Buffon, The Physiocrats And The Rule Of Nature.

Abstract

<p>An examination of Buffon's theories of natural history and Physiocratic doctrines, which treats them as products of the same socio-economic pressures; that is, as responses to the pressures created by the material requirements of the French war-machine and by the necessity of reconciling aristocratic and bourgeois ethical systems. Includes a study of the use of Newtonian ideas to undermine the social, economic and moral foundations of the Ancien Regime end to justify man's domination of nature.</p>