natural history and the encyclopédie

Journal of the History of Biology33: 1–25, 2000.© 2000Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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Natural History and the Encyclopédie

JAMES LLANAHumanities & Languages DepartmentState University of New YorkCollege at Old WestburyOld Westbury, NY 11568, U.S.A.E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract. The general popularity of natural history in the eighteenth century is mirroredin the frequency and importance of the more than 4,500 articles on natural history in theEncyclopédie. The main contributors to natural history were Daubenton, Diderot, Jaucourt andd’Holbach, but some of the key animating principles derive from Buffon, who wrote nothingspecifically for theEncyclopédie. Still, a number of articles reflect his thinking, especiallyhis antipathy toward Linnaeus. There was in principle a natural tie between encyclopedism,with its emphasis on connected knowledge, and the task of natural historians who concen-trated on the relationships among living forms. Both the encyclopedists and natural historiansaimed at a sweeping overview of knowledge, and we see that Diderot’s discussions of theencyclopedia were apparently informed by his reading of natural history. Most of the articleson natural history drew from traditional sources, but there are differences in emphasis andchoice of subject, depending upon the author. Diderot’s 300 contributions are often practical,interesting, and depend upon accounts from other parts of the world. Jaucourt, who wrote morearticles on natural history than anyone else, followed in his footsteps. Daubenton’s 900 articlesreflected a more narrow, professional approach. His contributions concluded for the most partwith Volume 8, and Jaucourt carried on almost single-handedly after that. While staking outtraditional ground (description, taxonomy) and advancing newer theoretical views linked withBuffon, natural history in theEncyclopédieavoided almost completely the sentimentalismconcerning nature that developed after Rousseau.

Keywords: natural history, Buffon,Encyclopédie, Diderot, Jaucourt, Daubenton

Interest in natural history was widespread in the Enlightenment, and it shouldcome as no surprise that over 4,500 of the some 71,000 articles in theEncyclo-pédieare designated by the editors as belonging to this discipline; hundredsmore likely fall into the same category. These entries reflect not just thestudy of animals, plants and minerals but several philosophical issues, someof which animated the whole enterprise of “encyclopedism” as conceived byDiderot and d’Alembert. The editors of theEncyclopédieand some of the keycontributors on natural history focused on the character and, more empha-tically, on the organization of knowledge. There was a natural congruencein their common practices of collecting, describing, organizing and inter-

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relating. The present study considers the connections between encyclopedismand natural history, and offers a broad analysis of the authors and their articleson the natural history of plants and animals.

Natural history is of course an ancient enterprise, defined in the Westby Aristotle and Theophrastus, among others, and later by Dioscorides andPliny, both of whom remained quite influential into the Renaissance.1 Dueperhaps to a renewed interest in Aristotle’s biological writings and no doubtto the “discovery” of the flora and fauna in the “new world,”2 a revival ofinterest in natural history occurred in the sixteenth century, as indicated by theworks of William Turner (1508–1568), Pierre Belon (1517–1564), GuillaumeRondelet (1507–1566), Leonhard Fuchs (1501–66), Konrad Gesner (1516–1565), Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1605), and Andreas Cesalpino (1519–1603).With critical eyes, writers undertook new catalogs of the natural world, butworked very much in the spirit of Pliny or Aristotle.3 An important sixteenthcentury development was the degree of specialization among some writers;one thinks of Rondelet on fish, Belon on fish and birds, and Moffett oninsects.4 Sixteenth-century references appear regularly in the natural historyarticles of theEncyclopédie.

The rationalism of the seventeenth century proved inhospitable initiallyto the detailed accounts of nature so prominent in the preceding period, butwell before the turn of the century natural history was once again attractingattention.5 Especially in England natural history received a special impetusin the seventeenth century from natural theology, with John Ray (1627–1705) and Francis Willughby (1635–1672) achieving considerable fame fortheir studies of the natural world. Equally famous in France was JosephPitton de Tournefort (1656–1708), whose descriptions and classifications ofplants were profoundly influential: he is the most frequently cited source,by far, for articles on plants in theEncyclopédie. Little noted today but

1 Sources for the modern history of natural history include Mornet, 1911; Boas, 1962;Mayr, 1982; Sloan, 1990, pp. 295–313; Lyon and Sloan, 1981; Daudin, [1927]; Stafleu, 1971;Duris, 1993; Foucault, 1978, especially chapter 5; Allen, 1976; Atran, 1990; Jardine, Secordand Spary, 1996. For an almost encyclopedic overview of natural history and encyclopedism,see Schaer (1996), the beautiful catalogue for the opening exposition of the new BibliothequeNationale. In addition to stunning reproductions from natural history books, there are manyfine articles, including those by Yves Laissus, Pietro Corsi, Daniel Roche, and Alain Cernuschion natural history and on encyclopedism. Even more recent is Blanckaert et al. (1997), animportant collection of articles mostly concerned with the nineteenth century.

2 Boas, 1962, p. 50.3 Sloan, 1990, p. 296.4 Rondelet,Libri de piscibus marinis(Lyons: 1554–1555); Belon,Histoire de la nature

des oyseaux. . . (Paris:1555) andLa Nature et diversit´e des poissons. . . (Paris:1555); ThomasMoffett, Insectorum, sive minimorum animalium(London: 1634).

5 Roger, 1989, pp. 102–106.

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important nonetheless in the seventeenth century is Joannes Jonston (1603–1675), whose six-volumeHistoria Naturalis (Frankfurt: 1650–1653) marksthe decisive break with the Renaissance-style “emblematic” natural historyand the development of a more strictly empirical study.6

With an increasing popular base in the first half of the eighteenth century,natural history encumbered a range of activities: collecting, observing,selling, drawing, as well as writing and publishing. Religion was allied withnatural history in popular works on natural theology; voyagers describingforeign lands and cultures seldom failed to include accounts of local naturalhistory; in general, natural history was useful, fascinating, surprising, andmorally uplifting. The landmark publications prior to theEncyclopédiewerePluche’s multi-volumeSpectacle de la Nature(Paris: 1732–1750), Reaumur’sMémoires pour servir à l’histoire des insectes(Paris: 1734–1742), and mostimportantly theHistoire Naturelle, général et particulière(Paris: 1749–1788)of Buffon and Daubenton (the latter collaborating on v. 1–15). When VolumeI of the Encyclopédieappeared in the summer of 1751, natural history wasin general a richly textured philosophical, religious, literary, and social enter-prise, and its marketability was established.7 And by century’s end, as Mornetconcludes, “tragedy or drama, Ossian or Rousseau had not won over morereaders, filled more leisure hours, or nourished more meditations than thegeneration of polyps or the societies of beavers.”8

* * *

Like its inspiration, Ephraim Chambers’sCyclopaedia, theEncyclopédiewasnot conceived simply as an alphabetized list of things known but ratheras a concatenated system of knowledge. Diderot and d’Alembert explorevarious metaphors – tree, chain, map – to illuminate their evolving viewsof connected knowledge. In the “Preliminary Discourse” natural history isshown to be fundamentally important in the vision of encyclopedic knowl-edge. D’Alembert runs through the credits for Volume I and leading the listis Louis-Jean-Marie Daubenton (1716–1800), who initially had the primaryresponsibility for articles on natural history. The editor explains that the list ofauthors “follows as much as possible the encyclopedic arrangement of mate-rials of which they have taken charge.”9 Why does natural history come first?

