Alfred Russel Wallace was a British naturalist who independently conceived of the theory of evolution by natural selection. While Wallace and Charles Darwin both arrived at the theory of natural selection, Darwin is given credit as the primary discoverer since he had been developing his ideas for over 20 years before Wallace sent him his essay. Wallace spent his later career focusing on issues outside the mainstream of evolutionary thought such as land reform, vaccination, and spiritualism.

1. Alfred Russel Wallace
1823 - 1913

2. Myths
Wallace was the real discoverer of natural selection
and Darwin stole the idea from him
Wallace fully accepted the power of natural selection
Wallace eventually spent his later years avoiding
evolution and examining issues which were wholly
marginal.
Wallace can be thought of as a “design theorist”

3. Evolution
Social
Nat. History +
Origins
Spiritualism
9% 1%
28%
34%
28%

4. Shorter
Works 7%
(747) 12% 29%
25%
Natural History+
Evolution 27%
Social
Anthropology
Spiritualism

5. Early Years
Born in Usk, Wales.
Middle-class family
1836: Apprenticed to builder
Influence of Owenite utopian
socialism and Thomas Paine
1837: Surveying w/ brother
Mechanics Institution lectures
1844: Teaching in Leicester
Reads Malthus, Lyell and Chambers
Investigates mesmerism

6. Mesmerism
Franz Anton Mesmer
“Animal magnetism”
The French Royal
Commission of 1784

7. On Vestiges
“I have a rather more favourable opinion of the ‘Vestiges’
than you [Bates] appear to have. I do not consider it a
hasty generalization, but rather as an ingenious hypothesis
strongly supported by some striking facts and analogies,
but which remains to be proven by more facts and the
additional light which more research may throw upon the
problem. It furnishes a subject for every student of nature
to attend to; every fact he observes will make either for
or against it, and it thus serves both as an incitement to
the collection of facts, and an object to which they can be
applied when collected.”

8. Henry Walter Bates
Explores Amazon with Wallace (1848 -
’59)
Returns over 14,000 species of which
8,000 were new to science.
1862: “Contributions to an insect fauna
of the Amazon Valley: Heliconiidae”
Batesian mimicry - mimicry by a
palatable species of an unpalatable
or noxious species.
Evidence for natural selection

9. Harmless

11. Henry Walter Bates
1844: Meets Wallace
Correspond on Vestiges, Darwin’s Journal of
Researches and Lyell’s Principles of Geology.
1848: Wallace and Bates explore the Amazon
as professional natural history collectors
Goal was to “gather facts towards solving
the problem of the origin of species”
Test idea that closely-related species
should inhabit neighboring areas
1852: Wallace returns home and loses
everything

17. 1852 - ’54
Sale of (few) remaining
specimens
Palm Trees of the Amazon and
their Uses
Travels on the Amazon
Briefly meets Darwin

18. Malay Archipelago
1854 - ‘62
Collect over 125,000
specimens
80,000 beetles
1,000 new species

22. 1853
“On the Monkeys of the
Amazon”
Geographic barriers often
separate closely related species
“Are very closely allied species
ever separated by a wide
interval of country?”
Answer would appear in 1855

23. Species
“On the Law which has regulated the introduction of
new species” (1855)
Four geographical facts and five geological facts
One deduction (the “Sarawak Law”), namely:
“Every species has come into existence coincident
both in space and time with a pre-existing closely
allied species.”
Transmutation!

24. 4 Geographic Facts
1. Large groups, such as classes and orders, are generally spread over the
whole earth, while smaller ones, such as families and genera, are frequently
confined to one portion, often to a very limited district.
2. In widely distributed families the genera are often limited in range; in widely
distributed genera, well marked groups of species are peculiar to each
geographical district.
3. When a group is confined to one district, and is rich in species, it is almost
invariably the case that the most closely allied species are found in the same
locality or in closely adjoining localities, and that therefore the natural
sequence of the species by affinity is also geographical.
4. In countries of a similar climate, but separated by a wide sea or lofty
mountains, the families, genera and species of the one are often represented
by closely allied families, genera and species peculiar to the other.

