The most amazing breakthrough made by Cuvier was his discovery that fossils were the remains of living things that did not live today, and therefore living things became extinct during the evolutionary process.
Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric Cuvier, or simply Georges Cuvier, who lived between 1769 and 1832 and is undoubtedly described as one of the most brilliant minds in history by Dr. Ben Waggoner from Berkeley University, wrote in 1831 "Discourse on the Revolutions of the Surface of the Globe and the He published his book titled "Changes Thereby Produced In The Animal Kingdom".
Cuvier, single-handedly, with almost no help from anyone else, founded the field of vertebrate paleontology and developed comparative methods, one of our most powerful tools in organismal biology. Even some historians of science; He is also referred to as the "founder of three branches of science" because he laid the foundations of vertebrate paleontology, comparative anatomy, and geological dating.
Most importantly, Cuvier discovered that species have gone through extinctions throughout the history of the Earth. In other words, before Cuvier, no one even imagined that living things that do not live today might once have existed on Earth. Since Plato, it has been thought that every object (and living thing) we see around us is a distorted reflection of perfect forms and that nothing changes or can change.
Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric, Baron Cuvier (23 August 1769 – 13 May 1832), known as Georges Cuvier was a French naturalist and zoologist, sometimes referred to as the "founding father of paleontology". Cuvier was a major figure in natural sciences research in the early 19th century and was instrumental in establishing the fields of comparative anatomy and paleontology through his work in comparing living animals with fossils.
Cuvier also wrote and lectured on the history of science, which was too little to mention at the time. In addition to all these, Cuvier's works added fossils, that is, extinct creatures, to the classification of Carl von Linne, known as the Father of Taxonomy, which included only living creatures, and expanded the scope of classification science exponentially.
Cuvier was born on August 23, 1769, in a French-speaking community in Montbéliard, on the Jura Mountain, which was not yet under French rule but was administered under the Duchy of Württemberg. Between 1784 and 1788, he studied at the Carolinian Academy of Stuttgart, founded by the Duke himself. Afterward, he went to a very noble family in Normandy as a teacher. In this way, it was protected from the violence of the French Revolution. He began working as a local government official in Normandy and gained a reputation as a naturalist. In 1795, Étienne Geoffroy was invited to Paris by a vertebrate zoologist named St Hilaire. Accepting this invitation, Cuvier was appointed as an assistant and soon received the title of professor of animal anatomy at the National Museum of Natural History.
When Napoleon became ruler, he was still serving as a professor. During this period, he was sent to many different officer positions. These included the positions of Inspector General and Member of the State Council, to which he was directly appointed by Napoleon. France changed 3 kings, but Cuvier retained his council membership in each. Interestingly, he was able to continue his duty without interruption through 3 opposing governments (the Revolution, Napoleon, and the monarchy). During this period, he achieved successes that would change the course of the history of science. He later died in his bed during a cholera epidemic in Paris. During this entire period, he also continued his duty at the Natural History Museum. His energy and dedication to science left all his colleagues in awe. For his work, he was declared a Permanent Friend of France in 1819, and a few years before his death, he was declared a knight and baron.
Cuvier's Anti-Evolution
Cuvier viewed organisms as integrated structures. Each structure and part of each organism formed a whole. According to Cuvier, no part could be changed without compromising the functional integrity of the others. At the same time, he believed that the claims presented as evidence for evolution were not evolutionary changes, but processes of re-creation following mass extinctions, which he discovered for the first time.
Cuvier's most important guide was the biological textbooks written by Aristotle. In these, Aristotle wrote that every living thing forms a perfect whole and that it is like a machine created to serve a purpose. Cuvier said that every living thing has a purpose and that this purpose requires coordination between organs that will ensure the survival of the animal. For example, an animal with incisor front teeth and grinding molars is a herbivore. Then his nails take the shape of hoofs. The reason for this is to make it easier for the animal to run fast and escape from meat eaters.
In contrast, meat eaters' canines are designed for tearing apart, and accordingly, they have claws to hold prey instead of hooves. A carnivore's intestine is shorter than a herbivore's because it is harder to digest grass. Their stomachs are also shaped according to the food they eat. Birds of prey have curved beaks that are used to tear apart meat, claws that are used to hold their prey, and sharp eyes that can see prey from far away.
Cuvier did not believe in organic evolution or any of its implications. He thought that any change in an organism's anatomy meant that it could not survive. However, this was already decades before the rules of the Theory of Evolution were established.
By examining the mummified cats and paddy crows discovered by his teacher Geoffroy during Napoleon's invasion of Egypt, Cuvier showed that these animals were not much different from their counterparts living in France. Cuvier used these findings to show that living things did not evolve over time. But of course, at that time, scientists defending the fact of evolution, which was now slowly being discovered, opposed Cuvier's claims.
Perhaps Cuvier's most important and long-lasting contribution to biology is his presentation of extinctions as a fact of nature. A century before, Cuvier had already suggested and accepted by scientists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Robert Hooke that fossils were the remains of once-living creatures. Some other scientists claimed that these remains belonged to creatures that no longer existed.
The most amazing breakthrough made by Cuvier was his discovery that fossils were the remains of living things that did not live today, and therefore living things became extinct during the evolutionary process. Darwin, who integrated the works of Thomas Malthus and the works of Cuvier, who came after him, discovered that extinctions are inevitable because living things in nature struggle for survival and that the environment changes radically and seriously from time to time, and realized that this selection makes change inevitable. The foundations will be laid. Therefore, thanks to his studies and contributions to science, Cuvier built one of the strongest pillars of a theory he was against. However, if Cuvier had known that he had contributed to the transition from the erroneous view of evolution of his time to the modern view of evolution, he would probably have been proud and pleased.