Alfred Russel Wallace had the most influence over Darwin's development of his theory of Natural selection. Alfred Wallace independently come up with the idea of Natural selection, just as Darwin did. His idea was very similar to Darwin as he too believed in species evolving over time. Wallace went on his own trips, one to the Brazilian Amazon in 1848 and the other to Malaysia and Indonesia. He discovered the Wallace Line which he described as the boundary between Australia and Asia where big changes in animals were found. He then wrote a letter to Darwin describing the changes and how that sets as evidence to the evolutionary theory both scientists were working on at the time.
The ideas which are very evident in the work of Alfred Wallace are: All organisms have the potential to reproduce, all organisms have needs which are called “resources” (this came to Wallace after reading and being influenced by Thomas Malthus' views on economics, the idea of pressure of population growth where little earthworms are crashed by big animals and therefore declining their population growth. Resources are limited, organisms with better access to resources will be more successful, traits must be inherited in order to evolve, Wallace believed in the selection of traits where he believed that the animal/organisms with better traits have a better chance at surviving, existing, and reproducing. Lastly Wallace believed selection occurred by groups and not individuals. Charles Darwin believed in much of these ideas, he built upon on all these ideas. Since his theory was very much similar to Wallace, Darwin supported most of these beliefs, except Darwin did not believe that selection occurred in groups, he believed it was solely on an individual.
Darwin could have not developed his theory of natural selection without the influence of Alfred Wallace because, Wallace reported back to Darwin. Wallace brought back bird samples for Darwin to use on his experiment. Darwin used the findings of Wallace as evidence for his theory. Also it was knowing that Wallace has discovered a similar idea to him that pushed Darwin to publish his work.
The church was a great believer in creationism, they did not like the idea of evolution which Darwin brought out. Darwin was afraid about being criticized for his work by the church especially remembering the execution of Galileo for saying the sun was the center of the sun. Darwin worked for a very long time before finally publishing his book so he can include as much detail and evidence he possibly can to prove his theory.
Links: http://www.christs.cam.ac.uk/darwin200/pages/index.php?page_id=d8
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/history_14
Hello Marcos!
ReplyDeleteReading your take on why Wallace was the most influential for Darwin was very interesting. You have good detail and really supported why you thought Wallace was the right choice. I believe you were right on point with how you think the church affected Darwin and why he waited to publish his book. One point would like to discuss though is how you believe Darwin could not have developed his theory of Natural Selection without Wallace. Although Wallace did send some letters to Darwin, I did read that they independently simultaneous discovered Natural Selection. I do however agree that Wallace's letters did encourage Darwin to publish his ideas, but in the nature of competition.
Hello Marcos,
ReplyDeleteI also believed that Alfred Russel Wallace had the most influence over Darwin's development of his theory over Natural selection. By reading your post, I couldn't agree anymore that Wallace had the most influence on Darwin. Your right in fact Wallace did come up with his own studies of Natural Selection and later shared and compared his studies to Darwin's. They both in fact came up with similar ideas on natural selection. Anyways without the help of Wallace's' studies, Darwin would have a hard time developing his theory on natural selection.
Wallace is a little tricky, since he and Darwin came up with essentially the same theory concurrently. They heavily influenced each other, which makes Wallace unique in this group of scientists.
ReplyDeleteGood background on Wallace. As far as bullet points, essentially all of them apply to Wallace, since their theories were so similar. I have read in some places that Wallace was a group selectionist, but other articles have said that he agreed with Darwin's contention that selection acted on the individual level. I tend to think he was an individual selectionist as the mechanism for natural selection doesn't really work on at the group level.
Darwin had essentially arrived at his theory before he and Wallace started their communications, so technically, he DID come up with his theory without Wallace. That said, Wallace did provide additional support to Darwin and, more importantly, provided the impetus for Darwin to finally publish or lose claim to the theory to Wallace.
Actually, the church was relatively open to the concept of change found in the "lower" organisms. It was the natural extension of the theory, that humans were also the product of natural processes, that disturbed them more.
Galileo wasn't executed. He was put under house arrest for the remainder of his life, but point taken. Darwin didn't fear house arrest, but he and his family might have experienced social repercussions. Since his wife was very religious, Darwin was concerned about how this might affect her.
Hi Marcus, I found your post detailed, and you answered each question well. I agree with your point that Alfred had influenced Darwin with his ideas on natural selection. They both shared same belief that species change over time. Although Darwin was inspired by Wallace's ideas, he kept his own ideas to make his theory. I believe that even though both men contributed equally, Darwin gets most of the credit today.
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