ABSTRACT
Well before Leroy defined the three states [états] of the Doric order, interest in similar step-by-step, fine-grained analysis of patterns of temporal change had been brought to public attention in Noël-Antoine Pluche’s enormously popular vulgarization of contemporary science, the Spectacle de la Nature (1732–1742). The first volume of Pluche’s book opens with a discussion of the “changements” of insects after they hatch, leading the reader through a succession of four “états” in the transformation of caterpillars into butterflies. The source for Pluche’s analysis was the work of the early Dutch microscopic researcher Jan Swammerdam, whose important study of insects demonstrated that their mutations corresponded to “four series or orders.” 1 In a later volume of the Spectacle, Pluche provided the reader with an even more arresting demonstration of principles of change over time in a survey of paleography, juxtaposing samples of historic calligraphy on successive pages to illustrate in reverse chronological order the increasing simplification of handwriting as one moved back in time from the sixteenth to the fourth centuries (Figures 5.1 and 5.2). 2 Leroy’s invention of three states of the Doric order thus partook in a wider contemporary interest in the science of change common to studies of natural history, paleography, and language. Noël-Antoine Pluche, sixteenth-century writing. https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780203723722/73bf3368-a88f-4510-9551-c2410add854d/content/fig5_1_B.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> From Le Spectacle de la nature, vol. 7 (Paris, 1747), pl. XIV. Noël-Antoine Pluche, fifth-and sixth-century writing. https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780203723722/73bf3368-a88f-4510-9551-c2410add854d/content/fig5_2_B.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> From Le Spectacle de la nature, vol. 7 (Paris, 1747), pl. XXVI.
