Rousseau and Diderot on natural history

• Grant number: 13/23233-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Start date: June 01, 2014
• End date: July 31, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - History of Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Pedro Paulo Garrido Pimenta
• Grantee: Pedro Paulo Garrido Pimenta
• Host Investigator: Laurent Jaffro
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France

Abstract

The research focuses on the attitudes of Rousseau and Diderot concerning Buffon's natural history, particularly in what relates to the theory of description. It is well known that Buffon rejects Linnaeus' nomenclature as an imperfect manner of classifying and understanding animals, vegetables and minerals. He proposes instead of treating natural beings by means of description, as a method for establishing a comparative knowledge between different classe and species of natural beigns. Diderot accepts Buffon's criticism and takes the theory of description as a starting point for porpusing a science of nature based on the notion of transformation. Rousseau sees description as a complementary procedure to nomenclature, and shows, in his observations of plants, that studying nature is a way of finding man's place among a more vast order. The aim of teh research is to examine these two ramifications of Buffon's theory in the realm of philosophy. (AU)