L'Anthropologie et l'histoire naturelle de l'homme en 1800. Les enjeux d'un héritage

Abstract

Jean-Luc Chappey, <i>Anthropology and the natural history of man in 1800: What's at stake in a legacy. </i> In an attempt to create the right conditions for the institutionalization and legitimation of their scientific programme, the members of the Société des Observateurs de l'homme (1799-1804) appealed to the legacy of Buffon, whose Natural History of Man can be considered as the central epistemological and methodological reference for their Anthropology. This appropriation of Buffon's legacy might appear surprising, as his scientific standing was the object of a number of attacks within the community of natural history during the 1800s. Thus, we need to investigate the stakes at play in this appropriation, as well as the motivations for it. The appeal to Buffon's legacy can be interpreted in the light of the social strategies of the « minor figures » in the field, and we examine the role played by this legacy in a possible offensive led by the Observateurs against the epistemological principles of the Idéologues Cabanis and de Tracy. The resulting observations will allow us to propose a series of hypotheses concerning the disappearance of the Observateurs in 1804, as well as the « failure » of their anthropological programme, which did not survive the profound transformations that characterized the social, epistemic and methodological forms of production and diffusion of knowledge between 1800 and 1810.