Argument

During the first half of the nineteenth century, the Muséum d'Histoire naturelle was both workplace and home to functionalist Georges Cuvier and morphologist Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, whose doctrinal differences became enmeshed with political dialogues regarding social reform. Surprisingly, the public not only viewed the arrangement of the collections in terms of the social platforms they were understood to be supporting, but critiqued the Muséum's buildings as expressions of their anatomical dispute. The Revolutions of 1830 and 1848 pushed these critiques forward, suggesting to some observers that true reform of the natural sciences would begin by reforming the Muséum's architectural program, thereby placing the goals of Comparative Anatomy in correct relationship to human progress.