6 See Ashworth, 1990, pp. 303–332. Foucault (1973, pp. 128–130), also argues for theimportance and novelty of Jonston’s work.

7 For an assessment of the popularity of natural history, see Yves Laissus (1964), who listsabout 240 cabinets d’histoire in Paris alone. Mornet (1911), devotes a great deal of his bookto the popularity of natural history.

8 Mornet, 1911, pp. 173–174.9 I cite the English translation: d’Alembert, 1963, p. 128.

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The answer lies in the “Detailed System of Human Knowledge” appendedto the “Preliminary Discourse.” Borrowed from Bacon, the scheme of humanunderstanding is broken down according to the three principal faculties ofthe understanding: memory, reason, and imagination. Memory, apparently thesimplest of the mental faculties, results in the “pure and simple enumeration”of our perceptions. History, derived from memory, comes in three forms:Sacred, Civil, and Natural. Although d’Alembert lists natural history last ofthe three, its sheer bulk easily crowds out sacred and civil history. And inkeeping with the spirit of the Enlightenment and theEncyclopédie, naturalhistory is certainly more important than sacred and civil history. Daubenton’stop billing in the credits comes then as no surprise.

As part of “memory,” natural history branches into “uniformities ofnature,” “deviations of nature,” and “uses of nature” (“arts, trades and manu-factures”).10 Of course, the latter, practical section is enormously importantfor the Encyclopédie, and the first two sections encompass simple descrip-tions of animals, vegetables, minerals and meteorological phenomena inall their variety. But description is not science, as the latter requires us toadvance to the next level and to use our reason to reflect on and comparethe facts assembled by memory. Reason applied to sacred history yields a“science of God”; from civil history comes the “science of man” and fromnatural history the “science of nature.” Depending upon the path taken fromnatural history, one arrives at mathematics or physics. Studied for what theyhave in common (extension, movement, impenetrability etc.) the objectsof natural history offer the science of general physics; studied for whatsets them apart into smaller groups, the objects of natural history yield theparticular sciences of natural history, namely zoology, physical astronomy,meteorology, cosmology, botany, mineralogy, and chemistry. Supporting thearts, trades, manufacturing practices, and all the natural sciences, the simplestudy of natural history carries a great deal of epistemological weight in theencyclopedic scheme.

Buffon and a Philosophy of Natural History

Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon seems to anticipate theEncyclopédiewhenhe insists that “natural history is the source of the other physical sciences and

10 See d’Alembert (1963, pp. 148–156), for the narrative accompanying the “DetailedSystem of Human Knowledge.” The division of knowledge according to the faculties ofthe mind derives in large part from Bacon but with important shifts. See Darnton, 1985,pp. 191–213; Cernuschi, 1996; Sloan, 1990, pp. 296–297.


the mother of all the arts.”11 Indeed, in some important ways theEncyclopédieis a reflection of the most famous naturalist of the day, despite the fact thathe apparently wrote no articles at all for it; through Daubenton and espe-cially the editor Denis Diderot, Buffon spoke to its readers. Daubenton wasof course Buffon’s collaborator for part of theHistoire Naturelle, and whilenot sharing all his ideas, he did line up with Buffon in a number of ways.12

Diderot fell under Buffon’s spell probably in 1749 when he read theHistoireNaturelle in prison.13 I do not claim that one can find Buffon’s philosophyas a whole reflected in theEncyclopédie, but I suggest that Buffon wassingularly important in helping Diderot and others to construct their generalunderstanding of natural history.

Many of Buffon’s ideas constitute collectively one distinctive philosophyof natural history in theEncyclopédie. In some important ways Buffon refash-ions and reflects the ideas of Locke, Leibniz and Newton and thus adoptsthe common currency of the Enlightenment, but he is better known for hisparticular thoughts on generation, species, the earth’s history and for hisvision of natural history as a science. Buffon dramatically resets the sightsfor natural history, as he aims for a broad, secular, and especially histor-ical understanding of the natural world. Simple description was insufficient;natural history would regain in Buffon’s hands the explanatory power it oncehad and in this respect would match the physical sciences.14 Diderot andDaubenton recognized the power of Buffon’s approach. Each in turn shedshis own light selectively on Buffon’s ideas, but the philosophy of naturalhistory that emerges clearly in theEncyclopédieis still recognizable as theshadow, and often the substance, of theHistoire Naturelle, especially the“Initial Discourse.”

11 I cite here the English translation of the “Premier Discours” in: Lyon, 1976, p. 159.References to other parts are to the first edition: Buffon, 1749–1767, 15 volumes.

12 Roger (1989, p. 448), observes that theEncyclopedie “articles edited by Daubenton,despite their dryness, remain faithful to the broad lines of theHistoire Naturelle.” For someimportant differences between Daubenton and Buffon, see Farber, 1975.

13 Roger (1963, 1971, pp. 597–616), considers the effect of Buffon’s ideas about livingthings on Diderot. Roger (1989, p. 267), claims that in 1750 Diderot was perhaps the onlyphilosophe who took theHistoire Naturelleseriously. See also Vartanian (1992), for therelationship between Diderot’sPensees sur l’Interpretation de la Natureand the “PremiersDiscours.” Proust (1995, pp. 288–291), also discusses the importance of Buffon for Diderot.

14 Buffon was part of a tradition of comprehensive, historical explanation in natural historythat extended back to Descartes and to some of the Renaissance Hermetic writers. Sloan,1990, pp. 297–300. As Sloan points out in this excellent article, Buffon distances himself fromthe abstract mathematical sciences in certain important respects. At the same time, however,I think his concern with explanatory power links the quantitative physical sciences and thehistorical sciences.

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That nature is composed of infinitely nuanced individuals, so clearlyexpressed in many parts of theEncyclopédie, is a key idea in the “InitialDiscourse” of theHistoire Naturelleand was one basis for Buffon’s persistentcriticism of Linnaean taxonomy.15 In the “Preliminary Discourse” to theEncyclopédiewe find that nature is “composed merely of individual thingswhich are the primary object of our sensations and direct perceptions.”16

And Diderot tells us in “*Encyclopédie” that the “universe presents us onlyparticular beings, infinite in number, and without almost any fixed and deter-mined division” (V 640b).17 Once more in “*animal”: “The more we examinenature, the more we convince ourselves that to describe it exactly we wouldneed almost as many names as there are individuals” (I 468b). In the samearticle Diderot allows Buffon to repeat the idea as well, and the implicationfor taxonomy is clear: any system is arbitrary.

Both the Histoire Naturelle and theEncyclopédie(particularly in the“Preliminary Discourse” and the article “*Encyclopédie”) contain pointedexamples of epistemological skepticism, along with a strong appeal for themerits of comparative knowledge. Locke had taken a similar position, butthe emphasis and the application to natural history and encyclopedism arestriking.18 Buffon gives knowledge a human face, “an order appropriate toour own nature” more than “one pertaining to the existence of the thingswhich we are considering.”19 D’Alembert as well understood the impor-tance of perspective – and the problems of classification in a world filledwith individuals – as he contemplated the various ways to shape the tree of

15 While the chain of being had an ancient lineage, it is not important, or even evident,in French natural history of the eighteenth century until theHistoire Naturelle. It reflects,probably, Buffon’s attachment to the Leibnizian philosophy.

