快猫短视频

The Alfred Russel Wallace Reader: A selection of writings from the field
edited by Jane Camerini, Johns Hopkins University Press, 拢13, ISBN
0810867894

AT LAST, Alfred Russel Wallace is getting a fairer share of the limelight. He
had almost been written out of the story of evolution through neglect, but in
many ways he is a more interesting person than his more famous collaborator
Charles Darwin.

The contrasts between their circumstances and personalities reveal the
nuances of Victorian middle-class society. Although Wallace came from a
professional background, he had to rely on self-help and that great Victorian
creation, the Mechanics鈥� Institute, for his secondary education. Wallace had to
make his own way in the world and earned his living as a professional collector
of wildlife in some of the most uncomfortable places on Earth. But he still
found time to theorise about what he saw, and communicate his ideas to
established scientists by letter.

Jane Camerini鈥檚 excellent selection of Wallace鈥檚 copious and diverse writings
allows the man to speak for himself. Wallace was author of about 22 books
ranging from Island Life to Land Nationalisation and even
On Miracles and Modern Spiritualism, a topic in which he tried
unsuccessfully to get Darwin and Huxley interested.

As his children recalled, 鈥渁n uphill fight in an unpopular cause, for
preference a thoroughly unpopular one, or any argument in favour of a generally
despised thesis, had charms for him that he could not resist.鈥� He was a much
more independent thinker than Darwin, openly espousing Owenite socialism and
religious scepticism. If only Karl Marx had written to Wallace rather than
Darwin about evolution, he might have got a reply.