Happy birthday, Al. Oh yes, and Thanks!

Alfred Russel Wallace was born on this day in 1823.

After Charles Darwin there are two figures I think are counted as critical to the development of modern evolutionary thought. Darwin resisted the public forum, disliked the rough and tumble of public disputation, and feared the challenge to his position in society publication could lead to. If it weren’t for the fact that Wallace had come up with pretty much the same idea and would have published, forcing Darwin’s hand, a frankly much weaker proponent would have articulated the theory. The other, of course, is Thomas Huxley. After publication it took a firebrand like Huxley to defend the whole thing in public.

I had an old friend who used to launch into reveries of conniption about how Darwin stole Wallace’s fire. (He also had significant doubts about who wrote Shakespeares’ plays…) The truth as regards the evolution of evolutionary theory is vastly more complicated than my friend would allow. I think most fairminded folk can acknowledge that both Darwin and Wallace came up with the idea independently. And, fairly, Darwin had posited it first, if not in a published paper, and more importantly, worked it out better.

But Wallace had most of it, and was almost the first to publish.

Ultimately that outlines of their theory were presented together was the right thing.

Later it was Darwin’s Origin of Species that laid out the argument that would win the intellectual day. And Wallace’s part would fade from the popular imagination…

Now evolution is the way things are, biologically speaking. And if neither of these guys had been born eventually it would have been figured out by someone, just with different words.

But it was Darwin and it was Wallace. And, yes indeed, it was Huxley. (My favorite of the lot…)

So, a quick pause. A tip of the hat. A bow. And a thank you, Mr Wallace.