25. 5 Geological Facts
1. The distribution of the organic world in time is very similar to its
present distribution in space.
2. Most of the larger and some small groups extend through several
geological periods.
3. In each period, however, there are peculiar groups, found nowhere else,
and extending through one or several formations.
4. Species of one genus, or genera of one family occurring in the same
geological time, are more closely allied than those separated in time.
5. As generally in geography no species or genus occurs in two very
distant localities without being also found in intermediate places, so in
geology the life of a species or genus has not been interrupted. In other
words, no group or species has come into existence twice.

26. Reaction
Lyell: Began to see the possibility of transmutation
Blyth: “Good! Upon the whole!... Wallace has, I think
put the matter well”
Darwin: “[N]othing very new ... Uses my simile of tree
[but] it seems all creation with him.”

27. 1858
Feb: Malarial bout in Ternate (?) leads to “On the
Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely From the
Original Type.”
Jun: Darwin receives manuscript and request to read it
and pass it on to Lyell.
CD to Lyell: “He could not have made a better short
abstract! ... he does not say he wishes me to publish, but I shall,
of course, at once write and offer to send to any journal.”
Jul: Paper read to Linnean Society

28. 1847: Extracts of theory sent to Hooker
1857: Letter to Gray
1858: Wallace paper

29. Wallace
To Hooker Sep 1858
“Allow me in the first place sincerely to thank yourself & Sir Charles Lyell for your kind offices on
this occasion, & to assure you of the gratification afforded me both by the course you have
pursued & the favourable opinions of my essay which you have so kindly expressed. I cannot but
consider myself a favoured party in this matter, because it has hitherto been too much the
practice in cases of this sort to impute all the merit to the first discoverer of a new fact or a new
theory, & little or none to any other party who may, quite independently, have arrived at the same
result a few years or a few hours later.
I also look upon it as a most fortunate circumstance that I had a short time ago commenced
a correspondence with Mr. Darwin on the subject of “Varieties,” since it has led to the earlier
publication of a portion of his researches & has secured to him a claim of priority which an
independent publication either by myself or some other party might have injuriously affected, —
for it is evident that the time has now arrived when these & similar views will be promulgated &
must be fairly discussed.
It would have caused me such pain & regret had Mr. Darwin’s excess of generosity led him to
make public my paper unaccompanied by his own much earlier & I doubt not much more
complete views on the same subject, & I must again thank you for the course you have adopted,
which while strictly just to both parties, is so favourable to myself.”

30. 1862
Visits Darwin
Is introduced to Spencer & Lyell
Writing, lecturing, editing, exam
correcting …
Land planning, statistical
epidemiology, biogeography,
glaciology, exobiology,
anthropology, museum design,
social planning …

31. Ideas
• Greenbelts (1882) • Fire hoses for riot
control (1899)
• Protection of rural areas
as monuments (1882) • Mars is uninhabited
(1907)
• Labeling of goods (1885)
• Overhunting causes
• Paper money as extinctions at the end of
the Pleistocene (1910)
standard (1898)

38. Natural Selection
1863: “Remarks on Haughton’s Paper on the Bee’s Cell
and on the Origin of Species”
1867: “Creation by Law” (against Argyll)
1870: Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection
1889: Darwinism

39. Darwin and Wallace
Natural Selection
“environmental pressures on varieties” (ARW) versus “competition
between individuals” (CD)
NS “checks and corrects any irregularities almost before they
become evident.”
Denial of ubiquitous power specifically with regard to human mind.
Sexual selection
Denial of (much) power
Tropical Nature and Other Essays (1878) presented alternative and
explained warning coloration of caterpillars etc

40. Wallace Effect
1889: Darwinism
When two populations of a species have diverged,
hybrid offspring would be less-well adapted and natural
selection would eliminate the hybrids.
Individuals who avoid hybridization (for whatever
reason) would be fitter.

41. Biogeography
1876: The Geographical
Distribution of Animals
1878: Tropical Nature and
Other Essays
1880: Island Life

42. Away from the Mainstream
Anti-vaccination
Land Nationalization
Socialism
Opposition to “Social
Darwinism” and eugenics.
Support for women’s
suffrage.
Spiritualism

43. Selection and Humans
1864: “The Origin of Human Races and the Antiquity
of Man Deduced From the Theory of ‘Natural
Selection’”
Accepted human evolution as a two stage process:
body (bipedalism) and brain.
But cannot explain artistic/musical abilities, humor, or
philosophy (CD used sexual selection).