16 d’Alembert, 1963, p. 48.17 Citations to theEncyclopediewill appear in the text as the volume number in Roman

numerals followed by the page number of the first edition with an “a” or “b” to indicatethe left or right column of text, respectively, on the folio page. Except for the “PreliminaryDiscourse,” citations are to the Paris folio edition. Diderot, d’Alembert, 1751–1765, 17 vols.

18 For an interesting and relevant discussion of Locke and Buffon see Sloan, 1976. Basedon Buffon’s claims for a “physical truth” as opposed to a “mathematical truth,” Sloan arguesthat Buffon escapes from Locke’s skepticism, despite what he describes as a “superficial”affinity between the two. As Sloan points out, many of Buffon’s contemporaries and somelater scholars have assumed a deep affinity. Sloan and Lyon (1981, pp. 1–32), have taken upthe same epistemological issue. Skeptic or not, Buffon’s emphasis on relational knowledge(real or not) remains.

19 Lyon, 1976, p. 150. Roger (1989, p. 64), underscores the general importance of relativeknowledge for Buffon: “The science that man constructs [according to Buffon] is a purelyhuman science.” and “The Buffonian conception of science is rooted in a philosophy of therelative.”


encyclopedic knowledge. Where did the branches belong? The method of thenaturalists was suggestive but fruitless in the end:

To be sure, we note in these individual things common properties bywhich we compare them and dissimilar properties by which we differen-tiate them. And these properties, designated by abstract names, have ledus to form different classes in which these objects have been placed. Butoften such an object, which because of one or several of its properties hasbeen placed in one class, belongs to another class by virtue of other prop-erties and might have been placed accordingly. Thus, the general divisionremains of necessity somewhat arbitrary. The most natural arrangementwould be the one in which the objects followed one another by impercep-tible shadings which serve simultaneously to separate them and to unitethem. But the small number of beings known to us does not permit us toindicate these shadings. The universe is but a vast ocean, on the surface ofwhich we perceive a few islands of various sizes, whose connection withthe continent is hidden from us.20

Denied a vantage point from which to understand the true connections amongthings, we have to improvise an order.

The fact that knowledge was to some extent reflexive implies the impor-tance of comparative knowledge. As Buffon argues, knowledge depends upona comparative study of objects followed by the extraction “from the totalityof their connections all the insights which may be able to assist us to seethem clearly and to know them better.”21 Buffon thus suggests that we needto know the whole before we can understand completely the parts. He writesthat “. . . things, in themselves, have no existence for us; nor does giving thema name call them into existence. But they begin to exist for us when webecome acquainted with their relations to each other and their properties.”22

More succinctly, Buffon states “. . . that which is absolutely incomparable, isentirely incomprehensible. . . ”23

Against the claims of a purely descriptive natural history, Daubenton alsopresses the importance of a comparative, general knowledge. The tensionbetween rationalism and empiricism is an important strand of the argument in“description,” where Daubenton takes a jab at the unbridled and uninformed

20 d’Alembert, 1963, p. 49. One can only agree with the translator of the “PreliminaryDiscourse,” Richard Schwab, who finds in this excerpt “a direct application of Buffon’sdefinition of biological continuity to the entire range of encyclopedic knowledge.” Schwabpoints specifically to the “Premier Discours” as the inspiration for d’Alembert’s analysis.d’Alembert, 1963, p. 49, note.

21 Lyon, 1976, p. 150.22 Lyon, 1976, p. 157.23 Buffon, 1749–1767, vol. 2, p. 431.

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search for facts, a tendency which he probably associated with Reaumur.24

If descriptions extended to every part of the universe, they would offeronly a “confused pile of nature’s parts.” Descriptions must be “restrainedby proper limits and submitted to certain laws” (IV 878a). What he has inmind apparently are the “restraints” offered by a knowledge of the mutualrelations among natural beings. He subordinates knowledge of particularsto the knowledge of relations: “Whatever perfection one might give to adescription, it is only a vain painting and the subject of a frivolous curiosity,if we fail to propose a more real object for the advancement of our trueknowledge in natural history. When we describe a being, it is necessary toobserve the relations that it has with the other beings of nature; it is onlyin comparing thus that we can discover the resemblances and differenceswhich are found among them, and establish a series of facts that providegeneral knowledge” (IV 878a-b). Paradoxically, the relational knowledge ismore “real” than knowledge of particulars; one could know the objects ofnatural history only through an understanding of their connections to the restof creation.25

Limited as it might be, an overview that permitted one to perceive relation-ships among natural phenomena afforded a higher order of understandingthan one could have from simple description. Still, both mundane descriptionand the overview were necessary, and Buffon describes, as did theEncyclo-pédie, the important roles in natural history of two different types of mind,each offering a different perspective on the same creation: the “grand view ofthe ardent genius who takes in everything at a glance, and the detailed atten-tion of an instinct which concentrates laboriously on a single minute detail.”26

Picking up the same idea, the anonymous author of “histoire naturelle”describes the collection of observations and facts as an arduous activity formany individuals, indeed entire nations, over centuries. And very occasion-ally a great genius would appear to order the myriad observations (“happyis the century that produces one of them in its time”). The “chef-d’oeuvre”of the human mind was to combine the known facts and “imagine a systemconformable to the facts” (VIII 229a). While the system could be wreckedby a single new fact, over the very long run it would yield to hard empiricalwork fortified periodically with doses of rationalism. Confidently, the authorannounces that the failure to gather all the facts would not be an obstacle,

24 The lack of respect for Reaumur by Diderot and Buffon is well-known. Roger, 1989,p. 597; Mornet, 1911, p. 115.

25 Desmarest, author of “geographie physique,” advanced as well the virtues of comparativeknowledge: “An isolated fact . . . is not aphysical fact” (VII 616).

26 Lyon, 1976, p. 145.


for “principles suffice to guarantee the truth of a system and to assure itsduration” (229a).

In the Encyclopédieand Buffon we find an important emphasis on thevalue of generalization, but there is an evident tension between the hard-wonobservational facts and the more general knowledge that existed apart fromthose facts. The announced epistemology required a respect for empiricism,but at the same time Buffon offered the possibility of transcending the detailsand achieving a greater vision that would take in the history and generaloperations of the natural world, and there is little doubt that he consideredmuch of theHistoire Naturellea record of that vision.

Buffon is thus both skeptical and confident about the possibility of under-standing nature. In his skeptical mode, he cheerfully embraced the humanperspective, forgoing a traditional taxonomy of the kind he loved to critique.A concrete example is his classification of quadrupeds which he based onconnections to human life.27 It is a natural order in the sense that our firstencounters are with horses, dogs, and other domesticated animals, followedby contact with wild animals. Buffon’s system is no less natural than anyother and, in his words, “From every point of view, it is easier, more agree-able, and more useful to consider things in relation to us rather than fromanother point of view.”28 Of course, the point is that we have no choice,since our perspective is our perspective, and no amount of being careful withobservation and reasoning will change that stubborn fact.

