Buffon

Georges-Louis Leclerc,
Comte de Buffon was a
naturalist and exponent of
the scientific movement
tied to the Enlightenment,
his theories influenced
generations of naturalists,
in particular the
evolutionary Jean-Baptiste
Lamarck and Charles
Darwin.
Buffon is well-known for
his major work, "Histoire
naturelle, générale et
particulière". In his work
Buffon included all the
knowledge in the field of
natural sciences. It is in
this way that Buffon noted
the similarities between
man and ape, and the
possibility of a common
genealogy.
 The attention paid to They had tried to study
the internal anatomy biological phenomena,
places him among the but they ignored the
initiators of enormous complexity
comparative anatomy. of fauna and flora.
Buffon had an edge
over this subject, and
had a much broader
view of what the
manifestations of life
are than his
colleagues.
 Buffon knew that, both plants and
animals, are not fixed in form and
function: when a particular species
of plant or animal has given birth
to an improved form, the previous
version of the same disappears.
Lamarck will later support many of
his theories.
 Buffon's training as a biologist
allowed him to collect plants
and animals and classify them
by introducing a new method
called Binomial classification.
Instead of what was commonly
believed, this method was
initially proposed by Buffon and
later improved by Linnaeus.
Erasmus Darwin
Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of
the famous Charles, was a
naturalist and a doctor. He
supported the idea of a
connection between historical
species, and that animals could
change when they encountered
a different habitat. Erasmus
thought that the creature born
from a changed one, could
inherit the new characteristics
obtained from the changes.
Hutton
James Hutton was a
Scottish geologist. He is
considered a founding
father of modern
geology. His view on the
Earth's crust evolution,
revolutionary for the
times in which they were
conceived, constitutes
the starting point for
many areas of Earth
sciences.
 James Hutton was He was the first to
the first one to understand how old
understand the role the Earth was, many
of different agents millions of years,
in shaping the not the 6000 years
Earth's surface, and that were attributed
he had also realized on the basis of a
the crucial role of literal interpretation
time factor in of the Bible.
geology.
 Smith
William Smith were the first to study, in a scientific way, the distribution of fossils in
the ground.
For many years, he went on studying fossils in
different areas of England, dividing the ground
in different places, distinguishing them
according to the fossils he found there.
Those particular
fossils were
called "Guiding
fossils", and were
the same in
different areas,
but only for the
same level of
stratification.
 He didn't fulfill his objective, he
couldn't interpret his data, but in
the following years, his study
became useful to conceive that the
Earth was composed by more than
one layer.
The End