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2011
- handle: 10670/1.7m4rlh
- halshs: halshs-00775369
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Vehicle bodies Animals and plants Relationships, Animal-plant Animal-plant interactions Plants and animals Plant-animal relationships Plant-animal interactions Interactions, Animal-plant Natural science Sciences Science of scienceCiter ce document
François Duchesneau, « Louis Bourguet and the model of organic bodies », HAL-SHS : histoire, philosophie et sociologie des sciences et des techniques, ID : 10670/1.7m4rlh
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This paper gives us a picture of the way Leibniz's theories of machines of nature, monads, and organic bodies came to influence naturalists in the early eighteenth century. A key figure in this transition was Louis Bourguet, a correspondent of Leibniz and Swiss natural philosopher who recast Antonio Vallisneri's views on preformation and generation in Leibnizian mould. In his Lettres philosophiques (1729), Bourguet developed a systematic conception of what he termed the "organic mechanism of plants and animals" to differentiate it from formative processes taking place in the inorganic world, such as crystallizations. His elaborate analyses of the generative processes that characterize plants and animals influenced later theorists, such as Buffon and Bonnet.