| Charles Bonnet | |
 |
|
| Born | March 13, 1720 Geneva |
|---|---|
| Died | May 20, 1793 |
| Citizenship | Swiss |
| Fields | naturalist |
Charles Bonnet (March 13, 1720 – May 20, 1793), Swiss naturalist and philosophical writer, was born at Geneva, of a French family driven into Switzerland by the religious persecution in the 16th century. Events 1138 - Cardinal Gregorio Conti is elected Antipope as Victor IV, succeeding Anacletus II. Year 1720 ( MDCCXX) was a Leap year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Leap year starting Geneva (Genève is the second-most populous city in Switzerland (after Zürich) and is the most populous city of Romandy (the French -speaking Events 325 - The First Council of Nicaea &ndash the first Ecumenical Council of the Christian Church is held Year 1793 ( MDCCXCIII) was a Common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Common Switzerland (English pronunciation; Schweiz Swiss German: Schwyz or Schwiiz Suisse Svizzera Svizra officially the Swiss Confederation Natural history is the Scientific research of Plants or Animals leaning more towards the Observational than Experimental methods Events 1138 - Cardinal Gregorio Conti is elected Antipope as Victor IV, succeeding Anacletus II. Year 1720 ( MDCCXX) was a Leap year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Leap year starting Events 325 - The First Council of Nicaea &ndash the first Ecumenical Council of the Christian Church is held Year 1793 ( MDCCXCIII) was a Common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Common Switzerland (English pronunciation; Schweiz Swiss German: Schwyz or Schwiiz Suisse Svizzera Svizra officially the Swiss Confederation Natural history is the Scientific research of Plants or Animals leaning more towards the Observational than Experimental methods Geneva (Genève is the second-most populous city in Switzerland (after Zürich) and is the most populous city of Romandy (the French -speaking This article is about the country For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic France topics.
Contents |
Life and work
Bonnet's life was uneventful. He seems never to have left Switzerland, nor does he appear to have taken any part in public affairs except for the period between 1752 and 1768, during which he was a member of the council of the republic. The last twenty five years of his life he spent quietly in the country, at Genthod, near Geneva, where he died after a long and painful illness on 20 May 1793. Genthod is a municipality of the Canton of Geneva, Switzerland. His wife was a lady of the family of De la Rive. They had no children, but Madame Bonnet's nephew, the celebrated Horace-Bénédict de Saussure, was brought up as their son. Horace-Bénédict de Saussure ( February 17, 1740 - January 22, 1799) was a Swiss aristocrat Physicist and Alpine traveller
He made law his profession, but his favourite pursuit was the study of natural science. Law is a system of rules enforced through a set of Institutions used as an instrument to underpin civil obedience politics economics and society The account of the ant-lion in Noël-Antoine Pluche's Spectacle de la nature, which he read in his sixteenth year, turned his attention to insect life. Noël-Antoine Pluche ( 13 November 1688, Rheims - 19 November 1761) La Varenne-Saint-Maur, near Paris) known He procured RAF de Réaumur's work on insects, and with the help of live specimens succeeded in adding many observations to those of Réaumur and Pluche. "Réaumur" redirects here For other uses see Réaumur (disambiguation. In 1740, Bonnet communicated to the Academy of Sciences a paper containing a series of experiments establishing what is now termed parthenogenesis in aphids or tree-lice, which obtained for him the honour of being admitted a corresponding member of the academy. Year 1740 ( MDCCXL) was a Leap year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Leap Parthenogenesis (from the Greek παρθένος parthenos, "virgin" + γένεσις genesis, "creation" is an asexual form In 1741, he began to study reproduction by fusion and the regeneration of lost parts in the freshwater hydra and other animals; and in the following year he discovered that the respiration of caterpillars and butterflies is performed by pores, to which the name of stigmata has since been given. Caterpillars are the Larval form of a member of the order Lepidoptera (the Insect order comprising butterflies and Moths A butterfly is an Insect of the order Lepidoptera. Like all Lepidoptera butterflies are notable for their unusual life cycle with a Stigmata are bodily marks sores or sensations of pain in locations corresponding to the Crucifixion wounds of Jesus. In 1743, he was admitted a fellow of the Royal Society; and in the same year he became a doctor of laws — his last act in connection with a profession which had ever been distasteful to him.
His first published work appeared in 1745, entitled Traité d'insectologie, in which were collected his various discoveries regarding insects, along with a preface on the development of germs and the scale of organized beings. Year 1745 ( MDCCXLV) was a Common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Botany, particularly the leaves of plants, next attracted his attention; and after several years of diligent study, rendered irksome by the increasing weakness of his eyesight, he published in 1754 one of the most original and interesting of his works, Recherches sur l'usage des feuilles dans les plantes; in which among other things he advances many considerations tending to show (as was later done by Francis Darwin) that plants are endowed with powers of sensation and discernment. Botany, plant science(s, phytology, or plant biology is a branch of Biology and is the scientific study of plant Life Year 1754 ( MDCCLIV) was a Common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or Sir Francis "Frank" Darwin, FRS ( August 16 1848 - 19 September 1925) a son of the British naturalist But Bonnet's eyesight, which threatened to fail altogether, caused him to turn to philosophy. Philosophy is the study of general problems concerning matters such as existence knowledge truth beauty justice validity mind and language In 1754 his Essai de psychologie was published anonymously in London. London ( ˈlʌndən is the capital and largest urban area in the United Kingdom. This was followed by the Essai analytique sur les facultés de l'âme (Copenhagen, 1760), in which he develops his views regarding the physiological conditions of mental activity. He returned to physical science, but to the speculative side of it, in his Considerations sur les corps organisées (Amsterdam, 1762), designed to refute the theory of epigenesis, and to explain and defend the doctrine of pre-existent germs. In his Contemplation de la nature (Amsterdam, 1764-1765; translated into Italian, German, English and Dutch), one of his most popular and delightful works, he sets forth, in eloquent language, the theory that all the beings in nature form a gradual scale rising from lowest to highest, without any break in its continuity. His last important work was the Palingénésie philosophique (Geneva, 1769-1770); in it he treats of the past and future of living beings, and supports the idea of the survival of all animals, and the perfecting of their faculties in a future state.
