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Georges Cuvier
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Scientific
ideas and their impact
Extinction
At the time Cuvier
presented his 1796 paper on living and fossil elephants, it was still widely
believed that no species of animal had ever become extinct, because God's
creation had been perfect. Authorities such as Buffon had claimed that fossils
found in Europe of animals such as the wooly rhinoceros and mammoth were
remains of animals still living in the tropics (ie rhinoceros and elephants),
which had shifted out of Europe and Asia as the earth became cooler. Cuvier's
early work demonstrated conclusively that this was not the case.[1]
Catastrophism
Cuvier came to believe that
most if not all the animal fossils he examined were remains of species that
were now extinct. Near the end of his 1796 paper on living and fossil elephants
he said:
All of
these facts, consistent among themselves, and not opposed by any report, seem
to me to prove the existence of a world previous to ours, destroyed by some
kind of catastrophe.
This lead Cuvier to become
an active proponent of the geological school of thought called catastrophism
that maintained that many of the geological features of the earth and the past
history of life could be explained by catastrophic events that had caused the
extinction of many species of animals. Over the course of his career Cuvier
came to believe that there had not been a single catastrophe but several,
resulting in a succession of different faunas. He wrote about these ideas many
times, in particular he discussed them in great detail in the preliminary
discourse (introduction) to a collection of his papers, Recherches sur les
Ossemens Fossiles de Quadrupédes, on quadruped fossils published in 1812. The
'Preliminary Discourse' became very well known and unauthorized (and in the
case of English not entirely accurate) translations were made into English,
German and Italian. In 1826 Cuvier would publish a revised version under
the name Discours sur les révolutions de la surface du globe.
After Cuvier's death the
catastrophic school of geological thought lost ground to uniformitarianism, as
championed by Charles Lyell and others, which claimed that the geological
features of the earth were best explained by currently observable forces, such
as erosion and vulcanism, acting gradually over an extended period of time. However,
the increasing interest in the topic of mass extinction starting in the late
20th century has lead to a resurgence of interest among historians of science
and other scholars in this aspect of Cuvier's work.
Age
of reptiles
In 1808 Cuvier identified a
fossil found in Maastricht as giant marine reptile, which he named mosasaurus. The
following year he identified, working only from a drawing, a fossil found in
Bavaria as a large flying reptile, which he named pterodactyl. Cuvier
speculated that there had been a time when reptiles rather than mammals had
been the dominant fauna.[2] This speculation was
confirmed over the next two decades by a series of spectacular finds, mostly by
English geologists and fossil collectors, who found and desribed the first icthyosaurs,
plesiosaurs, and dinosaurs.
Principle
of correlation of parts
In an 1798 paper on the
fossil remains of an animal found in some plaster quarries near Paris Cuvier
wrote:
Today comparative anatomy has reached such a
point of perfection that, after inspecting a single bone, one can often
determine the class, and sometimes even the genus of the animal to which it
belonged, above all if that bone belonged to the head or the limbs. ... This is
because the number, direction, and shape of the bones that compose each part of
an animal's body are always in a necessary relation to all the other parts, in
such a way that - up to a point - one can infer the whole from any one of them
and vice versa.
This idea is sometimes
referred to as 'Cuvier's principle of correlation of parts', and while Cuvier's
description may somewhat exaggerate its power, the basic concept is central to
comparative anatomy and paleontology.
Opposition
to evolution
Cuvier was highly critical
of evolutionary theories proposed by his contemporaries Lamarck and Geoffroy
Saint-Hilaire. He was skeptical of the mechanisms of change that they proposed
and his commitment to the principle of correlation of parts caused him to doubt
that any mechanism could ever significantly modify any part of an animal in
isolation from all the other parts, without rendering the animal unable to
survive. In his Elegy of Lamarck, Cuvier noted that Lamarck’s theory
rested on two shaky assumptions — that a nervous fluid exists with the power to
mold organs and that use and disuse can effect changes in an organism’s body
type:
"[Lamarck’s evolution] rested on two
arbitrary suppositions; the one, that it is the seminal vapor which organizes
the embryo; the other, that efforts and desires may engender organs. A system
established on such foundations may amuse the imagination of a poet; a
metaphysician may derive from it an entirely new series of systems; but it
cannot for a moment bear the examination of any one who has dissected a hand, a
viscus, or even a feather."
