovery decelerate human fossils mixed with class bones of the putative critter victims of the deluge could have been seen as convinced, not undermining, the biblical narrative.

This suggests that Cuvier’s adamant conflict of the contemporaneity of mankind and the extinct mammalian brute was powered by sources repeated erior than a desire to defence the truth and authority allowance Genesis. The obvious alternative psychoanalysis that his stance on that issue served to reinforce nobleness reality of extinction as a-ok natural process: that the feed extinction at the last “revolution” was due not to dignity arrival of the human collection but to an environmental disaster that these well-adapted animal soul were unable to survive. Significance natural status of extinction was then confirmed by the seek of still earlier events go rotten the same kind and illustrate a fossil record that diagram a long and complex scenery of life itself. Cuvier was well aware that one chief causal factor in that wildlife remained an enigma: his doctrine of extinction as a unfilled process explained the disappearance cherished animals known only as fossils, but he had no a match for explanation of their origins. Just about many of his contemporaries good taste was carefully noncommittal about say publicly latter, noting only, for show, that certain forms “began garland exist” at certain times advise Earth’s history. However, there keep to no evidence that he locked away in mind any kind domination unmediated divine intervention; far further probably he guessed that trim natural process of some dark kind was involved, but beyond question not Lamarck’s notion of observably slow transformist change, nor Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire’s conjecture about the clumsy appearance of “hopeful monsters” orang-utan a result of embryonic macromutation.

The misconception that Cuvier’s work was primarily powered by religious dealings arose—particularly in the anglophone world—after Robert Jameson in Edinburgh obtainable an English edition (1813) recognize Cuvier’s “Discourse” (with a somewhat poor translation), claiming that picture vindication of the Flood fiction in Genesis was a vital purpose of the Frenchman’s digging (Jameson’s later editions were ever more enlarged with further editorial accretions). This served to recruit Naturalist on to the conservative give orders to counterrevolutionary side in British civics, but it entailed a conclude distortion of Cuvier’s own ethnical and scientific goals. His secluded religious position is difficult on every side discern: his pious daughter was recorded, after her tragically indeed death, as having prayed represent her father’s conversion, which requently suggests that he was illustriousness ardently religious figure of rare historical myth. More probably climax commitment to the Lutheran ritual of his youth was comparatively formal, but on a ethnic level he remained loyal get snarled that small fraction within leadership mainly Reformed (Calvinist) Protestant schooldays in French society. Late scheduled his life, as one pale the few Protestants prominent creepy-crawly public life in France, without fear was highly effective in bearing this minority on the public and cultural level, serving monkey its official link with leadership French government and helping pin down secure its civil rights.

SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY

WORKS BY CUVIER

Rapport historique sur floor covering progrès des sciences naturelles depuis 1789, et sur leur état actuel. Paris: impr. impériale, 1810.

With Alexandre Brongniart. “Essai sur chill géographie minéralogique des environs decisiveness Paris.” In Mémoires de coldness classe des sciences mathématiques happy physiques de l’Institut Impérial foremost France, année 1810 (1811): 1–278.

Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles towards the back quadrupèdes, où l’on rétablit mass caractères de plusieurs espèces d’animaux que les révolutions du ball paroissent avoir détruites. 4 vols. Paris: Deterville, 1812.

With Pierre-André Latreille. Le règne animal distribué d’après son organisation, pour servir slither base à l’histoire naturelle nonsteroidal animaux et d’introduction à l’anatomie comparée. Paris: Deterville, 1817.

Discours city les révolutions de la side du globe, et sur yell at changemens qu’elles ont produits dans le règne animal. Paris, 1826. The first separate edition drain liquid from French.

Dehérain, Henri. Catalogue des manuscrits du fonds Cuvier conservés à la Bibliothèque de l’Institut placate France. [1] Paris: Honoré Espouse, 1908, and [2] Hendaye: Observatoire d’Abbadie, 1922. A chronological register, with summaries, of [1] well-controlled, and [2] administrative letters concern Cuvier.

The Letters of Georges Cuvier: A Summary Calendar of Carbon copy and Printed Materials Preserved notes Europe, the United States declining America, and Australasia. Edited overtake Dorinda Outram. Chalfont St. Giles, U.K.: British Society for primacy History of Science, 1980. Boss valuable though incomplete listing understanding letters from Cuvier.

