Wallace's Paper Research Articles

Political Descent: Malthus, Mutualism, and the Politics of Evolution in Victorian England by Piers J. Hale

Political Descent: Malthus, Mutualism, and the Politics of Evolution in Victorian England, by Piers J. Hale. Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 2014. 465 pp. $45.00 US (cloth). Piers Hale has written an engrossing and well-argued work on the complex milieu of Charles Darwin's early evolutionary theory and its subsequent interpreters. In so doing, he places the current disputes on evolutionary theory, particularly those between proponents of individual versus group selection, into a proper social, historical, and intellectual context. The assumptions regarding the social relations of competition and cooperation were no less obvious in Darwin's day than in our own. Political Descent argues that Thomas Malthus, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, and especially Darwin himself, were well aware of the political, moral, and social implications of evolutionary theory. Likewise, the assumptions grounding our present debates can be seen in these distant debates if we take Hale's invitation to suspend our usual disdainful sense that the arguments have progressed since then, or that it was ever simply an argument between Darwinists and anti-Darwinists. Hale begins with a discussion of Malthus and the politics of evolutionary theory before and after Darwin focused on the role of competition and cooperation in human evolution. The question of whether natural selection can account for the existence of altruism and social cohesion produced two ideological formations: one that embraced the social stasis invoked by Malthus, and the other a radical, progressive, anti-Malthusian politics that originates in Lamarck and Darwin's own Lamarckism. The opposition is between those who would interpret Darwin through the lens of Malthus and those who would have Darwin without Malthus. Hales shifts the figure of Darwin from its usual role as the organizing centre of attention to show Darwin in dialogue with Malthus, Herbert Spencer, and Alfred Russel Wallace. Hale describes how Darwin's rejection of Lamarck--and with it the radical politics often attached to the theory of acquired characteristics--facilitated the acceptance of On the Origin of Species (London, 1859) by placing it within the mainstream of Whig politics. However, this invited Malthusian interpretations of natural selection that Darwin flatly rejected. Darwin insisted that his use of Malthus was always metaphorical. Darwin's use of Malthus certainly influenced the reception of the Origin of Species, but Darwin's Origin reinterprets Malthus theory in support of an ever-changing nature. This, Hale shows, contributed to the diverse politics and social theories that continue to spring from Darwin's engagement with the species question. Hale provides a nice account of Wallace's often overlooked address to London's Anthropological Society that attempted to reconcile its avowed polygenism with the monogenism espoused in Darwin and Thomas Henry Huxley's Ethnological Society. Despite Darwin's enthusiasm for Wallace's paper, he held firmly to his views on the centrality of natural and sexual selection in human evolution while embracing the portion of Wallace's paper that showed the importance of social relations in the development of moral sentiment and altruism in humans. …

Further details concerning the Darwin–Wallace presentation to the Linnean Society in 1858, including its submission on 1 July, not 30 June

ABSTRACTEvidence from the Linnean Society’s ledger of papers received in 1858 points to 1 July as the date of submission of the Darwin–Wallace papers for the famous meeting of the same evening. It has been widely assumed, and repeatedly stated, that the submission was on 30 June. but this article shows that this seems to be a wrong assumption. Acceptance of this later submission date also provides an explanation of the ‘oddities’ in the letter of transmittal. In turn, this reading implies further details about the separate roles of Hooker and Lyell in the crucial 13 days before the meeting.

Teasing Out Clues, Not Kooks

Teasing Out Clues, Not Kooks

Independence or Not? Paul V. McNutt, Manuel L. Quezon, and the Re-examination of Philippine Independence, 1937–9

In 1934 the United States set the Philippines on a new course, one that was to begin with autonomy for the archipelago as a ‘commonwealth’ - not a colony - and end with the Islands gaining independ...

Branching with Uncertain Semantics

Branching with Uncertain Semantics

G. Ledyard Stebbins. The ladyslipper and I

G. Ledyard Stebbins. The ladyslipper and I

From Darwin and Wallace to the discovery of Invar

Charles Darwin conceived his theory of the origin of species by natural selection following his voyage as naturalist on HMS Beagle . Among the many things he observed and pondered upon was the fact that in the Galapagos islands most of the animal species were found nowhere else in the world, and

Can Economic Growth Make Monetarist Arithmetic Pleasant?

