An Epicurean View on Nature and Laws : Natural and Civil History by Buffon and Montesquieu

Thierry Hoquet

My presentation will focus on a specific country in a specific period, i.e. France around the 1740s. I will use examples mainly from the French context in order to show the relevance of the topic of epicurism for two eighteenth-century French philosophers Buffon and Montesquieu.
I will begin with a description of Buffon’s conception of natural history, and then see how it helps us to think the relationship between man and nature ; and I wish to show that his work is in no way isolated and that it can be understood in the light of eighteenth century epicurism. 

What is natural history ? According to Jacques Roger, answering this question implies that we first understand what the word history stands for. Is history only the science of temporal events, as Roger himself seems to believe ? To understand natural history, we would then have to look for time in nature, and to admit that the question of the history of nature is nothing more than the question of the age of the earth.
Eighteenth century history has to be conceptualized in several forms, among which the natural and civil ones are only two examples. History does not deal only with naturalia or societies. When travellers publish the history of a country, it can be a natural history, and at the same time, a moral, ecclesiastical or political one ; This shows clearly that history has to be understood as a general method, shared by all historians, whether they study the animal kingdom or the British one.
Apart from its temporal meaning, I believe the term “ history ” takes a special relevance in regards to its methodical meaning of inquiry and description. We can therefore think of history as a unique science, a method of description that can be applied to various fields or subjects. History treats nature and culture in the very same way, making no distinction at all between natural laws and civil laws, working in a field prior to any dichotomy between nature and mankind. 
In this context, animal species are described as peoples, with their habits, manners, and specific techniques.  This is very clear in the study of insects, where, for instance, the political model of bees counterbalances the society of wasps. The beehive embodies a society where individuals are ready to sacrifice their own good and interests for the sake of the community, whereas wasps are the pirates and the cannibals of the flying nation, killing and robbing like Europeans.
In the same kind of conceptual knot, Montesquieu’s conception of the laws has been widely commented, precisely because he makes no distinction between civil and natural laws : “ Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations arising from the nature of things. ” (Spirit of the Laws, I, 1). The definition shows that every law is not an essence but a “ necessary relationship ” (rapport nécessaire) which has to be produced. The law “ arises ” (dérive) and can therefore be considered as the result of a process, not as a principle. Since a law can be natural and nonetheless, not be nature itself, we can think that in its process of arising, various factors can interfere and affect the result. In other terms, if laws arise, then we can transform them. Knowing this, we can, in a Baconian sense, develop some sort of legal technology, meaning : the knowledge of the process gives us the ability to interact with the law. Law as an arising relationship is nothing intemporal and intangible : it is always and nothing but the production of a system of constraints.
Considering those points, Montesquieu cannot isolate civil laws from other types of regulations and legislations : “ all beings have their laws ” — from the Almighty Creator to the tiniest creature, from “ physical ” bodies to “ moral ” creatures. This means nothing more than the fact that there are different kinds of relations between different beings. Even God acts observing the constant rules of His being. The same can be said of beasts, mankind, and angels (“ intelligences superior to man ”). 

But if history ignores the strong dichotomy between man and nature, what of this classification of this science in the tree of knowledge ? 
In their Système figuré des connaissances humaines, Diderot and D'Alembert form the tree of sciences by relating different knowledge to diverse faculties of the mind, rather than relating each science  to its object. There will therefore be three main scientific branches, following the three principal faculties of the mind : reason, memory and imagination. 
Both histories — natural and civil— grow out of the same branch. This common source allows a comparison of their methods : they belong, along with sacred and literary history, to the branch of knowledge derived from memory, a branch in which the factual records prevail.  Both, each in his own way, proceed by collecting facts or monuments. 
It is the Baconian interpretation of the role of natural history : to gather the fundamental pieces or archives which will provide the firm ground for science or natural philosophy. According to Bacon, it is not even necessary that natural history respect any kind of order : it can be the mere warehouse of knowledge, the place where raw materials are collected, i.e., put together, waiting for the right time to be part of a construction which will be “ physical ”, in so far as it deals with nature (phusis).
But in the same movement, Diderot and D'Alembert disconnect natural history from physics. Whereas natural history relies on memory, physics constitutes the last part of the sciences of reason. Therefore, according to their model, physics is closer to mathematics, on which it partially depends. But natural history is condemned to be the blind accumulation of data, not even close to being a real science. 
Buffon will reendorse the conception of natural history as the collecting of facts in order to write the history of nature ; but, unlike the Encyclopedists, he will strongly oppose the mathematical conception of physics. Natural history as the collection of data is the first step to the general knowledge of physical beings. 

