خرید و دانلود نسخه کامل کتاب The Life of Alfred Russel Wallace – PDF

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he anthrop olo g ist Loren Eiseley, popularizer of the history of evolutionary thought, famously referred to the nineteenth century as “Dar- win’s Century.” Although his book of that name is concerned with a good deal more than Darwin, the phrase has contributed to the myth of a lone sci- entist ultimately triumphing over universal opposition. Darwin was not alone, however. Another man also discovered the theory of natural selection, and he championed the theory as vigorously as did Darwin. His name was Alfred Russel Wallace. Although he was the century’s greatest explorer- naturalist, few besides scholars know very much about him. For a time, Wal- lace shared the limelight with Darwin. It was Wallace who forced Darwin to publish The Origin of Species; indeed, were it not for Darwin, the nineteenth century probably would be known as “Wallace’s Century.” Darwin, cautious to a fault, had been laboring for some twenty years on his theory, amassing what he hoped would be enough data to change the minds of the majority of his fellow scientists. At the time, most people be- lieved that species had been separately (and divinely) created. Only two men knew the true nature and import of Darwin’s work: his friends the botanist Joseph Hooker and the geologist Sir Charles Lyell. Darwin had begun to or- ganize his material into a multivolume book to be entitled “Natural Selec- tion.” But an extraordinary thing happened. Sometime in June 1858, Darwin received a packet postmarked from the island of Ternate in the Dutch East Indies. The packet contained an essay by Alfred Russel Wallace, a thirty-five- year-old English naturalist with whom Darwin had struck up a correspon- dence three years earlier. The essay, “On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type,” shocked Darwin. Wallace wrote: We believe that there is a tendency in nature to the continue