He also pointed out that
Napoleon's expedition to Egypt had retrieved animals mummified thousands of
years previously that seemed no different from their modern counterparts.[3] "Certainly," Cuvier wrote, "one cannot
detect any greater difference between these creatures and those we see, than
between the human mummies and the skeletons of present-day men."[4] Lamarck dismissed this conclusion, arguing that evolution
happened much too slowly to be observed over just a few thousand years. Cuvier,
however, in turn criticized how Lamarck and other naturalists conveniently
introduced hundreds of thousands of years "with a stroke of a pen" to
uphold their theory. Instead, he argued that one can only judge what a long
time would produce by multiplying what a lesser time produces. Since a lesser
time produced no organic changes, neither, probably, would a much longer time.[5]
The harshness of his
criticism and the strength of his reputation continued to discourage
naturalists from speculating about the transmutation of species, right up until
Darwin published The Origin of Species more than two decades after
Cuvier's death.[6]
Chief
scientific work
On
comparative anatomy and classification
In 1798 Cuvier published
his first independent work, the Tableau élémentaire de l'Histoire naturelle
des animaux, which was an abridgment of his course of lectures at the École
du Pantheon, and may be regarded as the foundation and first statement of his
natural classification of the animal kingdom.
In 1800 he published the Leçons
d'anatomie comparée, assisted by A. M. C. Duméril for the first two volumes
and Georges Louis Duvernoy for the three later ones.
On
molluscs
Cuvier's papers on the
Mollusca began appearing as early as 1792, but most of his memoirs on this
branch were published in the Annales du museum between 1802 and 1815;
they were subsequently collected as Mémoires pour servir de l'histoire et a
l'anatomie des mollusques, published in one volume at Paris in 1817.
On
fish
Cuvier's researches on fish,
begun in 1801, finally culminated in the publication of the Histoire
naturelle des poissons, which contained descriptions of 5000 species of
fishes, and was the joint production of Cuvier and A. Valenciennes. Cuvier's
work on this project extended over the years 1828–1831.
On
palaeontology and osteology
In this field Cuvier
published a long list of memoirs, partly relating to the bones of extinct
animals, and partly detailing the results of observations on the skeletons of
living animals, specially examined with a view of throwing light upon the
structure and affinities of the fossil forms.
Among living forms he
published papers relating to the osteology of the Rhinoceros Indicus,
the tapir, Hyrax Capensis, the hippopotamus, the sloths, the manatee,
etc.
He produced an even larger
body of work on fossils, dealing with the extinct mammals of the Eocene beds of
Montmartre, the fossil species of hippopotamus, a marsupial (which he called Didelphys
gypsorum), the Megalonyx, the Megatherium, the cave-hyena, the pterodactyl,
the extinct species of rhinoceros, the cave bear, the mastodont, the extinct
species of elephant, fossil species of manatee and seals, fossil forms of crocodilians,
chelonians, fishes, birds, etc. The department of palaeontology dealing with
the Mammalia may be said to have been essentially created and established by
Cuvier.
The results of Cuvier's
principal palaeontological and geological investigations were ultimately given
to the world in the form of two separate works: Recherches sur les ossements
fossiles de quadrupedes (Paris, 1812; later editions in 1821 and 1825); and
Discours sur les revolutions de la surface du globe (Paris, 1825). In
this latter work he expounded a scientific theory of Catastrophism.
The
Animal Kingdom
None of Cuvier's works
attained a higher reputation than his Règne Animal distribué d'après son
Organisation pour servir de base à l'Histoire Naturelle des Animaux et
d'Introduction à l'Anatomie Comparée, the first edition of which appeared
in four octavo volumes in 1817, and the second in five volumes in 1829–1830. In
this classic work Cuvier embodied the results of the whole of his previous
researches on the structure of living and fossil animals. The whole of the work
was his own, with the exception of the section on Insecta, in which he
was assisted by his friend Latreille. It was translated into English many
times, often with substantial notes and supplementary material updating the
book in accordance with the expansion of knowledge.