44. Spirit
Something in the “unseen universe of Spirit” had:
created life from non-life,
introduced consciousness to higher organisms, and
generated the higher faculties in humans.
The development of human spirit was the reason for
the universe (anthropocentric teleology)

45. Spiritualism
Wallace become interested in 1865
“I thus learnt my first great lesson in the
inquiry into [mesmerism], never to accept the
disbelief of great men or their accusations of
imposture or of imbecility, as of any weight
when opposed to the repeated observation of
facts by other men, admittedly sane and
honest. The whole history of science shows us
that whenever the educated and scientific men
of any age have denied the facts of other
investigators on a priori grounds of absurdity
or impossibility, the deniers have always been
wrong.”
Science and philosophy, not religion

47. Hooker - 1879
“Wallace has lost caste considerably,
not only by his adhesion to
Spiritualism, but by the fact of his
having deliberately and against the
whole voice of the committee of his
section of the British Association,
brought about a discussion of on
Spiritualism at one of its sectional
meetings. That he is said to have
done so in an underhanded manner,
and I well remember the indignation
it gave rise to in the B.A. Council.”

48. Wallace
Spiritualism could explain historical events and provide a
moral theory
Spiritualism was testable and verifiable
Scientists have wrongly ignore the evidence for spiritualism;
“[They] seem to think that it is an argument against the
facts being genuine that they cannot all be produced and
exhibited at will; and another argument against them, that
they cannot be explained by any known laws. But neither
can catalepsy, the fall of meteoric stones nor hydrophobia”

49. 1871
“While proclaiming loudly that the
only way to acquire knowledge is by
observation of facts, by experiment,
and by the formation of provisional
hypotheses to serve as the basis for
further experiment and more
extended observation, they have yet,
for many years refused to accept any
facts or experiments which go to
prove the existence of recondite
powers in the human mind, or the
action of minds not in a visible body”

50. “Historical Teachings”
Socrates was sane
Ancient oracles
Scriptural events
Miracles of the saints
Witchcraft
Modern Catholic miracles
“Second sight”
Efficacy of prayer

51. 1875
Man is a duality, consisting of an organized
spiritual form, evolved coincidently and
permeating the physical body, and having
corresponding organs and development.
Death is the separation of this duality, and
effects no change in the spirit, morally or
intellectually.
Progressive evolution of the intellectual
and moral nature is the destiny of
individuals; the knowledge, attainments,
and experience of earth-life forming the
basis of spirit-life.

52. Moral Force
The characteristics of a period are
primarily determined by the level of
intellectual and moral development
attained in life
This development comes through
rejecting materialistic, self-centered
goals and adopting a socially conscious
attitude
There is a continuity of cause and
effect in nature such that an individual’s
actions result in “just” rewards or
punishment

53. Wallace and Design
Opposition to materialism and support for teleology &
purpose is equated with “intelligent design” and/or theistic
evolutionism.
If so, so what?
C.H. Smith: “Don’t fall for the facile understanding being
promoted by some agenda-driven observers who argue
that, just because Wallace was a spiritualist and believed
that ‘higher intelligences’ were influencing events here on
earth, that he also believed in miraculous, non-law-based
kinds of Godly intervention.”

54. Wallace
Now, in referring to the origin of man, and its possible determining causes, I have used
the words "some other power" - "some intelligent power" - "a superior intelligence" - "a
controlling intelligence," and only in reference to the origin of universal forces and laws
have I spoken of the will or power of "one Supreme Intelligence." These are the only
expressions I have used in alluding to the power which I believe has acted in the case of
man, and they were purposely chosen to show, that I reject the hypothesis of "first
causes" for any and every special effect in the universe, except in the same sense that
the action of man or of any other intelligent being is a first cause. In using such terms I
wished to show plainly, that I contemplated the possibility that the development of the
essentially human portions of man's structure and intellect may have been determined by
the directing influence of some higher intelligent beings, acting through natural and
universal laws. A belief of this nature may or may not have a foundation, but it is an
intelligible theory, and is not, in its nature, incapable of proof; and it rests on facts and
arguments of an exactly similar kind to those, which would enable a sufficiently powerful
intellect to deduce, from the existence on the earth of cultivated plants and domestic
animals, the presence of some intelligent being of a higher nature than themselves.

55. "The last of the giants
belonging to that wonderful
group of intellectuals that
included, among others,
Darwin, Huxley, Spencer,
Lyell, and Owen, whose
daring investigations
revolutionised and
evolutionised the thought
of the century."
New York Times