Overview

Jean Octave Edmond Perrier was a French zoologist who lived through the tumult of British Darwinism and Lyellism, and reminds us in this revealing account that French scientists had much to contribute to such perennial topics as evolution, catastrophism and creationism. While very much a product of the Third Republic, Perrier’s account also aimed to outline timeless issues and permanent advances in taxonomic and developmental biology since classical Greece and Rome. In this aim he succeeds with surprisingly modern perspectives for a book first published in 1884. Perrier was born May 9, 1844 at Tulle, the son of the principal of a school which now bears his name, Lycée Edmond Perrier. In 1864 he was accepted to the École Normale Supérieure, where he was strongly influenced by Louis Pasteur and Henri de Lacaze-Duthiers. After working for three years at a high school in Agen, he obtained a post of naturalist-aid at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle (1868), advancing in that institution to Chair of Natural History of Molluscs, Worms and Corals (1876–1903) and then Director of the museum (1900–1919) and Chair of Comparative Anatomy (1903–1921). Previous directors of the museum included many of the scientists he discusses in this book: George Cuvier (1822–1823, 1826–1827, 1830–1831), Isidore Geoffrey St Hilaire (1860– 1861), and Alphonse Milne-Edwards (1891–1900). Perrier’s own research on echinoderms and earthworms took him on several expeditions in 1880-1885, mostly to Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts, but also to the Caribbean.

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From the reviews: The 20 chapters cover a range of pre-Darwin naturalists and scholars, primarily discussing their ideas with admirable conciseness and perspective. Rarely does a relatively short opus address so much in such detail as this one. Cook and Retallack supply a comprehensive glossary of terms and a Biographical Index. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All collections. (F. S. Szalay, Choice, Vol. 47 (7), March, 2010) The Philosophy of Zoology Before Darwin. A Translated and Annotated Version of the Original French Text by Emond Perrier is a welcome and much-needed addition to a huge volume of literature in the history of biology. As McBirney notes in his introduction to this translation, he was surprised to find Perrier s history so ignored within the canon of history of biology. Perrier s history provides a unique synthesis of pre-Darwinian philosophical assumptions he traces these premises throughout the centuries and millennia of their influence in his short, informative, biographical sketches. The book is a solid reminder of a time in the history of biology when history itself carried legitimate explanatory power. Review by Lydia Pyne, PaleoAnthropology 2010

From the reviews: The 20 chapters cover a range of pre-Darwin naturalists and scholars, primarily discussing their ideas with admirable conciseness and perspective. Rarely does a relatively short opus address so much in such detail as this one. Cook and Retallack supply a comprehensive glossary of terms and a Biographical Index. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All collections. (F. S. Szalay, Choice, Vol. 47 (7), March, 2010) The Philosophy of Zoology Before Darwin. A Translated and Annotated Version of the Original French Text by Emond Perrier is a welcome and much-needed addition to a huge volume of literature in the history of biology. As McBirney notes in his introduction to this translation, he was surprised to find Perrier 's history so ignored within the canon of history of biology. Perrier 's history provides a unique synthesis of pre-Darwinian philosophical assumptions he traces these premises throughout the centuries and millennia of their influence in his short, inform

From the reviews: The 20 chapters cover a range of pre-Darwin naturalists and scholars, primarily discussing their ideas with admirable conciseness and perspective. Rarely does a relatively short opus address so much in such detail as this one. Cook and Retallack ... supply a comprehensive glossary of terms and a `Biographical Index.' ... Summing Up: Highly recommended. All collections. (F. S. Szalay, Choice, Vol. 47 (7), March, 2010) The Philosophy of Zoology Before Darwin. A Translated and Annotated Version of the Original French Text by Emond Perrier is a welcome and much-needed addition to a huge volume of literature in the history of biology. As McBirney notes in his introduction to this translation, he was surprised to find Perrier's history so ignored within the canon of history of biology. Perrier's history provides a unique synthesis of pre-Darwinian philosophical assumptions-he traces these premises throughout the centuries and millennia of their influence in his short, informative, biographical sketches. The book is a solid reminder of a time in the history of bi-ology when history itself carried legitimate explanatory power. Review by Lydia Pyne, PaleoAnthropology 2010

Author Information

Alex McBirney, a retired professor of Geology at the University of Oregon is the author of several books on the history of science, as well as his many studies on volcanology and igneous petrology. He developed an interest in Darwin while working in the Galapagos Islands and learned about Perrier’s long-overlooked book through his friend, Philippe Janvier, at the Museum of Natural History in Paris. He saw that it was a very scholarly book of broad interest, but after reading few pages he realized why it had been almost totally ignored. Much of the text is very convoluted and almost incomprehensible, even to native French speakers. Enlisting the help of two colleagues, Gregory Retallack, a paleontologist, and Stanton Cook, a biologist, he undertook the task of translating it into a more readable form, so that it would be available to wide audience. The text has been annotated to take into account more recent work, and an extensive Glossary and Biographical Index have been added to provide a ready reference to the technical terms and persons cited in the text.

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