The French aristocrat who understood evolution 100 years before Darwin – and even worried about climate change
The Guardian - 2024-04-07T14:00:06.000Z

Georges-Louis Leclerc proposed species change and extinction back in the 1740s, a new book revealsShortly after Charles Darwin published his magnum opus, The Origin of Species, in 1859 he started reading a little-known 100-year-old work by a wealthy French aristocrat.Its contents were quite a surprise. “Whole pages [of his book] are laughably like mine,” Darwin wrote to a friend. “It is surprising how candid it makes one to see one’s view in another man’s words.”In later editions of The Origin... Read this story