Many more knew that he was intensely collecting information of the mechanisms of change in domestic animals. That was part of the reason that “the idea was in the air” and why there was some concern by Lyell and Hooker that Darwin publish “soon” to establish his priority. The fact that Darwin had written others about his ideas is what made Darwins’ receiving Wallaces’ “not for publication” essay so touchy. Both men had written expositions of their ideas in letters [Darwin had also drafted a sixty page essay in 1844 that his will said to publish at private expense in case he died]. Darwin’s colleagues felt that this dilemma could only be resolved by simultaneous publication of both Wallace’s and Darwin’s earlier drafts. Those were presented in 1858 at the Linnaean Society. That event barely got a wisp of notice. There was a general apprehension in those days that “theory without real evidence” was not very good (or at least incomplete) science. Wallace had written about evolution in general in 1855 and was “scolded” for being too philosophical.

That Darwin, who had already completed two-thirds of his massive “Natural Selection” was better equipped to publish a more extensive work on the topic was obvious. Wallace was spending another three years in the Indies collecting. He had no extensive library. In fact it took him another 5 years after his return to even get his journals in order to publish his classic “The Malay Archipelago”. After the “Origin of Species” Wallace himself always recognized that Darwin was the more significant of the two in actually providing the real life examples, the general applications, and forestalling the challenges that would ultimately occur after their essays were published. Wallace in fact wrote a work entitle “Darwinism” using some of Darwin’s’ material collected for that massive volume that never reached print.

But the fact is that neither Darwin or Wallace had first advanced or even popularized evolution. That had already been done by Lamarck, an anonymous author of the popular “Vestiges of Creation” and even Herbert Spencer. The great benefit that Darwin and Wallace supplied was that natural selection was the mechanism that COMPELLED evolution and that adaptations could be explained through natural forces.

Even more interesting is that Darwin and Wallace’s work, dealing as it did with the origin of species as organisms with a shared history and adaptation directly confronted one of the main props of scientific racism…polygenism…that the different human races derived from different creations and had dramatically different adaptations. Evolution would hold that the races are at most, different local forms that use the same basic “human adaptation”. Both Darwin and Wallace (despite their different backgrounds- Wallace was more like Lincoln in social standing in several respects than Darwin was) still, despite their view of general biological equality and potential, were still social chauvinists. Wallace was a big promoter of the ideas of Rajah James Brooke and even the Dutch system despite his advocacy of Irish Home Rule and socialism at home.

Your book is at the top of my ‘list’, Adam.

Your thoughts and ideas are wonderful, matching, as they do, many of my own, but your eloquence is most delightful and thoroughly enjoyable.

We do have a paucity, in our times, of those who might compare to Lincoln or Darwin (I especially appreciate your making clear that Darwin’s abhorrence of slavery was central to his motivation in exploring the world and its manifestation of subtle ‘connection’ and evolutionary impetus descernable to those willing to look and understand).

Thank you, ever so much!!!

DW

funny.

wasn’t that more of a general knee-jerk reaction of a country?
the camps? liberal?

adam, please explain that one.

I would, however, recommend buying this or any other book from Powell’s, which is unionized, unlike Amazon, which most definitely is not.