McBirney / Cook The Philosophy of Zoology Before Darwin

A translated and annotated version of the original French text by Edmond Perrier
1. Auflage 2009
ISBN: 978-90-481-3009-2
Verlag: Springer Netherlands
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 266 Seiten

Jean Octave Edmond Perrier was a French zoologist who lived through the tumult of British Darwinism and Lyellism, and reminds us in this revealing account that French scientists had much to contribute to such perennial topics as evolution, catastrophism and creationism. While very much a product of the Third Republic, Perrier's account also aimed to outline timeless issues and permanent advances in taxonomic and developmental biology since classical Greece and Rome. In this aim he succeeds with surprisingly modern perspectives for a book first published in 1884. Perrier was born May 9, 1844 at Tulle, the son of the principal of a school which now bears his name, Lycée Edmond Perrier. In 1864 he was accepted to the École Normale Supérieure, where he was strongly influenced by Louis Pasteur and Henri de Lacaze-Duthiers. After working for three years at a high school in Agen, he obtained a post of naturalist-aid at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle (1868), advancing in that institution to Chair of Natural History of Molluscs, Worms and Corals (1876-1903) and then Director of the museum (1900-1919) and Chair of Comparative Anatomy (1903-1921). Previous directors of the museum included many of the scientists he discusses in this book: George Cuvier (1822-1823, 1826-1827, 1830-1831), Isidore Geoffrey St Hilaire (1860- 1861), and Alphonse Milne-Edwards (1891-1900). Perrier's own research on echinoderms and earthworms took him on several expeditions in 1880-1885, mostly to Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts, but also to the Caribbean.

Alex McBirney, a retired professor of Geology at the University of Oregon is the author of several books on the history of science, as well as his many studies on volcanology and igneous petrology. He developed an interest in Darwin while working in the Galapagos Islands and learned about Perrier's long-overlooked book through his friend, Philippe Janvier, at the Museum of Natural History in Paris. He saw that it was a very scholarly book of broad interest, but after reading few pages he realized why it had been almost totally ignored. Much of the text is very convoluted and almost incomprehensible, even to native French speakers. Enlisting the help of two colleagues, Gregory Retallack, a paleontologist, and Stanton Cook, a biologist, he undertook the task of translating it into a more readable form, so that it would be available to wide audience. The text has been annotated to take into account more recent work, and an extensive Glossary and Biographical Index have been added to provide a ready reference to the technical terms and persons cited in the text.

Autoren/Hrsg.

McBirney, Alex

Cook, Stanton

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1;Table of Contents;5
2;Foreword;10
3;Translator’s Preface;13
4;Preface;15
5;Chapter I Introduction;19
6;Chapter II Aristotle;24
7;Chapter III The Roman Period;31
8;Chapter IV The Middle Ages and Renaissance;36
9;Chapter V Evolution of the Concept of Species;41
10;Chapter VI Philosophers of the XVIIIth Century;47
11;Chapter VII Buffon;60
12;Chapter VIII Lamarck;72
13;Chapter IX Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire;86
14;Chapter X Georges Cuvier;100
15;Chapter XI Debate between Cuvier and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire;112
16;Chapter XII Goethe;122
17;Dugès Chapter XIII;127
18;Chapter XIV The German Natural Philosophers;139
19;Chapter XV The Theory of the Organic Types and its Consequences;150
20;Chapter XVI Louis Agassiz;168
21;Chapter XVII The Lower Animals;179
22;Chapter XVIII Cell Theory and the Constitution of the Individual;195
23;Chapter XIX Embryology;209
24;Chapter XX Species and their Modifications;220