Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire : a visionary naturalist / Hervé Le Guyader ; translated by Marjorie Grene.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Le Guyader, Hervé.

Standardized Title:

Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hlaire, 1772-1844. English

Language:

English

French

Subjects (All):

Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Etienne, 1772-1844.

Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Etienne.

Zoologists--France--Biography.

Zoologists.

France.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

302 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2004.

Summary:

A professor at twenty-one and member of Napoleon's Egyptian expedition at twenty-six, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire was a man of one idea, which he formulated when he was twenty-four. Nature, he thought, had formed all living beings with one single plan. This was a revolutionary idea -- and one vigorously opposed by Geoffroy's colleague Georges Cuvier, a great anatomist and one of the giants of French science. In 1830, their long-running disagreement erupted into furious public debate. Geoffroy argued that all vertebrates shared the same basic body plan not just with each other but with insects as well. Cuvier strenuously disputed this idea, which he saw as tantamount to a belief in "transformism" -- arguing instead that each species had its own special and permanent form. With Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Herve Le Guyader provides an analysis not only of that infamous debate but also of Geoffroy's bold intuitions about anatomy and development. Featuring Geoffroy's published version of the 1830 debates -- translated into English for the first time -- the book also illustrates how Geoffroy's insights foreshadowed some of the most recent discoveries in evolutionary and developmental biology.

Contents:

1 Two Friends of Forty Years 4

2 The Foundational Work 20

Anatomical Philosophy: Preliminary Discourse (1818) 26

Anatomical Philosophy: Preliminary Discourse (1822) 36

3 The Provocative Work 48

Memoir on the Organization of Insects (1820) 53

General Considerations on the Vertebra (1822) 64

4 The Affair of the Crocodiles of Normandy 88

5 The Public Confrontation 96

Principles of Zoological Philosophy (1830) 107

6 October 1830: The Controversy Reappears 225

Funeral Orations (1844) 232

7 The Debate A Century and A Half Later 243.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [255]-289) and index.

ISBN:

0226470911

OCLC:

52341440