Download Alfred Russel Wallace by Tim Flannery | Books | The Guardian

Alfred Russel Wallace by Tim Flannery | Books | The Guardian
30/09/2011 19:28
Alfred Russel Wallace by Tim Flannery
The theory of evolution by natural selection has two founders – Charles Darwin and
Alfred Russel Wallace. Darwin was a leading figure of the Victorian scientific establishment, and is justly celebrated for his lifelong study of the evolutionary mechanism. His reputation rivals those of Newton and Einstein. Wallace, by contrast, is best
remembered – if at all – in the Wallace Line, a zoogeographic boundary separating
Australia from south-east Asia.
Wallace's independent discovery and publication of evolutionary theory in 1858 is
fully equal to Darwin's. Yet as a self-educated product of the working-class, he never
found acceptance with the social elite. His greatest work was published in 1903,
when he was 80, and today is almost entirely forgotten. Man's Place in the Universe: A
Study of the Results of Scientific Research in Relation to the Unity or Plurality of Worlds is a
visionary book that lays the foundations for the science of astrobiology and foreshadows James Lovelock's Gaia theory. It is also a passionate plea for environmental and
social justice.
Wallace blamed the appalling air pollution then prevalent in British cities on the
"criminal apathy" of industrialists, politicians, the courts and scientists. Lamenting
the sickly, stunted bodies of workers forced to breathe the foulest air our species had
ever created, he wrote: "Let this be our claim: pure air and pure water for every inhabitant of the British Isles."
Darwin and Wallace were very different men. But I think the defining difference between them is that, while Darwin focused on understanding the mechanism of evolution, Wallace considered its legacy. He knew that that legacy includes our minds, our
societies and the totality of our living planet, and that by virtue of its complex interactions, it is far greater than the sum of its parts. Wallace was the greatest holistic
thinker of his age, and he deserves to join Darwin in the scientific pantheon.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/feb/26/alfred-russel-wallace-hero-tim-flannery
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Alfred Russel Wallace by Tim Flannery | Books | The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/feb/26/alfred-russel-wallace-hero-tim-flannery
30/09/2011 19:28
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