Name Noel-Antoine Pluche | ||
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Noel-Antoine Pluche (13 November 1688 – 19 November 1761), known as the abbe Pluche, was a French priest. He is now known for his Spectacle de la nature, a most popular work of natural history.
Pluche, son of a baker, was born in Rheims, in a street now named after him. He became a teacher of rhetoric. The Bishop of Laon made him head of the town's college, a post he accepted to escape judicial consequences of opposing the papal bull Unigenitus (1713)
He withdrew in 1749 to La Varenne-Saint-Maur, near Paris, where he died.
His Spectacle de la nature, ou Entretiens sur les particularites de l'Histoire naturelle qui ont paru les plus propres a rendre les jeunes gens curieux et a leur former l'esprit was published in 1732, and widely translated all over Europe. Although it influenced many to become naturalists, it was a work of popularization, not of science.
Other works were