The Cuvier-Geoffroy Debate

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.

- A classic confrontation and its interpretations
- Cuvier and Geoffroy: Collaborators on a new science
- "Le legislateur de la science" Cuvier and functionalist anatomy
- Geoffroy and the emergence of philosophical anatomy
- The battle lines are drawn: 1820-1829
- The debate before the academie
- Beyond the academie: The many uses of the debate
- Teleology, morphology, and evolution: The debate and the future of zoology