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Diderot and the Metamorphosis of Species

By Mary Gregory

Published October 23rd 2006 by Routledge – 208 pages

Series: Studies in Philosophy

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Description

In this study Dr. Gregory examines how Diderot borrowed from Lucretius, Buffon, Maupertuis, and probability theory, and combined ideas from these sources in an innovative fashion to hypothesize that species are mutable and that all life arose randomly from a single prototype.

Contents

Introduction

  1. Chaos, Flux, Time, and Probability

  2. Embryology, Epigenesis, and the Metamorphosis of Species

  3. Spontaneous Generation

  4. The Chain of Beings

  5. The Mutability of Species

  6. The Ascent of Consciousness

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Author Bio

Mary Gregory is a scholar of the French Enlightenment. For the past ten years she has been researching Diderot’s views regarding the metamorphosis of species in four of his texts, namely, the Pensées philosophiques (1746), the Lettre sur les aveugles à l’usage de ceux qui voient (1749), the Pensées sur l’interprétation de la nature (1753), and the trilogy, the Entretien entre d’Alembert et Diderot (1769), the Rêve de d’Alembert (1769), and the Suite de l’Entretien (1769).

Related Subjects

  1. Philosophy

Name: Diderot and the Metamorphosis of Species (Hardback) – Routledge 
Description: By Mary Gregory. In this study Dr. Gregory examines how Diderot borrowed from Lucretius, Buffon, Maupertuis, and probability theory, and combined ideas from these sources in an innovative fashion to hypothesize that species are mutable and that all life arose randomly...
Categories: Philosophy