Organic Evolution and the Darwin-Wallace Controversy

Ruhul Kuddus, Ph.D.Utah Valley University (January 2014)

Darwin vs. Wallace What Darwin Wallace

Time 1809-1882 1823-1913

Nationality British Welsh (he claimed himself British)

Class Born and died affluent Born and died poor

Education Edinburg (Medicine, flopped)Cambridge (BA in Theology)

Hartford Grammar School (completed 3rd grade)

Vocation Naturalist and writer Trapper and writer

Religion Unitarian (abandoned later on) No religion

Main contribution

Deducing and popularizing the phrase “origin of species by natural selection” On the Origin of Species

Deducing the theory “Origin of species by natural selection”The Malay Archipelago

Awards etc. Royal Medal, Wollaston Medal, Copley Medal

Royal Medal, Darwin Medal, Copley Medal, Founder’s Medal Linnaean Medal, Darwin-Wallace Medal, Order or Merit

Who Discovered Organic Evolution

Jean Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829)Use enhances and disuse destroys characteristics

Characteristics acquired during lifetime passes on to offspring

Lamarck’s Theory Can be correct at the gene and to some extent cellular levels

But for metazoan organisms, only changes that pass to offspring are the changes in the gametes (sex cells)

This is the first published theory on the process of evolution and it correctly established hereditary changes as the primary requirement of evolution

• There were some closet evolutionists before Lamarck, including Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802) but their ideas were not published

Who laid the foundation of the phrase “natural selection”

Thomas Malthus (1766-1834): Principle of Population (published in 1798)

Population increase is proportional to means of subsistence yet population increase geometrically if subsistence is there

Increased population beyond a level is repressed by misery and vice

Agustin de Candolle (1778-1841): Nature’s War (published in 1820’s)

Different organisms are at a perpetual war with one another for survival

How Darwin came there

1824’s: Read Malthus and de Candolle's works

1838: Started to shift from natural theology “species as the God’s plan” to “result of transmutation” ideology while cataloguing his Beagle collections

1837: Started to put together a theory on the process of evolution in writings and sketches

1844: Read the global bestseller “Vestiges of Natural History of Creation” published anonymously by Robert Cambers.

Chamber’s established transmutation (the word was coined by Lamarck) i.e. constant change of forms and functions as the natural cause of the evolution of species

1849: Stops going churches but remained theist till death

Wallace appeared like a meteor

Darwin, despite of accumulating mountains of evidences in support of evolution, was unable to come up with a comprehensive article on his theory on evolution of species

In 1856, Wallace published a paper titled “On the Law which has Regulated the Introduction of New Species” in which he forcefully presented the his law “Every species has come into existence coincident both in space and time with a pre-existing closely allied species”

Sir Charles Lyell (1797-1875), a mentor of Darwin, read the article and ‘discerned’ it to Darwin that Wallace may have ‘anticipated’ some of Darwin’s ideas

On Lyell’s ‘urging’ Darwin started to put together his ideas in a ‘big book’ and also wrote several letters soliciting Wallace’s opinion on the matter

In June 18, 1858, Darwin received Wallace’s article (Titled On the tendency of varieties to depart indefinitely from the original type) for it to be forward to Lyell for publishing the article in the Linnaean Society journal

Lyell and Hooker (1817-1911) made arrangements so that Wallace would “co-author” his article with two of Darwin’s pieces

How Wallace arrived there

1840s: The self-educated teen ager Wallace read the major works of Malthus (Population), Lyell (Principles of Geology), Chambers (Vestiges), Humboldt and Edwards (travelogues on natural history) and Darwin (i.e. The Voyage of the Beagle)

1848: Went Brazil to collect, study and sale biological samples, his collection was lost in a ship fire in 1852

1854: Went to Malaysia and Indonesia to collect, study and sale biological samples

1855: Published the article “On the Law which has Regulated the Introduction of New Species” in Annals and Magazines of natural History that caught Lyle's attention

The “Co-authored” articles

Darwin 1: Extract from unpublished work “On the variation of organic beings in a state of nature; on the natural means of selection; on the comparison of domestic races and true species”

Elaborated de Candolle and Malthus’ theses (i.e. rapid population increase and war of species for survival), alluded how slightly changed variety of a species may replace the original species after thousands of generations as the land changed

Darwin 2: Abstract of a letter from Darwin to Asa Gray (1810-1888) dated September 5, 1857

The content is essentially the same as the article 1, but the phrase “natural selection” appeared and it also alluded that the original species and the variant may coexist by utilizing different resources of the changed land

The “Co-authored” articlesWallace: On the Tendency of varieties to depart indefinitely from the original type. The article methodically explained

How organisms may rapidly increase in population density

Yet the population size remains same because of hunger, predation, etc.

Thus organisms struggle for existence

Variants arise among species and some variants are more well-equipped to compete and they leave more offspring causing increase and decrease of population size of different variants forcing extinction of some and radiation of some species

Some of surviving variants ultimately become sufficiently different from the parental species to become a different species

The species must evolve in the natural environment. Artificially selected variants among domesticated organisms would not survive in the wild to speciate.

