Alfred R. Wallace Encyclopedia
1858: The Linnean Society of London listened to a lecture on how the theory of natural selection affects biological evolution and species diversity. Joint paper report on the issue. The authors of the paper were Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. Thus, history unveiled the prelude to modern biology.
Scientists at that time had already recognized the evolution of organisms. The fossil record provides evidence of the existence of extinct species. The question is, how do organisms evolve?
Darwin began working on his theory in 1837, when he had just completed a long voyage aboard the Royal Navy HMS Beagle. The famously rigorous naturalist not only set out to classify the vast number of different species he had observed during his travels, but he also hoped to find a possible explanation for the phenomenon.
He felt that he needed to publish detailed documents on the theory of natural selection in order to overcome the resistance of ordinary people to this concept, which was considered radical at the time. So he planned to write an all-encompassing, voluminous book that would conquer scientists and the world.
In June 1858, when Darwin was still immersed in his magnum opus, he received a letter from a British naturalist working in the Malay Archipelago. Alfred Russel Wallace was really a reckless boy at that time. When he conceived the theory of natural selection, he never imagined that his life would be dedicated to a book that would be as many as ten volumes. . He just hurriedly wrote a core paper on this topic, and then sent it to Darwin, the author of "The Voyage of the Little Dog", asking whether his paper could be published.
Darwin was very depressed (Translator: This is the rule in the scientific world, whoever publishes the results first will get it.). It was as if he was prepared to lose the honor he deserved for his twenty years of research. Wallace also asked Darwin to forward the paper to Scottish geologist Charles Lyell. Like the English botanist Joseph Hooke, Lyell was one of the few people who knew the early drafts of Darwin's work on the theory of natural selection.
Darwin wrote to both Lyell and Hooke, and they arranged for a joint paper to be read at the upcoming Linnean Society Congress in London. (The Linnean Society of London was founded in 1788. It was named in honor of the Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus, who pioneered binomial nomenclature. The Society is the oldest biological society in the world. "Translator: The so-called binomial nomenclature It refers to naming plant species in Latin. The species name of each plant is composed of two Latin words or Latinized words. The first word is the genus name, which is equivalent to the "surname"; the second word is the genus name, which is equivalent to the "surname"; The first word is the species plus name, which is equivalent to the name. A complete scientific name also needs to be added with the name of the author who first named the plant, so the third word is the name of the genus plus the species name + the name of the person who named it. The way of writing. Modern plant species names, that is, the naming of common scientific names, all use the binomial method. 』)
But neither Darwin nor Wallace attended the conference. Wallace was still wasting his time in the Malay Archipelago. Darwin was at home, grieving with his wife over their 12-month-old son, who had died three days earlier.
The president of the Linnean Society of London read out this 18-page paper, which consists of four parts:
1. Letter of introduction from the reader of the paper. The special circumstances surrounding this paper are explained.
2. An excerpt from Darwin's unpublished manuscript, taken from a chapter entitled "On the formation of species in a state of nature; On the method of natural selection; On the comparison of domestic species and the definition of species";
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3. A summary of a letter Darwin wrote on this subject to Harvard botanist Asa Gray in 1857.
4. Wallace's manuscript, "On the tendency of the diversity of life to develop without limits away from its original form."
The paper and the conference did not create an immediate sensation. There were other papers being read that day. The Linnean Society of London had routine business to attend to. The meeting lasted for a long time. The society only agreed to publish this paper in the journal at the end of the year.
Is this an extraordinary case of simultaneous discovery? That doesn't seem accurate. It was more like publishing at the same time.
Coincidentally, both Darwin and Wallace attributed their major insights to reading Thomas Malthus's 1798 essay "On Population."
Darwin read Malthus's work in 1838 and immediately realized how to apply it to his own research. Wallace did not come into contact with his work until around 1846, but he thought about human evolution when he was suffering from fever in the Malay Archipelago. A few years later, he was the first to realize the importance of "The Theory of Population" in explaining the theory of evolution.
Malthus observed that population numbers are always kept within controllable limits because not every individual has a chance to reproduce. Likewise, Wallace wrote, “The idea suddenly flashed into my mind…In each generation of the species, the inferior individuals will be eliminated, and only the superior individuals will survive—this is the fittest. Survival."
Differences in personality caused Darwin to delay the publication of his research, while Wallace couldn't wait to publish the results. Now, the same personality difference has become even more important to Darwin. Beneficial... and ultimately bringing him greater fame. Wallace had already prepared for the next step: collecting a large number of specimens of natural species in the hope of gaining fame and fortune.
Darwin also realized that he had to take action: at the urging of his friends, he published a magnificent volume containing all his research, which was "On the Origin of Species" published in 1859. 》.
This book caused a sensation in intellectual and cultural circles, perhaps the biggest sensation in the 19th century. Next year will be the 150th anniversary of the birth of this book, and the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth, both of which are more widely known than 1858.
But the story doesn’t end here…really. Both Darwin and Wallace admitted that they did not understand how surviving species passed their traits on to the next generation.
As early as two years before Darwin and Wallace's paper was published, an unknown Austrian monk named Gregor Mendel had begun studying the variation of hybrid peas. He discovered the importance of recombination of dominant and recessive traits in varieties. Mendel announced his paper "Experiments on Plant Hybridization" in 1865, which was published the following year.
But Mendel’s research did not receive much attention, and in the following 35 years, his results were cited only three times. Just as Malthus's observations had been ignored, Mendel's contributions to biology had to wait until the time came.
Waiting until 1900 AD, three European botanists, almost at the same time, rediscovered Mendel’s research. This was obviously the part that Darwin and Wallace had not understood. .
Sociologist Robert K. Morton believes that "crash" is common in scientific theories and inventions, citing calculus, natural selection, the telegraph, telephone, and the automobile as examples. He believes that there are still many innovations and advances that have no warning before they are born, because the first-to-publish-first-to-recognize regulations and patent issues prevent many researchers from making their results public. They have no choice but to find new topics or continue research on related topics.
As for the story of Darwin and Wallace, it is just an exception:
It is not just about an invention or a discovery, but a transformation of thinking, and it is It was this new thinking that structured modern biology—in a sense, all of modern science.
The independent research of these two scientists happened to be published in the form of a joint paper at the same time and place.
This is an example of a complex "crash" that spans the globe and affects an entire century.
As Morton and other scholars have shown us, ideas and concepts, even thinking, mature in response to the social and historical circumstances in which they exist. An idea arrives too soon, just as a seed is sown in the ground too soon - as in Malthus and Mendel - the ground leaves the seed dormant for a long time. The world of scientists is social, and their ideas, interests, visions, and audacity—including their blind spots and limitations—are products of their culture.
If this is right, in the words of Victor Hugo, a great writer of the same generation as Darwin, it is that times make ideas happen.