Buffon

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707-1788), was the most important naturalist of 18th-century Europe. His canniness, connections and pragmatism contributed enormously to his meteoric rise. Today Buffon is a dim and shadowy figure, but Roger makes clear that our debt to him is greater than most of us realize. That Roger is more a historian of science than a biographer serves him well and ill throughout. Despite its size, Roger's narrative is thin on the more intimate details of his subject's life: Buffon's family history and childhood are over in a chapter and a half; his political maneuverings are more matters of conjecture than of fact. This paucity is no doubt owing to Buffon's relatively few personal papers. On the other hand, Buffon's 36-volume Histoire naturelle (System of Nature) is a virtual playground for the curious, and Roger makes good use of it to elaborate on 18th-century views of embryology, anthropology, zoology, botany, taxonomy, geology and astronomy. Though this version of Buffon's life suffers from a sometimes too-flat prose and an unnecessary defensiveness about his many errors, Roger succeeds in giving his subject the attention he deserves. (June)