What I aim to show, is that, that natural history has no mathematical foundation does not constitute valid grounds for debasing it as a legitimate science. History might be the name of another form of science, independant from the mathematical norms. Traditionally, if a science — namely natural history— does not adopt the mathematical way, it is immediately debunked in its aspiration to be a science : it is confined to the area of opinions, tales, and the spooky dreams of fancy : no place for a science.
Let us put this simply: D'Alembert and Diderot include mathematics as a full-fledged member of the natural sciences ; and at the same time, they refuse to give natural history the legitimacy of being the physical science, the complete science of natural beings. If every science has to be mathematical in order to fulfill the true sense of the word, and if natural history is just the collection of facts, or at best their description, then natural history is not entitled to be called a science. 
And yet Buffon confronts this pattern in two different ways: on one hand, he unbinds natural history from the mere collection of facts in order to describe it like physics.  Natural history is no longer a forerunner to science, it is science itself. On the other hand, Buffon disclaims mathematics in their pretention to be the right method to physical science. Instead of being the organon of science, mathematics are said to be the most abstract and unreal science. What mathematics deal with, is nothing more than fantasies. Their proper matter is nothing else than our own ideas. Therefore, according to Buffon, mathematical physics no longer is the science par excellence. It is just the paragon of a discourse that has lost any sense of reality. 

On the contrary, according to Buffon, natural history is the source of all other physical sciences and the mother of all arts. Natural history is characterized in a strong parallel with civil history. Both of them are grounded on fact, and together they build the complete body of sciences. If natural history is the core science for philosophers, civil history is more helpful to statesmen. What is central in the definition of history is that it has to know facts that cannot be made up by the human mind. Facts are to science what experience is to everyday life : it is the way men can know what is the very substance of knowledge : not the Platonic ideas, the Aristotelian forms, or the Cartesian substances, but the relations that things bear to each other and to us (“ les rapports que les choses naturelles ont entre elles et avec nous ”) .
Such a conception of natural history leaves aside the theological model of the “ Book of nature ” (written in mathematical signs, which have to be decrypted) and puts forward a questioning in terms of archives and documents.
A monument is not only an architectural building, but any kind of “ remains ” of the past that keeps memory of events. In a famous text of his Epochs of Nature, Buffon starts his reflexion with a reminder of several perplexing facts : one is the presence of “ elephants ” in the frigid North ; another is the widely reported presence of seashells on the highest mountaintops. Buffon refers to them as monuments. 
Buffon is not the first one to borrow the concept of monuments from civil historians. A very important category of natural monuments, the petrified seashells, has been coined as reliquia Diluvii (remains of the Flood) by several physico-theologians, like Scheuchzer and Bourguet. Does this mean that Buffon binds together the Book of Nature and the Holy Scripture ? In fact we will see that his comparative method excludes God from the natural sciences. Therefore, Buffon translates a theological concept into a physical one. In his theory, monuments have nothing to do with a divine revelation, they are just a way of acquiring certainty through factual evidence : they provide historians with irrefutable beliefs, just like demonstrations do in mathematics.  
We have to be cautious with the fact that Buffon’s theory apparently shares a common feature with providentialism. Buffon refers to the very  same fact (namely the presence of seashells) that  has been interpreted as proof of the biblical universal Flood. But far from reproducing the theological argument, Buffon offers a new interpretation of these facts. 
His method of studying nature (looking for monuments and archives) can be analyzed as a form of spinozian way of reading. In his Tractatus theologico-politicus, ch. 7, Spinoza declares : 
“ For the method of interpreting Scripture is not different from the method of interpreting Nature, and is in fact in complete accord with it. ” The model that Spinoza describes here is precisely a conception of history : “ For the method of interpreting nature consists essentially in composing a detailed study of nature from which, as being the source of our assured data, we can deduce the definitions of the things of Nature. ” In the same manner, the interpretation of Scripture must rest upon the solid ground of firm data and principles.

