ENGLISH

The Cuvier-Geoffrey Debate: French Biology in the Decades before Darwin

By Toby A. Appel

Book information

Publisher
Oxford University Press, USA
Year
1987
ISBN
9780195041385, 0-19-504138-0
Language
english
Format
DJVU
Filesize
13 MB (13883024 bytes)
Series
Monographs on the History and Philosophy of Biology
Pages
334\334
Topic
Biology
Time added
2010-04-25 21:59:20

Description

For scientists, no event better represents the contest between form and function as the chief organizing principle of life as the debate between Georges Cuvier and Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. This book presents the first comprehensive study of the celebrated French scientific controversy that focused the attention of naturalists in the first decades of the nineteenth century on the conflicting claims of teleology, morphology, and evolution, which ultimately contributed to the making of Darwin's theory. This history describes not only the scientific dimensions of the controversy and its impact on individuals and institutions, but also examines the meaning of the debate for culture and society in the years before Darwin.

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