Georges Cuvier

Vocation, Science and Authority in Post-Revolutionary France

Dorinda Outram

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781032126319
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000534771
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book, first published in 1984, examines the lifetime of Georges Cuvier, and in his constant and varying struggles to retain his position both as a politician and as a leading naturalist we find displayed almost all of the political tensions of Restoration France. Our understanding of the new French intellectual elite is enhanced if we can explain what sort of power this group wielded, and how it related to the structure of politics as a whole. Cuvier's career epitomises this relationship to the highest degree. Examination of the building of his career under the Directory and Empire offers many new insights into the way the expanding market for science, the restructuring of society as a whole, and the moral authority of science itself could be utilised as resources in the making of a reputation. The influence of scientific competition and controversy on Cuvier's scientific work is examined at length, and it is argued that they exerted a decisive effect on the structure of his biological and geological thinking.

Notes

Note to Introduction

1. All quotations retain the original spelling.

Notes to Chapter I

1. See Goguel, 1864; pp. 21-2, reprints the birth certificate.
2. Coleman, 1964, devoted only pp. 6-8 of his 212-page study to this period; Febvre, 1953, p. 329, dismisses the years in Montbéliard as ‘secondary’ and ‘negligible’ in importance.
3. For general accounts see Viénot, 1895, and C. Duvernoy, 1891.
4. E.g., Georg-Friedrich Parrot, born in Montbéliard in 1767, became first President of the University of Tartu in Russian Estonia, and Secretary to the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences.
5. For genealogies, see Haag, 1859-68, s.v. Württemburg, IX.
6. Estimated as 3, 143 in 1769 and as 3,996 in 1794, by Debard, 1974-5, and Sahler, 1911.
7. The first and second years of Cuvier’s life were also marked by a particularly acute crisis; food shortage may well have contributed to his bad health as a child and adolescent.
8. Cucuel, 1914, quoting BNP MS fr. 8548, fol. 91.
9. Tuefferd, 1862, p. 28.
10. Ibid.
11. See genealogical table of Cuvier’s family, and note 15 below.
12. Oberkirch n.d., p. 36; C.-L. Duvernoy, ed. M. Menot, 1955-9, pp. 289-90.
13. Viénot, 1895, p, 149.
14. Oberkirch, n.d., passim, relates these visits and others like them; Renard, 1967, gives full details of visits by the Grand-Duke Paul of Russia; Fallot, 1903, points out the opportunities for travel in Germany which could accrue from attendance at Court.
15. Goguel, 1864, p. 8 et seq., incorporates work by G.-L. Duvernoy on Cuvier’s family tree; see also Roy, 1887, Emonot, 1897; Mauveaux, 1913, pp. 265-6; Salomon, 1927; Viénot, 1932; Mathiot, 1932, gives details of the life of the surgeon Jehan Cuvier, Cuvier’s greatgrandfather.
16. Mauveaux, 1913, pp. 265-6, gives the armorial of the Cuvier family in the Red Book of the bourgeoisie.
17. Waldner was an uncle of Mme d’Oberkirch, whose memoirs of life at the court of Etupes have already been cited. Jean-George Cuvier joined the regiment in 1758, and held the rank of lieutenant in 1769. For the regiment, see Grouvel, 1945.
18. Cuvier’s autobiography (MS Flourens 2598) of the library of the Institut de France, puts the family’s annual income at 800 francs at this period.
19. Debard, 1974-5, p. 280.
20. Goguel, 1864, p. 204, gives Frederic’s godparents as his mother’s brother Samuel-Frédéric Chatel, a teacher at the town’s infant school, and a military colleague of his father, Jean-Frédéric Richard, a lieutenant in his regiment.
21. For accounts of Cuvier’s childhood, see Lee, 1833, pp. 8-14; C. L. Duvernoy, 1833, pp. 8-11, also quoted in Trouessart, 1909; Viénot, 1932, pp. 6-14 quotes material from Duvernoy’s source C.-N. Cuvier, omitted in all previous accounts, except that of Bourdon, 1844, p. 98.
22. G.-L. Duvernoy, ibid; Trouessart, ibid., p. 110; Viénot, ibid., pp. 10-11.
23. Boas, 1966, pp. 1-31, Coveney, 1967, p. 48; Cuvier, 1819-27, 1, pp. 37-8, II, p. 313.
24. E.g. Lee, 1833, p. 11.
25. Wetzel, cited in Godard, 1893, pp. 191-2.
26. Viénot, 1932, pp. 10-11.
27. Viénot, 1885, passim; C. Duvernoy, 1891, p. 386 et seq.; Viénot 1932, p. 9.
