TY  - BOOK
AU  - Mary Efrosini Gregory
PY  - 2008
CY  - New York, United States of America
PB  - Peter Lang Verlag
SN  - 9781453903834
TI  - Evolutionism in Eighteenth-Century French Thought
DO  - 10.3726/978-1-4539-0383-4
UR  - https://www.peterlang.com/document/1050842
N2  - This book examines how eight eighteenth-century French theorists – Maillet, Montesquieu, La Mettrie, Buffon, Maupertuis, Diderot, Rousseau, and Voltaire – addressed evolutionism. Each thinker laid down a building block that would eventually open the door to the mutability of species and a departure from the long-held belief that the chain of beings is fixed. This book describes how the philosophes established a triune relationship among contemporary scientific discoveries, random creationism propelled by the motive and conscious properties of matter, and the notion of the chain of being, along with its corollaries, plenitude and continuity. Also addressed is the contemporary debate over whether apes could ever be taught to speak as well as the issue of race and the family of man.
KW  - Frankreich, Evolutionismus, Geschichte 1700-1800, Benoît de Maillet, Georges Louis Leclerc, Denis Diderot, François-Marie Arouet de Voltaire, Charles de Secondat, Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, Julien Offray de La Mettrie
LA  - English
ER  -