This particular controversy, between Voltaire and John Needham, has a number of contemporary themes. Put at its simplest, it is a feud about generation, i.e., reproduction, the formation of new life, new individuals. The principal question was ... where do embryos come from ... are they formed spontaneously or were they all preformed at the time of creation? In the 4th century BC Aristotle suggested that living things do not need parents and this introduced a controversial issue called "spontaneous generation", the theme underlying this dispute. He claimed there were two categories of live beings; those which are born from a seed and those which are born from the rot. The term spontaneous generation results then from the idea that live beings can, by some "vital force", emerge from the inert matter. It was a controversy that, like so many we witness today, has, at its heart, a large measure of religious beliefs, with generous helpings of dogma and a large side-order of ignorance. At stake was the fear by many, including Voltaire, that Needham's claims would support atheism and materialism. It was thought by many that the theory of spontaneous generation implied that life could originate by a chance, random combination of substances. This was so contrary to existing religious beliefs, and to a natural philosophy still very much trying to demonstrate the existence of a benificent Creator, that it generated heated opposition. In a sense, many of the issues raised by the antagonists were similar to those in the conflict of creationism vs evolution, which, as you are well aware, also produces a great deal of controversy today.
The battle we're exploring today, figure 1, occurred between Voltaire - a preformationist - and, principally, John Needham - an epigenesist; we'll look at the meaning of those terms in a moment. It is very closely related to some contemporary issues that also precipitate heated debate; for example,
Over a period of 10 years or so Voltaire took it upon himself to try to expose Needham, a well-known English naturalist, as a "dangerous biological thinker". Today, their feud may appear foolish, absurd, stupid, perhaps even pointless, but the vituperous, insulting and underhand methods used by the two major antagonists are not uncommon today; one only needs to think about recent, presidential and senatorial election campaigns. In our battle, for example, Voltaire suggested that Needham was a homosexual, and Needham, in reply, referred scornfully to "so-called sages" who rigorously profess, but do not practice, celibacy - a shot at Voltaire's several love affairs, one of which was with a married woman and another with his niece. It's a pity that similar, scurrilous attempts at character assassination are still with us today ... we may profess not to like it, but it does make good reading!
The Generation Controversy actually involves a number of major players and so by way of setting the background, I should start off by introducing them briefly to you. The central character is François Marie Arouet, much better known by his pen-name Voltaire, see figure 2, whose style, wit, intelligence and keen sense of justice made him one of France's greatest writers and philosophers. During this battle, Voltaire, in roughly 1 year - from 1752 to 1753 - takes on and disposes with Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698 - 1758), one of France's leading scientists of the day. His longest dispute was with John Turbeville Needham (1713-1781), an English microscopist; their dispute was to continue for well over 10 years, from 1765 until Voltaire's death in 1778. The Comte de Buffon (1707-1788), a French mathematician, was not directly attacked by Voltaire, but he became involved, albeit at the periphery, because of his association with Maupertuis and his strong support of Needham. Also thrown into the mix, was Gottfried Leibniz, or rather Leibniz's philosophies, since he had died in 1716.
According to his birth certificate, Voltaire, see figure 3, was born on November 21, 1694 in Paris. As we shall see, controversy and dispute were the rule rather than the exception in his life, and that started very early on, for he would always claim he was born on February 20! He received an excellent education at a Jesuit school. He left school at age 16 and soon formed friendships with a group of Parisian aristocrats. Paris society sought his company for his cleverness, humor and remarkable ability to write verse. In 1717, he was arrested for writing a series of satirical verses ridiculing the French government and was imprisoned in the Bastille. During his time in prison he wrote his first major play, Oedipe, which received great success in 1718.
In 1726 he insulted a powerful nobleman and was forced to choose between two options; imprisonment or exile! He chose the latter and lived in England from 1726-1729. While he was in England he became attracted to the philosophy of John Locke and Isaac Newton. In 1733, after returning to Paris, he published a book of letters about English customs and institutions, called Letters on the English. However, some of his other publications, such as his Lettres Philosophiques, a set of fictitious letters published in 1734 that were primarily a demonstration of the benign effects of religious tolerance, were very controversial being considered highly critical of the French government. A warrant for his arrest was issued in May 1734 and he was forced to flee Paris. He took refuge in the château of the Marquise du Châtelet at Cirey in Champagne - we'll hear more of her later - where he felt he would be much less subject to censorship.
