Buffon (1707-1788) and Poland.

Abstract

Thirty years ago, at the occasion of the tercentenary of the birth of Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon (1707–1788), one of the leading figures in French science and literature of the Enlightenment, a volume devoted to the relationships between him and Poland was published. Still today, it is one of the few contributions to the study of the circulation of knowledge and ideas between France and Central and Eastern Europe in the eighteenth century. Here, we analyze its contents, and, more generally, we outline a reflection on the historiography of Buffon’s relations with the European culture of his time. We briefly examine the different agents of diffusion and their role in the (often biased) transmission of scientific texts and conceptions from one country to another, and the ways these agents have been studied by historians in Buffon’s case, in particular by the authors of Buffon (1707–1788) et la Pologne. Certainly, this work did not attempt to bring general conclusions, but it contributed to give a first sketch of the complex networks of relationships between French and Polish naturalists in the late eighteenth century. It would be valuable, nevertheless, to develop a more comprehensive approach of these processes, to consider multipolar rather than bilateral exchanges, and to take into account the role of other (German, Russian…) cultural zones.