 In addressing the history of the earth, Buffon also broke with the “counter-factual” tradition of Descartes. In its place he offered a secular and scientifically literal account of the origins of the earth and its life forms. Buffon’s new style of natural-historical inquiry also disconnected it from its long association with providential design-contrivance natural theology developed particularly by British natural historians after John Ray (1627–1705). This was another feature differentiating his style of natural history from that of Linnaeus. If he was not alone responsible for “bursting the limits of time”, he was nonetheless one of the major figures in the “time revolution” of the latter eighteenth century (Rudwick 2005). Even though all these points were offered before the Epochs of 1778–9 in fragmentary form, and often without satisfactory development from a general philosophical point of view, their presentation in Buffon’s widely influential work profoundly affected the subsequent tradition of natural history.