Although he was not a scientist, Voltaire developed a keen interest in both the physical and biological sciences. When he was exiled in England, he didn't meet Newton but in 1738 he published Elements of Newton's Philosophy, a book that did much to bring Newton's ideas to the attention of the general population of continental Europe. Of course, Newton's science was well known to educated scholars through his books, the Principia Mathematica and Optiks, but much less was known about Newton's philosophy. In his book, Voltaire recounts amusingly what appears to be one of the first stories that links Newton with that all-important apple; he says;
Thus, it appears it was Voltaire that helped establish the legend of Newton and the apple!
Through his association with scientists and philosophers, Voltaire became one of the earliest science writers, that is, someone who is not necessarily a scientist themselves, but can convert complex scientific ideas into readable prose. During this period of his life, from 1733-1749, he had a remarkable collaborator and lover, Gabrielle Émilie le Tonnelier de Breteuil, the Marquise du Châtelet, shown in figure 4, whom we met briefly earlier. She was a remarkable (albeit married) woman who had a good measure of wealth, charm and brains, and many lovers! Émilie was delighted with the splendor and extravagance of court life, and she developed a taste for all things expensive. She had a large wardrobe of gowns, shoes, and accessories, and she loved diamonds. Years later Voltaire wrote,
From 1745 until her death - in childbirth in 1749 - she worked unceasingly translating Newton's Principia into French; it was published posthumously in part, with a preface by Voltaire in 1756, and in toto in 1759. In fact, she had a much better understanding of Newton's work than Voltaire having been tutored some years previously by a scientist named Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (another character in our story whom we'll meet again, shortly).
At the end of 1758, after various travels, including Prussia, Voltaire, now aged 64, purchased an estate called "Ferney" in Geneva, Switzerland, near the French-Swiss border and a another property, Tourney, just on the French side of the border. This is where he lived until shortly before his death; by crossing the frontier he made sure he could safeguard himself against police incursion from either country! Ferney soon became the intellectual capitol of Europe. Throughout his years in exile, Voltaire produced many books, plays, pamphlets and letters. He was considered by many as the voice of reason, and he was an outspoken critic of religious intolerance and persecution. He returned to Paris to a hero's welcome in February 1777, when he was 83, but it proved too much for him. In May 1778 he was stricken with uremia and he died on May 30. Voltaire had witnessed Newton's fine, state funeral while he was in London and he hoped he would have an impressive funeral also. He got his wish but it was 13 years after his death. Because of his criticism of the Church, he was given a hasty Christian burial outside Paris at an Abbey in Champagne; but by popular demand, in 1791 his remains were moved with much pomp and ceremony during the Revolution to a resting place at the newly built Pantheon in Paris. After 1800 he was held at least partly responsible, by many, for formenting the troubles that led to the French Revolution and that may have been the reason why, in 1814, members of an ultra-right wing religious group stole his remains and just dumped them.
During his lifetime Voltaire produced a veritable flood of poems, letters, plays, histories, political pamphlets and stories. Some he signed, others he left unattributed because, in his day, in France, many of his themes, if attributable, could result in his torture and death and, as we have already seen, he not only spent time in the Bastille but on at least two occasions was forced to flee Paris.
Few "celebrities" escaped his wit and criticism; he fought many general campaigns against injustice and intolerance, and absolutist power in both church and state. He fought some personal vendettas as well, as we shall see, and generally, his attacks were devastating. He once commented (1766):
Voltaire was the undisputed master of understatement and nuance. After a dispute with Frederick II (the Great), King of Prussia, over a pamphlet he published in 1752 that was critical of Maupertuis, he wrote a letter to his niece, Mademoiselle Denis - another of his lovers - telling her that he was compiling a Dictionary for the Use of Kings. Examples included:
And one never knew where Voltaire would strike next!
So, what caused Voltaire to become one of the central figures of the Generation Controversy? Although he rejected organized religion he believed there was harmony and order in the universe and, basically, that pointed to the existence of an intelligence as a basic mover. As he put it - perhaps because of his admiration of Newton:
Also, he was a preformationist, an idea of reproduction and generation that dominated the first half of the 18th century. Preformationists believed that
One Swiss naturalist of the time claimed that preformation was
which shows clearly it was as much philosophical as it was a scientific theory. In fact, as we have already seen, its roots date back to Aristotle. In one version of the theory, called "emboîtement" (or encasement), it was thought that each embryo contained within it a huge number of other embryos, all waiting for their appropriate time to be "born". Thus, all embryos had been created by God at The Creation and placed in the first female of each species. (In fact, Leibniz was a firm supporter of emboîtement ... we can only wonder what comment Newton would have made!)