In 1760 he described a condition now called Charles Bonnet Syndrome, in which vivid, complex visual hallucinations (fictive visual percepts) occur in psychologically normal people. Charles Bonnet syndrome ( CBS) is a disease that causes patients to have hallucinations first described by Charles Bonnet in 1760 (He documented it in his 87 year old grandfather, who was nearly blind from cataracts in both eyes but perceived men, women, birds, carriages, buildings, tapestries and scaffolding patterns. ) Most people affected are elderly with visual impairments, however the phenomenon does not occur only in the elderly or in those with visual impairments; it can also be caused by damage elsewhere in their optic pathway or brain.
Bonnet's philosophical system may be outlined as follows. Man is a compound of two distinct substances, mind and body, the one immaterial and the other material. All knowledge originates in sensations; sensations follow (whether as physical effects or merely as sequents Bonnet will not say) vibrations in the nerves appropriate to each; and lastly, the nerves are made to vibrate by external physical stimulus. A nerve is an enclosed cable-like bundle of peripheral Axons (the long slender projections of Neurons. A nerve once set in motion by a particular object tends to reproduce that motion; so that when it a second time receives an impression from the same object it vibrates with less resistance. The sensation accompanying this increased flexibility in the nerve is, according to Bonnet, the condition of memory. When reflection--that is, the active element in mind--is applied to the acquisition and combination of sensations, those abstract ideas are formed which, though generally distinguished from, are thus merely sensations in combination only. That which puts the mind into activity is pleasure or pain; happiness is the end of human existence.
Bonnet's metaphysical theory is based on two principles borrowed from Leibniz: first, that there are not successive acts of creation, but that the universe is completed by the single original act of the divine will, and thereafter moves on by its own inherent force; and secondly, that there is no break in the continuity of existence. Metaphysics is the branch of Philosophy investigating principles of reality transcending those of any particular science The divine Being originally created a multitude of germs in a graduated scale, each with an inherent power of self-development. At every successive step in the progress of the universe, these germs, as progressively modified, advance nearer to perfection; if some advanced and others did not there would be a gap in the continuity of the chain. Thus not man only but all other forms of existence are immortal. Nor is man's mind alone immortal; his body also will pass into the higher stage, not, indeed, the body he now possesses, but a finer one of which the germ at present exists within him. It is impossible, however, to reach absolute perfection, because the distance is infinite. In this final proposition Bonnet violates his own principle of continuity, by postulating an interval between the highest created being and the Divine. It is also difficult to understand whether the constant advance to perfection is performed by each individual, or only by each race of beings as a whole. There seems, in fact, to be an oscillation between two distinct but analogous doctrines--that of the constantly increasing advancement of the individual in future stages of existence, and that of the constantly increasing advancement of the race as a whole according to the successive evolutions of the globe. In Philosophical Palingesis, or Ideas on the Past and Future States of Living Beings (1770), Bonnet argued that females carry within them all future generations in a miniature form. He believed these miniature beings, sometimes called homonculi, would be able to survive even great cataclysms such as the biblical Flood; he predicted, moreover, that these catastrophes brought about evolutionary change, and that after the next disaster, men would become angels, mammals would gain intelligence, and so on.
Bonnet had an influence on other philosophers and pre-evolutionary thinkers; James Burnett, Lord Monboddo is known to have studied his publications on insects and to have been influenced as he developed concepts on progression of species (evolution)[1]. This timeline of the evolution of life outlines the major events in the development James Burnett Lord Monboddo ( October 25, 1714 - May 26, 1799) was a Scottish Judge, scholar of language evolution and
Bonnet's complete works appeared at Neuchâtel in 1779-1783, partly revised by himself. An English translation of certain portions of the Palingénésie philosophique was published in 1787, under the title Philosophical and Critical Inquiries concerning Christianity. See also A Lemoine, Charles Bonnet (Paris, 1850); the duc de Caraman, Charles Bonnet, philosophe et naturaliste (Paris, 1859); Max Offner, Die Psychologie C. B. (Leipzig, 1893); Joh. Speck, in Arch. f. Gesch. d. Philos x. (1897), xi. (1897), pp. 58 foIl. , Xi. (1898) pp. 1-211; J Trembley, Vie privée et littéraire de C. B. (Bern, 1794).
References
- ^ William Knight, Lord Monboddo and some of his contemporaries, Thoemmes Press, Bristol, England (1900) ISBN 1-85506-207-0
External links
Principal source
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain. James Burnett Lord Monboddo ( October 25, 1714 - May 26, 1799) was a Scottish Judge, scholar of language evolution and The Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition (1910–1911 is a 29-volume reference work that marked the beginning of the Encyclopædia Britannica The public domain is a range of abstract materials &ndash commonly referred to as Intellectual property &ndash which are not owned or controlled by anyone
Dapyx Software network: MP3 Explorer | Ebook Manager | Zenithic