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6 □ 10,000 B.C.: THE GEOLOGY OF MORALS

 

tions. Organic forms are nevertheless different from one another, as are 

organs, compound substances, and molecules. It is of little or no impor-

tance that Geoffroy chose anatomical elements as the substantial units 

rather than protein and nucleic acid radicals. At any rate, he already 

invoked a whole interplay of molecules. The important thing is the princi-

ple of the simultaneous unity and variety of the stratum: isomorphism of 

forms but no correspondence; identity of elements or components but no 

identity of compound substances.

 

This is where the dialogue, or rather violent debate, with Cuvier came 

in. To keep the last of the audience from leaving, Challenger imagined a 

particularly epistemological dialogue of the dead, in puppet theater style. 

Geoffroy called forth Monsters, Cuvier laid out all the Fossils in order, 

Baer flourished flasks filled with embryos, Vialleton put on a tetrapod's 

belt, Perrier mimed the dramatic battle between the Mouth and the Brain, 

and so on. Geoffroy: The proof that there is isomorphism is that you can 

always get from one form on the organic stratum to another, however dif-

ferent they may be, by means of "folding." To go from the Vertebrate to the 

Cephalopod, bring the two sides of the Vertebrate's backbone together, 

bend its head down to its feet and its pelvis up to the nape of its neck ... 

Cuvier  (angrily): That's just not true! You go from an Elephant to a 

Medusa; I know, I tried. There are irreducible axes, types, branches. There 

are resemblances between organs and analogies between forms, nothing 

more. You're a falsifier, a metaphysician. Vialleton (a disciple of Cuvier 

and Baer): Even if folding gave good results, who could endure it? It's not 

by chance that Geoffroy only considers anatomical elements. No muscle or 

ligament would survive it. Geoffroy. I said that there was isomorphism but 

not correspondence. You have to bring "degrees of development or perfec-

tion" into the picture. It is not everywhere on a stratum that materials 

reach the degree at which they form a given aggregate. Anatomical ele-

ments may be arrested or inhibited in certain places by molecular clashes, 

the influence of the milieu, or pressure from neighbors to such an extent 

that they compose different organs. The same formal relations or connec-

tions are then effectuated in entirely different forms and arrangements. It 

is still the same abstract Animal that is realized throughout the stratum, 

only to varying degrees, in varying modes. Each time, it is as perfect as its 

surroundings or milieu allows it to be (it is obviously not yet a question of 

evolution: neither folding nor degrees imply descent or derivation, only 

autonomous realizations of the same abstract relations). This is where 

Geoffroy invoked Monsters: human monsters are embryos that were 

retarded at a certain degree of development, the human in them is only a 

straitjacket for inhuman forms and substances. Yes, the Heteradelph is a 

crustacean. Baer (an ally of Cuvier and contemporary of Darwin, about

 

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0,000 B.C.: THE GEOLOGY OF MORALS □ 47

 

whom he had reservations, in addition to being an enemy of Geoffroy): 

That's not true, you can't confuse degrees of development with types of 

forms. A single type has several degrees, a single degree is found in several 

types, but never will you make types out of degrees. An embryo of one type 

cannot display another type; at most, it can be of the same degree as an 

embryo of the second type. Vialleton (a disciple of Baer's who took both 

Darwin and Geoffroy one further): And then there are things that only an 

embryo can do or endure. It can do or endure these things precisely because 

of its type, not because it can go from one type to another according to 

degrees of development. Admire the Tortoise. Its neck requires that a cer-

tain number of protovertebrae change position, and its front limbs must 

slide 180 degrees in relation to that of a bird. You can never draw conclu-

sions about phylogenesis on the basis of embryogenesis. Folding does not 

make it possible to go from one type to another; quite the contrary, the 

types testify to the irreducibility of the forms of folding ... (Thus Vialleton 

presented two kinds of interconnected arguments in the service of the same 

cause, saying first that there are things no animal can do by reason of its 

substance, and then that there are things that only an embryo can do by rea-

son of its form. Two strong arguments.)

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We're a little lost now. There is so much going on in these retorts. So 

many endlessly proliferating distinctions. So much getting even, for 

episte-mology is not innocent. The sweet and subtle Geoffroy and the 

violent and serious Cuvier do battle around Napoleon. Cuvier, the rigid 

specialist, is pitted against Geoffroy, always ready to switch specialities. 

Cuvier hates Geoffroy, he can't stomach Geoffroy's lighthearted 

formulas, his humor (yes, Hens do indeed have teeth, the Lobster has 

skin on its bones, etc.). Cuvier is a man of Power and Terrain, and he 

won't let Geoffroy forget it; Geoffroy, on the other hand, prefigures the 

nomadic man of speed. Cuvier reflects a Euclidean space, whereas 

Geoffroy thinks topologically. Today let us invoke the folds of the cortex 

with all their paradoxes. Strata are topological, and Geoffroy is a great 

artist of the fold, a formidable artist; as such, he already has a 

presentiment of a certain kind of animal rhizome with aberrant paths of 

communication—Monsters. Cuvier reacts in terms of discontinuous 

photographs, and casts of fossils. But we're a little lost, because 

distinctions have proliferated in all directions.

 

We have not even taken Darwin, evolutionism, or neoevolutionism into 

account yet. This, however, is where a decisive phenomenon occurs: our 

puppet theater becomes more and more nebulous, in other words, collec-

tive and differential. Earlier, we invoked two factors, and their uncertain 

relations, in order to explain the diversity within a stratum—degrees of 

development or perfection and types of forms. They now undergo a pro-

found transformation. There is a double tendency for types of forms to be

 

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