Alfred Russel Wallace: the "red-headed stepchild" of Evolutionary Theory?

“In 1858, Alfred Russel Wallace, aged thirty-five, weak with malaria, isolated in the Spice Islands, wrote to Charles Darwin: he had, he said excitedly, worked out a theory of natural selection. Darwin was aghast--his work of decades was about to be scooped. Within two weeks, his outline and Wallace's paper were presented jointly in London. A year later, with Wallace still on the opposite side of the globe, Darwin published On the Origin of Species.”

Peter Raby in “Alfred Russel Wallace: A Life”

Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) was born in southeast Wales to a middle-class couple of modest means. Alfred suffered from poor health throughout his childhood, as did his other siblings; 4 out of 5 of his older sisters died before the ages of 22. By the time he was 14, he was forced to drop out of school and move to London and later Bedfordshire to live with his older brother William due to economic hardships within his family. It was here that he picked up a number of trades including draft and map-making, building design and construction, mechanics, and agricultural chemistry.

He also began taking an interest in natural history during this time, particularly in the areas of botany, geology, and astronomy.

In 1843, he began a teaching position at the Collegiate School in Leicester. He became engrossed in the library and read endlessly on topics including natural history and systematic. A chance meeting with another young amateur naturalist and entomologist, Henry Walter Bates, furthered his interest in collecting specimens and contemplating natural history.

Fun Fact! Henry Walter Bates gave the first scientific account of Batesian mimicry in animals.

After his brother William died in 1845, he quit his teaching job and returned to surveying. However, surveying did not afford him the knowledge he sought, so he continued with his natural history-related activities. He was even made curator of the Neath Philosophical and Literary Institute’s museum.

Intrigued by a book titled “A Voyage up the River Amazon” by William H. Edwards, Wallace and his new comrade Bates decided to legitimize their amateurish inklings and launch a self-sustaining natural history collecting expedition to South America. At the time Wallace was 25 and Bates was only 23!

The Amazon

In April 1848, they set out to Para (now Belem), Brazil at the mouth of the Amazon. Interestingly, less than 2 years after their inaugural voyage, Wallace and Bates split up. The reason for this is still unknown. Wallace centered his activities in the middle Amazon and Rio Negro Region, while Bates remained in southern Amazon.

Fun fact! After 11 years, Bates returned from the Amazon with over 14,000 specimens. Some 8,000 new species (mostly insects) had never before been identified!

Wallace managed to ascend the Rio Negro farther than anyone else had by that point (at least documented travels). He drafted a surprisingly accurate map of the Rio Negro region, given the cartographical limitations of the time.

From the influences of earlier readings on natural science, including Charles Lyell’s “Principles of Geology”, and discussions with the utopian socialist, Robert Owen, Wallace developed an overriding reason for coming to the Amazon (besides collecting and exploring). He wanted to explore his interests in “organic evolution” and social evolution. Wallace began to appreciate how long-term change could be effected through the operation of slow, ongoing processes.

Many of the books he read argued persuasively against Creationism and Lamarckism.

Wallace decided that by tracing out, over time and space, the geographical records of individual phylogenies he could demonstrate evolution. This was to be determined by:

1. The way geography limited or facilitated species’ ranges
2. How ecological niches seemed to shape species’ adaptations rather than their closeness to other forms.

He quickly immersed himself in the natural history of the Amazon’s birds, insects, primates, fishes, plants, and geography. He was also very much interested in the region’s native culture and the spatial distribution of their vocabularies and languages.

Upon his return to England in 1852, his ship caught fire and sank. He lost all of his possessions – including some live animals – along with all of the specimens he had collected over the course of his journey through the Amazon. He and the crew were rescued at sea by a passing cargo ship while adrift in leaking lifeboats.

With no prospects in England immediately apparent, and all of his collections lost, he managed to carry on in part thanks to a grant from the Royal Geographical Society that would take him to the Malay Archipelago (Singapore) in 1854.

Fun Fact! Founded in 1830, members of the Royal Geographical Society have included David Livingston (“Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”; driver of discovering the source of the Nile), Robert Falcon Scott (leader of Antarctic expeditions including the ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition), Percy Harrison Fawcett (searcher of the Lost City of Z; presumed dead after failed rescue attempts), Charles Darwin, and Sir Edmund Percival Hillary (first climber to reach the summit of Mt. Everest).

The Malay Archipelago

Over the course of 8 years, Wallace undertook about 70 different expeditions throughout the archipelago, collecting more than 125,660 specimens (at least 1,000 new to science).

He continued his mindfulness on the causes of evolution throughout his expedition. He wrote and published an essay titled “On the Law which has Regulated the Introduction of New Species” (1855), which elucidated his belief in evolution and the relation between biogeography and evolutionary change. This paper was seen by Charles Lyell and Darwin, but Darwin took relatively little notice.

