Les epoques de la nature

Codice: SC2123
Autore: Buffon
Titolo: Les epoques de la nature
Sottotitolo: Par monsieur le Comte De Buffon intendant du jardin & du cabinet du roi, de l'Academie francoise, de cella des sciences &c.
Editore: De l'Imprimerie Royale
Luogo Edizione: Paris
Anno Edizione: 1780
Formato: in 16th
Volumi: Two volumes
Legatura: Leather with title and gold decorations on the spine
Particolari: First edition - Decorated cuts and flyleaves
Lingua: French
Stato: France
Numero pagine: 246; 264
Difetti: Ink note on the endpaper of both volumes.
Note: Rare first separate edition of 1780 of the most important work of the naturalist George Louis Le Clerc, Count of Buffon (1707-1788) which marked the beginning of historical geology. The volumes collect Buffon's reflections on historical cosmology, the history of the Earth, the origin and degeneration of species. The Author proposes a new chronology of the history of the earth divided into seven eras with an age of 75,000 years, putting forward hypotheses on the appearance of the first living beings, their migration before the separation of the continents and their differentiation as a function of the environment. Theories later condemned by the Sorbonne. Buffon was an exponent of the scientific movement linked to the Enlightenment and his theories influenced subsequent generations of naturalists, in particular Jean Baptiste Lamarck and Charles Darwin.