Bully for Brontosaurus (37 page)

Now, the irony: Jenkin was, basically, a proponent of the laissez-faire school. Darwin, as I have often argued in these essays, established his central theory of natural selection by importing the structure of Adam Smith’s economic arguments into nature (with organisms struggling for individual reproductive success as the analogue of “each man, acting rationally for his own advantage” in Jenkin’s quotation—and with organic progress and balance of nature arising as a result, just as “the good of all” supposedly emerges from concatenated selfishness in Adam Smith’s system). How ironic then that Jenkin was belittled and disparaged for truly original work in the parent discipline of economics—but, thanks to Darwin’s greater geniality and sense of fairness, honored and acknowledged for similarly cogent contributions to a field that had so benefited, just a little before (in 1859 when Darwin published the
Origin
), from generous consideration of economic theories.

GALILEO AND LAVOISIER
have more in common than their brilliance. Both men are focal points in a cardinal legend about the life of intellectuals—the conflict of lonely and revolutionary genius with state power. Both stories are apocryphal, however inspiring. Yet they only exaggerate, or encapsulate in the epitome of a bon mot, an essential theme in the history of thinking and its impact upon society.

Galileo, on his knees before the Inquisition, abjures his heretical belief that the earth revolves around a central sun. Yet, as he rises, brave Galileo, faithful to the highest truth of factuality, addresses a stage whisper to the world:
eppur se muove
—nevertheless, it does move. Lavoisier, before the revolutionary tribunal during the Reign of Terror in 1794, accepts the inevitable verdict of death, but asks for a week or two to finish some experiments. Coffinhal, the young judge who has sealed his doom, denies his request, stating,
La république n’a pas besoin de savants
(the Republic does not need scientists).

Coffinhal said no such thing, although the sentiments are not inconsistent with emotions unleashed in those frightening and all too frequent political episodes so well characterized by Marc Antony in his lamentation over Caesar: “O judgment! thou are fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason.” Lavoisier, who had been under arrest for months, was engaged in no experiments at the time. Moreover, as we shall see, the charges leading to his execution bore no relationship to his scientific work.

But if Coffinhal’s chilling remark is apocryphal, the second most famous quotation surrounding the death of Lavoisier is accurate and well attested. The great mathematician Joseph Louis Lagrange, upon hearing the news about his friend’s execution, remarked bitterly: “It took them only an instant to cut off that head, but France may not produce another like it in a century.”

DISCOURS

D’OUVERTURE ET DE CLÔTURE

D U

COURS DE ZOOLOGIE

Donné dans le Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, l’an IX de la République,

PAR LE C
^EN
LACEPÈDE,

Membre du Séuat et de l’Institut national de France; I’un des Professeurs du Muséum d’Histoire naturelle; membre de l’Instuitut national de la République Cisalpine; de la société d’Arragon; de celle des Curieux de la Nature, de Berlin; de sociétés d’Histoire naturelle, des Pharnaciens, Philotechuique, Philomatique, et des Observateurs de l’homme, de Paris; de celle d’Agriculture d’Agen; de la seciété des Sciences et Arts de Montauban, du Lycée d’Alençon, etc.

A PARIS,

CHEZ PLASSAN, IMPRIMEUR-LIBRAIRE

L’AN IX DE LA REPUBLIQUE

Title page for Lacépède’s opening and closing addresses for the zoology course at the Natural History Museum in 1801–1802—but identified only as “year 9 of the Republic.”

The French revolution had been born in hope and expansiveness. At the height of enthusiasm for new beginnings, the revolutionary government suppressed the old calendar, and started time all over again, with Year I beginning on September 22, 1792, al the founding of the French republic. The months would no longer bear names of Roman gods or emperors, but would record the natural passage of seasons—as in
brumaire
(foggy),
ventose
(windy),
germinal
(budding), and to replace parts of July and August, originally named for two despotic caesars,
thermidor
. Measures would be rationalized, decimalized, and based on earthly physics, with the meter defined as one ten-millionth of a quarter meridian from pole to equator. The metric system is our enduring legacy of this revolutionary spirit, and Lavoisier himself played a guiding role in devising the new weights and measures.

But initial optimism soon unraveled under the realities of internal dissension and external pressure. Governments tumbled one after the other, and Dr. Guillotin’s machine, invented to make execution more humane, became a symbol of terror by sheer frequency of public use. Louis XVI was beheaded in January 1793 (Year I of the republic). Power shifted from the Girondins to the Montagnards, as the Terror reached its height and the war with Austria and Prussia continued. Finally, as so often happens, the architect of the terror, Robespierre himself, paid his visit to Dr. Guillotin’s device, and the cycle played itself out. A few years later, in 1804, Napoleon was crowned as emperor, and the First Republic ended. Poor Lavoisier had been caught in the midst of the cycle, dying for his former role as tax collector on May 8, 1794, less than three months before the fall of Robespierre on July 27 (9 Thermidor, Year II).

