La révolution scientifique manquée de 1830 ou l’échec d’Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire à imposer le transformisme dans la communauté scientifique française

Resumen

The defeated revolution of 1830. The failure of Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire to establish transformism among the french scientific community

In France, between 1825 and 1832, a famous scientific controversy opposed Georges Cuvier, who defended the dogma of biblical creationism, and Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, a friend of Lamarck, who was convinced by evolutionism. Although the theory of descent with modification was the solution accepted by the international scientific community in due time, Cuvier succeeded in preventing his colleagues from it. To understand the defeat of evolutionism at this period, we have proposed three hypotheses, all based on several historical works. The first one considers, as Cuvier argued in his time, that evolutionism was not built on enough factual arguments. This naturalist wished to separate absolutely all theories, which can be altered by some possible discoveries, and facts, which are supposed to be final results. Actually, Saint-Hilaire proved the evolutionist theory with a lot of observation and experiments. The second hypothesis supposes that, in French biology in the early XIXth century, the researches about the origin of species were considered as theologic or metaphysical problems, not scientific ones. But if Cuvier defended an empirical conception of science, he rarely could prevent himself from theorizing. His anatomical laws are still famous, as well as his theory of earth, called catastrophism. On the question of human fossils, for example, he did not submit to facts, but to his supposition on the discontinuity of our planet history. The last historical hypothesis consists in stating that Cuvier’s victory among the scientific community was due to social causes. With the help of his considerable institutional and political influence, he succeeded in ruining the reputation of his colleagues Lamarck and Geoffroy. The question is not whether Cuvier’s catastrophism was justified by religious beliefs, but if he used his enormous power to enforce creationism. This can be proved by Cuvier’s attitude toward Saint-Hilaire and the arguments of authority he imposed against all the evolutionist theories. Cuvier also had scientific reasons to reject that paradigm. His a priori can be seen notably in the mechanism of fossilisation during the “revolutions du globe” he defended. In conclusion, this debate shows that internal and external factors of science dynamics  must be studied together, not separately. The synergic theory of human sciences, based on D. Buican’s works will guide us to study more precisely the analogy between the evolution of ideas and that of living forms.