The Heretic in Darwin’s Court: The Life of Alfred Russel Wallace - Hardcover

Slotten, Ross

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0231130104 ISBN 13: 9780231130103

Publisher: Columbia University Press, 2004

Synopsis

During their lifetimes, Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin shared credit and fame for the independent and near-simultaneous discovery of natural selection. Together, the two men spearheaded one of the greatest intellectual revolutions in modern history, and their rivalry, usually amicable but occasionally acrimonious, forged modern evolutionary theory. Yet today, few people today know much about Wallace.

The Heretic in Darwin's Court explores the controversial life and scientific contributions of Alfred Russel Wallace―Victorian traveler, scientist, spiritualist, and co-discoverer with Charles Darwin of natural selection. After examining his early years, the biography turns to Wallace's twelve years of often harrowing travels in the western and eastern tropics, which place him in the pantheon of the greatest explorer-naturalists of the nineteenth century. Tracing step-by-step his discovery of natural selection―a piece of scientific detective work as revolutionary in its implications as the discovery of the structure of DNA―the book then follows the remaining fifty years of Wallace's eccentric and entertaining life. In addition to his divergence from Darwin on two fundamental issues―sexual selection and the origin of the human mind―he pursued topics that most scientific figures of his day conspicuously avoided, including spiritualism, phrenology, mesmerism, environmentalism, and life on Mars.

Although there may be disagreement about his conclusions, Wallace's intellectual investigations into the origins of life, consciousness, and the universe itself remain some of the most inspired scientific accomplishments in history. This authoritative biography casts new light on the life and work of Alfred Russel Wallace and the importance of his twenty-five-year relationship with Charles Darwin.

About this title

About the Author

Ross A. Slotten, M.D., is a family practitioner in private practice in Chicago. He is a Wallace enthusiast and has retraced a number of Wallace's travels in Indonesia.

Reviews

In 1858, Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913), a self-educated British naturalist collecting specimens in the Malay Archipelago, sent a brief manuscript to Charles Darwin outlining the concept of natural selection and explaining its important role in the creation of new species. Darwin, who had been working on this topic for 20 years but had not yet published anything, feared that Wallace's paper would take precedence over all of his own earlier work. In fact, Darwin's scientific allies arranged for a joint presentation of his ideas alongside Wallace's to the Linnean Society of London while Darwin rushed to complete On the Origin of Species. Physician and amateur historian Slotten does a very good job of contextualizing this critical moment in the history of biology within the life and times of Wallace. He demonstrates that Wallace was a brilliant, complex man and argues persuasively that Wallace never resented Darwin's receiving much more credit for the theory of natural selection than he did. Wallace, perhaps more than Darwin, took on all comers and was an articulate and forceful spokesman for natural selection. But, as Slotten shows, he was very much interested in other causes as well. As a socialist, he was an ardent proponent of social justice, working for land reform (he was himself from the lower classes). He believed in spiritualism, was against smallpox vaccination and, to the chagrin of many scientists, claimed that human intelligence was divinely inspired. Slotten's enjoyable exposition provides insight into the scientific process and the role of class structure in Victorian England. Illus., maps.
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*Starred Review* As a scientist, Charles Darwin will probably always tower above the man with whom he shared the honor of having discovered natural selection. But three outstanding biographies in three years evince a growing interest in Alfred Russel Wallace. Like Fichman's An Elusive Victorian (2004) and Raby's Alfred Russel Wallace (2001), Slotten's new life study illuminates an unpredictable genius who cut a wide swath in Victorian culture. Like his predecessors, Slotten examines closely the improbable chain of events that brought Darwin and Wallace to the same epoch-making discovery and probes the reasons that Darwin ascended to the scientific pantheon while Wallace descended into historians' footnotes. But Slotten surpasses earlier biographers in detailing the complex personal relationship between the two biologists, chronicling the curious way Wallace humbly deferred to Darwin in controversies over priority yet still vexed him over questions about the evolutionary process. Slotten's own jungle travels also enable him to chronicle vividly Wallace's labors as a field naturalist, labors that put him deep in dangerous wilderness long after Darwin had withdrawn to the comforts of the study. Even in Wallace's much-ridiculed forays into spiritualism, Slotten discerns the fearless curiosity of an explorer. Wallace, a man who defied even death in his investigation of earth's most peculiar species, is no longer a footnote. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0231130104
• ISBN 13: 9780231130103
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 602