The vegetal model: Buffon's general theory of reproduction

This article examines Buffon's general theory of reproduction, concentrating on his discussion of the similarities and differences between animals and plants and his explanation of nourishment, development and reproduction as effects of the same general cause. In the 'First Discourse' and various of the chapters of Volume II of Buffon's Natural History he seems to affirm two contradictory claims concerning the distinction between animals and plants: both that this distinction is absolute and indubitable and that it is false and insupportable. In this article I argue that this apparent contradiction is explained by distinguishing between what are for Buffon two distinct tasks in natural history: first, the classification of the natural world and the natural history of particular animals and plants; and second, enquiry into the general phenomena of life (nutrition, development and reproduction). It is in the first task, I argue, that the distinction between animals and plants is maintained, while it is largely inapplicable in the second. Distinguishing between these two tasks then also allows us to discern in Buffon's work, I argue, an implicit conceptual distinction between the empirical classificatory group of plants (les végétaux), distinguished from animals, and the vegetal (le végétal), concerning processes common to both animals and plants. The emphasis on the comparison of animals and plants, together with the conceptual distinction between plants (vegetables) and the vegetal, further allows us to see, I argue, that Buffon's general theory of reproduction is based on a vegetal model. That is, analysis of the details of Buffon's theory shows not just-as almost all of his predecessors agreed-that animals and plants share the vegetative functions of nutrition, development and reproduction, but that the process of vegetative multiplication provides the model for reproduction in general. Theories of generation and embryological development based on analogies with the plant seed were still not uncommon in the eighteenth century. But I argue that Buffon's general theory of reproduction presents something different in being based on the model of what we now call 'vegetative reproduction' (a new whole growing from a part) and in explaining the seed in these terms too. I conclude with some brief reflections on the implications of this vegetal understanding of Buffon's general theory of reproduction for other aspects of Buffon's natural history, particularly the introduction of the novel terminology of 'reproduction', the criticism of pre-existence theories and the controversy concerning the theory of the sexes of plants.