13,844 research outputs found
Reflections on Wallace
An unpublished paper has recently come to light, which shows that even at an early age, Alfred Russel Wallace was bold enough to approach the scientific establishment with his ideas
Wallace: the Review, and Wallace: the Preview
In this essay commemorating the one hundred year anniversary of his death, Alfred Russel Wallace (1823ā1913) is remembered for his main contributions to biogeography, and pointed to as a possible source of inspiration for future work in that field. As one of the scienceās āfathers,ā Wallace established both methods for study and a long-lived geographical systemization of animal distribution patterns. His efforts, moreover, may yet have the potential to inspire further new studies in the subject
A Further Look at the 1858 Wallace-Darwin Mail Delivery Question
Recent investigations have led to a conclusion that Alfred Russel Wallace probably mailed his āTernateā paper on natural selection to Darwin a month later than some have thought, thus freeing Darwin from possible accusations of plagiarism. Further examination of the question suggests this conclusion is premature, as the evidence in favor of the later mailing date appears to be shakier than first thought
Alfred Russel Wallace: Past and Future [Guest Editorial]
The naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823ā1913) has for many years been standing in the shadow of his more famed co-discoverer of the principle of natural selection, Charles Darwin. Despite outward similarities between the two menās formulation of the principle, Wallace had fit his appreciation of natural selection into views on evolution that were quite different from Darwinās. A closer examination of what Wallace had in mind suggests a model of process in which natural selection per se acts as the negative feedback mechanism (actually, a āstatespaceā) in the relation between population and environment, and environmental engagement as made possible by the resulting selection of traits acts as the positive feedback part of the cycle. Thus, it may be better to contextualize adaptive structures as entropy-relaying biogeochemical facilitators that only āgenerate a potential for evolutionā than to portray them as the end results of evolution. This systems point of view better lends itself to appreciations of the biogeographical context of evolution than does the tree-thinking of a more conventional style of speciation-focused Darwinism, which sometimes confuses process with result
- ā¦