Under these different theoretical regimens, questions were asked that were almost always the same but were given each time a different solution: the possibility of living beings some, like Linnaeus, holding that all of nature can be accommodated within a taxonomy, others, like Buffon, holding that it is too rich and various to be fitted within so rigid a framework; the generative process, with the more mechanistically minded in favour of preformation, and others believing in the specific development of germs; analysis of functions (circulation after Harvey, sensation, motivity, and, towards the end of the century, respiration).