That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive;
Ephesians 4:14
"..Alfred Wallace, for instance, is brought in simply as an agent provocateur to spur Darwin into publishing his masterpiece. Sometimes Wallace is mentioned by an author as codiscoverer of the theory, which allows the author to extol Darwin's gracious nature in sharing the
discovery with an unknown. However, his name is then quickly forgotten; in fact, shortly after its inception as the Darwin-Wallace theory, the name Wallace was dropped, for reasons that will soon become apparent.
Wallace set out for the Malay archipelago and remained in the Malayan jungles alone, except for his native helpers, for the next eight years, returning to England finally in 1862....For the remainder of his life, he never obtained gainful employment...Wallace's "dark side"; he dabbled with spiritism; this activity more than anything else caused him to be alienated from the scientific circle. During his early travels in the Amazon, Wallace had befriended the Indians and had been allowed to enter into some of their black arts. At the time he dismissed much of this activity as heathen superstition. However, upon his return to England he found there was a fashionable interest in the occult and, carried out in the more genteel Victorian setting, he plunged into table-rapping and oui-ja boards with enthusiasm. Many well-known Victorians such as Conan Doyle, John Ruskin, and Lord Tennyson were also involved with spiritism and frequented seances, but Wallace evidently went too far and exposed himself to ridicule by becoming actively involved in the Society for Psychical Research.
....but what of the part he played in the theory of evolution? Wallace had read Lyell's Principles of Geology, which was abundantly furnished with examples illustrating the principles of uniformitarianism. He had read how the fossil evidence implied a succession of life forms, from the simplest in the early ages to the most complex in the more recent ages. Lyell had proposed that the earth was continuing to go through a slow but continual change and that the living things were also going through a slow and gradual change in response to the changing environment.
During his expedition to Sarawak in the Malay archipelago, Wallace published a paper, in 1855, entitled On the Law Which Has Regulated the Introduction of New Species. It was concisely written and enumerated ten facts dealing with such observations as the geographical distribution of species. It also set out the entire theory of evolution, except for how the species change....Wallace's "Sarawak law", as it came to be called, basically said that "every species had come into existence coincident both in time and space (geographic distribution) with a pre-existing closely allied species" (Brackman 1980, 314). This is exactly what the modern theory of evolution teaches.
Wallace wrote out his Ternate paper, which he entitled On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely From the Original Type. This was the document that contained the long-sought-for key to the theory of evolution: survival of the fittest was the mechanism, the how, by which the process operated.
Before taking a close look at what is really being said as the foundation for Wallace's theory -- later known as Darwin's theory -- it might be helpful to summarize what has been said so far:
1. Malthus saw man as the brute-beast and argued that disease, famine, infanticide, and warfare were legitimate checks on human population and should not be discouraged.
2. Lyell rejected catastrophes, including the Genesis Flood, by expanding the time frame for events in the past.
3. Wallace rejected the Genesis fixity of species and adopted Lyell's picture of the ascending order of complexity in the fossil record."
MindsOfMen
Ephesians 4:14
"..Alfred Wallace, for instance, is brought in simply as an agent provocateur to spur Darwin into publishing his masterpiece. Sometimes Wallace is mentioned by an author as codiscoverer of the theory, which allows the author to extol Darwin's gracious nature in sharing the
Wallace set out for the Malay archipelago and remained in the Malayan jungles alone, except for his native helpers, for the next eight years, returning to England finally in 1862....For the remainder of his life, he never obtained gainful employment...Wallace's "dark side"; he dabbled with spiritism; this activity more than anything else caused him to be alienated from the scientific circle. During his early travels in the Amazon, Wallace had befriended the Indians and had been allowed to enter into some of their black arts. At the time he dismissed much of this activity as heathen superstition. However, upon his return to England he found there was a fashionable interest in the occult and, carried out in the more genteel Victorian setting, he plunged into table-rapping and oui-ja boards with enthusiasm. Many well-known Victorians such as Conan Doyle, John Ruskin, and Lord Tennyson were also involved with spiritism and frequented seances, but Wallace evidently went too far and exposed himself to ridicule by becoming actively involved in the Society for Psychical Research.
....but what of the part he played in the theory of evolution? Wallace had read Lyell's Principles of Geology, which was abundantly furnished with examples illustrating the principles of uniformitarianism. He had read how the fossil evidence implied a succession of life forms, from the simplest in the early ages to the most complex in the more recent ages. Lyell had proposed that the earth was continuing to go through a slow but continual change and that the living things were also going through a slow and gradual change in response to the changing environment.
During his expedition to Sarawak in the Malay archipelago, Wallace published a paper, in 1855, entitled On the Law Which Has Regulated the Introduction of New Species. It was concisely written and enumerated ten facts dealing with such observations as the geographical distribution of species. It also set out the entire theory of evolution, except for how the species change....Wallace's "Sarawak law", as it came to be called, basically said that "every species had come into existence coincident both in time and space (geographic distribution) with a pre-existing closely allied species" (Brackman 1980, 314). This is exactly what the modern theory of evolution teaches.
Wallace wrote out his Ternate paper, which he entitled On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely From the Original Type. This was the document that contained the long-sought-for key to the theory of evolution: survival of the fittest was the mechanism, the how, by which the process operated.
Before taking a close look at what is really being said as the foundation for Wallace's theory -- later known as Darwin's theory -- it might be helpful to summarize what has been said so far:
1. Malthus saw man as the brute-beast and argued that disease, famine, infanticide, and warfare were legitimate checks on human population and should not be discouraged.
2. Lyell rejected catastrophes, including the Genesis Flood, by expanding the time frame for events in the past.
3. Wallace rejected the Genesis fixity of species and adopted Lyell's picture of the ascending order of complexity in the fossil record."
MindsOfMen