Memorial
bust by David d'Angers, 1833
Official
and public work
Apart from his own original
investigations in zoology and paleontology Cuvier carried out a vast amount of
work as perpetual secretary of the National Institute, and as an official
connected with public education generally; and much of this work appeared
ultimately in a published form. Thus, in 1808 he was placed by Napoleon upon
the council of the Imperial University, and in this capacity he presided (in
the years 1809, 1811 and 1813) over commissions charged to examine the state of
the higher educational establishments in the districts beyond the Alps and the Rhine
which had been annexed to France, and to report upon the means by which these
could be affiliated with the central university. Three separate reports on this
subject were published by him.
In his capacity, again, of
perpetual secretary of the Institute, he not only prepared a number of éloges
historiques on deceased members of the Academy of Sciences, but he was the
author of a number of reports on the history of the physical and natural
sciences, the most important of these being the Rapport historique sur le
progrès des sciences physiques depuis 1789, published in 1810.
Prior to the fall of
Napoleon (1814) he had been admitted to the council of state, and his position
remained unaffected by the restoration of the Bourbons. He was elected
chancellor of the university, in which capacity he acted as interim president
of the council of public instruction, whilst he also, as a Lutheran,
superintended the faculty of Protestant theology. In 1819 he was appointed
president of the committee of the interior, and retained the office until his
death.
In 1826 he was made grand
officer of the Legion of Honour; and in 1831 he was raised by Louis Philippe to
the rank of peer of France, and was subsequently appointed president of the
council of state. Member of the Doctrinaires, he was nominated to the ministry
of the interior in the beginning of 1832.
Animals
named after Cuvier
These include Cuvier's beaked
whale, Cuvier's Gazelle, Cuvier's toucan,Cuvier's Bichir, and Galeocerdo
cuvieri, the tiger shark. There are also some extinct animals named after
Cuvier, such as the South American giant sloth Catonyx cuvieri.
Notes
- ^ Rudwick, Georges Cuvier, Fossil Bones,
and Geological Catastrophes pp 22-24.
- ^ Rudwick pp 158
- ^ Zimmer, Evolution: the triumph of an
idea pp 19
- ^ Rudwick, Georges Cuvier, Fossil Bones,
and Geological Catastrophes, pp 229
- ^ Rudwick, Georges Cuvier, Fossil Bones,
and Geological Catastrophes, pp 228-229
- ^ Larson, Evolution: the history of a
scientific theory pp 9-10
References
- Dorinda Outram, Georges Cuvier:
Vocation, Science and Authority in Post-Revolutionary France (Palgrave
Macmillan, 1984)
- PJM Flourens, Eloge
historique de G. Cuvier, published as an introduction to the Eloges
historiques of Cuvier
- Histoire des truvaux de
Georges Cuvier (3rd ed., Paris, 1858)
- A. P. de Candolle, "Mort
de G. Cuvier", Bibliothique universelle (1832, 59, p. 442);
- CL Laurillard, "Cuvier,"
Biographie universelle, supp. vol. 61 (1836)
- Sarah Lee, Memoirs of Cuvier,
translated into French by T Lacordaire (1833)
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh
Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
- Pietro Corsi, Rapport
historique sur les progrès des sciences naturelles depuis 1789, et sur
leur état actuel, présenté à Sa Majesté l'Empereur et Roi, en son Conseil
d'État, le 6 février 1808, par la classe des sciences physiques et
mathématiques de l'Institut... conformément à l'arrêté du gouvernement du
13 ventôse an X (Paris, 2005)
- Philippe Taquet, Georges
Cuvier, Naissance d'un Génie; 539 pages; Ed. Odile jacob, Paris, 2006; ISBN
2-7381-0969-1 (in French)
- Rudwick, Martin J.S. Georges Cuvier,
Fossil Bones, and Geological Catastrophes (The University of Chicago
Press, 1997) ISBN 0-226-73106-5
- Larson, Edward J. Evolution: The
Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory The Modern Library: New
York, 2004. ISBN 0-679-64288-9
- Zimmer, Carl Evolution:the triumph of
an idea Harper Perennial New York 2006 ISBN 0-06-113840-1
Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Georges_Cuvier&action=history
Scientific
ideas and their impact
Extinction
At the time Cuvier
presented his 1796 paper on living and fossil elephants, it was still widely
believed that no species of animal had ever become extinct, because God's
creation had been perfect. Authorities such as Buffon had claimed that fossils
found in Europe of animals such as the wooly rhinoceros and mammoth were
remains of animals still living in the tropics (ie rhinoceros and elephants),
which had shifted out of Europe and Asia as the earth became cooler. Cuvier's
early work demonstrated conclusively that this was not the case.[1]
Catastrophism
Cuvier came to believe that
most if not all the animal fossils he examined were remains of species that
were now extinct. Near the end of his 1796 paper on living and fossil elephants
he said:
All of
these facts, consistent among themselves, and not opposed by any report, seem
to me to prove the existence of a world previous to ours, destroyed by some
kind of catastrophe.