Voltaire argued, as preformationists had to, that the world was now as it always had been. And so, when questioned later by Le Comte de Buffon about marine fossils found in the Alps, he dismissed the idea by suggesting quite simply that they were remains of meals taken by passing travelers!
The other characters in this controversy who were to feel Voltaire's sharp criticism, namely Maupertuis, Le Comte de Buffon and John Needham, were all epigenesists. They believed that in reproduction and generation, each embryo is formed anew and spontaneously from other, disorganized, matter. In framing their ideas and philosophies, epigenesists sought for much more physical ideas that had proved successful in the fields of physics and astronomy. For example, since Newton had shown that the movement and motion of inanimate matter was controlled by the force of gravitation, they believed that life was driven and controlled by a "force" also, such as the "vis viva" (or life force) introduced by Leibniz.
Although the specifics of the individual theories of Maupertuis, Buffon and Needham differed in detail - for example, Needham believed that inanimate matter required an additional special, vital, "force" to produce life - only Needham had done any significant laboratory work. Furthermore, Needham was to prove to be the most resilient foe.
The first serious attack on Aristotle's idea of spontaneous generation was made in 1668 by Francesco Redi, a Florentine and a natural philosopher to the Tuscan court that had been the patron of Galileo. Using what has been described as the "first proper experiment in biology", he showed that maggots, which appear in rotting meat, do not appear spontaneously, but come from eggs laid by flies. Nevertheless, in spite of his well-executed experiment, the belief in spontaneous generation remained strong, and even Redi himself continued to believe it occurred in some circumstances.
Voltaire had a number of reasons for disliking and attacking Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, pictured in figure 5. Maupertuis was born on September 28, 1698 in St. Malo, France. He was to become a leading figure in 18th century science in Europe and if other disputes with Voltaire were not enough, Voltaire's lover and colleague, Gabrielle Émilie le Tonnelier de Breteuil, the Marquise du Châtelet, whom we met earlier, developed an infatuation for Maupertuis, which was not, however, returned.
Maupertuis became a member of the Académy des Sciences in Paris in 1731. He introduced Newton's Law of Gravitation to France in 1732. In the late 1600's and early 1700's there was considerable debate concerning the exact shape of the Earth, of course, both Aristotle and Ptolemy had claimed the Earth was perfectly spherical. However, some measurements in the early 1700's seemed to suggest the Earth was a prolate spheroid while others suggested it was an oblate spheroid. Accordingly, in 1736 Maupertuis led an expedition on behalf of the Académie des Sciences to Lapland, to measure very carefully the length of a degree along the meridian. He returned in 1737 with the news that his measurements confirmed Newton's theory that the Earth was indeed an oblate spheroid. In fact, it was measurements like this that produced the historic definition of the length of a meter in 1791, as 1/10,000,000 of the distance of the line from the North Pole to the Equator that passes through Paris, see figure 6.
Maupertuis gained a great deal of fame from this expedition and was invited by Frederick II (the Great) to Germany. After going to Berlin he joined the Prussian army in the field and was taken prisoner in 1741. He became a member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences in 1741 and, in 1745 he became its President, a post he held for 8 years.
Maupertuis formulated the principle of least action in 1744, i.e., that nature chooses the most economical path for moving bodies, light waves, etc., and published it in his Essai de cosmologie (1750). He hoped that the principle might unify the laws of the universe and claimed it provided a proof of the existence of God.
As we will see later, Voltaire's major, satirical attack on Maupertuis began in 1752. Voltaire was so critical of his work that Maupertuis left Berlin in 1753 embarrassed and humiliated into obscurity. He died on July 27, 1759 in Basle, Switzerland.