In his conception of encyclopedic knowledge, Diderot perhaps generalizesBuffon’s centering of the human perspective in quadruped classification. Hewrites in “*Encyclopédie,” that there are an infinite number of points of viewto represent the universe, and “the number of possible systems of humanknowledge is as great as those points of view” (V 640b). However, any butthe real, true system in the mind of God is arbitrary, and even if we had theprivileged view we could not understand it any better than the universe itself.This being the case, Diderot invites us to grab hold of “that which accordswith our human condition” (V 641a). We have to start from where we are andretain the human perspective, for without it the universe would be without

27 I think Buffon’s classification of the quadrupeds has more to do with criticizing othertaxonomists, especially Linnaeus, than marking the circumscribed boundaries of humanunderstanding. Buffon had a vastly greater estimation of human knowledge than his strangesystem suggests.

28 Lyon, 1976, p. 162. He notes (p. 139), in his introduction that Buffon may have beeninconsistent in this position or may have seen it merely as a starting point, on the way to a more“objectivist view.” Lyon and Sloan (1981, p. 22), deny a “radical subjectivity” in Buffon’sclassification of the quadrupeds. Apparently in later years Buffon had given up the idea ofbasing taxonomy on the human experience in favor of a more optimistic view of our ability toseize the true relations in nature. See Roger, 1971, p. 567.

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meaning, wrapped in silence and darkness. The context is a discussion ofthe rationale for the organization of theEncyclopédie. Diderot asks “why weshould not introduce man into our work as he is placed in the universe? Whydon’t we make him the common center of it? Is there in all the infinite spaceany point from which we could with more advantage extend the immenselines which we are proposing to draw to all the other points?” (V 641a).

As Buffon arrays at least the quadrupeds around human beings, so Diderotfashions encyclopedic knowledge, based as it was on memory, reason, andimagination, the faculties of human understanding. Buffon views the chain ofcreation from the human perspective and theEncyclopédie– a word whichmeans, as the first line of the article tells us, “enchaînement” of knowledge –organizes the chain of knowledge in terms of human understanding and fromthe human perspective.

Diderot the editor often found Buffon’s prose as attractive as his philos-ophy, and some articles involve wholesale, verbatim imports from theHistoire Naturelle. “Espèce, (Hist. Nat.)” (V 956b–957a) is entirely a quota-tion from Buffon.29 There we find the famous definition equating a speciesto a succession of individuals which reproduce with one another. Diderotassembles the article “∗Animal” (I 468a–474b) mostly verbatim from thefirst chapter of the second volume of theHistoire Naturelle,30 along with hisown italicized “reflexions” woven into Buffon’s text which extend Buffon’sconclusions in a decidedly materialist direction.31 In “*Humaine espèce”(VIII 344–348) Diderot invites Buffon to do the work again by taking muchof the three and one-half page article from theHistoire Naturelle.32 The chiefconclusion is that despite the tremendous variation in humans around theworld, the human race is not composed of “essentially different species.”Climate, nourishment, and custom fashion all the apparent variety. Theaccount of human biological development in “*Homme, (Hist. nat.)” (VIII256b–261b), again by Diderot, is stitched together with multiple sectionsof the Histoire Naturelle.33 The three Diderot articles just cited echo thecentral feature of Buffon’s “radical” natural history: the human being mustbe studied, like other animals, in the context of natural history.

29 Buffon, 1749–1767, vol. 4, pp. 384–386. Diderot gives the wrong page number.30 In addition to the first seventeen pages of vol. 2, Diderot used other sections of Buffon’s

text: pp. 260–263 and 440–442.31 Roger (1971, pp. 599–600), briefly discusses Diderot’s use of Buffon in “*Animal.”32 Buffon, 1749–1767, vol. 3, “Varietes dans l’espece humaine,” pp. 371–530. Diderot used

only representative fragments from this long section which basically reviewed the accounts ofothers who had observed cultures around the world.

33 Buffon, 1749–1767, vol. 2. Diderot’s article is based on extracts from “Histoire Naturellede l’Homme,” pp. 445–603.


To pursue the philosophy of natural history, and Buffon’s contributionsto it, we need to consider further the article “histoire naturelle” and somekey articles by Buffon’s collaborator Daubenton. Unfortunately, the article“histoire naturelle” is unsigned.34 Based on the particular points of viewpresented, I am inclined to think that Daubenton was the author, but Diderotis certainly a possibility; or perhaps the two worked in collaboration. At anyrate, it is obviously an important contribution to the philosophy of naturalhistory laid out in theEncyclopédie.

The author of “histoire naturelle” writes that natural history embraceseverything in the vicinity of the earth and, as it turns out, things rather distantas well. The “theory of the earth” links even astronomy to natural history;with improvements in the telescope the relationship will be closer still as thenatural history of other planets is revealed! Closer to home, animals, vege-tables, and minerals constitute the three “principal parts” and are the objectsof several sciences that “derive from natural history as the branches of a treeleave the trunk” (IV 226).

An important part of the message, an especially clear echo of the “InitialDiscourse,” is a criticism of the Linnaean approach to natural history. TheSwedish naturalist had produced a system that was eminently useful, aboveall for plants, for the identification and classification of species. In the caseof plants, his method depended upon some specific features of the sexualparts; its virtues were eventually obvious to nearly everyone in Europe,including even Bernard de Jussieu, the influential botanist at theJardin duRoi, who announced in 1739 the superiority of the Linnaean system over thatof Tournefort.35 In dissenting, “histoire naturelle” claims that there are twotypes of descriptions constituting the base of natural history: incomplete andcomplete. The former, which the author terms “denominations,” characterizesthings only enough to distinguish them from others. Nature’s diversity, eachcreature differing from others by barely sensible nuances, made it impossiblefor incomplete descriptions to capture faithfully nature’s production. Theauthor takes aim at Linnaeus and others who devised only a system of namesbut implied a system of nature.

Complete descriptions, which would define any object unequivocally, tookin all objects in their entirety and indicated the “relations [rapports] foundamong the constituent parts.” Such descriptions “give a true idea of theconformation of the principal parts of each thing.” Of course, these fulldescriptions permit comparisons but also reveal the “different means that

34 Daniel Roche (1996, p. 129), mentions that “histoire naturelle” has been attributed toDiderot.

35 Daudin [1927], p. 118. See Stafleu (1971, chapter 9), for an account of the FrenchLinnaeans. Duris (1993), picks up the story after 1780.

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nature uses to produce the same effect,” allowing us to reach general results,the “most precious facts fornatural history” (IV 226b).

As a group, botanists were the worst offenders when it came to anoverzealous, pernicious nomenclature at the expense of adequate descrip-tions. The author complained that so much of botany was given over tonomenclature – in short, to the task of offering only “denominations” – whencomplete descriptions were needed. With medical applications in mind, theauthor urged botanists to spend much less time naming plants and much moretime understanding their properties and cultivation.

Next is a comparison of naturalists and anatomists, drawn from one ofDaubenton’s sections of theHistoire Naturelle.36 Focused on the marks ofdistinction in natural objects, the naturalist makes every effort to take in theoperation [marche] of nature in its productions. The anatomist, in contrast,concentrates on “the thing in itself” in minute detail in order to reveal allthe various ways that nature uses to “make animated bodies move.” Morerecently, the author argues, comparative anatomy has shed light on humananatomy through comparisons with other, very different animals, and in doingso it has drawn closer to natural history. While traditional anatomy producedonly isolated details, comparative anatomy yielded the prized “general factsand results.”

