Alfred Russel Wallace and his myths

• People (especially popular Writers) tend to think of Wallace as a forgotten genius who has been
wronged or cheated because he was not as famous as Darwin
• Not to trust sources outside as more myths than truth. Lots of falsehood.
• The false hood comes from people:
1) exaggerating his accomplishments and how genius he is .eg. People say he is the founder of
biogeography. Nope. Biogeography existed for decades b4 him.
2)exaggerating how he had to ght against extraordinary hardships.

Wallace background
• Son of Mary Ann Wallace and Thomas Vere Wallace (a gentlemen)
• Born in Kensington cottage, Usk
• Family only had one cook
• Sent to Hertford Free grammar school- a school for gentlemen
• Wasn’t forced to leave school cause family money run out. This is a myth.
• Became an assistant teacher at Collegiate School at Leicester.
• Met Henry Water Bates who left school at 13 at the school. Bates was from industrial family but
family had more money. Introduced Wallace to insect collection.
• Read Vestiges of Creation and Wallace was very convinced, unlike Bates.
• From 1913, Wallace became showered with praises, because most other prominent players in this
eld died.

Trip to Amazon,Brazil
• “Solving the problem of the origin of species “is an exaggeration made by Bates about Wallace trip
to Brazil. Wallace went to work as a collector.
• Back then many museums wanted specimens of plants and animals and Wallace made use of this
opportunity.
• When he decided to sail home, ship Wallace was on caught re and sank. Wallace private collection
of birds and insects was destroyed but everyone was physically safe.

After coming back from Amazon

• Did networking and gained funds from gov to buy rst class ticket on steamer to Singapore.
• Set up shop at St Joseph church, Bukit Timah.
• Staying with a mercenary, who was preaching to Chinese workers working at plantations in that area.
• Forests only left on hilltops as others been cleared for plantations. Wallace went to these parts of
tropical forest left.
• Complexity and abundance of species of wildlife made Wallace very pleasantly surprised.
• Spent 8 years travelling from malacca to New Guinea and the many island in between, discovering
thousands of species.
• Didn’t do it by himself. Always had hired assistants who helped him shoot birds and collect animals.
• One of Wallace’s main assistant was Ali from Sarawak

Sarawak law paper 1885

• Sarawak law paper 1885 didn’t mention evolution despite popular claims ( Writers saying that this lay
down theory for evolution).
• In this paper, while he uses words that may hint evolution to modern readers (people like us who
know abt evolution), it doesn’t explicitly state that older species change to become newer species,
stating instead that new species appear in space and time related to disappeared species.
• Using this paper, Wallace is testing the grounds of the scienti c community and trying to bring the
readers to understand his conclusion and POV, as it was very forbidden to talk abt evolution. He
couldn’t risk himself/ his name and status and being labelled a crazy evolutionist, on a society when
“creation” was the mainstream believe. He used creationist language so that readers can come to his
 conclusion.
• Darwin said thought that the paper was nothing new but very well put. He did wonder how does the
idea of “creation” ( which Wallace used in his paper) can be used to explain how creatures resemble
each other so much. He thought if “creation” was changed to “evolution” , he would quite agree with
him.

Wallace Line
On one side of the line lies animals belonging to Asian species and on the other side Australian family.
Animals on each side doesn’t live on the other side. Very di erent groups of animals existing right next
to each other..
Wallace rst person to exist this trend.

Big question :Why is Darwin so much more famous?

Extremely di erent views from modern and historical POV. In early history, people talk about Darwin-
Wallace-relationship in a nice way, talking about collaboration. Only after 1960s, Wallace is labelled the
victim.

The “eureka moment” Feb 1858 and the Ternate essay

After a night a ected by tropical fever, Wallace wrote an essay sounding very like natural selection. He
mentions on how insects become similar to background colours. This theory was likely inspired by tiger
beetles.
About the Ternate essay: The idea of variety vs Darwin’s idea. For Wallace, he talks about how variety
naturally occurs ( species are just born di erently, coming in di forms), and environment stimulus
(change of environment)would naturally kills some variety as they cannot survive given the new
environment. While Darwin talks about small changes that occur through thousands of years.
Ternate essay was sent to Darwin. Darwin wanted to publish it before his own essay of evolution but
his friends Charles Lyell and Joseph Hooker advised to instead have it read together with Darwin’s
notes so that Wallace may get some credit. After their reading, nth happened and this essay, together
with Darwin’s notes wasn’t enough to stir ath up.
Wallace opinion’s on this reading: very grati ed. This has elevated him in the world of science and his
name is tied to Darwin.
Conclusion from this part: Darwin was a noble man who assisted Wallace, helping him get his ideas on
a more prominent platform.

Darwin: The Origin of species.

The book that help so much evidence that it turned the scienti c world upside down.
Nth in the book was from Wallace. The book was Darwin’s 20 years worth of research.
Wallace agrees with the book and feels like he learnt a lot, stating that there many ideas stated that he
had never through of. Became one of the Darwin’s strongest supporters.
Conclusion: Darwin thought of evolution by natural selection. Natural selection had many parts of it and
Darwin gured out majority by himself. Wallace de nitely didn’t contribute 50% to the whole idea.

Wallace
in Singapore
Arrived18
April 1854
stayeda d
total 228
days