Georges Louis Leclerc, Le Comte de Buffon, shown in figure 7, was born September 7, 1707 in Montbard, Côte-d'Or, France. Although an important 18th century scientist in the area of natural history - using his microscope he claimed to have seen the spontaneous generation of microscopic animals in rainwater puddles - he is best known today for his contributions to mathematics and, in particular, his experiments on probability. In fact, it was an early interest in Mathematics that drew him to study science. His so-called "needle" experiments caused much discussion. He is remembered best for a probability experiment in which he calculated the probability that an object will land on equally spaced lines, by throwing French stick loaves (baguettes) onto a tiled floor and counting the number of times the loaves fell across the lines between the tiles, see figure 8(a) and figure 8(b)! He speculated also that the Earth was created by a collision between a comet and the Sun. Based on the cooling rate of iron, he calculated that the Earth was 75,000 years old. This proclamation was condemned by the Catholic Church in France, and his books were burned. He died in Paris on April 16, 1788.
The other principal character, John Turbeville Needham, was in born in London on September 10, 1713. He was to become a renowned microscopist. He came from a staunchly Roman Catholic family who refused to participate in the services of the established Anglican Church. He went to school in France and was ordained as a secular priest in 1737, at age 24 years, but he was to spend most of time as a teacher and tutor. It was while he was directing a Catholic School from 1740-1743 that he got a taste of natural science.
In 1743 he published his first scientific paper, which was mainly on a geological subject. However, he appended a section on
The first discovery, on the mechanism of pollen, established him as a recognized botanist. A second discovery was to lead to him forever being known as L'Anguillard, the "Eel Man"; but more of that later. He published a book on New Microscopical Discoveries in 1745, which sold well. In 1761 he was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London. In 1767 he retired to the English seminary in Paris to carry on his scientific experiments. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in London in 1768, the first Roman Catholic Priest to be so honored. He was appointed the first Director of the Imperial Academy in Brussels in 1773, where he served until 1780. While there, he helped introduce advanced laboratory techniques into biological science. He died in Brussels on December 30, 1781, at age 68.
So, what was the problem and how did Voltaire discredit Maupertuis, Buffon and Needham?
As we have already seen, there were a number of reasons why Voltaire disliked and would have wanted to attack Maupertuis.
How did Voltaire do it? Well, in 1752 Maupertuis had published some of his scholarly ideas in a series of letters. Some were sensible but others proved ridiculous; for example, Maupertuis proposed:
To Voltaire, these ideas proved much too good an opportunity to miss to ridicule Maupertuis. His basic weapon was a satirical essay entitled A Dissertation by Dr. Akakia, Physician to the Pope, which was published in 1752. In the essay, Dr. Akakia, with inquisitors, analyze the actions of a young student .. [clearly, Maupertuis] ... who writes "Letters" while trying to pass himself off as the respected President of an important academy. (Recall, in 1752 Maupertuis was the President of the Berlin Academy.) It is reminiscent of the examination of Galileo by the Inquisition, but with the students' letters replacing the Dialogue. Of course, the true names of the combatants are never mentioned but it is obvious who they are. For example, the Inquisitors state:
The latter was also a direct reference to the fact that Maupertuis was an epigenesist and a supporter of Needham who, as we will see later, claimed, in experiments with wet wheat, to have observed the spontaneous generation of "eel-like" microscopical animals. So, Needham was being targeted here as well.
After describing other excesses the examiners conclude:
After publication, Maupertuis sent a threatening letter to Voltaire, who responded by publishing a further adventure of Dr. Akakia and putting Maupertuis's letter at the beginning. Maupertuis became the laughing stock of Europe and he left Berlin embarrassed and ashamed in 1753. He died a few years later, in 1759, broken in spirit, in mind and health. The article was produced while Voltaire was in Prussia, and it so enraged King Frederick who, you may remember had invited Maupertuis to Prussia, that he gave Voltaire a telling-off and ordered all copies burned. Voltaire hastily fled Prussia but he was forbidden by Louis XV to approach Paris; eventually he found asylum in Geneva.
In 1759, some years after he had dispensed with Maupertuis, Voltaire had a "go" at Leibniz, producing his most famous work Candide. It is a savage satire on 18th century life and thought, on religious fanaticism and war, the injustices of class distinction and the philosophy of Leibniz ... quite a mixture! The hero of the story is Candide whose mentor is Dr. Pangloss, a disciple of Leibniz. After a series of adventures, both serious and comic, Pangloss maintains - as did Leibniz - that
The book was extremely successful and very popular (as it is even today). The two main reasons Voltaire went after Leibniz was because in maintaining the
philosophy, Leibniz was being not only pessimistic but accepting the status-quo; something Voltaire simply could not, nor would not accept. He thought Leibniz's philosophy was illusionary and pretentious, and therefore "fake"; it was the very antithesis of Newton's philosophy (who, as we've seen, was one of Voltaire's "heroes"). For example, Leibniz had thought that by using his calculus to study the small developments and changes in human behavior his calculus might be able to help one understand the human mind.
