In centuries past, when Europeans began to emerge from a long period of (self-imposed) ignorance and a few thought leaders started to report findings based on actual observations and experiments rather than religious dogma, church officials took a dim view of the whole thing. Whether because they enjoyed the positions of power they had, or whether they were true believers who didn’t want anything challenging their dogma, they tried to suppress new information and new findings.
Georges-Louis Leclerc, also known by his noble title, Compte de Buffon, was born September 7, 1707, into the thick of the controversy. He was born into the equivalent of a middle-class family of civil servants, not into nobility. But his godfather died when Leclerc was just seven, and left the kid an enormous fortune. Probably with his parents’ guidance, Leclerc purchased a large estate in the village of Buffon and moved the family to Dijon, where the adults bought their way into much higher-level civil service offices.
When Leclerc was in his late teens he studied law, then moved to the University of Angers (still in France) to study math and medicine. In 1730 he met the Duke of Kingston, a rich young English bro, and the two spent a year traveling the Mediterranean. Even today there are rumors about that trip — duels, secret trips to England, and various other intrigues — but maybe they’re just rumors. In any case, Leclerc’s mother died when he was in his 20s, and he returned to Dijon to point out to his father that the family fortune was actually his, not his father’s. The old man had actually sold off the village estate! Leclerc bought it back, added “de Buffon” to his name, and moved to Paris to study math and science and became the equivalent of an angel investor — and he was pretty good at it; his fortune kept growing.
He was pretty good at his studies, too. In Paris he hung around with leading intellectuals like Voltaire and held his own — he made some important advancements in math and probability theory, and there’s still a problem named after him: Buffon’s needle. He got interested in natural sciences too, and was appointed the head of the major botanical garden in France Jardin du Roi. He built it up into a major research center — it’s still there, still a working botanical school, and still very impressive.
He published a 36-volume treatise on natural history that was “read by every educated person in Europe.” Quite a while before Darwin, he suggested that species “improve” over time and even speculated that changes in the climate spurred changes in species. He also theorized about the creation of the solar system, and got it fairly close to correct when he guessed that the planets and the sun had a common origin.
But remember that bit about the theologians of the time being uncomfortable with science and its findings? Leclerc was called several times before the theological committee at the University of Paris because of his various writings. As a rich guy (and in later life a Comte, thanks to the king declaring that the village he bought was its own county), he probably didn’t want any trouble, so each time he said “sure, you’re right, I take it all back.” But afterward, Leclerc may have muttered something like Galileo’s comment after his own encounter with church authorities: “and yet it moves.”
