Making friends in the church led to his eventual appointment as a zoology professor in the Royal Garden (later became the Museum of Natural History), when a post was vacated due to more political problems.
[5] Geoffroy agreed with Buffon that any classification system was arbitrary and thus somewhat empty, but he nonetheless attempted to find the general laws that applied to all organisms in nature.
Cuvier met a member of the Academy of Sciences, Henri-Alexandre Tessier, in Normandy in 1794 while he was a young man tutoring the children of the wealthy.
"[3] When Cuvier joined him at the Museum, other colleagues warned Geoffroy against mentoring him, suggesting that this brilliant young scientist would eventually surpass him.
It was not long before Cuvier began to make a name for himself individually too, as he was highly skilled at reaching out to patrons, networking and acquiring funding for his research.
One of the most significant events that solidified the split between the two scientists was Cuvier's appointment to the Academy of Sciences on December 17, 1795 as one of the six original members of anatomy and zoology.
This attitude sprang from worries that this kind of thinking would lead to unrest and disorder in France as the French Revolution had torn through only a few decades before.
[3] Cuvier encouraged young scientists to stick with facts and often won them over easily due to his strong reputation as a good ally to have in science.
[3][5] Geoffroy thought of facts as building blocks to science while new ideas would lead to real discovery, occasionally dipping more into philosophical hypotheses instead of testable or demonstrated research.
[3] Geoffroy found support for his unity of composition which would unite the vertebrates and mollusks -two of Cuvier's published embranchments of animals[4]- on one common plan.
[3] At the next meeting of the Academy on February 22, Cuvier came fully prepared with detailed, labeled, colorful drawings, in particular one of an octopus and another of a duck bent backwards, and a new memoir called "Considerations on the Mollusks and in Particular on the Cephalopods".
In response to Cuvier's comments about unity of composition being poorly defined, Geoffroy claimed that he was seeking more "philosophical resemblances" other than actual, observable similarities between animals.
To counter Cuvier's very analytical approach, Geoffroy said his rival was simply getting too bogged down in the details and forgetting the main issue of differences in philosophy.
Cuvier continued to supply examples of differences amongst animal form, insisting Geoffroy explain why nature would be constrained to using the same parts similarly across all species.
[3] After the debate officially ended, both naturalists continued to throw in snide mentions to each other's works in Academy discussion, though neither Geoffroy nor Cuvier openly engaged each other again.
While neither Geoffroy or Cuvier's ideas were fully adopted in future science theory, both unity of composition and functional morphology can be seen as influences to further works on the natural world.