The Buffon-Linnaeus Controversy

B UFFON'S ATTACK ON LINNAEUS and Linnean taxonomy in the Histoire ntaturelle, getnerale et particu1iere has been interpreted by a long line of historians of biology as an unfortunate and basically misconceived criticism of the taxonomic reforms which served to free biology in the eighteenth century from the chaos of conflicting systems and nomenclatures that had characterized the early part of the century. Buffon's polemic has variously been considered to be an advocacy of an untenable taxonomic nominalism, a reflection of personal jealousy against his initially more famous contemporary, and a contrived and artificial attempt to distinguish his approach to natural history from that of the great classifier.' A persistent line of criticism, initiated by Buffon's contemnporary C.-G. de Lamoignon de Malesherbes and repeated more recently by such historians as Henri Daudin, has attributed Buffon's attack on taxonomy to an alleged unfamiliarity with the subject matter of zoology and botany when he gained the post of director of the jardin du Roil. Even to his successors in French biology somewhat favorably disposed to his biological thought, Buffon's criticisms were seen as representing a brief interlude in the progress of rational systematics, confined in its influence to the circle of biologists associated with the Jardin and quickly dissipating after Buffon's death in 1788.'