The article covers as well the popularity of natural history which, it asserts,is cultivated more than at any other time in the past, and not only by the “gensde lettres” but also by the public at large. Devotees fall into two groups – thosebent on advancing the science and getting at the truth and the others whoseinterest was in displaying and admiring all the marvels of nature. The “greatnumber” of natural history cabinets demonstrated the public interest in thisscience, but the writer recognizes that even the sciences were subject to the“empire of fashion,” and he wonders whether the “reign of natural history”would also come to an end. Since natural history was the “base” of the phys-ical sciences it would surely last as long. Indeed, it was “inexhaustible”: itcould engage the greatest genius and yet be a source of amusement for thosetrying “to escape theennui of an idle life”; it could exercise the mind andbody; and one could pursue it any time, any place, and at any age (IV 228b).It was pleasure and utility combined.

In complete agreement with Buffon, the author argues that the main factsof natural history are relational, and thus comparison is at the heart of theenterprise. The naturalist, who “only considers a thing in order to compareit to others,” brings objects in turn closer together and further apart “in

36 Daubenton was at the time contributing the anatomical work to theHistoire Naturelle; thesame comparison appears in his section “De la Description des Animaux,” Buffon, 1749–1767,vol. 4, pp. 113–141.


order to recognize the substance and the essential and characteristic form ofeach material being” (IV 229b). Moreover, the comparison must be based oncomprehensive observations, not simply on a single part or property. “Generalresults” would be impossible otherwise.

To end the article, the author repeats the warning against systems basedon “particular results.” He then backtracks and acknowledges the need forsuch systems in organizing a vast array of observations and “relieving thememory.” Back on the attack, he reminds the possibly confused reader thatthe systems “are founded only on the arbitrary conventions of men” and are“not in agreement with the invariable laws of nature” (IV 230a). Once again,the Linnaeans are the target, although the author’s aim seems unsteady.

Important themes from “histoire naturelle” echo elsewhere in theEncyclo-pédie, particularly in articles by Daubenton. Buffon asked his fellow citizenof Montbard to collaborate with him beginning in 1742; within two yearsDaubenton was named to the Académie Royale des Sciences, and for thebalance of his life, Daubenton (a medical doctor, superb anatomist andgardeet demonstrateurof the natural history collection at theJardin du Roi)remained scientifically active as author, teacher, researcher, administrator,and encyclopedist.

Critiques of classification systems abound in Daubenton’s articles, basedon the assumption that only individuals exist in nature.37 Closer inspectionof animals or plants would, it was assumed, continue to yield distinctionsamong them, and as a consequence, as Daubenton points out in “classe,” onecould multiply the divisions of taxonomy (reign, classe, genus, and species)“as much as one likes, while allowing the least intervals between these terms”(III 506). On this account, the best taxonomy looked like no taxonomy at all.

A more positive view of the ideal taxonomy appeared in “Méthode,division méthodique des différentes productions de la nature” and althoughDaubenton’s mark is not there, it seems likely that he wrote it, judging fromthe tone and point of view.38 The author of “méthode” imagines what a perfectsystem of classification would look like; he considers the case in which oneman comes to know each object “en entier,” a complete knowledge of itsproperties and its qualities. A classification scheme which simplified andabbreviated the relations and analogies among all those creatures would bethe “true system by which one can distinguish the productions of nature onefrom another, without confusion and error.” To have such a system would

37 See also “botanique,” “cabinet d’histoire naturelle.”38 “M ethode” is a sharp critique of Linnaeus and hence suggests that Daubenton (or Buffon

himself?) was the author since Daubenton and Buffon were singularly hostile to him. Daudin(1927, p. 119), shows that their attitude stood in contrast to that of the major botanical figuresin France at mid-century.

14 JAMES LLANA

bring natural history to its point of perfection, a point which in practiceis most likely unattainable. In contrast, “méthode” offers the difficulties ofLinnaeus’ system, described in a long quotation from theHistoire Naturelle.True to the empirical spirit, the author of “méthode” reminds the reader, inconclusion, that the proper means of self-instruction is “to observe each thingin all its parts, to examine as much as it is possible all its qualities and all itsproperties” (X 460a).

Daubenton’s “botanique” offers perhaps the bluntest, certainly the mostsustained, attack on the “nomenclateurs.” Nomenclature is one part of botany,but Daubenton laments that it has become the sole enterprise for some botan-ists – and to no good effect, since a system of naming plants offers no cluesto the essential characters of plants; names are not, and can never be, descrip-tions. The most “vaunted” systems are based on the flowering parts, yet theyare no closer to nature than any other. When we use conventions to distinguishplants according to different categories, we lose sight of the real individuals.The time wasted in naming plants could be more profitably used investigatingthe medicinal properties of plants and improving agriculture.

Despite its want of organization, the article “histoire naturelle,” plusarticles by Daubenton, Diderot, and anonymous authors offer a more or lesscoherent “philosophy” of natural history, one inspired often by Buffon. Asin the “Initial Discourse,” readers learned that nature was composed only ofindividuals, that Linnaean taxonomy failed fundamentally for basing classi-fication on incomplete descriptions, that knowledge of relations was moreimportant than simple description, and that botanists often mistook namingand classifying plants for a proper science. They learned as well the virtuesof empiricism and the limits on knowledge, but at the same time, the possi-bilities of transcending those limits to achieve a higher understanding.39 Inassigning importance to the search for general causes, theEncyclopédie, likethe Histoire Naturelle, seeks to situate natural history, traditionally definedlargely as an empirical, taxonomical enterprise, much closer to a rationalized,explanatory natural philosophy.

39 I offer practically no analysis of the plates here, but in assessing Buffon’s importance forthe Encyclopedieone should note that a number of the quadruped plates (Vol. VI of plates)are from theHistoire Naturelle, and despite the claim that Brisson’s system would guidethe accompanying text, there are numerous attributions to Buffon by the author, Edme-LouisDaubenton (the cousin and brother-in-law of L.-M.-J. Daubenton). Proust (1985, p. 235), notesthe presence of Buffon in theEncyclopedie, but it is not the case, as he suggests, that Jaucourtplayed a role in publicizing Buffon’s contributions to natural history.


Numerically Speaking . . .

The articles discussed so far establish the philosophical profile of naturalhistory in theEncyclopédie, but in terms of numbers they are a tiny portion ofthe thousands of articles on natural history. What follows is a simple numer-ical analysis that gives some shape to the contributions of natural history asa whole, revealing patterns of authorship through time, subject choice, andarticle length. Of the 71,818 entries in the seventeen volumes of theEncyclo-pédie, at least 4,550 (6.3%) are labeled by the editors as one form or anotherof “natural history.” The analysis here is based on a study of 2,752 articlesout of that subgroup.40 The sample includes nearly all the signed articles andfifty or so unsigned ones.