Although Buffon was never attacked directly by Voltaire he became a target of ridicule indirectly for having worked with both Maupertuis and Needham, and for calling Needham a good observer during Voltaire's attack on Needham. (And he had also claimed to have observed the spontaneous generation of microscopic animals in rain puddles.) In addition, as we saw earlier, Buffon had estimated the age of the Earth at 75,000 years (although he was to increase the age considerably, later). More troublesome to Voltaire than the time-line, however, was the implication that nature was rational and would give up its secrets if only one could read, understand and explain its language and that would have been an anathema to Voltaire; he was a firm believer in God but he was certain that God would not reveal his secrets nor should Man seek them out.
John Needham was a self-assured, conceited cleric and scientist and someone who was to prove no pushover. Certainly, he had some weapons of his own, for instance;
So, what caused Voltaire to attack him? Well, Needham had done some significant work in the laboratory in the area of embryology. Carried out between about 1745 and 1750 in London and Paris, these experiments were a reasonable attempt to check out some of the claims of the preformationists on the presence of pre-existing embryos. For example, Needham's Observations upon the Generation, Composition, and Decomposition of Animal and Vegetable Substances (1748) offered what he considered to be proof of spontaneous generation. In an effort to kill any living organisms - including embryos - he boiled some mutton gravy in a glass flask and then sealed the opening with cork and mastic, a resinous glue. As a further precaution he heated the flask in hot ashes. After a few days he opened the flask and examined the gravy through his microscope. He said that
In other experiments using moistened wheat, he found a similar result. In fact, among the microscopical animals were some that Needham described as looking rather like eels; later Voltaire was to satirize Needham as the "eel-man", as we've seen.
In other words, Needham claimed to have seen spontaneous generation, the creation of living organisms from non-living matter. The possibility of spontaneous generation had long been held; the Greeks believed that flies and small animals came from river-mud and others cited the evidence that maggots were produced by meat; in 1667 a well-known Flemish physician and scientist Jan Baptista van Helmont believed that mice were formed when cheese was wrapped with rags - how could anyone doubt it ... all you had to do was to put the two items together in a corner and wait the appropriate time and, lo and behold, mice appeared! - and even the Royal Society in London supported research to try to make insects from cheese! However, during the first half of the 18th century the theory of spontaneous generation had fallen into disrepute, preformation was the accepted theory and the understanding was that life only came from life, and from the same kinds of life forms. But now it appeared that Needham, using what seemed to be a sound scientific experiment, had proved that at least some lower life forms could be created from inorganic, non-living matter. So, if it happened with lower forms of life, it was argued that maybe it held for higher forms as well. And if that was the case, Needham's supporters would argue, there was no need to have embryos in existence from the original moment of The Creation; they would be produced anew and spontaneously at the appropriate time.
Voltaire was ignorant of Needham's work until 1752 - some years after it had been carried out. Ironically, he heard about it from his correspondence with Maupertuis. Yet, Voltaire didn't start to attack Needham until 1765, over a decade later. He became very upset with Needham not simply by what he, Needham, did, although his experiments did seem to toll the death-knell for preformation, and Voltaire was a preformationist. Voltaire was also very unhappy, perhaps even envious, of Needham's popularity and by the way his work was seized on by others - including materialistic and atheist philosophers - who based their arguments against the existence of a divine creator on Needham's ideas. Although Voltaire fought against many of the excesses of the Church, he was a firm believer in God. Also, Voltaire had been a strong supporter of Newton, while Needham was a professed Leibnizian. Furthermore, Needham's published books were often an incoherent and ambiguous mixture of science, philosophy and religious polemic, just the thing to drive Voltaire crazy! But, initially, Voltaire bided his time.
