The Cuvier-Geoffroy Debate

Explores the historical and scientific issues that made comparative anatomy central to 19th-century biology and fostered the development of Darwin's theory of evolution.

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For scientists, no event better represents the contest between form and function as the chief organizing principle of life as the debate between Georges Cuvier and Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. This book presents the first comprehensive study of the celebrated French scientific controversy that focused the attention of naturalists in the first decades of the nineteenth century on the conflicting claims of teleology, morphology, and evolution, which ultimately
contributed to the making of Darwin's theory. This history describes not only the scientific dimensions of the controversy and its impact on individuals and institutions, but also examines the meaning of
the debate for culture and society in the years before Darwin.