Charles Bonnet’s palingenesis: from alchemy to evolution

Abstract

In Stoic philosophy, the term ‘palingenesis’ represents the cyclical rebirth of the world after the universal confl agration. Over the centuries, it has also received alchemical and naturalistic interpretations. The 18th-century Swiss naturalist Charles Bonnet, in his Palingénésie philosophique (1769) reinterprets ‘palingenesis’, employing Leibnizian metaphysics as well as the results of his own research on living organisms. In his view, ‘palingenesis’ can be used to present the development of species on the ladder of beings, thus becoming a synonym for the concept of specifi cally understood evolution. 

In Stoic philosophy, the term ‘palingenesis’ represents the cyclical rebirth of the world after the universal confl agration. Over the centuries, it has also received alchemical and naturalistic interpretations. The 18th-century Swiss naturalist Charles Bonnet, in his Palingénésie philosophique (1769) reinterprets ‘palingenesis’, employing Leibnizian metaphysics as well as the results of his own research on living organisms. In his view, ‘palingenesis’ can be used to present the development of species on the ladder of beings, thus becoming a synonym for the concept of specifi cally understood evolution.