Infinite Tropics: An Alfred Russel Wallace Anthology - Softcover

Wallace, Alfred Russel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1859844782 ISBN 13: 9781859844786

Publisher: Verso Books, 2003

Synopsis

Alfred Russel Wallace’s reputation has been based on the fact that, at age thirty-five and stricken with malaria in the Moluccan Islands, he stumbled independently upon on the theory of natural selection. Andrew Berry’s anthology rescue’s 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 extraordinarily forward-thinking writing on socialism, imperialism and pacifism. Wallace’s opinions on women’s suffrage, on land reform, on the roles of the 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.

About this title

About the Author:

Alfred Russel Wallace (1823 – 1913) was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist. He is best known for independently proposing a theory of evolution due to natural selection that prompted Charles Darwin to publish his own theory.

Andrew Berry is a research associate at Harvard University’s Museum of Comparative Zoology. He contributes to, among others, the London Review of Books, Nature, Slate and The New York Observer.

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) was the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology and Professor of Geology at Harvard University. He published over twenty books, received the National Book and National Book Critics Circle Awards, and a MacArthur Fellowship.

From Library Journal:

This anthology of excerpts from the basic writings of Alfred Russel Wallace (l823-l913) introduces the reader to his pioneering explorations in natural science and his critical insights into social issues. He is best remembered for codiscovering, independently of Charles Darwin, the mechanism of natural selection to explain the process of organic evolution. Yet as an extensive traveler, astute observer, and avid collector, Wallace also made valuable contributions to entomology, ornithology, biogeography, and anthropology particularly as a result of his long-term research in the Amazon and Malaysia. He focused on insect camouflage and mimicry (especially in butterflies) and described numerous life forms, from the wild orangutan to the birds of paradise. However, after embracing both evolutionary teleology and theistic spiritualism, Wallace claimed that the human species is unique in this dynamic universe. Although he remains in Darwin's shadow, Wallace was an important naturalist during the Victorian age. Edited by Berry, a research associate at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology, this excellent book on Wallace's life and thought is recommended for large academic and public libraries. [Coming in September from Oxford University Press is Michael Shermer's In Darwin's Shadow: The Life and Science of Alfred Russel Wallace. Ed.] H. James Birx, Canisius Coll., Buffalo, N.
- H. James Birx, Canisius Coll., Buffalo, NY
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Verso Books
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1859844782
• ISBN 13: 9781859844786
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320
• Editor: Berry Andrew