Georges Cuvier, fossil bones, and geological catastrophes

(and, as significantly, so far ignored by historians). Historians of science and medicine who are not interested in the minutiae of the chemistry of life will, nevertheless, find the volume an extremely useful reference source. There are helpful names and subject indices and a generous 184 pages of bibliography. Such readers will particularly enjoy the three introductory chapters, partly drawn from the author's A skeptical biochemist (1992), that are new to this edition. Here Fruton offers helpful distinctions between the "research disciplines" created autonomously by the interplay of practising and publishing biologists and chemists, and "academic disciplines" that are promoted (or otherwise) by institutional, administrative or government policies. He also provides a wonderful worldwide survey and guide to the institutional settings in which the interplay of biology and chemistry has taken place, and an intriguing series of reflections on the way that biological and chemical issues (such as vitalism, teleology, reductionism and organization) have continued to fascinate philosophers, even if biochemists themselves have ceased to be directly influenced by philosophy. Fruton emerges as a happy-go-lucky realist and empiricist. To Paul Feyerabend's quip that scientists do not solve problems because they have a method or theory of rationality but "because they have studied it a long time", he forcibly adds "and by putting more women and men on the job". fossil bones, and geological catastrophes. new translations & interpretations of the primary texts, Georges Cuvier, pioneer of vertebrate palaeontology and comparative anatomist at the Museum national d'histoire naturelle in Paris from 1795 until his death in 1832, was arguably the leading scientist of France-and the most brilliant naturalist in Europe-during the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Modem biographers have produced excellent analyses of his careers as zoologist and scientific administrator, but his place in the history of geology has not been well preserved. Anglophone geologists of the later nineteenth century stressed his leadership of the losing side in two crucial debates: uniformitarianism versus catastrophism in the history of the earth, and evolutionism versus species fixity in the history of life. To make the victors' history as clear and simple as possible, Cuvier the catastrophist was cast as a miracle-monger anxious to find support for the Bible in the record of the rocks, and thus an obstructionist to proper geological theory. Twentieth-century geological textbooks perpetuated this flawed, positivist interpretation. During the past three decades, however, Cuvier's geological beliefs and accomplishments have …