The list of authors who contributed articles on natural history includesL.-J.-M. Daubenton, Denis Diderot, the Chevalier de Jaucourt, the Barond’Holbach, Dezaillier d’Argenville, Pierre Daubenton, Nicolas Desmarest,Jean-Henri-Samuel Formey, Urbain de Vandenesse, Pierre Tarin, AugustinRoux, Charles-Marie de La Condamine, Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Le Romain,Jean-Baptiste Le Roy, and Elie Bertrand.41 However, the first four contrib-uted the vast bulk of articles, and for them we find a shifting pattern ofcontributions (see Table 1). Roughly, Daubenton and/or Diderot handled theanimal and plant reigns for the early volumes, while Jaucourt picked up bothkingdoms for the later work. D’Holbach for the most part had the mineralreign to himself throughout, beginning with Volume II.

With both Diderot and Daubenton producing articles in natural history forVolumes I and II, the number of them is rather large. However, the editor’sproduction drops dramatically after Volume II (more accurately, the articleswith his mark on them became fewer), and the quantity of Daubenton’s contri-butions decreases as well, although not nearly as much. The total number ofarticles labeled as natural history declines with each consecutive volume fromthe largest in Volume II to the smallest in Volume VI, and the proportion ofnatural history as a part of the whole follows the downward trend, except fora slight increase in Volume VI. In Volume VII Daubenton nearly triples hisoutput, and the result is a modest rebound.

40 There are articles without a subject designation, but it is unusual. The editors or authorstypically provide an abbreviated subject designation after the title of the article. For this studyI have selected most variants of the designation “Hist. Nat.” The category designations are notat all consistent, but usually one finds “Hist. Nat.” followed by “Bot” or “Min” or “Zoo” or“Bot Exotique” or “Insect” or “Ornith” and so on. I found this study possible only because ofthe inventory of allEncyclopediearticles by W. E. Rex and R. N. Schwab, 1971, 1972, 1984.The figure for total entries is from Rex and Schwab, 1971, vol. 80, p. 45.

41 Biographical information on the encyclopedists is available in the invaluable volume byFrank and Serena Kafker, 1988.

16 JAMES LLANA

Table 1. Number of signed natural history articles by volume for Daubenton,Diderot, d’Holbach and Jaucourt. Attribution is based on the presence of theauthor’s mark at the end or beginning of the article; second author contributions,“follow-up’s,” no matter how extensive, are not counted here. About 1,800 articleslabeled as natural history do not have marks; for this and other reasons one maycertainly conclude that each of these four authors wrote more articles than cred-ited with here. The right-hand column includes articles by authors not listed inthis chart.

Vol Daubenton Diderot Jaucourt d’Holbach All articles

natural history

1 178 106 0 0 312

2 216 145 3 13 414

3 102 18 11 20 165

4 96 8 10 9 150

5 65 1 2 10 95

6 33 2 12 11 74

7 89 4 32 20 184

8 34 27 77 37 332

9 2 1 76 29 387

10 0 0 78 44 295

11 66 0 102 47 385

12 6 0 119 13 308

13 0 0 72 7 200

14 1 0 121 8 309

15 1 0 134 9 326

16 0 0 198 14 379

17 0 0 95 6 233

Totals 889 312 1142 297 4548

Events following the publication of Volume VII in late 1757 were critical,as theEncyclopédielost its privilège, d’Alembert resigned, and productionwent underground. The final ten volumes of text would all be publishedin 1765. Despite the difficulties after Volume VII, the number of naturalhistory articles rose again to the range of 300–400 per volume and, exceptfor Volumes XII and XVII, continued quite high, thanks apparently to thetireless Jaucourt.42

42 The number of unsigned articles rose dramatically after the crisis following Volume VIIand remained high for the duration. The average number of anonymous articles in naturalhistory for Volumes I–VII is 18; the remaining volumes averaged 171 each.


Table 2. Percentages of articles according to subject, by author. Subjectcategories are my own. Almost all of d’Holbach’s natural history articlesconcerned topics in the mineral reign: minerals, earths, metals, stones.There was very little overlap between him and the other natural historywriters.

Subject Daubenton Jaucourt Diderot Entire sample

Plants/Genera 51 65 63 54

Quadrupeds 6 3 7 4

Fish 10 3 3.5 5

Birds 15 7 4 8

Shellfish 1 3 1 2

Minerals 2 2 6 10

Insects 3 0 1 2

Reptiles 1 1 3.5 1

Miscellaneous 9 15 10 14

The ideal encyclopedia will define its contents in accordance with someset of coherent principles, but the real worldEncyclopédiewas shaped byvarious economic, personal, political as well as intellectual factors, all ofwhich determined the nature and number of articles on natural history. Ofcourse, any encyclopedia is subject to the same types of factors, but theEncyclopédie, buffeted unpredictably by one force and then another, experi-enced them rather intensely. I do not know the events or considerations thatproduced the particular pattern of articles on natural history or the changesin authorship, but it seems clear in general that at least the number and typesof articles presented as natural history were subject to factors that did notusually apply to “regular” books. The fact that Jaucourt produced the bulk ofthe entries on natural history in the latter volumes certainly made a differencein the material covered, since each author apparently exercised some controlover the choice of articles. As Table 2 indicates, Daubenton wrote much morefrequently on fish and birds than did Diderot or Jaucourt, but the latter twowrote relatively more often on plants than did the anatomist Daubenton.

Not only did the topic frequency differ among the authors, but theirarticles varied characteristically in length as well. In the most frequent subjectareas, plants and plant genera, both Jaucourt and Diderot wrote significantlymore than Daubenton. When the subject was birds, the reverse was the case.Jaucourt wrote on average more than seven times as much on fish as Diderot.The differences in length point in a rough way to the discretion exercised byeach author.

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More important than the selection of topics and length, there were, asI suggest further on, important differences in style and sources among theauthors. But the numerical analysis begins to reveal the uneven treatment ofnatural history, most likely due to the manifold difficulties of publication,and compounded possibly by Diderot’s light editorial hand.43 If, as the titleclaimed, theEncyclopédiewas a “reasoned dictionary” in terms of its articlesand their relationships, the “reasoning” is not always easy to fathom.

Daubenton’s Contributions

As Table 1 indicates, Daubenton’s mark (I) begins to drop off quickly in thethird volume and appears irregularly after that. There is a burst of significantactivity for Volume XI, but basically after Volume VIII we hear little fromhim. Still, the “I” appeared after almost 900 articles covering the entire fieldof natural history.

The most striking aspect of Daubenton’s contribution is the reliance onthe major traditional sources in natural history. Unlike Diderot and Jaucourt,who both contributed mightily to natural history, Daubenton was usually verycareful to cite his sources, and a very short list of them accounts for the bulkof his articles. The different names cited either in passing or at the end ofan article total approximately 85; four names, however – Francis Willughby,Guillaume Rondelet, John Ray, and Joseph Pitton de Tournefort – are collec-tively the primary sources for 60% of all Daubenton’s articles. When oneadds Plumier and Micheli to the list, both of whom were cited exclusivelyas sources for plant genera, the proportion goes to 70%.44 Daubenton citeshis famous contemporaries, Buffon and Reaumur, in important ways butrelatively rarely – eight and sixteen times, respectively.45

43 John Lough (1989, p. 77), claims that Diderot took his editorial “duties rather lightly.”The “last ten volumes seem to have been shoved together without much care.”

