L’impossibilité D’une théorie de l'évolution dans la pensée française du XVIIIe siècle

Abstract

The absence of a fully-fledged theory of evolution in the eighteenth century can be accounted for by the unquestioned assumption of a hierarchy of values whose effect was to allot an inferior status to all potentially evolutionary concepts. The dominant values in the hierarchy were absolute form and plenitude, whereas concepts such as the movement of matter, change, diversity, etc., were seen simply as the means by which nature produced purely contingent effects. Only man's intervention, through art or animal breeding for example, could create controlled order, that is, form and value. The change in attitudes which will make evolutionary thought possible is first seen on Lamarck's theory of heredity and his theory of the structure of the universe.