Bible Connection

My child, if you accept my words
and treasure up my commandments within you,
making your ear attentive to wisdom
and inclining your heart to understanding,
if you indeed cry out for insight
and raise your voice for understanding,
if you seek it like silver
and search for it as for hidden treasures—
then you will understand the fear of the Lord
and find the knowledge of God.
For the Lord gives wisdom;
from his mouth come knowledge and understanding;
he stores up sound wisdom for the upright;
he is a shield to those who walk blamelessly,
guarding the paths of justice
and preserving the way of his faithful ones. — Proverbs 2:1-8

All about Georges Cuvier (1769-1832)

Georges Cuvier (Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric, Baron Cuvier) was a Christian who became one of the premier scientists of his time. He established comparative anatomy and paleontology as sciences. As most people of his time, he started with the assumption that God created the world and all creatures/species  bore the mark of his intention. Unlike most people of his time, he compared living animals with fossils and became the first to suggest certain animals had become extinct.

Cuvier is well-known for proposing “catastrophism,” the idea that Earth’s history has been shaped by sudden, catastrophic events. As a result of these events, he surmised, many species became extinct and new species emerged after each world-shaping event. He rejected the new idea of organic evolution, and continued to view species as fixed and unchanging, each one having a specific purpose and function. While Cuvier rejected evolution, his work on extinctions and comparative anatomy influenced later scientists, including Charles Darwin, who built upon his ideas. Darwin wrote to William Ogle in 1832, “Linnaeus and Cuvier have been my two gods, though in very different ways, but they were mere school-boys to old Aristotle.”

Georges Cuvier was born in Montbéliard, a French-speaking community in the Jura Mountains, near Switzerland, which was part of the Duchy of Württemberg at the time. During his lifetime, the Duchy was abolished. His parents were devout Lutherans and he remained one for his entire life. He attended the Karlsschule Academy in Stuttgart, Germany, where he learned to dissect animals and developed his interest in natural history. After graduation, he became a tutor for a noble family in Normandy, France. There he met the Abbot Teissier, an agronomist and member of the former Royal Academy of Science. Teissier shared with Cuvier his research on mollusks and, impressed by his encyclopedic knowledge, introduced him to his friends in Paris, where Cuvier settled in 1795 to embark on a brilliant career.

Cuvier was already well-known when, in 1812, he published his opus Recherches sur les Ossements Fossiles des Quadrupèdes (Researches on the Fossil Bones of Quadrupeds). He advanced a principle of “subordination of organs” (the organs of a living being affect each other and cooperate to bring about the same action through reciprocal reaction), and he established a new classification for vertebrates. These principles enabled him to reconstruct complete skeletons from bones and fossils, thus proving the existence of fauna so far unknown.

Cuvier invented the science of paleontology. He defended his theory of  cataclycisme (catastrophist scenario) in his Discours sur la Révolution du Globe (Discourse on the Revolutionary Upheaval on the Surface of the Earth) and opposed actualisme, a theory according to which the laws that determined past geological phenomena are identical to those that determine present phenomena.

British geologists made Cuvier an ally in connecting catastrophism to the Bible’s story of Noah and the flood. But there is little indication in Cuvier’s writings that this was part of his science.  Cuvier treated the Bible both as a book with divine authority and as a source of information about nature and history. In doing so, he distanced himself both from scholars finding natural laws in the Bible and from neologists making up theology to match the latest data. For Cuvier the Augustinian principle of “accommodation,” which pre-dates historical criticism, sufficed to keep scripture and geology relatively separate, as his interpretation of texts on the flood and on Old Testament chronology indicate. The accommodation principle suggests God adjusts revelation to fit human understanding and limitations. So theological, scientific or historical understanding are all provisional. God uses language for revelation but the revelation is beyond language and limited human capacity.

Cuvier distanced himself from a speculative geology based solely on Bible texts. For him, the Bible could be consulted for elements of natural history, such as the features of the earth, of organisms and of ancient civilizations. But any responsible use was limited by an awareness of the accommodated nature of the texts. He was working on stronger, empirical alternatives built on the standard belief that God’s work revealed in nature agrees with the revelation in scripture. Cuvier’s use of Bible texts, or of metaphysical ideas in general, is characterized by an insistence that any matter under consideration can stand on its own empirical feet. This means Cuvier is not a “scriptural geologist.” The general idea of geological catastrophes may have been inspired by the story of the Flood, and the definition of biological species by the story of Creation, but the hypotheses stand on their own merit.  (See “Georges Cuvier and the Use of Scripture in Geology” by Jitse M. van der Meer).

Georges Cuvier became a baron in 1818 and Chancellor of his university in 1820. He was President of the State Council and Director of Religious Affairs, and held many other positions and titles. He became one of the most powerful and decorated men of his era.

After he approached Napoleon for the organization of the Lutheran Church in Paris, it  was established in 1806 at the Oratoire des Billettes. In 1824, he was placed in charge of the Faculty of Protestant Theology and in 1828 was appointed director of non-Roman Catholic religions under King Charles X. He encouraged the creation of numerous pastoral positions, especially in the Montbéliard region. His daughter Clémentine devoted much of her time to Protestant charities.

Balzac’s quotation about the man he considered equal to Napoleon is well-known “Cuvier is married to the globe.”

Quotes

Why has not anyone seen that fossils alone gave birth to a theory about the formation of the earth, that without them, no one would have ever dreamed that there were successive epochs in the formation of the globe. — Discourse on the Revolutionary Upheavals on the Surface of the Earth

To spread healthy ideas among even the lowest classes of people, to remove men from the influence of prejudice and passion, to make reason the arbiter and supreme guide of public opinion; that is the essential goal of the sciences; that is how science will contribute to the advancement of civilization, and that is what deserves protection of governments who want to insure the stability of their power. — Historical Report on Advance in natural Sciences

Genius and science have burst the limits of space, and few observations, explained by just reasoning, have unveiled the mechanism of the universe. Would it not also be glorious for man to burst the limits of time, and, by a few observations, to ascertain the history of this world, and the series of events which preceded the birth of the human race? — Essay on the Theory of the Earth

More

Bio from the Virtual Museum of Protestantism.

Bio from the University of California Museum of Paleontology. [link]

This video shows the development of Cuvier’s assertions about extinction in  eight minutes. [link] 

November 30 is Remembrance Day for Lost Species due to human-caused catastrophe.

Noted paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould  (1941-2002) posited “punctuated equilibrium” as a more accurate view of species development. His views were reminiscent of Cuvier’s catastrophism. “Creationists” use Gould’s argument to make paleontological sense of Noah and the flood, and they have websites [link].

This video mentions Cuvier as part of a history of science lesson leading to Darwin. It is an interesting thirteen minutes! :

What do we do with this?

Would Georges Cuvier pass muster on a roll call of orthodox Evangelicals today? That remains to be seen. He was not an overt proponent for much more than his scientific discoveries. His faith was public, a given, but not something he intended to defend, scientifically. Faith influenced everything he thought and did, but he did not try to make everything fit under its Lordship, so to speak. Is he a lukewarm believer? Do you think he belongs in our historical examples of faith? Do you belong there?

Cuvier is less well known, these days, but in his own time he was very famous. He was involved in church, in politics, and was deeply involved in the scientific revolution impacting every area of thought. When he was 20 the French Revolution began. He was connected to Napoleon who became Emperor when he was 35. He rose to prominence during the Bourbon restoration, when he was made a baron. He died two years into the July Monarchy. His faith and his science survived all the turmoil. May your love and truth do the same.