This lead Cuvier to become
an active proponent of the geological school of thought called catastrophism
that maintained that many of the geological features of the earth and the past
history of life could be explained by catastrophic events that had caused the
extinction of many species of animals. Over the course of his career Cuvier
came to believe that there had not been a single catastrophe but several,
resulting in a succession of different faunas. He wrote about these ideas many
times, in particular he discussed them in great detail in the preliminary
discourse (introduction) to a collection of his papers, Recherches sur les
Ossemens Fossiles de Quadrupédes, on quadruped fossils published in 1812. The
'Preliminary Discourse' became very well known and unauthorized (and in the
case of English not entirely accurate) translations were made into English,
German and Italian. In 1826 Cuvier would publish a revised version under
the name Discours sur les révolutions de la surface du globe.
After Cuvier's death the
catastrophic school of geological thought lost ground to uniformitarianism, as
championed by Charles Lyell and others, which claimed that the geological
features of the earth were best explained by currently observable forces, such
as erosion and vulcanism, acting gradually over an extended period of time. However,
the increasing interest in the topic of mass extinction starting in the late
20th century has lead to a resurgence of interest among historians of science
and other scholars in this aspect of Cuvier's work.
Age
of reptiles
In 1808 Cuvier identified a
fossil found in Maastricht as giant marine reptile, which he named mosasaurus. The
following year he identified, working only from a drawing, a fossil found in
Bavaria as a large flying reptile, which he named pterodactyl. Cuvier
speculated that there had been a time when reptiles rather than mammals had
been the dominant fauna.[2] This speculation was
confirmed over the next two decades by a series of spectacular finds, mostly by
English geologists and fossil collectors, who found and desribed the first icthyosaurs,
plesiosaurs, and dinosaurs.
Principle
of correlation of parts
In an 1798 paper on the
fossil remains of an animal found in some plaster quarries near Paris Cuvier
wrote:
Today comparative anatomy has reached such a
point of perfection that, after inspecting a single bone, one can often
determine the class, and sometimes even the genus of the animal to which it
belonged, above all if that bone belonged to the head or the limbs. ... This is
because the number, direction, and shape of the bones that compose each part of
an animal's body are always in a necessary relation to all the other parts, in
such a way that - up to a point - one can infer the whole from any one of them
and vice versa.
This idea is sometimes
referred to as 'Cuvier's principle of correlation of parts', and while Cuvier's
description may somewhat exaggerate its power, the basic concept is central to
comparative anatomy and paleontology.
Opposition
to evolution
Cuvier was highly critical
of evolutionary theories proposed by his contemporaries Lamarck and Geoffroy
Saint-Hilaire. He was skeptical of the mechanisms of change that they proposed
and his commitment to the principle of correlation of parts caused him to doubt
that any mechanism could ever significantly modify any part of an animal in
isolation from all the other parts, without rendering the animal unable to
survive. In his Elegy of Lamarck, Cuvier noted that Lamarck’s theory
rested on two shaky assumptions — that a nervous fluid exists with the power to
mold organs and that use and disuse can effect changes in an organism’s body
type:
"[Lamarck’s evolution] rested on two
arbitrary suppositions; the one, that it is the seminal vapor which organizes
the embryo; the other, that efforts and desires may engender organs. A system
established on such foundations may amuse the imagination of a poet; a
metaphysician may derive from it an entirely new series of systems; but it
cannot for a moment bear the examination of any one who has dissected a hand, a
viscus, or even a feather."
