There are several reasons why Charles Darwin got more credit for the theory of natural selection than did his contemporary Alfred Russel Wallace, who entertained some rather similar thoughts on the subject. I think it is well established that Darwin's original thinking did indeed precede Wallace's and I am not about to spoil our commemoration of Darwin's achievements on this bicentennial of his birthday by discussing whether Wallace deserved more of the credit.
While Wallace was certainly quite the free thinker, Darwin was intellectually the bolder of the two. For him, the mechanics of evolution were powerful enough to bring forth adaptations as striking as consciousness itself. Wallace, on the other hand, believed not only in the materialistic workings of evolutionary theory but felt the need for an additional spiritual force in order to create life in the first place and later to create forms of consciousness in animals and humans.
Today, it is probably true enough to say that people who have thought about how consciousness might be explained can be divided into three main groups. There are the die-hard evolutionists, who believe that life and consciousness evolved from the raw materials of a materialistic universe. There are those, like Wallace, who believe that evolution can explain huge physical adaptations such that fish can turn into mammals just as shallow seas can become thrown up into dramatic mountain peaks, but reckon that some extra ingredients are required to explain consciousness. Lastly, there are those who believe above all in a spiritual force and choose sources of evidence supposedly revealed to us by this spiritual force instead of the materialistic implications of evolutionary theory.
Unlike modern-day creationists, Wallace was a very independent thinker and was certainly not hung up on issues of biblical truth. But he epitomizes the many people who are quite prepared to give evolutionary processes enormous powers over the physical adaptation of life-forms but who baulk when it comes to the evolution of consciousness. While it is easy to see the irreconcilable differences between the evolutionists and the creationists, the differences as exemplified between Darwin and Wallace with respect to this problem of consciousness are surely more worthy of sustained intellectual discussion.
Humans have in the past naturally been drawn to assume that an all-intelligent force created the universe, such that thought must precede existence. Everything we know about existence itself is a conscious knowledge, hence Descartes' assertion that "I think therefore I am." But Darwin's (and Wallace's) theories lead inexorably to the notion that our own ability as a species to develop self-conscious thoughts as individuals must have been the product of evolution, although Wallace could not accept it. And this is what we observe every time a couple of bags of DNA come together to form a new human being - a potential for conscious thought develops into another self-aware individual. Here indeed the emergent property of an individual's consciousness in some sense recapitulates its initial evolutionary development as an adaptive feature of an increasingly complicated central nervous system.
We live neither in a world of mechanical determinism nor in a world where strange spiritual forces must be invoked to breathe life and consciousness into dead matter. It takes a while to get used to the reality that the forces of random change and natural selection can create something as adaptively superb and complicated as an eye. There seems to be no scientific reason not to take the leap and include fully the organ of consciousness within evolution's grasp. By all accounts, Darwin himself probably had more difficulty understanding how on earth peacocks came up with those ridiculous tail feathers than the more sensible accomplishment of consciousness.
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5 comments:
Oddly, I actually believe in one or more higher powers, I presume more like Wallace. The thing is, I don't have any problem listing it as a belief with no scientific support. I don't confuse my belief with science.
I'm always surprised when people have a hard time with accept beliefs without wanting to legitimize them somehow. Why be threatened?
I have not read either word, but I think Darwin makes major concessions to his arguments in his book. Maybe people were atracted to a humble person who could admit his flaws. I'm not an expert, this was just a thought that can to mine.
Hi Stephanie - that's totally fine and I'm not saying everything one believes has to be scientifically "legitimate." But one has to have a reason (emotional, logical or whatever) to actually believe in certain things. I do find the concept of a higher power that interferes with the material world "incredible" because it seems so hard to reconcile with my view of reality which includes the scientific notion of universal physical laws and the idea of choosing the "simplest" explanation for what we observe around us. If we accept something like evolution, then it seems overly anthropocentric to imagine higher powers that care particularly about our fate. Consciousness is an extremely hard "essence" to imagine evolving out of inorganic matter. But consciousness only really exists for us within a context of space, time and matter, and these are arguably much harder properties to summon up from some initial void. For me, any higher power simply corresponds to the grandest mystery, which is the mystery of the whole damn thing, and which for simplicity I think of as playing out in the space, time and matter we observe around us. I think there are many people who find that concept threatening. We would all agree that it isn't totally satisfying, but I'm not going to find satisfaction in something I can't believe in either.
