Cliff Lundberg wrote:
>
> Stephen E. Jones wrote:
> >[IMHO Darwin did act less than honourably in not
> >immediately forwarding Wallace's MS to Lyell for publication as requested, but
>
> >instead prevailed on his friends Lyell and Hooker to have his abstract read
> >jointly with Wallace's paper. However, the claim that Darwin plagiarised
> Wallace seems
> >unsustainable, since the abstract of Darwin's theory is attached to a letter
> >he wrote to Asa Gray in September 1857.
It's a matter of historical fact that Hooker and Lyell persuaded Darwin
that a joint publication was the only way for him to maintain priority.
Darwin did not suggest this avenue to either of them.
The reason we have "Darwinism" and not "Wallacism" is less to do with
natural selection, and more to do with what happened _after_ 1859 -
namely:
1) Darwin was the one who expanded on his theory in works such as
"Domestication", "Descent", "Expression of Emotions" etc, all of which
represented outgrowths from his original formulation within "Origin". We
thus see developments of the themes of common descent, natural selection
and sexual selection. Wallace, on the other hand, offered no substantial
further theoretical works in this field.
2) "Darwinism" prior to the 1930's meant common descent (a theory that
was accepted by all) - it did not mean natural selection (a theory that
was accepted by few). As Wallace was somwhat ambivalent to common
descent, this really leaves him outside the loop a little.
Wallace is not "forgotten" in any meaningful way - far more than Darwin
he developed the science of biogeography.
-jml
--John M. LynchInterdisciplinary Humanities Program & Institute of Human OriginsCollege of Liberal Arts and SciencesArizona State UniversityTempe, AZ 85287-0302, USA
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