He also pointed out that
Napoleon's expedition to Egypt had retrieved animals mummified thousands of
years previously that seemed no different from their modern counterparts.[3] "Certainly," Cuvier wrote, "one cannot
detect any greater difference between these creatures and those we see, than
between the human mummies and the skeletons of present-day men."[4] Lamarck dismissed this conclusion, arguing that evolution
happened much too slowly to be observed over just a few thousand years. Cuvier,
however, in turn criticized how Lamarck and other naturalists conveniently
introduced hundreds of thousands of years "with a stroke of a pen" to
uphold their theory. Instead, he argued that one can only judge what a long
time would produce by multiplying what a lesser time produces. Since a lesser
time produced no organic changes, neither, probably, would a much longer time.[5]
The harshness of his
criticism and the strength of his reputation continued to discourage
naturalists from speculating about the transmutation of species, right up until
Darwin published The Origin of Species more than two decades after
Cuvier's death.[6]
Chief
scientific work
On
comparative anatomy and classification
In 1798 Cuvier published
his first independent work, the Tableau élémentaire de l'Histoire naturelle
des animaux, which was an abridgment of his course of lectures at the École
du Pantheon, and may be regarded as the foundation and first statement of his
natural classification of the animal kingdom.
In 1800 he published the Leçons
d'anatomie comparée, assisted by A. M. C. Duméril for the first two volumes
and Georges Louis Duvernoy for the three later ones.
On
molluscs
Cuvier's papers on the
Mollusca began appearing as early as 1792, but most of his memoirs on this
branch were published in the Annales du museum between 1802 and 1815;
they were subsequently collected as Mémoires pour servir de l'histoire et a
l'anatomie des mollusques, published in one volume at Paris in 1817.
On
fish
Cuvier's researches on fish,
begun in 1801, finally culminated in the publication of the Histoire
naturelle des poissons, which contained descriptions of 5000 species of
fishes, and was the joint production of Cuvier and A. Valenciennes. Cuvier's
work on this project extended over the years 1828–1831.
On
palaeontology and osteology
In this field Cuvier
published a long list of memoirs, partly relating to the bones of extinct
animals, and partly detailing the results of observations on the skeletons of
living animals, specially examined with a view of throwing light upon the
structure and affinities of the fossil forms.
Among living forms he
published papers relating to the osteology of the Rhinoceros Indicus,
the tapir, Hyrax Capensis, the hippopotamus, the sloths, the manatee,
etc.
He produced an even larger
body of work on fossils, dealing with the extinct mammals of the Eocene beds of
Montmartre, the fossil species of hippopotamus, a marsupial (which he called Didelphys
gypsorum), the Megalonyx, the Megatherium, the cave-hyena, the pterodactyl,
the extinct species of rhinoceros, the cave bear, the mastodont, the extinct
species of elephant, fossil species of manatee and seals, fossil forms of crocodilians,
chelonians, fishes, birds, etc. The department of palaeontology dealing with
the Mammalia may be said to have been essentially created and established by
Cuvier.
The results of Cuvier's
principal palaeontological and geological investigations were ultimately given
to the world in the form of two separate works: Recherches sur les ossements
fossiles de quadrupedes (Paris, 1812; later editions in 1821 and 1825); and
Discours sur les revolutions de la surface du globe (Paris, 1825). In
this latter work he expounded a scientific theory of Catastrophism.
The
Animal Kingdom
None of Cuvier's works
attained a higher reputation than his Règne Animal distribué d'après son
Organisation pour servir de base à l'Histoire Naturelle des Animaux et
d'Introduction à l'Anatomie Comparée, the first edition of which appeared
in four octavo volumes in 1817, and the second in five volumes in 1829–1830. In
this classic work Cuvier embodied the results of the whole of his previous
researches on the structure of living and fossil animals. The whole of the work
was his own, with the exception of the section on Insecta, in which he
was assisted by his friend Latreille. It was translated into English many
times, often with substantial notes and supplementary material updating the
book in accordance with the expansion of knowledge.