44 The most commonly cited work in all of Daubenton’s articles is Tournefort’sInstitu-tiones rei herbariae, 3 vols. (Paris: 1700), referred to over 340 times. Daubenton drawsheavily on Willughby’sOrnithologiae(London: 1676), Rondelet’sLibri de piscibus marinis(Lyons: 1554–1555), Ray’sHistoria piscium (Oxford: 1686), written with Willughby,Synopsis animalium quadrupedem et serpentini(London: 1693) andSynopsis avium etpiscium(London: 1713), Plumier’sNova plantarum americanarum genera(Paris: 1703), andMicheli’s Nova plantarum genera(Florence: 1729). Aldrovandi was cited as often as Micheli,followed by Belon, Reaumur, Linnaeus, Pliny, Buffon, Gesner, and Aristotle. Most of hissources are cited fewer than five times each.

45 Daubenton makes explicit references to Buffon in the following articles: “Coquille,”“Corne d’Ammon,” “Ours,” “Caillou,” “Accouplement,” “Animalcule,” “Argille,” “*AnglesCorrespondans des Montagnes” (joint authorship with Diderot). Perhaps Daubenton also


The quality and depth of Daubenton’s work varies as greatly as hissources. One can reasonably anticipate long, detailed, engaging articles whenthe subject is insects and the source Reaumur. However, relying most oftenon Tournefort’sInstitutiones rei herbariae, Daubenton dispatched each plantgenus, usually in about five or six lines, with a quick formulaic approachthat typically described the stem, leaf, fruit and seed in rapid succession. Thearticles on ornithology covered certain set features of bird anatomy, habitat,and life habits and came most often with an acknowledgment to FrancisWillughby’s Ornithologiae. In general terms, each article that covered a typeof plant or animal follows a kind of template that gives a characteristic shapeto the specific type of article, and that template derived from the main sourceon which Daubenton relied.46

“Follow-up” material, written by other authors and added by the editorsafter the “main” article (they are often articles in their own right), sometimesbreaks with Daubenton’s formulaic approach; when such material is included(17% of the time for Daubenton, far more often than with other writers) thereis almost always a completely new dimension to the subject. Moreover, thefollow-up often overwhelms the “main article” in terms of depth, length, andinterest – especially from a practical point of view – and doubtless that wastheir function.47 Indeed, where follow-ups appear, one often wonders why theeditors bothered at all with Daubenton’s bare-bones contribution, consideringwhat follows from another contributor. In one case, apparently frustratedby Daubenton’s timid contribution for “cabinet d’histoire naturelle,” Diderotreaches for theHistoire Naturelleand quotes Daubenton himself at greatlength. The “other contributor” is most often Diderot in the first two volumes,but Jaucourt almost completely displaces him as time goes on.48

Daubenton did not always write the largest sections of articles on naturalhistory to which he contributed, and he did not contribute at all to perhapsthousands of articles in natural history (with or without theEncyclopédie“HN” subject heading). As Table 1 shows, even among the articles withthe “HN” heading, Daubenton wrote perhaps only 20% of them. Yet he

wrote “methode,” which contains a long quote by Buffon. Linnaeus is cited more often (14times) than Buffon in Daubenton’s articles, although not always favorably.

46 Tournefort was the source for 327 of Daubenton’s 409 articles on plant genera; Plumierand Micheli accounted for another 83. Willughby was the source for 77 of 137 bird articles;Rondelet for 64 of 87 articles on fish.

47 Roger (1989, p. 269), has commented on the “brevity and dryness” of Daubenton’s contri-butions. Haechler (1995, p. 215), expresses the same idea and extolls Jaucourt’s virtues at thesame time.

48 The identity and frequency of the Daubenton follow-up authors is as follows: Jaucourt(55), Vandenesse (41), Diderot (41), Argenville (12), Pierre Daubenton (8), LeRomain (3),d’Holbach (2), unknown (2). There are 162 follow-up’s to 151 Daubenton articles.

20 JAMES LLANA

was the acknowledged expert, and a working professional in natural history,well-known as Buffon’s collaborator. His presence lent an authority to theEncyclopédiewhich the other contributors could not match.

Diderot and Natural History

Diderot credits himself with over 300 articles on natural history, of whichmore than 250 fall into the first two volumes. With an eye for the exotic,the practical, and the provocative, he consistently produces more interestingarticles than Daubenton; in good Enlightenment fashion the editor takes aimwhenever possible at credulity and, as I have argued above, he certainlypromotes some of Buffon’s ideas in a few articles.

Perhaps owing to the popularity of travel accounts, Diderot uses themoften as sources, even if they compromised his concern for reliability.For more than two centuries European explorers had produced numerousaccounts of exotic flora and fauna, which proved irresistible to readers ingeneral and, as a result, to Diderot the editor, whose own articles on naturalhistory contain nearly 200 references to animals or plants that flourished innon-European countries. He frequently acknowledges that the descriptionsavailable to him were poor and incomplete, and he often takes a jab at thesource, the “voyageurs,” who are often “rather bad naturalists.” The bizarreand contradictory accounts of the “*chacal,” some of which are faithfullyreported by Diderot, “would scarcely merit a place in a work where one wouldlike only certainty” (III 4a).

His frustration is clear in the article “*aguaxima” where he can report littlemore than the name of a plant from Brazil and Central America. Uninformedabout the plant, he sets the record straight on his sources:

for whom are these descriptions made? Not for the natives who very likelyknow the characteristics of the plant and who have no need to know thatthe plant originated in their country. It is as if you said to a Frenchman thata pear tree is a tree that grows in France, in Germany etc. It is no longerfor us; because of what importance is it to us that there is in Brazil a treenamed aguaxima if we only know the name? What good is the name for?It leaves the ignorant right where they are, it teaches nothing to others. . . (I 191a)

Why then does Diderot bother with articles on plants as mysterious as theaguaxima? It is, he explains, through “condescension for certain readers, whoprefer to find nothing in a Dictionary article, or even to find only foolishness,than not to find the article at all” (I 191a). And so Diderot often repeats, along


with his complaints and apologies, descriptions that would cover a multitudeof species.

Diderot cites over forty sources throughout his articles, although he oftenmentions no one at all. His favorite reference is John Ray who finds his wayinto forty-four articles on plants. Tournefort receives only two citations andLinnaeus is not cited at all. After Ray, Diderot chooses to mention Pliny andNicolas Lemery (for drugs) most often, each with ten citations.

Diderot also takes on the “marvelous” accounts of nature that amount tonothing more than superstition and which would yield to reason and directobservation. He argues in general that the more marvelous the presumedproperties are, the worse the description must be (“*assazoé” [I 766b]).49

Perhaps the best-known attack on the marvelous is in “*agnus scythicus,”where Diderot in effect lays down the rules of credulity.50

After Volume II, Diderot was apparently happy to let Daubenton, aided byJaucourt, handle the bulk of articles on natural history and, with a few notableexceptions, the editor’s mark in natural history fades quickly from sight.However, in his taste for longer articles with an emphasis on the practical andthe exotic (issues often foreign to a narrowly construed “scientific” naturalhistory), Diderot’s momentum was continued by the work of the prolificJaucourt.

