[NYTr] In Darwin's Shadow, a Socialist Pioneer of Evolution

[nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com]

sent by Bill Koehnlein

People's Weekly World - February 17-23, 2007
http://www.pww.org/article/articleview/10598/1/359


In Darwin's Shadow, a Socialist Pioneer of Evolution

by Nick Bart

The man was writhing in the grips of Malaria. A torrent of tropical rain
beat on the roof of his Indonesian hut. In the calm interludes between
the sweats and chills, he wrote about ideas--big ones. It was 1856, and
naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace was writing about how species evolve.

Little known today, Wallace went on to become the co-discoverer, with
Charles Darwin, of the theory of natural selection, the engine behind
evolution. And he became a socialist.

Who was this overshadowed scientific pioneer?

Wallace left school early to work as a surveyor. He loved to read, and
England's public libraries, not pubs, were his university. He was
fascinated when he heard a presentation by socialist Robert Owen in a
workingmen's Hall of Science. While working in Wales, he found himself
in the midst of the insurrectionary Rebecca Riots of 1842-43. These
experiences left their political mark.

In 1848, Wallace's interest in natural history led him to Manaus, deep
in Brazil's Amazon River Basin. While he contemplated the origins of
species, he needed to earn a living, and it was dangerous. He collected
insects, birds and other specimens along the Amazon and Black Rivers and
sold them to interested parties. One of his customers was Charles
Darwin.

After four years in the Amazon contemplating the variety among animals
of the same species, he decided to return to England. He made his way to
the port city of Pará with parrots, other birds and detailed notes of
his experiences and observations. Disaster struck when his ship, the
Helen, caught fire. A combustible balsam cargo had ignited. While he
escaped in a lifeboat, his precious specimens and notes were lost.

Undaunted, Wallace journeyed to the tiny island of Ternate, among the
Spice Islands of Indonesia in 1854. More collecting and observing
wildlife led to his 1858 paper, "On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart
Indefinitely from the Original Type." He mailed it to someone he felt
would be most interested --Charles Darwin.

Darwin was astonished that this young collector had independently
thought through, as he had, how species evolve. Darwin had kept his
thoughts on this mostly to himself, knowing the explosiveness in
Victorian England of a materialist explanation of species' origins. Now
there was a chance he could be "scooped." Some friends of Darwin's,
botanist Joseph Hooker and geologist Charles Lyell, moved to protect
their friend.

Both Darwin's and Wallace's papers were read on July 1, 1858, at the
Linnean Society in London. They were among six other papers read that
night. Not many took notice. It was a yawner. Meanwhile, Wallace was
still collecting insects in New Guinea to make a living. Darwin, due to
family fortune and some timely investments, was not burdened as Wallace
was by the need to earn money. So he set to work. His famous "Origin of
Species" (1859) was the result.

Charles Darwin is correctly referred to as the father of modern biology.
He collected mounds of evidence for evolution and its associated
theories. He experimented on worms and barnacles. He wrote prolifically.
But he also tipped his hat to Wallace in "The Origin of Species." He
quoted from an 1855 paper of Wallace's: "Every species has come into
existence coincident both in space and time with a pre-existing closely
allied species." Darwin wrote that Wallace and he agreed that this was
"descent with modification" in action.

Wallace was respectful of Darwin and his work. In 1882, he was a
pallbearer at Darwin's funeral. But he also differed from the famous
biologist in some important ways. While both saw the importance of the
environment, it was Wallace who developed this more in his later
writing. And he did it from a working-class perspective. Note this
sentence from his 1909 paper "The Plunder of the Earth": "The struggle
for wealth, and its deplorable results ...have been accompanied by a
reckless destruction of the storied-up products of nature, which is even
more deplorable because more irretrievable."

Wallace was the first president of the Land Nationalization Society of
England. His advanced political ideas helped him avoid the pitfalls that
trapped other 19th century evolutionists. Edward Bellamy's utopian
"Looking Backward" convinced Wallace of the socialist alternative. He
opposed social Darwinism and eugenics. He understood that class-driven
economics and politics, not biology, had much to do with the corruption
and injustices of society.

While we give Darwin his due, is it Alfred Russel Wallace's socialist
views that keep his 21 books out of print? The political left, and
especially those in the environmental movement, should read more of this
far-seeing worker naturalist.

[Nick Bart is an environmental activist in Connecticut.]