Charles Darwin And Alfred Russel Wallace

While Charles Darwin is familiar to so many, Alfred Wallace's contribution to science and especially to the theory of evolution was invaluable. The two traveled the world separately and developed their ideas separately, but Darwin published his theory first. Rather than become enemies, they both worked to promote acceptance of the controversial ideas. Readers will be interested in the biographies of these globetrotting scientists as well as actual quotes that aid in a better understanding of the men and their motivations.

Includes two essays by Wallace, "On the law which has regulated the introduction of new species" and "On the tendency of varieties to depart indefinitely from the original type."

Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913), co-discoverer of natural selection, was second only to Charles Darwin as the 19th century's most noted English naturalist. Yet his belief in spiritualism caused him to be ridiculed and dismissed by many. Though based upon very different formulations of natural selection, the Wallace/Darwin dispute as presented by Flannery shows a metaphysical clash of worldviews coextensive with modern evolutionary theory itself.

Alfred Russel Wallace's reputation has been based on the fact that, at the age of thirty-five and stricken with malaria in the Moluccan Islands, he stumbled independently on the theory of natural selection. Andrew Berry's anthology rescues Wallace's legacy, showing Wallace to be far more than just the co-discoverer of natural selection. Wallace was a brilliant and wide ranging scientist, a passionate social reformer and a gifted writer. The eloquence that has made his The Malay Archipelago a classic of travel writing is a prominent feature too of his extraordinary forward-thinking writing on socialism, imperialism and pacifism. Wallace's opinions on women's suffrage, on land reform, on the roles of church and aristocracy in a parliamentary democracy, on publicly funded education—to name a few of the issues he addressed—remain as fresh and as topical today as they were when they were written.

Virtually unknown today, Alfred Russel Wallace was the co-discoverer of natural selection with Charles Darwin and an eminent scientist who stood out among his Victorian peers as a man of formidable mind and equally outsized personality. Now Michael Shermer rescues Wallace from the shadow of Darwin in this landmark biography. Here we see Wallace as perhaps the greatest naturalist of his age--spending years in remote jungles, collecting astounding quantities of specimens, writing thoughtfully and with bemused detachment at his reception in places where no white man had ever gone. Here, too, is his supple and forceful intelligence at work, grappling with such arcane problems as the bright coloration of caterpillars, or shaping his 1858 paper on natural selection that prompted Darwin to publish (with Wallace) the first paper outlining the theory of evolution. Shermer also shows that Wallace's self-trained intellect, while powerful, also embraced surprisingly naive ideas, such as his deep interest in the study of spiritual manifestations and seances. Shermer shows that the same iconoclastic outlook that led him to overturn scientific orthodoxy as he worked in relative isolation also led him to embrace irrational beliefs, and thus tarnish his reputation. As author of Why People Believe Weird Things and founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, Shermer is an authority on why people embrace the irrational. Now he turns his keen judgment and incisive analysis to Wallace's life and his contradictory beliefs, restoring a leading figure in the rise of modern science to his rightful place.

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Alfred Russel Wallace OM, FRS (1823 -1913) was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist. He did extensive fieldwork first in the Amazon River basin, and then in the Malay Archipelago. He is best known for independently proposing a theory of natural selection which prompted Charles Darwin to publish his own more developed theory sooner than intended. Wallace was considered the 19th century's leading expert on the geographical distribution of animal species and is sometimes called the "father of biogeography." He advocated spiritualism and believed in a non-material origin for the higher mental faculties of humans. He was also a social activist and was thus critical of what he considered to be an unjust social and economic system in 19th century Britain. His The Malay Archipelago became one of the most popular journals of scientific exploration of the 19th century. His other substantial works include Darwinism, (1889)and Is Mars Habitable? (1907).