GREGORY, Mary Efrosini, Evolutionism in Eighteenth-Century French Thought, Oxford / Bern / Berlin / Bruxelles / Frankfurt am Main / New York / Wien, Peter Lang (Currents in Comparative Romance Languages and Literatures), 2008, 356 p.
ISBN 978-1-4331-0373-5
RÉSUMÉ
This book examines how eight eighteenth-century French theorists -Maillet, Montesquieu, La Mettrie, Buffon, Maupertuis, Diderot,Rousseau, and Voltaire - addressed evolutionism. Each thinker laid downa building block that would eventually open the door to the mutabilityof species and a departure from the long-held belief that the chain ofbeings is fixed. This book describes how the philosophes established atriune relationship among contemporary scientific discoveries, randomcreationism 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 debateover whether apes could ever be taught to speak as well as the issue ofrace and the family of man.
BIOGRAPHIE
Mary Efrosini Gregory received her B.A. and M.A. in French from QueensCollege and her M.Phil. in French from Columbia University. She is theauthor of numerous books on French literature including Diderot and the Metamorphosis of Species (2007) and An Eastern Orthodox View of Pascal(2008). Two other books, one on the Orthodox Church and the other onChristianity and twenty-first century science, are in theprepublication stage.