Explained why Lamarck's idea of variation can be accepted but his idea on organisms’ desire for change should be refuted

Comparison of the two articlesDarwin’s articles were poorly composed, loosely articulated, they lack forcefulness and they were insufficient in establishing a convincing case for origin of species through natural selection

Wallace's paper was superbly well written, it was methodically explained and confidently presented to establish natural selection as the primary deriving force behind speciation

Wallace's article once again convinced doubters to concede that evolution is a law of nature

Darwin's “On the Origin of Species” (published 1859) is somewhat an extended version of the Darwin-Wallace (coauthored) article

D and W after 1857Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859 and played a significant role in advancing the evolutionary ideas among scientists and other intellectuals

In 1868, Darwin published “The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication” and proposed his version of pangenesis theory, also known as gemmule theory, which perhaps is the lowest point of his intellectual journey

In 1871, he published “Descent of Men” for which he consulted frequently with Wallace and others

Died in 1882 of heart disease, buried in the West Minister Abbey close to Newton's grave

D and W after 1857In 1869, Wallace published “The Malay Archipelago” a bedside classic of then and now

In 1880 he published “Island Life” and in 1888 “The Geographical Distribution of Animals” that earned him the title “the father biogeography”

Other publications include “Land Nationalization (1899), “The Wonderful Century (1899),” and “The Revolt of Democracy (1913).

Died in 1913, buried in Bradstone, Dorset (a medallion in his name was placed in the Westminster Abbey in 1915)

Is there a difference between Darwin’s and Wallace's versions of the theory

Darwin was more descriptive whereas Wallace was more analytical in deducing the theory

Some say that there are some differences in the theory of speciation by natural selection

Darwin emphasized competition between individuals of the same species to survive and reproduce

Wallace emphasized ecological pressure on varieties within species and between species forcing them to become adapted to their local environment or become extinct.

Darwin emphasized “sexual selection” whereas Wallace forwarded “reproductive isolation” as the force of speciation

Wallace, according to some, placed natural selection as a feed back mechanism that forces species and variants to adapt to their environment

D and W personal relationships

Wallace held high regards for Darwin and never claimed superiority of his concepts on evolution

Wallace even wrote a book titled “Darwinism (1890)” to defend natural selection as the major cause of evolution.

Darwin often consulted with Wallace on problems he found puzzling (for example, why some white-colored moth species succeed over dark colored ones in a dusky environment)

Darwin was aware of the financial problems of Wallace and often tried to arrange some help through his wealthy circle

Without Wallace's paper, Darwin may never have published On the Origin of Species and without Darwin, Wallace’s article could have been ignored and forgotten

If Natural Selection is a coin, Darwin and Wallace are truly its two faces but the coin is not enough to explain evolution

Why Wallace is ignored Despite of his later day inclination to some apparently radical ideas such as land reform and spiritualism, Wallace was not ignored in the past. He received as much prominence as Darwin among the biologist communities on both sides of the Atlantic

Recently, some biologists have equated organic evolution with Darwin’s theory although Darwin (or Wallace) only presented one of the many mechanisms of evolution

AP College Board, for example, failed to mention Wallace’s name in its ~100 page biology syllabus and it presented as if evolution is but Darwin’s theory

The reason is ignorance and incompetence of some biologists and their lacks in educating the public

Another case of disproportionDNA was discovered in 1869 by Friedrich Miescher (1844-1895)

Structure of DNA was determined chemically by Erwin Chargaff (1905-2002) in 1952 and physically by Maurice Wilkins (1916-2004) and Rosalind Franklyn (1920-1958) in 1952.

Linus Pauling (1901-1994) proposed a model of DNA in early 1950’s but the model was found incorrect.

Francis Crick (1916-2004) and James Watson (1928) reinterpreted Chargaff, Wilkins, Franklyn and Pauling’s data and without conducting a single experiment proposed the structure of double-stranded DNA in 1953.

Watson and Crick shared 1962 Nobel prize in Chemistry with Wilkins for their insight but their relentless propagation and large follow up made Watson and Crick the hero and the other discoverers are forgotten from the public domain

Today many believe that Watson and Crick discovered DNA

ConclusionsBoth Darwin and Wallace are important contributors to biology and knowledge

In a finer scale, Wallace's theory is more advanced than that of Darwin’s but Darwin had been more influential in making the theory acceptable to the intelligentsia

Not featuring Wallace's contributions to evolutionary theories is tantamount to ignorance and possibly hatred

Organic evolution is a natural law whereas Darwin and Wallace only proposed a theory to explain the process of evolution.

Presenting Darwin’s (or Wallace’s) theory as an equivalent of evolution is probably the worst of ignorance in this this line

Improper or disproportionate attention to one scientist over another is not uncommon in sciences, most likely because of the lack of adequate ethical sensitivities among some scientists