If Buffon’s monuments are not part of a providentialist theory, they do belong to an Epicurean constellation of theses. Of course, according to the seventeenth century tradition, Epicurian physics is an atomism. It makes up every single being with the combination of a number of various microscopical parts, whereas providentialism puts a stress on essences and substances. Buffon’s theory of the formation of bodies implies the organization of thousands of minute bodies, the  organic molecules.
According to the Epicurian philosophy, chance plays an important role in the emergence of forms. To a Providentialist, God’s wisdom has to oversee every production among the creatures. 
In other terms, the Epicurian world is active, full of powers which actually produce novelty, whereas the Providentialist view of the world is passive, without any true generation.
Buffon’s theory of the origins of the Earth implies an anti-teleological pattern. Buffon expels God out of his system, as a hypothesis that has to be avoided. Instead he puts forward the hypothesis of a physical body — a comet—  ruled by a physical force —attraction. And precisely, Newtonian attraction can be read as a new version of Epicurean chance. As Cudworth already noted, modern atheists do not refer to chance, as the Ancients did, but to the laws of nature.
More specifically, around 1750, the word Epicurism is a way to epitomize and at the same time to criticize an atheisitic view of nature and culture, as opposed to the Christian true and providentialist philosophy. Epicurism is a system of philosophy, in which physics, i.e. in the science of the natural beings, is the ground science. It starts therefore with matter (instead of Logic or Metaphysics, which would point to the Soul or to God).
Buffon’s natural history is such a physical theory, which refutes the validity of moral considerations. 
A/ there is no such thing as an organic “ hymen ”, this concept being nothing more than the embodiment of a mental or moral prejudice. Therefore, a physical history of mankind has to look for those physicized moral beliefs, in order to bring them back to their own (moral) nature. 
B/ On the contrary, many moral beliefs will have to be physicized. For instance, some people have to practice circumcision otherwise they would not be able to mate. Moreover, Buffon denies any relevance to the final causes. In a beehive, the form of the cells does not exhibit any intelligence, but is merely the result of geometrical and physical constraints. 
There is a kind of inner contradiction to his system: it is that, in a very Epicurean way, he combines the moral and the physical into one single reality. But at the same time, within this physico-moral whole, he gives the priority to one of the terms (namely the physical).
This reduction of moral substances to physical relationships is also very clear in Buffon’s attempt to pave the way for a new metaphysics. He describes the body and the soul not as opposite substances, but as mutually comparable.
In his text “ On human nature ”, Buffon clearly opposes two different ways of knowing the body and the soul. 
One is called “ way of negation ” (voie de négation) : everytime you attribute a specific feature to one of the substances, you must attribute symetrically the opposite feature to the second substance. For instance, if you call the body “ material, extended, divisible ”, you will have nothing more to say about the soul but that it is : immaterial, unextended, indivisible. This makes us understand, that the negative way is in fact, the way of Cartesian metaphysics. 
On the other end, Buffon recommends using a “ way of comparison ”, which consists in attributing positive proprieties to both terms of the comparison. For instance, in this Buffonian method for metaphysics, you call the soul simple, general, constant, and the body divisible, destructible, and extended. The soul commands and the body obeys. The soul can merge with anything, the body can’t unite with anything. This comparative method produces a large array of proprieties, and a much larger spectrum than the use of the negative way.  