28. Marchant, 1858, pp. 59-60. Letter of 14 October 1788.
29. Cramer and Hermehnle, 1906-53, confirms this story. There is no record of Cuvier’s matriculation at Tübingen; H, pp. 329, 323, records the matriculation of his cousins Charles-Nicholas Cuvier in 1785 and Louis-Christophe Cuvier in 1784.
30. I can find no confirmatory evidence of the story recounted in Lee, 1833, p. 13, of Cuvier reaching the Grand-Duke’s notice by his delivery of a ceremonial speech of welcome on the occasion of this visit, nor is this event mentioned in the autobiography.
31. Batz, 1784, p. 92.
32. Ibid., p. 39.
33. Raeff, 1975.
34. Batz, 1784, p. 48.
35. Fallot, 1903, p. 18, gives an account of a meal at the Academy in 1773, witnessed by the Montbéliardais D.-C.-E. Berdot: Tous les élèves s’étant mis en marche très cadencée, défilent deux à deux pour se rendre chacun à sa chaise où ils s’arrêtent pour attendre le commandement d’un bas-officier qui après leur avoir fait faire un demi-tour à droite, commande la prière qui se fait à haute voix par un des élèves placé dans un cathèdre qui se trouve à l’autre extrémité de la salle. Cette prière faite, les jeunes gens se mettent à table et à peine le Duc a-t-il dit, “Mangez, Messieurs”, que chacun porte la cuillière à la bouche ... le tout se fait avec la dernière précision militaire’. See also Batz, 1784, p. 205.
36. For the reminiscences of a contemporary of Cuvier at the Academy, a Polish nobleman, see Longin (ed. anon.), 1914.
37. Batz, 1784, p. 9.
38. Raeff, 1975; Mack Walker, 1978.
39. Longin (ed. anon.), 1914, p. 230, relates the peculiar practical jokes which the Grand-Duke was liable to play on the students, but comments that nevertheless, he ‘avait porté sur cette institution toute son affection, et c’était celle d’un tendre père plutôt que d’un protecteur. Il donnait constamment des marques de bienveillance aux élèves, et les prodiguait surtout aux plus jeunes, qui ne le voyaient jamais sans avoir reçu de lui quelques paroles caressantes; il savait par coeur les noms de tous, et les nommait sans hésiter. Les bâtiments de l’Académie étaient attenants à son palais; il n’avait qu’un couloir à traverser pour s’y rendre.’
40. Those in authority possessed great power as the focus of adolescent emotion. Ibid., p. 233, recounts how after attending a Grand-ducal ball ‘Je trouvai la Grande-Duchesse si belle que de trois semaines elle ne sortit pas de l’esprit. Je la vis danser un menuet... je devins mélancholique et je pleurais la nuit’.
41. Batz, 1784, was clearly written to rebut such charges,- see its preface, and pp. 210-91: ‘C’est de la méchanceté et de l’ingratitude de ces mauvais sujets qui ont lassé la longanimité [sic] du Duc, que viennent en grande partie les noires calomnies qu’on a répandues contre l’Institution’.
42. D’Harcourt, 1928, pp. 28-46. Cuvier displayed his fellow-student Danneker’s bust of Schiller in a prominent position in his home in Paris at the Jardin des Plantes.
43. Pfaff, 1858, p. 16; for another example of Cuvier’s physical immobility, see ibid., p. 17.
44. Ibid., p. 22.
45. Anon., 1791.
46. [Jean-Simon Kemer], 1786, Vorrede, no pagination: ‘Auch finde ich sehr billig hier öffentlich dem Hm chevalier von Marschall und Hm Cuvier, welche in der Botanik unter den zoglingen der höhen Carls-Schúle gegenwärtig die meiste kenntnisse haben, meinen lebhaften Dank abzustatten ... .’ This is very probably the first mention of Cuvier in print.
47. Pfaff, 1858, pp. 17-19. Similar stories that Cuvier opened a natural history society at school in Montbéliard should be taken as a reading back of the incidents of Stuttgart. There is no evidence for such a society in Montbéliard, and one is not mentioned by Wetz...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• Genealogical table
• Introduction
• I The cosmopolitan province
• II Youth, revolution and vocation
• III The conquest of the city
• IV Problems and opportunities of the Empire: science and the Imperial University
• V The Restoration and the crisis of patronage
• VI Controversy, authority and the market: Lamarck, Gall and Naturphilosophie
• VII Geology, history and the shaping of a self-image
• VIII Families, friends and institutions: the Paris Museum of Natural History
• IX Patronage and the post-revolutionary élite: enquiry and conclusion
• Notes
• Manuscript sources
• Publications by Cuvier
• Appendix: positions held by Cuvier
• Index