How did Buffon's theory influence Darwin's thinking about evolution?

Answer 1

I'm not sure if Buffon's 'Histoire Naturelle' influenced Darwin so much as it must have angered him enough to want to disprove many of Buffon's outlandish and unfounded claims.

An example of the naive claims made by Buffon:

"In the Americas, therefore, animated Nature is weaker, less active, and more circumscribed in the variety of her productions; for we perceive, from the enumeration of the American animals, that the numbers of species is not only fewer, but that, in general, all the animals are much smaller than those of the Old World (Europe)."

Darwin surely must have known just how much of a Quack Buffon really was.

How about this observation by Buffon?:

"Hence in the New Continent, there are more running waters, in proportion to the extent of territory, than in the Old; and this quantity of water is greatly increased for want of proper drains or outlets. ... Besides, as the earth is every where there covered with trees, shrubs, and gross herbage, it never dries. The transpiration of so many vegetables, pressed close together, produce immense quantities of moist and noxious exhalations. In these melancholy regions, Nature remains concealed under her old garments, and never exhibits herself in fresh attire; being neither cherished nor cultivated by man, she never opens her fruitful and beneficent womb. As much, large land animals in the New Continent can not prosper nor recreate themselves."

This being said by a man who never traveled the world? Never saw or had knowledge of the arid South Western United States? Never heard of the American Buffalo or Grizzly Bear?

Seriously, I don't think Buffon influenced Darwin except perhaps to try harder to disprove so many misconceptions.


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However, as a mathematician Buffon influenced generations of mathematicians with his broadly accepted theory of probability. Perhaps Darwin might have been able to apply the theory of mathematical probability to evolution. But I can't say this for certain.