Cuvier's attitude toward creation and the biblical Flood

Abstract

AbstractGeorges Cuvier was born in Montbeliard in eastern France, which at that time was part of the dukedom of Württemberg. He received a Lutheran religious education and was deeply anchored to his Protestant faith until the death of his daughter Clementine in 1827. This faith, along with his writings, and especially his well-known Discours sur les Révolutions de la surface du globe, gave him the reputation of being convinced of the existence of the biblical Flood, the last catastrophe to have swept the surface of the Earth. However, Cuvier's ideas on creation and the Flood, borrowed and distorted by some British followers of natural theology, are not so clear-cut. A thorough reading of Cuvier's works and an analysis of his (unpublished) written exchange with Henry de la Fite, the translator of de Luc's Elementary Treatise on Geology, show that the French naturalist always took great care to separate all that referred to facts linked to natural history, palaeontology and geology from references to geotheories, metaphysical ideas and theological interpretations.