The language of nature in Buffon's Histoire naturelle
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The language of nature in Buffon's Histoire naturelle
（Oxford University studies in the Enlightenment, 2018:10）
Liverpool University Press on behalf of Voltaire Foundation, University of Oxford, c2018
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Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Drawing from literary studies, philosophy, and the history of science, in this interdisciplinary study Hanna Roman argues that the language of Buffon's Histoire naturelle (1749-1788) could not be separated from the science it conveyed; the language communicated nature's vital order, form and movement. In the Histoire naturelle, the ability of language to embody and communicate the living essence of nature grew increasingly poignant as Buffon established his hypothesis that the Earth, initially a molten ball of fire, was dying as it slowly became colder.
The author highlights Buffon's Epoques de la nature (1778) in which he implied that to save nature from cold death, people must learn to create actual heat according to the model provided by his lyrical, dynamic language, the energy of which would transform into re-warming a cooling globe.
In this way, Roman argues that Buffon's literary simulacrum of nature taught his readers not only about the history of nature and its laws, but also how to interact with nature differently, transferring to them the skills necessary to modify the surrounding world in order to better fit the desires and dreams of humanity. A new world could be more than imagined-it could be engineered through language.
Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction: Enlightenment natural history and literary invention
Style: combining rhetoric and knowledge
Harmonizing world and word
Natural history: between physics and history
The literary practice of natural history
Summary of chapters
1. Inventing natural language: the harmonization of mind
and world
Mathematical rules and natural laws
Buffon and natural law: relativizing perception
Inventing and intervening: Montesquieu and the natural
laws of history
Scaling the levels of perception: the evolving relationship
with nature in the Histoire naturelle
2. Generating heat: the energy of natural language
Introducing heat: De l'art d'ecrire
Heat: the material interface with nature
Between body and mind: the spirit of language
The energy of the natural historical text
3. Writing nature: the foundations of natural history
The 'Discours sur le style': translating the movement
of nature
The mise-en-scene of style in the Histoire naturelle, 1749
From style to history: reading temporality into
nature's story
4. Hypothesis and the energy of invention
Hypothesis and the invention of a verisimilar world
Hypothesis and heat: inventing the hidden mechanism
of nature
Making heat real: the hypothesis in the 'Epoques
de la nature'
5. Reinventing nature's heat
Buffon's theorization of heat
The natural history of human beings: a story of inventing
the temperate
Writing the future with heat
Conclusion: preserving the heat of the Histoire naturelle
Rethinking Buffon's intellectual legacy
Condorcet's Eloge de M. de Buffon
Saving style for posterity
The literary experiment
Bibliography
Index
by "Nielsen BookData"
