It also helped him sink into today’s relative obscurity-although he should soar in our estimation. Wallace was flattered that Darwin and his friends “thought so highly of it.” And working his own angle, Wallace told a friend: “This assures me the acquaintance and assistance of these eminent men on my return home.” It did. Darwin an essay on a subject on which he is now writing a great work,” he wrote. Instead, Wallace demonstrated grace and gratitude. Hollywood would make the egos clash-Mozart versus Salieri redux. To respect Wallace-while asserting Darwin’s primacy-his colleagues presented Wallace’s paper with two of Darwin’s writings, to the Linnean Society on July 1, 1858. The result was On the Origins of the Species, published in 1859. he does not say he wishes me to publish, but I shall, of course, at once write and offer to send to any journal.” Darwin added: “I would far rather burn my whole book, than that he or any other man should think that I had behaved in a paltry spirit.”įeeling protective-and paltry-Darwin’s friends pushed him to write a short introduction summarizing his central insight. “Even his terms now stand as heads of my chapters. Wallace “could not have made a better short abstract!” Darwin exclaimed. It was also the individual this middle-class, perennially-financially-strapped naturalist most wanted to impress-the wealthy, well-bred, brilliant aristocrat Charles Darwin. Wallace sent his paper on natural selection to the person he figured would most appreciate it. Both embraced heresy: creation was no six-day God-produced melodrama, but a constant process of churning, changing, evolving. Darwin emphasized competition, a natural sifting which only the fittest survived. Wallace thought the differences reflected different environmental adaptations. A naturalist who observed keenly, collected obsessively, and wrote exquisitely, Wallace noticed what Darwin noticed: the world is overflowing with species distinguished by subtle variations which represent some natural dynamism. Yet, in 1858, struggling from a malarial fever in Gilholo-now Halmahera-contemplating Thomas Malthus’s pessimism that disease and famine kill off the weak, Alfred Wallace had his breakthrough. But the theory is Darwin’s, the school of thought Darwinism, the mode of competition Darwinian. The light bulb isn’t the Edisunlight, the phone is not the Bellaphone and the car is a car, with Ford, Mercedes-Benz and other brands. Wallace’s obscurity is so striking because his input was so important yet Darwin’s name is now so dominant. In a less pr-centered world, we would think of Elisha Gray and Antonio Meucci, with Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone, Karl Benz with Henry Ford’s motor car, and Alfred Russel Wallace with Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Edison should be known as one inventor of the light bulb, along with Joseph Swan, Henry Woodward, Matthew Evans, William Sawyer and Albon Man. Although we imagine lone inventors shouting “Eureka,” most discoveries are three-dimensional, involving colleagues, predecessors-and competitors. Thomas Edison’s one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration genius formula got it half right it’s also 150 percent marketing. Although Alfred Russel Wallace should be as famous as Charles Darwin for discovering that species evolve – Wallace was evolved enough to delight in Darwin’s glory, not stew in Darwinian jealousy.
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