Jaucourt and Natural History

With an estimated 17,000 articles to his name, theChevalierJaucourt is theunheralded workhorse of theEncyclopédie.51 Of the articles designated asnatural history, Jaucourt probably wrote more than anyone else; it is certainlythe case that, among writers of articles whose authorship we know, he standsat the top of the list, with over 1140 articles to his name. Jaucourt’s workbegan in earnest as Daubenton ended his period of greatest activity afterVolume VII appeared.

In total, Jaucourt cites approximately 175 authors in his natural historyarticles. Along with some of the great names in natural history are scores

49 For other critiques of the marvelous, see “*capivar,” “*calundronius,” “*cactonite,”“*boa,” “*champacam,” “*assienne,” and “*bonasus.”

50 Diderot uses an article on a fabulous but “authoritatively” documented plant to assessdifferent kinds of claims and sources. Roger (1971, p. 602, note 86), points out that “allthe elements” of this article came from theDictionnaire universel de medicine. . . by RobertJames. Diderot had worked on a French translation of the medical dictionary. Roger notes aswell that Diderot took the articles on plants for Vol. 1 from James.

51 Lough, 1989, p. 46. See Haechler (1995), for a thorough and enthusiastic discussion ofJaucourt.

22 JAMES LLANA

of lesser known authors: traveling missionaries, representatives of the majorcolonial companies, professors, physicians, naturalists dispatched by kings,academicians, garden administrators and staff, virtuosi, and writers lookingfor a marketable subject. Jaucourt still cites a few classical sources – espe-cially Dioscorides, Theophrastus, and Pliny – and some of the leading lightsof the 16th century – Aldrovandi, Gesner, Belon – but, reflecting the generalgrowth of natural history in Europe, the bulk of his sources are divided aboutevenly between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.52 Jaucourt lookedfar and wide for sources, but not always right under his nose; as far as Ican tell, out of the 1,140 signed articles on natural history in my sample hementions Buffon only once (“mulot” X 855b–856a).

Jaucourt’s diversified collection of sources stands in contrast to thegroup cited by Daubenton, who relied on far fewer and more traditionalauthorities in natural history. Through his citations, the insider and profes-sional Daubenton implies boundaries for natural history which are far lesspermeable than those constructed by the all-purpose Jaucourt. Both haveTournefort at the top of their lists of references, and John Ray and CharlesPlumier were important to each, but Willughby, Rondelet, and Aldrovandi,mainstays for Daubenton, were relatively unimportant to Jaucourt, whogreatly extended the list of “authorities” in natural history.

Jaucourt offers no pointed theoretical or methodological lessons beyondthe usual exhortations on behalf of empiricism, skepticism, and a rationalnomenclature. Except for reasons of credulity or superstition, he seldom criti-cizes anyone. The aim of his long, informative articles was to interest hisreaders.

* * *

Fundamentally concerned with a reasoned order, natural history and encyclo-pedism were in some ways parallel enterprises. Both attempted to organizeknowledge of the world whose complexity posed great difficulties for anydeep, objective understanding; nearly all natural historians, in their morecautious moments, conceded that the “God’s eye view” was beyond them.Still there was the need for some organizational framework or system, andas Diderot elaborated his epistemology for an encyclopedia, he franklyand enthusiastically put humans at the center in a way similar in spirit towhat Buffon had done (perhaps uncharacteristically) in his classification ofquadrupeds. With humanity as the “common center” from which Diderot

52 I provide here only a superficial analysis of Jaucourt’s sources, but it is enough to revealthe social complexity, and broad appeal, of natural history. Of all the sources cited by Jaucourt,I have been unable to identify 34. Of the remainder, 7 are “ancients,” 21 date from the sixteenthcentury, and the remaining 110 or so from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.


proposed to survey the world, there was a natural emphasis on relationalknowledge; indeed, the organization of knowledge – based on relationships –was the knowledge or at least the highest order of knowledge. The centraltheoretical issue was the connectedness of things, the “enchaînement.” Inthe same way that Buffon’s knowledge of natural history comprehended, atits best, nature’s dynamic ensemble of minerals, plants, and animals, a deepknowledge of the world at large must be encyclopedic knowledge where onecould “see” all things, art and nature, “chained” together and set in the properperspective. Such was the vision, if not the achievement.53

The theoretical positions offered by Buffon, Diderot, and Daubenton standin contrast to the prevailing emphases on classification or description incontemporary natural history, and taken as a whole, the articles on naturalhistory are indeed broadly descriptive and eclectic. But many do include whatmost professional naturalists would have considered extraneous information.The intention was to enliven the article, or in many cases to offer a practicaldimension; in this regard Diderot and Jaucourt did a good job of exposing anddeveloping the popular side of natural history through discussions of whatwas useful, curious or exotic.

The popular dimension was reminiscent of an older Renaissance naturalhistory when authors often provided every sort of information related tothe subject.54 Folklore, crafts, medications, recipes, and stories from ancientor other cultures, even when cast in a negative light, made for interestingreading and doubtless took advantage of, and reinforced, the popular interestin natural history. However, in one way natural history in theEncyclopédiedoes not resonate on a popular level: appeals to religion or to a sentimentalitybased on nature are virtually absent.55 The path from Pluche’sLa Spectaclede la Natureto Bernardin de St. Pierre’sEtudes de la Naturedid not cross

53 Cernuschi (1996, p. 377), suggests that the scheme for relating knowledge in the“Preliminary Discourse” played very little role in the actual construction of the work.

54 Roger (1980, p. 264), notes the throwback in Pluche and Diderot.55 In my sample I found only a handful of references to the wisdom and beneficence of

the creator, in the style of natural religion. And with the exception of Jaucourt’s quotation ofThomson in “oiseau” and a similar quotation in “oiseaux de passage,” there is no hint of thecult of nature precipitated by Rousseau’sNouvelle Heloïsein 1761. Mornet (1980, p. 457),refers to the ”general impulse after Rousseau to substitute instincts of the heart for deductionsof reason.“ And wherever Rousseau learned to love botany, it seems likely to me that it was nottheEncyclopedie. It’s interesting to consider, after many years, Gillispie’s fascinating claimsabout the impact of theEncyclopedieon the suppression of the academy of science during therevolution. He noted that theEncyclopedie’s “enthusiasm for natural history . . . presaged ineach essential element the events which engulfed the scientific community in the Revolution.”Gillispie, 1959, p. 280. Natural history, as I have encountered it in theEncyclopedie,hardlyseems up to the task. Gillispie’s argument does not by any means rest solely on this one claim.

24 JAMES LLANA

through natural history in theEncyclopédie.56 As announced in the “Prelim-inary Discourse,” natural history for the encyclopedists was very much anaffair of the mind – memory and reason – and with ties neither to religion norto sentiment.

References

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Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, ed. D. Lindberg and R. Westman, pp. 303–332.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Atran, Scott. 1990.Cognitive Foundations of Natural History. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Blanckaert, Claude, Cohen, Claudine, Corsi, Pietro and Fischer, Jean-Louis, coordinators.1997.Le Muséum au premier siècle de son histoire. Paris: Musèum national d’Histoirenaturelle.

Boas, Marie. 1962.The Scientific Renaissance 1450–1630. New York: Harper.Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc comte de. 1749–1767.Histoire naturelle, générale et

particulière. Paris: Imprimerie royale.Cernuschi, Alain. 1996. “L’arbre encyclopédique des connaissances. Figures, opération,

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