It's also worth reading the following from the web-pages at WKU:
http://www.wku.edu/%7Esmithch/FAQ.htm. Clearly, the author of the
web-page doesn't see Wallace as "forgotten" and doesn't hold that
Wallace "scooped" Darwin.
Perhaps Stephen Jones needs to be a little more careful in his
sources/annotations?
-jml
Question: Did Wallace really become "the forgotten man" when Darwin
published his On the Origin of Species?
Answer: Hardly! When Wallace returned to England from his travels in
the East in 1862, two and one half years after Darwin's
book was published, his role in the completion of that work was
already known to naturalists; by that point, moreover, he had
attained an enviable reputation as a collector and observer. His
writings on a variety of subjects (in both the natural and social
sciences) soon brought him to the attention of a wider public and
professional audience. By the early twentieth century (years
after Darwin's death in 1882) he certainly ranked among the world's
most famous naturalists. At the time of his death in 1913, in
fact, he may well have been the most famous scientist in the world--I
have in my possession copies of contemporary interviews,
obituaries, and other accounts that refer to him in the following
glowing terms: "England's greatest living naturalist" (1886); "the
acknowledged dean of the world's scientists" (1902); "[one of the
two] most important and significant figures of the nineteenth
century" (1904); "a mid-Victorian giant" (1909); "this greatest
living representative of the Victorians" (1910); "the Grand Old
Man of Science" (1911, 1913, 1913); "the last of the great
Victorians" (1912); "the last of that great breed of men with whose
names the glory of the Victorian era is inseparably bound up" (1913);
"one of the greatest naturalists of the nineteenth century"
(1913); "We should not know where to look among the world's greatest
men for a figure more worthy to be called unique" (1913);
"Of all the great men of his time, or times, he was, with the single
exception of Huxley, the most human" (1913); "Only a great
ruler could have been accorded by the press of the world any such
elaborate obituary recognition as was evoked by the death of
Alfred Russel Wallace" (1914); "the last of the giants of English
nineteenth-century science" (1914)--and so on [contact the
Editor for bibliographic details]. After his death, however, he soon
fell into what might be termed "relative obscurity," and the road
back has been slow.
* *
* * *
Question: Did Wallace really, as some claim, "scoop" Darwin on the
theory of natural selection?
Answer: No. While Wallace had been thinking in evolutionary terms for
many years--in fact, one might reasonably argue
(because of his very early interest in social evolution), for as long
as Darwin had--the natural selection concept in particular did
not occur to him until 1858, by which time Darwin had been studying
the idea for some twenty years. Wallace's 1855 paper 'On
the Law Which Has Regulated the Introduction of New Species' (S20),
which hinted strongly at an evolutionary position,
nevertheless contains not even a trace of natural selection-like
thinking. Moreover . . . True, Darwin had published nothing
concerning natural selection by the time he received Wallace's essay
'On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely From
the Original Type' (S43) in mid-1858--and true, Darwin's contribution
to the 1 July 1858 introduction of natural selection to the
Linnean Society consisted only of two unpublished writings--but it
must be remembered that Wallace's essay itself was also an
"unpublished writing," and that he had not asked Darwin to submit it
for publication. Thus, the overall presentation consisted of
three unpublished, unintended-for-publication writings, and it cannot
be claimed even technically that "Wallace got into print
with a finished work" on natural selection before Darwin did. In
fact, Wallace's first natural selection-related analysis (that he
did intend for publication, that is!) did not appear until late 1863,
a whole four years after On the Origin of Species was published.
--John M. LynchInterdisciplinary Humanities Program & Institute of Human OriginsCollege of Liberal Arts and SciencesArizona State UniversityTempe, AZ 85287-0302, USA
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