The Sargent and Wallace paper has stimulated a debate concerning the relative size of the growth rate vs. the after-tax interest rate, and two different approaches have been followed in this debate. One approach is to simply compare the historical data on the growth rate and the discount rate, and the other approach is to consider optimizing under-pinnings. Darby [8] and McCallum [12] have emphasized that bond-financed deficits are feasible if the growth rate exceeds the discount rate, and, following the first approach, Darby interprets the empirical evidence for the U.S. as showing that this condition is met. Miller and Sargent [14] have replied to Darby, noting that the growth rate exceeding the interest rate condition is only necessary, not sufficient for the feasibility of bond-financing. They also emphasize that a period involving bond-financed deficits may raise interest rates, so that the growth rate should eventually be too low, as it has been in the U.S. since 1980. The alternative reaction to the growth rate vs. the interest rate debate is taken in McCallum [13]. His microeconomic analysis involved infinitely-lived agents with money directly entering the utility function, and his conclusion is that the conditions of optimizing behaviour preclude the growth rate from exceeding the interest rate. Burbidge [6] reaches the same conclusion with an overlapping generations model. However, Buiter and Carmichael [5] and Aiyagari [1] use overlapping generations models which do permit the growth rate to exceed the interest rate. Furthermore, Aiyagari emphasizes that higher deficits need not lead to higher interest rates, as long as the distribution of wealth across young and old agents is not affected by the deficit. What general conclusion can be drawn from these studies? In short, none. Theorists have demonstrated that they do not have a common view regarding the specification of optimizing models, and different historical periods can be cited to support either relative

Darwin's use of the analogy between artificial and natural selection.

The central role played by Darwin's analogy between selection under domestication and that under nature has been adequately appreciated, but I have indicated how important the domesticated organisms also were to other elements of Darwin's theory of evolution-his recognition of “the constant principle of change,” for instance, of the imperfection of adaptation, and of the extent of variation in nature. The further development of his theory and its presentation to the public likewise hinged on frequent reference to domesticates. We have seen that Darwin's reliance on the analogy between domesticated varieties and wild species was a bold and original step, in light of contemporary views on the nature of domesticates. However, as Darwin undoubtedly foresaw, his reliance on the analogy created difficulties as well as solving problems, and these began with his Malthusian codiscoverer of the principle of natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace. Wallace's paper “On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type,” presented to the Linnean Scoiety along with the first public unveiling of Darwin's theory, states: We see, then, that no inferences as to varieties in a state of nature can be deduced from the observation of those occurring among domestic animals. The two are so much opposed to each other in every circumstance of their existence, that what applies to the one is almost sure not to apply to the other. Domestic animals are abnormal, irregular, artificial; they are subject to varieties which never occur and never can occur in a state of nature.62 Much has been made of the similarity of views of Darwin and Wallace, but this quotation surely reveals how utterly different their views were on what to Darwin was an important matter. Several critics of the Origin saw Darwin's reliance on the domesticates as his Achilles heel. As Young has pointed out, Samuel Wilberforce included the following passage in his attack on the Origin: Nor must we pass over unnoticed the transference of the argument from the domesticated to the untamed animals. Assuming that man as the selector can do much in a limited time, Mr. Darwin argues that Nature, a more powerful, a more continuous power, working over vastly extended ranges of time, can do more. But why should Nature, so uniform and persistent in all her operations, tend in this instance to change? Why should she become a selector of varieties?63 Another critic, Fleeming Jenkin, found the analogy a weakness in Darwin's theory because of the limited extent of variation in any one direction in domestic animals and plants.64 We have already seen that Darwin had confided a similar view to his notebook thirty years earlier, but changed his mind as a result of his profound study of domesticates. De Beer's reference to “an English country gentleman's knowledge of domestic plants and animals and their breeding”65 fails totally to recognize the originality and depth of Darwin's knowledge of domesticates. Why did Darwin, against the currents of his time, rely so heavily on mankind's experience with domesticated organisms to shape his theory about species in nature? On reason is that only with domesticates was an approach that came close to experimental verification possible. Darwin fully realized the inadequacies of the experiment, as is emphasized by his repeated contrasting of selection under nature and selection by man. Yet the extensive experience and data of plant and animal breeders offered the only reliable base against which Darwin could continually challenge his views. As he wrote in the introduction to Variation, with domestication, “man ... may be said to have been trying an experiment on a gigantic scale.”66 Given Darwin's high opinion of the quantitative work of Malthus and Quetelet (as emphasized by Schweber),67 and his unremitting efforts to secure data by which to test his theories, it was inevitable that he should attach high significance to domesticated varieties. John Tyndall, in his Belfast address of 1874, said: “The strength of the doctrine of Evolution consists, not in experimental demonstration (for the subject is hardly accessible to this mode of proof), but in its general harmony with scientific thought.”68 Darwin would have agreed with the latter thought, but I think he would have challenged the preceding one on the grounds that long experience with domesticated varieties did provide an element of experimental demonstration. It gave him confidence in his theory, and he used his vast knowledge of artificial selection boldly and creatively.