Hi DrBurst - Yes, Darwin clearly valued extremely careful arguments to properly convince himself and his readers of the veracity of his ideas and I gather that he mostly avoided making rash, unsubstantiated claims - although of course his works involved elements of speculation. Although we live in a much faster-paced world today, I think it's true to say that there are still scientists who present their ideas carefully and some who are prepared to admit their mistakes!
You're missing the key factor in Darwin's fame and Wallace's diminished status: class.
Alfred Wallace was born in Wales to a Scottish father and lower-class English mother in 1823. His father was in trade and later, so was he. Charles Darwin was born to a wealthy, upper-class English family. It's very hard for people today, especially Americans, to understand what that would have meant but it meant everything.
Wallace would not go to university because people of his class didn't, and Wallace did not. It would be taken for granted that a man of Darwin's class would attend the best British universities, and he did attend Edinburgh University and Cambridge. Wallace's explorations would not be funded by anyone else and he earned his way around the world working. A person of his class would not be a member of any scientific societies and he wasn't. Darwin was a member of several societies and had the family money to pay his way on The Beagle. Darwin was English, Wallace was a mongrel Celt, at that time in in the UK, several English scholars and doctors proposed that Celts were not the same kind of human as Saxons, that they were cruder, less intelligent and more like animals. Later it would be proposed that Celts were direct, living descendants of Neanderthals and some scientists would spend decades trying to prove that theory.
Darwin's discoveries were not ahead of Wallace's and, in fact, Wallace shared most of what he saw and collected with Darwin and was flattered and grateful that Darwin accepted his letters and wrote him back, as Darwin was well his social better. Wallace did not expect himself to seriously publish and would never be published and praised in the way that Darwin was because in society's eyes, Wallace was nothing.
It really is a miracle that Wallace achieved the things he did achieve and my admiration for him is much greater than my admiration for Darwin.
Hi G Becket
Thanks for dropping by. Actually I tried to make it clear that I was only really bringing Darwin and Wallace together in order to focus on their different views on whether evolution could in principle explain consciousness and on that score I agree more with Darwin.
OK, so let's talk about class-consciousness. I agree with you wholeheartedly that someone who has to really work for things deserves far more praise and respect than someone who has them handed to them on a silver plate. Darwin had a way easier time than Wallace, who clearly had an extremely energetic intelligence and spirit of adventure.
Having said this, you do somewhat exaggerate Wallace's social situation, since his father actually had a law degree and inherited some wealth, and his mother's background was definitely middle not lower-class. Wallace himself was not in trade but worked as a school master and surveyor.
It is true that Darwin became a fellow of the Linnean society four years prior to Lyell and Hooker presenting his and Wallace's joint claims. Wallace became a fellow 13 years after that presentation. There may well have been some cliquish class-consciousness involved here - I have no idea - but the society did strike a medal in their joint honour 50 years after the presentation, which is more than you would expect if indeed the upper-class English nitwits were telling Wallace to go back to his Neaderthal cave. In fact I seem to recall that Darwin got most of the brunt when he was depicted as an ape!
Personally, since Darwin and Wallace definitely came to their initial evolutionary thoughts independently, I think it unimportant who thought about it first. But everything I've read - including a website that aims to promote Wallace's overall importance - indicates that Darwin did come up with it first if only because his Beagle expedition predated Wallace's opportunities to go exploring.
I think Lyell and Hooker acted totally inappropriately in making the joint presentation without Wallace's knowledge or approval. While it would have been Darwin's fault if he had been "scooped," it would also have been a shame. I think there was a genuine attempt to see - for the right reasons - that this didn't happen, and I don't really think that Wallace was in any way unfairly suppressed.
I'm not saying that class didn't enter into the equation at all here. Wallace did have to worry about money numerous times throughout his life, but he did find ways to go off exploring and his scientific peers clearly took him seriously. Class-consciousness can affect issues of recognition among scientists, but I have to say that people like Lyell, Hooker and Darwin clearly took Wallace very seriously.
As should we all. Personally, I think we should call it the Darwin-Wallace theory as reflected on the Linnean commemorative medal.
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