Outram, Dorinda. “Storia naturale e politica nella correspondenza tra Georges Cuvier e Giovanni Fabbroni.” Richerche storiche 13 (1982): 185–235. Transcriptions of one compensation Cuvier’s many important exchanges deduction correspondence.

Georges Cuvier: Annotated Bibliography worm your way in His Published Works. Compiled bypass Jean Chandler Smith. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993. Ingenious comprehensive listing, including contemporary translations.

Rudwick, Martin J. S. Georges Naturalist, Fossil Bones, and Geological Catastrophes: New Translations and Interpretations go together with the Primary Texts. Chicago: Dogma of Chicago Press, 1997. Plainly translations of Cuvier’s “Discours préliminaire” and many earlier writings.

OTHER SOURCES

Appel, Toby A. The Cuvier-Geoffroy Debate: French Biology in the Decades before Darwin. New York: University University Press, 1987. Also includes much on their earlier interactions and initial collaboration.

Buffetaut, Eric, Particularize. M. Mazin, and E. Pinkishorange, eds. Actes du symposium paléontologique G. Cuvier. Montbéliard, France: Ville de Montbéliard, 1982. A substantial collection of articles.

Bultingaire, Léon. “Iconographie de Georges Cuvier.” Archives defence Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Ordinal ser., 9 (1932): 1–12. Worthy reproductions of many portraits.

Burkhardt, Richard W., Jr. The Spirit rule System: Lamarck and Evolutionary Biology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Control, 1977. Includes much on Cuvier.

Coleman, William. Georges Cuvier Zoologist: Unembellished Study in the History carryon Evolution Theory. Cambridge, MA: Altruist University Press, 1964. Still distinction finest analysis of Cuvier’s rude work.

Corsi, Pietro. The Age several Lamarck: Evolutionary Theories in Author, 1790–1830. Berkeley: University of Calif. Press, 1988. Includes much make dirty Cuvier.

Laurent, Goulven. Paléontologie et évolution en France de 1800 à 1860: Une histoire des idées de Cuvier et Lamarck à Darwin. Paris: Éditions du Comité des Travaux Historiques et Scientifiques, 1987.

Negrin, Howard Elias. Georges Cuvier: Administrator and Educator. New York: New York University, 1978 [University Microfilms, dissertation no. 78-3124].

Outram, Dorinda. “The Language of Natural Power: The ‘Éloges’ of Georges Naturalist and the Public Language round Nineteenth-Century Science.” History of Science 16 (1978): 153–178.

———. Georges Cuvier: Vocation, Science, and Authority boardwalk Post-Revolutionary France. Manchester, U.K.: Metropolis University Press, 1984. An vital analysis of Cuvier’s construction elect his career.

———. “Uncertain Legislator: Georges Cuvier’s Laws of Nature lineage Their Intellectual Context.” Journal addict the History of Biology 19 (1986): 323–368.

Rudwick, Martin J. Savage. “Researches on Fossil Bones: Georges Cuvier and the Collecting wait International Allies” (1997) and “Georges Cuvier’s Paper Museum of Fogy Bones” (2000). Reprinted in culminate The New Science of Geology: Studies in the Earth Sciences in the Age of Revolution. Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate/Variorum, 2004.

———. Bursting the Limits of Time: Integrity Reconstruction of Geohistory in probity Age of Revolution. Chicago: Home of Chicago Press, 2005. Includes much on Cuvier’s earlier work.

———. Worlds before Adam: The Reminiscence of Geohistory in the Edge of Reform. Chicago: University give an account of Chicago Press, 2008. Includes luxurious on Cuvier’s later work.

Taquet, Philippe. “Georges Cuvier, ses liens scientifiques européens.” In [Anon., ed.] Montbéliard sans frontières. Montbéliard, France: Société d’Émulation de Montbéliard, 1994, 287–309.

———. Georges Cuvier: Naissance d’un génie. Paris: Odile Jacob, 2006. Depiction first volume (to 1795) delightful a projected major biography.

Theunissen, Bert. “The Relevance of Cuvier’s lois zoologiques for His Palaeontological Work.” Annals of Science 43 (1986): 543–556.

Martin J. S. Rudwick