Charles Darwin in London: The Integration of Public and Private Science

HARLES DARWIN'S PRIVATE WORK on the problem of the origin of species, in the years following his return from the voyage of the Beagle, has become one of the most intensively studied episodes in the history of science.' This is hardly surprising, for Darwin's conception of evolutionary change is one of outstanding historical significance by any criterion, from the most internalist to the most externalist. For at least two reasons, however, the interest of the episode extends far beyond the small circle of Darwin scholars, or even beyond that of historians of biology. First, it is an almost unparalleled example of a major scientific theory that can be followed in detail through all the phases of its development, and it thereby throws light on the dynamic processes of cognitive growth on the individual level. Second, it offers an important opportunity for studying the role of direct personal interactions-as opposed to merely bookish influences -in the construction of a theory, or more generally the link between the individual and group levels of scientific practice, or between and science.2 For in one crucial respect Darwin's early work on the species problem is highly atypical of theory construction in science: it was not developed in mutual interaction with other scientists. As is well known, his theory remained almost totally private for some twenty years. (Darwin discussed it with a very few colleagues, such as Joseph Hooker, but not until after he had formulated it in most of its essentials; the fact that he was working on a theory of speciation was more widely known, but its content was not.) The theory was eventually forced into the public realm only by external circumstances, namely by the unexpected arrival of Alfred Russel Wallace's paper in 1858, which closely paralleled Darwin's work.

Interpretations of Quantifiers

Contemporary theories of truth use a variety of interpretations of quantifiers. Some theories base their interpretations on Tarski's famous paper (1936); others use a substitutional interpretation; while others use yet further interpretations. Although it seems unlikely that the proliferation of interpretations reveals an equal range of substantively different options, there also seems no a priori reason to suppose that, in the end, all interpretations are one. The present paper is an attempt to make clear the relations between some of these interpretations, particularly those between substitutional and Tarskian interpretations. This enterprise is not novel: in a famous paper (1970), Wallace argued that all interpretations of quantifiers are, in the end, variants of that proposed by Tarski. Wallace's paper has attracted many critics, most of whom have focused on the argument by which Wallace purports to show that a substitutional interpretation is a variant of the Tarskian approach, and a careful examination of the controversy surrounding this argument provides an excellent route into the general issue of the relations between interpretations of quantifiers.

Wallace, Darwin, and Edward Blyth: further notes on the development of evolution theory.

Alfred Russel Wallace's paper, "On the Law Which Has Regulated the Introduction of New Species," was published in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History in September 1855, near the beginning of his eight-year stay in the Malay Archipelago. His object in presenting his views was, as he wrote, to submit them "to the test of other minds, and to be made aware of all the facts supposed to be inconsistent with them." His 'law"-deduced from a series of propositions relating to the geographical and geological distribution of organisms-read: "Every species has come into existence coincident both in space and time with a pre-existing closely allied species." 2 But, although Wallace himself sensed the true importance of his paper, it appeared to arouse little interest, and he received none of the constructive criticism for which he had hoped. In the summer of 1857 a congratulatory letter finally arrived from his old friend and erstwhile companion, Henry

The reading of the Darwin and Wallace papers: an historical "non-event"

The reading of the Darwin and Wallace papers: an historical "non-event"

The reading of the Darwin and Wallace papers: an historical "non-event"

The reading of the Darwin and Wallace papers: an historical "non-event"

Wallace, Darwin, and the theory of natural selection

On 1 July 1908 the Linnean Society of London commemorated the reading before the Society fifty years earlier of the DarwinWallace joint papers, "On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection." 1 On the first occasion only some thirty Fellows and guests had been present at a quiet, unheralded meeting; the authors themselves were absent. Now there was a large and distinguished gathering celebrating the historic event. Two of the original cast were present, the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) and the botanist Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817-1911). The other two, the biologist Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882) and the geologist Sir Charles Lyell (1797-1875) had been dead for many years. Hooker, now a venerable nonagenarian, spoke of his "halfcentury-old real or fancied memories" of that June in 1858 when his old friend Darwin received Wallace's paper on natural selection. He based his account on Sir Francis Darwin's Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, remarking with some uneasiness that, beyond the letters from Darwin to himself and to Lyell, no other documentary evidence existed of the events of those turbulent weeks before the reading of the papers. Despite a search, the letters to Darwin from Hooker and Lyell could not be found, "and, most surprising of all, Mr. Wallace's letter and its enclosure have disappeared." 2