Memorial
bust by David d'Angers, 1833
Official
and public work
Apart from his own original
investigations in zoology and paleontology Cuvier carried out a vast amount of
work as perpetual secretary of the National Institute, and as an official
connected with public education generally; and much of this work appeared
ultimately in a published form. Thus, in 1808 he was placed by Napoleon upon
the council of the Imperial University, and in this capacity he presided (in
the years 1809, 1811 and 1813) over commissions charged to examine the state of
the higher educational establishments in the districts beyond the Alps and the Rhine
which had been annexed to France, and to report upon the means by which these
could be affiliated with the central university. Three separate reports on this
subject were published by him.
In his capacity, again, of
perpetual secretary of the Institute, he not only prepared a number of éloges
historiques on deceased members of the Academy of Sciences, but he was the
author of a number of reports on the history of the physical and natural
sciences, the most important of these being the Rapport historique sur le
progrès des sciences physiques depuis 1789, published in 1810.
Prior to the fall of
Napoleon (1814) he had been admitted to the council of state, and his position
remained unaffected by the restoration of the Bourbons. He was elected
chancellor of the university, in which capacity he acted as interim president
of the council of public instruction, whilst he also, as a Lutheran,
superintended the faculty of Protestant theology. In 1819 he was appointed
president of the committee of the interior, and retained the office until his
death.
In 1826 he was made grand
officer of the Legion of Honour; and in 1831 he was raised by Louis Philippe to
the rank of peer of France, and was subsequently appointed president of the
council of state. Member of the Doctrinaires, he was nominated to the ministry
of the interior in the beginning of 1832.
Animals
named after Cuvier
These include Cuvier's beaked
whale, Cuvier's Gazelle, Cuvier's toucan,Cuvier's Bichir, and Galeocerdo
cuvieri, the tiger shark. There are also some extinct animals named after
Cuvier, such as the South American giant sloth Catonyx cuvieri.
Notes
- ^ Rudwick, Georges Cuvier, Fossil Bones,
and Geological Catastrophes pp 22-24.
- ^ Rudwick pp 158
- ^ Zimmer, Evolution: the triumph of an
idea pp 19
- ^ Rudwick, Georges Cuvier, Fossil Bones,
and Geological Catastrophes, pp 229
- ^ Rudwick, Georges Cuvier, Fossil Bones,
and Geological Catastrophes, pp 228-229
- ^ Larson, Evolution: the history of a
scientific theory pp 9-10
References
- Dorinda Outram, Georges Cuvier:
Vocation, Science and Authority in Post-Revolutionary France (Palgrave
Macmillan, 1984)
- PJM Flourens, Eloge
historique de G. Cuvier, published as an introduction to the Eloges
historiques of Cuvier
- Histoire des truvaux de
Georges Cuvier (3rd ed., Paris, 1858)
- A. P. de Candolle, "Mort
de G. Cuvier", Bibliothique universelle (1832, 59, p. 442);
- CL Laurillard, "Cuvier,"
Biographie universelle, supp. vol. 61 (1836)
- Sarah Lee, Memoirs of Cuvier,
translated into French by T Lacordaire (1833)
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh
Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
- Pietro Corsi, Rapport
historique sur les progrès des sciences naturelles depuis 1789, et sur
leur état actuel, présenté à Sa Majesté l'Empereur et Roi, en son Conseil
d'État, le 6 février 1808, par la classe des sciences physiques et
mathématiques de l'Institut... conformément à l'arrêté du gouvernement du
13 ventôse an X (Paris, 2005)
- Philippe Taquet, Georges
Cuvier, Naissance d'un Génie; 539 pages; Ed. Odile jacob, Paris, 2006; ISBN
2-7381-0969-1 (in French)
- Rudwick, Martin J.S. Georges Cuvier,
Fossil Bones, and Geological Catastrophes (The University of Chicago
Press, 1997) ISBN 0-226-73106-5
- Larson, Edward J. Evolution: The
Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory The Modern Library: New
York, 2004. ISBN 0-679-64288-9
- Zimmer, Carl Evolution:the triumph of
an idea Harper Perennial New York 2006 ISBN 0-06-113840-1
Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Georges_Cuvier&action=history