The turning point for Voltaire occurred a few years after he had moved to "Ferney" on the French-Swiss border near Geneva; where he could be free from the censorship. At that time the Protestant Church was a powerful force in Switzerland and the subject of religious miracles had become entangled with politics. For example, Jean Jacques Rousseau, another well-known French writer and debater, had written against miracles in the hope of weakening the Roman Catholic Church's power. Needham not only defended miracles but also the Calvinist and Roman Catholic Churches, as well as the politics of the upper classes. Voltaire, on the other hand, was very much more a "man of the people".
In 1765, some 13 years after he had become aware of Needham's experiments, Voltaire began his attacks. A series of pamphlets began to appear entitled Lettres sur les miracles written anonymously (although almost everyone realized they were authored by Voltaire). He took aim not only at the miracles of revelation - the appearance of religious figures - but also at the divine right of kings. Since Needham's work on spontaneous generation seemed to provide clear evidence that miracles took place every day, Voltaire felt that he needed to attack him personally. First, he claimed that Needham was a homosexual and exclaimed:
In reply, Needham wrote several public letters; in one he denounced Voltaire's morality and referred to
who profess but do not practice celibacy; a reference to Voltaire's well-known love affairs. He added that Voltaire's
According to Needham, Voltaire, who professed to be a great benefactor, was really the scourge of humanity and should be declared an enemy of the country. Needham wrote:
After three letters Needham was sure he had exposed Voltaire's "false reasoning" and was so convinced of his triumph he wrote to a colleague apologizing that he hadn't written earlier but he was
Needham was proud of these letters denouncing Voltaire, referring to them as "trophies" and claiming that he had not worked for personal glory but for the good of society.
Of course, any Needham victory against an adversary like Voltaire would be short-lived. Although by that time Needham was an important scientist - for example, he was the most cited author of the period in the Journal des Savants (and how that must have irritated Voltaire!) - while Voltaire himself was just a mere "popular" figure, But Needham had forgotten with whom he was dealing. So, in a manner reminiscent of his battle with Maupertuis, Voltaire expanded his character assassination of Needham. He claimed Needham was a fanatical, Irish, Jesuit priest disguised as an ordinary man, who wanted to convert the entire Protestant world to Catholicism and who was able to create "eels" miraculously out of mutton gravy and wheat! Of course, as we have seen, Needham was neither Irish nor a Jesuit but once Voltaire was finished with him, in most people's eyes he was both! Why an Irish Jesuit, you may ask? Well, it was certainly no compliment; the Jesuits had been expelled from France in 1764 and maybe as an Irishman he would appear more dangerous in the eyes of English Protestants. In another letter, dated 1770, Voltaire, who was very unhappy about Needham's popularity, wrote
He emphasized his new characterization of Needham when he referred to
As a minor digression we should note that shortly after he began his vitriolic attack on Needham, Voltaire was almost certainly aware that a man named Lazzaro Spallanzani (1729-1799), an Italian biologist and cleric, had checked Needham's experiments using flasks with narrow necks that could be closed by melting the glass itself rather than using corks. Sometime in the late 1760's, Spallanzani found that after proper boiling, the gravy remained sterile indefinitely; and he showed that hot ashes and corks were simply not up to the task of eliminating microscopic life forms. Needham refuted these claims by suggesting that Spallanzani's intense boiling had destroyed not only any organisms but also their power to generate, which, he said, was controlled by a special, vital "force" responsible for all physiological processes. However, Needham's criticisms were easily dealt with when, after the gravy was exposed once again to air the microscopic life forms reappeared. But then proponents of spontaneous generation argued that Spallanzani had only proven that spontaneous generation could not occur without air!
In a letter to Spallanzani Voltaire wrote:
Actually, there is considerable irony in the dispute, for Needham, although carrying out flawed experiments, was supporting what turned out eventually to be winning side, whereas Spallanzani, a careful experimenter, had concluded, incorrectly, of course, that he had proved the theory of preformation. Perhaps worse - not so much for the combatants, but for science - was the fact that the renewed belief in preformation following Spallanzani's work seriously delayed the development of embryology. (In fact, there is recent evidence that Spallanzani's microscope was inferior to those of Buffon and Needham, so it is not even certain that he could have seen objects as small as bacteria with his instrument. The drawings he supplied strongly suggest that probably he observed protozoans, considerably larger in size than the microscopic life-forms of concern to Buffon and Needham.)
