After a holiday break, I will once again be sharing something I have drawn, read, and listened to every week. I didn't do any drawing during the holidays, but I did read a 5-star book and attend a 5-star concert.

Drawing

Reading

A few years ago, my brother gave me a volume of Comte de Buffon's Histoire Naturelle. Quadrupèdes VIII, a 1769 edition with wonderful 18th-century illustrations. I now have several volumes in my bookcase (long live Catawiki, and long live my brother, of course), but I didn't really know much about Buffon himself.

In All That Lives, by Jason Roberts, the life stories of both Linnaeus and Buffon are told. Both born in 1707, they both attempted to describe all life on earth. Buffon in his Histoire Naturelle, and Linnaeus in his Systema Naturae. According to Roberts, that's where the comparison ends. The two scholars turned out to have completely different worldviews on how all life on earth could be described.

As a reader, I quickly became a member of the Buffon fan club. Whereas Linnaeus comes across as a fairly straightforward and religious man, Buffon is open-minded and relies more on observation and experience. Buffon did not believe that nature could be categorized as easily as Linnaeus claimed, something he would later be proven right about. Buffon described (as early as the 18th century) how humans could destroy the earth and that it was not an inexhaustible resource. According to Roberts, his theory of transferable characteristics could be seen as a precursor to the discovery of DNA.

And, under a layer of censorship, Buffon even described how species can change, or evolve. Darwin was not yet familiar with his ideas when he wrote Origin of Species, but immediately saw the similarities when his work was brought to his attention almost a century later.

A wonderful double biography that also teaches you a lot about science in the 18th century. Read the review in de Volkskrant.

Listen

Like many others, I started following Americana artist MJ Lenderman more closely after the beautiful Right Back to It with Waxahatchee. Later that year, his solo album Manning Fireworks followed. In August, I saw him live at the Tolhuistuin and it was, as Gijsbert Kamer wrote, in one word: magnificent.

His cover of This is Lorelei's Dancing in the Club was surprisingly cool that evening.

See you next week!