While suffering from a severe attack of malaria, Wallace unexpectedly connected the ideas of Thomas Malthus to evolutionary change. [Thomas Malthus wrote on the limits to population growth that might ensure long-term organic change] This became the concept of “survival of the fittest”, in which those organisms that are best adapted to their local surroundings are seen to have a better chance of survival, and thus passing on their traits to progeny. Excited over his discovery, he put it into essay form and sent it to Charles Darwin (“On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type”). His correspondence with Darwin over the past few years had maintained a shared interest in, what they deemed, “the species question”.

Little did Wallace know, Darwin had been entertaining similar ideas from his essay for upwards of 20 years, and now a threat to his superiority on the subject loomed. Darwin contacted Charles Lyell for advice and they agreed to present Wallace’s Essay, along with some unpublished fragments of Darwin’s writings, to the next meeting of the Linnaean Society on July 1, 1858 – without obtaining Wallace’s permission first!

Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was published just 18 months later, ensuring the world’s introduction to the concept of natural selection through his eyes. Although Wallace remained in the highest ranks of scientific dialogue, from that point on (at least in the public eye) Darwin would overshadow Wallace in all things associated with selection theory.

Wallace remained in the Malay Archipelago for another 4 years, exploring and recording the fauna, flora, and native peoples. He has since become the foremost authority on this region and is especially known for his studies on zoogeography. Most impressively, he discovered the region of faunal discontinuity known as “Wallace’s Line”, which extends between the islands of Bali and Lombock and Borneo and Sulawesi. The Wallace Line demarcates the transitional zone between Asia and Australia. West of the line are organisms related to Asiatic species; to the east, a mixture of species of Asian and Australian descent.

Wallace's Line

The Aftermath

When Wallace returned to England in 1862, his life remained centered around the theory of natural selection. Although he was known as the co-originator of this concept and wholeheartedly defended natural selection throughout his life, future events would prove that he was not necessarily a full supporter of Darwinian doctrines (particularly those ideas detailed in Darwin’s Descent of Man). The biggest point of contention was Wallace’s belief that natural selection was insufficient to explain the development of human consciousness.

Researchers believe that Wallace frequently debated the relationship between natural selection theory and the origin/development of humankind’s higher mental and moral qualities. After about 1865, Wallace never published on natural selection again. He began investigating the philosophy of spiritualism and how it could account for our consciousness, which he presumed to be non-biologically operational (and consequently not under the influence of Darwinian selection).

For the rest of his life, Wallace remained a spiritualist and continued to publish over 150 works including essays, letters, reviews, books, and monographs. Due to poor investments, Wallace lost most of his profits accrued during his Malay expedition and resorted to taking on odd jobs to make ends meet. He regularly spoke out against political misdeeds and labor movements and became somewhat of a social radical. He later endorsed socialism as a means of obtaining certain basic and acceptable standards of living for the average person. He believed that freedom from worrying over basic necessities would allow people to redirect their attention towards moral and ethical self-improvement.

By 1885, Wallace had begun a trip through America lecturing at various institutions on everything from natural selection to socialism. This gave him the impetus to write one of his most famous books titled, Darwinism, which details his opinions on natural selection, including a critique on sexual selection.

Despite his radical associations with spiritualism and socialism, Wallace remained one of the most honored and prolific scientists of his time. Receiving a seemingly infinite number of awards and publishing countless works on a wide variety of topics, he was one of the first prominent scientists to raise awareness over the environmental impact of human activity.

Why then, after his death in 1913, did his reputation fade so quickly? He was undoubtedly one of the greatest natural history explorers of his time. Perhaps it was his modesty, or his interest in championing unpopular causes without regard to his reputation. Perhaps it was because Darwin was better at presenting the evidence and detailed more than just natural selection, but sexual selection and speciation. More recently, biographical publications and anthologies of his writings have brought him back into a meager spotlight. Although his role in assisting Darwin’s evolution into a household name (pun intended) has been recognized, he may never receive the same attention because of his affinity toward the unconventional despite his many accomplishments. Needless to say, the basis on which we define all aspects of evolutionary theory and natural history may not have formed as eloquently and effectively without his influences.

Literature:

Alfred Russel Wallace: A Life, Peter Raby, Pimlico (2002)

An elusive Victorian: the evolution of Alfred Russel Wallace, Martin Fichman, University of Chicago Press (2004)

Quammen, David (2008) The Man Who Wasn't Darwin. National Geographic 106:33

The Malay Archipelago. Alfred Russel Wallace, Cosimo, Inc. (2007)

Wallace, A.R. (1855) On the law which has regulated the introduction of new species. Annals and Magazine of Natural History, 2nd Series, 16: 184-196

Darwinism, Alfred Russel Wallace, Kessinger Publishing (reprint edition) (2004)