This dominance of Epicurean physics is neither a mathematization, nor a deification of nature. 
What is nature for Buffon ? It is difficult to know since he refused to write the article “ Nature ” for Diderot and D'Alembert’s Encyclopedy. But from his texts, we can understand the following : 
A/ Nature can not be expressed mathematically. 
Whereas D'Alembert believes in the possibility of a mathematically founded rational mechanics, Buffon gives up the ideal of an a priori knowledge of the laws of nature. 
Comparison expresses this leap forward, of natural history out of the field of Galilean quantified physics. Nature, as Buffon describes it, is a body of laws, and laws are nothing more than relations.  
The laws of nature lack the Cartesian characteristics of clarity and distinctness of necessary truths.  But the failure of the Cartesian method comes also from the strong belief that the system of the world might be reached by strict operation of the mind, guided by the principles of logic. 
In Buffon’s sense, natural laws are not the product of our imagination, but neither are they resolved into a mere catalogue of particulars. The idea of generality is very important to the concept of law, and this generality, arising from the repetition and collection of singular events, anchors laws into the real world.
B/ The method of comparison states that no absolute essence standing by itself can be known or understood : the only things we are able to know must bear a link to us, and therefore be susceptible to comparison. No knowledge can be prior to experience. 
It is the very reason why natural history has to be an atheistic science : since God is the infinite being, He is in no way comparable or reducible to finite creatures. And having no relation to natural creatures, God is out of the reach of human knowledge and has therefore to be expelled out of science. In a way, this axiom of incomparability replays what Epicurus wrote in his second maxim : “ what cannot be felt is nothing to us ”. 

Conclusion : 
Each scientist offers a specific view of the organization and divisions of sciences. Many scholars have shown that pigeon-holing is an exercise in power. But natural history seems to be unfit to the grids of the classification schemes : it is neither a hard nor a soft science.
My treatment of eighteenth century natural sciences attempts to identify new concepts in the methodology of sciences. Instead of following the paths of the mechanization of the world picture, or of the progress of the quantifying spirit, I attempt to follow a different road : where natural history has to be tied to civil history, and where their methods share common features. 
In no way can one reduce eighteenth century philosophy to a tendency to make nature mechanical and calculable. The Kantian idea of a discontinuity between nature and culture is not relevant in the thought of two eighteenth century French philosophers, the naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon (1707-1788) and the jurist Charles-Louis Secondat de Montesquieu (1689-1755). Eighteenth century thinkers gave a different treatment of the problem of nature and culture, and of the traditional relations between moral and physical entities. 
Their work exemplify that the “ Enlightenment project ” can in no way be reduced to the ideal of a mathematicized mechanism.Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws (1748) links the judicial to the physical, in the same way that Buffon draws a parallel between two kinds of history (natural and civil). Buffon’s Natural History (1749-1789) is based on a logic of comparison, which, in turn, provides the ground for a relational ontology. On this logical basis, Buffon rejects applying mathematics to physics, considering that it is arbitrary to do so. 
However, Buffon’s attack on mathematicized physics does more than simply highlight the specific features of nature. In contrast to the mathematical method, which proceeds by proofs, quantifications and demonstrations, Buffon develops a positive conception of physical truth, involving moral certainties : he derives this concept from studies of historical and judicial probabilities.
Whereas Kant defines nature and liberty as two different kingdoms, Buffon and Montesquieu do not fit into the Cassirerian perspective on the Enlightenment. Rather they represent an Epicurean trend in philosophy. Thus, they assert that Nature, as a whole, is the body of laws ruling over interconnected beings ; and thence, Nature expels moral considerations from the sphere of physical knowledge. Physics is a science devoted to the description of the relationships between nature and ourselves, on one hand, and among nature’s various productions, on the other. It appears that, in this Epicurean tradition, history and natural sciences, rather than being set apart, are intimately linked as non-mathematical methods, since they share epistemological concepts (like probabilities as truths and monuments as proofs) and a unified body of creatures (physically interrelated).