The Discoverers (Knowledge Series Book 2)

by Daniel J. Boorstin

It was left to Buffon to open the vistas of modern biology by bringing the whole earth and all its plants and animals onto the stage of history. After Buffon it was harder to believe that anything on earth was changeless. He had glimpsed the “mystery” of species. Now there was time and time to spare for varieties of animals to emerge or become extinct, making the whole world a museum of surprising fossils. By stretching the calendar, Buffon widened the stage for the naturalists’ imagination. The creation could be observed not merely as a Linnaean panorama in space, but as a continuous drama in time. “Nature’s great workman is Time. He marches ever with an even pace, and does nothing by leaps and bounds, but by degrees, gradations and successions he does all things; and the changes which he works—at first imperceptible—become little by little perceptible, and show themselves eventually in results about which there can be no mistake.”