In his 20th and final Lettres sur les miracles Voltaire created an absurd scenario in which Needham is put in jail for hiding the fact that he was a Jesuit ... and surely, he felt, that would be the end of Needham! In fact, these Lettres sur les miracles had proved so successful, in the sense that they became widely read, that in 1771 they were placed on the Catholic Church's index of prohibited books! However, Needham refused to give up ... he supported the divine right of kings and argued that Voltaire, a Frenchman, should not interfere in Swiss affairs. And it was at this stage that Buffon also entered the fray in support of Needham by suggesting that Voltaire's jealousy of all celebrities:
In 1776 Needham issued his Idée sommaire against Voltaire and still argued bitterly against the
of the preformationists, and even into the 1780's preformation theory was widely held. It was to take research by many individuals - people like Louis Pasteur in the 1860's and 1870's - involving the cell theory of life and, much later, the discovery of chromosomes, etc., before the final nail went into the coffin of the preformationist doctrine.
The dispute between Needham and Voltaire came to an end in 1778 when Voltaire died, aged 83 years. Voltaire had failed to quieten Needham. Indeed by the time of his death 3 years later, in 1781, Needham had been honored with English and Belgium titles of nobility and had received several ecclesiastical titles as well.
Today, the confrontation between Needham and Voltaire appears excessive, so what are we to make of it? Clearly, Voltaire, like so many others in the 18th century, got his religion mixed up with his understanding of science. His motivation was anger due, at least partly, to Needham's popularity and the way atheists' used Needham's work to deny the existence of God and support materialism. Although Voltaire did not support organized religion - his call, "écrasez l'infame," ("stamp out absuses") was directed at the backwardness of the Church and the state - he felt strongly that there was order and harmony on the universe, which implied the existence of an intelligence as a basic mover; a view widely held today.
What about Needham, was he blinded by his religious fanaticism also? He was, it's true, one of the last individuals who tried to use science to support his religion. Although many of his arguments were erroneous and his experiments were flawed he was, nevertheless, correct in his assertion that development is epigenetic. Despite holding the views they did, neither Buffon nor Needham are considered today as thinkers far ahead of the religious dogma of the period. Indeed, it was Voltaire who spawned the notion that Needham and Buffon were poor scientists, though this was based on seriously misrepresenting Needham.
There is still debate today on how "life" actually began. Certainly, there is strong argument that primordial life started spontaneously or at least developed from non-life, that is, from a chance combination of complex amino acids, the basic prerequisites for life. In the 1920's the Soviet biochemist A.I. Oparin suggested that amino acids could have been produced from methane, ammonia, water vapor and hydrogen that combined under the extreme conditions that existed on the early Earth - like electrical storms and ultraviolet light. Some experiments were carried out in 1953 by Harold Urey and Stanley Murray to simulate the possible conditions prevailing when the Earth was young and indeed, by sending electrical sparks through a mixture of ammonia, methane, hydrogen and water vapor, they produced five of the amino acids thought essential for life. However, if this is view is correct, the life forms must have been very simple; at the level of the virus or below.
There is also controversy today on a subject closely connected with the Voltaire/Needham case, and that is the vitalist/mechanist debate. The vitalist position, which was put forth by Leibniz and strongly supported by Needham, is that the matter that makes up living organisms is somehow different intrinsically from non-living matter - for it contains a "special force" - and so it should be treated differently. So, according to vitalists, life processes cannot be explained by the laws of chemistry and physics. The mechanists argue, on the other hand, that matter is matter and that life can be explained simply in the way the particles are put together. Which is correct? Well we are not much further ahead than the scientists of the 18th century. As you know, there are a great many medications, supplements, diet-pills, etc. that treat the body as if were simply as a machine, just like we "flush out" the cooling system in our cars, or "grease" the moving parts or add a "booster" to the gasoline to make them run smoother! And in some cases they seem to work well! But, there is also strong evidence that our bodies are not simple machines that can be treated and repaired like "engines"; for example, different people often respond differently to various medications and stimuli. And so, maybe, a vitalist approach may be required to fully understand life. At the very least, Needham's work suggested that somehow life's activities came from within rather than without ... and, in fact, that's not a bad description of DNA.
So, was all this fury worth it? Do we learn anything from this controversy? As a practicing scientists I applaud and welcome debate. But it is better expressed by Hal Hellman's rephrasing of the following famous literary quote from Voltaire ...
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The dispute between Voltaire and Needham certainly brought the question of spontaneous generation to a head.
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