Abstract
Alfred Russel Wallace’s 1858 essay on natural selection is often related by historians to his earlier views in the 1840s, and to his much later reminiscences around 1900. It is interpreted here as an amplification and transformation of a conjectural sketch composed two or three years before 1858 in his Notebook 4. Like the sketch, the essay was more brains-on bookwork than hands-on fieldwork. Wallace’s theory was not a group-selectionist theory. As an individual-selectionist theory about self-helping wild animal life, it supported, by contrast, his socialist view of human society. He never rejected Darwin’s analogy between artificial and natural selection, accepting it most probably on first encountering it.
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Acknowledgements
I am much indebted to discussions with Jim Costa and John van Wyhe. Their invaluable studies of Wallace have greatly enhanced our knowledge of his Malayan years. The section on references in the superb edition of Notebook 4, at pp. 544–545, is very informative on the indispensable online resources. The Alfred Russel Wallace page website directed by Charles Smith guides one to the others. The two multi-authored volumes edited by Charles Smith et al. include important new papers. The text of this paper has benefited greatly from Professor Charlotte Sleigh’s professional editorial expertise. Many thanks too to George Beccaloni, especially for decisive guidance on Wallace’s debts to Malthus, and to Greg Radick for characteristically cogent suggestions for crucial improvements to the final version.
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Hodge, J. (2023). On Revisiting Wallace’s 1858 Theory of Natural Selection. In: Méthot, PO. (eds) Philosophy, History and Biology: Essays in Honour of Jean Gayon. History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences, vol 30. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28157-0_11
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