Old ideals often persist in vestigial forms of address and writing, long after their disappearance in practice. I was reminded of this phenomenon when I acquired, a few months ago, a copy of the opening and closing addresses for the course in zoology at the Muséum d’Histoire naturelle of Paris for 1801–1802. The democratic fervor of the revolution had faded, and Napoleon had already staged his
coup d’état
of 18 Brumaire (November 9, 1799), emerging as emperor de facto, although not crowned until 1804. Nonetheless, the author of these addresses, who would soon resume his full name Bernard-Germain-Etienne de la Ville-sur-Illon, comte de Lacépède, is identified on the title page only as C
^en
Lacépède (for
citoyen
, or “citizen”—the democratic form adopted by the revolution to abolish all distinctions of address). The long list of honors and memberships, printed in small type below Lacépède’s name, is almost a parody on the ancient forms; for instead of the old affiliations that always included “member of the royal academy of this or that” and “counsellor to the king or count of here or there,” Lacépède’s titles are rigorously egalitarian—including “one of the professors at the museum of natural history,” and member of the society of pharmacists of Paris, and of agriculture of Agen. As for the year of publication, we have to know the history detailed above—for the publisher’s date is given, at the bottom, only as “I’an IX de la République.”

Lacépède was one of the great natural historians in the golden age of French zoology during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. His name may be overshadowed in retrospect by the illustrious quartet of Buffon, Lamarck, Geoffroy, and Cuvier, but Lacépède—who was chosen by Buffon to complete his life’s work, the multivolumed
Histoire naturelle
—deserves a place with these men, for all were
citoyens
of comparable merit. Although Lacépède supported the revolution in its moderate first phases, his noble title bred suspicion and he went into internal exile during the Terror. But the fall of Robespierre prompted his return to Paris, where his former colleagues persuaded the government to establish a special chair for him at the Muséum, as zoologist for reptiles and fishes.

By tradition, the opening and closing addresses for the zoology course at the Muséum were published in pamphlet form each year. The opening address for Year IX, “Sur l’histoire des races ou principales variétés de l’espèce humaine” (On the history of races and principal varieties of the human species), is a typical statement of the liberality and optimism of Enlightenment thought. The races, we learn, may differ in current accomplishments, but all are capable of greater and equal achievement, and all can progress.

But the bloom of hope had been withered by the Terror. Progress, Lacépède asserts, is not guaranteed, but is possible only if untrammeled by the dark side of human venality. Memories of dire consequences for unpopular thoughts must have been fresh, for Lacépède cloaked his criticism of revolutionary excesses in careful speech and foreign attribution. Ostensibly, he was only describing the evils of the Indian caste system in a passage that must be read as a lament about the Reign of Terror:

At the end of his address, Lacépède returns to the familiar theme of political excesses and makes a point, by no means original of course, that I regard as the central structural tragedy in the working of any complex system, including organisms and social institutions—the crushing asymmetry between the need for slow and painstaking construction and the potential for almost instantaneous destruction:

The chilling final line, a gloss on Lagrange’s famous statement about the death of Lavoisier, inspired me to write about the founder of modern chemistry, and to think a bit more about the tragic asymmetry of creation and destruction.

Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, born in 1743, belonged to the nobility through a title purchased by his father (standard practice for boosting the royal treasury during the
ancien régime
). As a leading liberal and rationalist of the Enlightenment (a movement that attracted much of the nobility, including many wealthy intellectuals who had purchased their titles to rise from the bourgeoisie), Lavoisier fitted an astounding array of social and scientific services into a life cut short by the headsman at age fifty-one.

Lavoisier and his wife as painted by the great artist David, who later became a fervent supporter of the revolution.
THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, PURCHASE, MR. AND MRS. CHARLES WRIGHTSMAN GIFT
, 1977.

We know him best today as the chief founder of modern chemistry. The textbook one-liners describe him as the discoverer (or at least the namer) of oxygen, the man who (though anticipated by Henry Cavendish in England) recognized water as a compound of the gases hydrogen and oxygen, and who correctly described combustion, not as the liberation of a hypothetical substance called phlogiston, but as the combination of burning material with oxygen. But we can surely epitomize his contribution more accurately by stating that Lavoisier set the basis for modern chemistry by recognizing the nature of elements and compounds—by finally dethroning the ancient taxonomy of air, water, earth, and fire as indivisible elements; by identifying gas, liquid, and solid as states of aggregation for a single substance subjected to different degrees of heat; and by developing quantitative methods for defining and identifying true elements. Such a brief statement can only rank as a caricature of Lavoisier’s scientific achievements, but this essay treats his other life in social service, and I must move on.

Lavoisier, no shrinking violet in the game of self-promotion, openly spoke of his new chemistry as “a revolution.” He even published his major manifesto,
Traité élémentaire de chimie
, in 1789, starting date of the other revolution that would seal his fate.

Lavoisier, liberal child of the Enlightenment, was no opponent of the political revolution, at least in its early days. He supported the idea of a constitutional monarchy, and joined the most moderate of the revolutionary societies, the Club of ’89. He served as an alternate delegate in the States General, took his turn as a
citoyen
at guard duty, and led several studies and commissions vital to the success of the revolution—including a long stint as
régisseur des poudres
(director of gunpowder, where his brilliant successes produced the best stock in Europe, thus providing substantial help in France’s war against Austria and Prussia). He worked on financing the revolution by
assignats
(paper money backed largely by confiscated church lands), and he served on the commission of weights and measures that formulated the metric system. Lavoisier rendered these services to all governments, including the most radical, right to his death, even hoping at the end that his crucial work on weights and measures might save his life. Why, then, did Lavoisier end up in two pieces on the
place de la Révolution
(long ago renamed, in pleasant newspeak,
place de la Concorde
)?