Alfred Russel Wallace, F. R. S., and his essays of 1858 and 1855

IN 1858 Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin jointly and independently stated the principle of natural selection, and in 1859 Darwin published the Origin of species. In this essay I want to discuss the part played by Alfred Wallace in that great event: was he no more than a catalyst for Darwin, applied at a critical moment of his career? I shall try to show how much more than that he was and, up to a point, how similarly they pursued their great problem. That is the more remarkable because it would be hard to choose men more unlike in character than these two. Charles Darwin came of well-to-do parentage with a strong family tradition both to support and to bind him. His dominant father moulded the future pattern of his life. He went through the school and college training of a young gentleman for whom it seemed difficult to find a satisfactory calling. But all his life he was a man of property, and continued so through his common sense and his financial sagacity.

Polar Record ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 51 (5) ◽  
pp. 492-500 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Leah Devlin

ABSTRACTIn the summers of 1858 and 1859, the Scot Sir James Lamont of Knockdow embarked on two cruises to Svalbard (referred to by Lamont as Spitzbergen [sic]) to hunt, make geographical surveys, and collect geological and biological specimens. Lamont's return from these voyages coincided with the publication of the joint Charles Darwin-Alfred Russel Wallace paper, ‘On the tendency of species to form varieties; on the perpetuation of varieties and species by natural means of selection’ by the Linnean Society in August 1858 and, a year later, the publication of Darwin's On the origin of species (Darwin 1958). Profoundly influenced by Darwin's ideas, Lamont initiated a correspondence with the naturalist, relating examples of what he considered to be natural selection, observed during his hunting expeditions. In his Svalbard travelogue, Seasons with the sea-horses (1861), Lamont expounded specifically upon walrus and polar bear evolution, ideas inspired by sporadic yet encouraging letters from the renowned naturalist.


Author(s):  
James Aaron Green

Abstract In Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (1863), Charles Lyell appraised the distinct contribution made by his protégé, Charles Darwin (On the Origin of Species (1859)), to evolutionary theory: ‘Progression … is not a necessary accompaniment of variation and natural selection [… Darwin’s theory accounts] equally well for what is called degradation, or a retrogressive movement towards a simple structure’. In Rhoda Broughton’s first novel, Not Wisely, but Too Well (1867), written contemporaneously with Lyell’s book, the Crystal Palace at Sydenham prompts precisely this sort of Darwinian ambivalence to progress; but whether British civilization ‘advance[s] or retreat[s]’, her narrator adds that this prophesized state ‘will not be in our days’ – its realization exceeds the single lifespan. This article argues that Not Wisely, but Too Well is attentive to the irreconcilability of Darwinism to the Victorian ‘idea of progress’: Broughton’s novel, distinctly from its peers, raises the retrogressive and nihilistic potentials of Darwin’s theory and purposes them to reflect on the status of the individual in mid-century Britain.


Author(s):  
Brian Charlesworth ◽  
Deborah Charlesworth

Less than 150 years ago, the view that living species were the result of special creation by God was still dominant. The recognition by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace of the mechanism of evolution by natural selection has completely transformed our understanding of the living world, including our own origins. Evolution: A Very Short Introduction provides a summary of the process of evolution by natural selection, highlighting the wide range of evidence, and explains how natural selection gives rise to adaptations and eventually, over many generations, to new species. It introduces the central concepts of the field of evolutionary biology and discusses some of the remaining questions regarding evolutionary processes.


2005 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 235-257
Author(s):  
Friedel Weinert

Charles Darwin published hisOrigin of Specieson November 24, 1859. Whatever hurdle the theory of natural selection faced in its struggle for acceptance, its impact on human self-images was almost immediate. Well before Darwin had the chance of applying the principle of natural selection to human origins—in hisDescent of Man(1871)—his contemporaries quickly and rashly drew the inference to man's descent from the ape. Satirical magazines likePunchdelighted in depicting Darwin with his imposing head on an apish body. At the Oxford meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (June 1860), Bishop Wilberforce asked T. H. Huxley triumphantly whether he traced his ancestry to the ape on his grandfather's or grandmother's side. A wave of evolutionary texts swept over Europe (L. Biichner, E. Haeckel, T. H. Huxley, J. B. Lamarck, C. Lyell, F. Rolle, E. Tyler and K. Vogt). Written in English, French and German, they all had a common focus: the place of humans in a Darwinian world, including religion and morality.


2005 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 20-21
Author(s):  
Friedel Weinert

Charles Darwin published his Origin of Species on November 24, 1859. Whatever hurdle the theory of natural selection faced in its struggle for acceptance, its impact on human self-images was almost immediate. Well before Darwin had the chance of applying the principle of natural selection to human origins—in his Descent of Man (1871)—his contemporaries quickly and rashly drew the infer–ence to man’s descent from the ape. Satirical magazines like Punch delighted in depicting Darwin with his imposing head on an apish body. At the Oxford meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (June 1860), Bishop Wilberforce asked T.


2012 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-113
Author(s):  
Joseph A. Walsh

Students, using information gained since 1859, write letters to Charles Darwin critiquing passages from the first edition of On the Origin of Species.


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