Jim Costa: Alfred Russel Wallace, a radical by nature
Image Courtesy of Professor Jim Costa
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Jim Costa: Alfred Russell Wallace was something of an almost polymathic Victorian era naturalist, and maybe most famous as the co-discoverer with Darwin of the principle of natural selection in 1858 - but also recognised today as the founder of what we would call modern evolutionary biogeography, the study of the geographical distribution of animals.
Jim Costa: And understanding that distribution of species on earth today is really a product of a combination of evolutionary processes, but also geological history and climatic history. And Wallace was one of those in the 19th century that was able to really see with great clarity these patterns and put this all together.
Sally Le Page: Now we know that a lot of Darwin's ideas were solidified through The Voyage of the Beagle, Galapagos Islands - very famous. And it seems Wallace had almost a parallel path to the exact same ideas. Can you tell us a bit about that? Because I think that's such a huge part of his story, is the traveling and collecting that he did.
Jim Costa: Yeah, certainly. I do see some really striking parallels in the intellectual trajectories between Darwin and Wallace in that both of them - they are of a time of exploration, discovery - collection of natural history specimens was an important part of the scientific pursuit in the day, and both of them were part of that enterprise.
Jim Costa: But Wallace specifically in reading Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle, as a young guy, but also other natural history treatises like that of Charles Lyell, the geologist, reading Alexander von Humboldt, he had this keen interest in travel.
Jim Costa: But in his case, from the get go his interest in travel seemed to be motivated by a very particular interest in understanding the nature of species and varieties and maybe helping to investigate what was considered a great mystery of the time, which is the nature of the origin of species. Perhaps something of a heretical notion. You know, for some, this is something that Darwin came to after his voyage around the world on HMS Beagle, but Wallace seemed to be interested in traveling specifically with this in mind.
Jim Costa: And he found a way with a friend, a kindred spirit, Henry Walter Bates, to travel and collect and, with the help of a very capable agent back in London, finance their travels by sending specimens back to London. And these would be offered for sale to, the growing museums of the time, wealthy collectors that were interested in exotic and rare species.
Jim Costa: They're essentially financing their travels and explorations in that way. And all the while though, they're holding back duplicate specimens for later study. He travels for four years in South America, and then shortly thereafter, he travels in another eight years in Southeast Asia, modern day Indonesia primarily.
Jim Costa: And it is there that he makes some of his greatest discoveries in terms of geographical distribution of species and discovers the principles of natural selection and so in fact achieve this amazing goal of helping shed light on what some eminent philosophers of the day called the mystery of mysteries - the question of the origin of species.
Jim Costa: So Darwin and Wallace are interesting in that they're sort of parallel in their intellectual trajectories, but Darwin comes to his evolutionary insights after his travels. Whereas Wallace is motivated to travel precisely to investigate this. So there's a kind of inversion in a way of how they approach this multifaceted question of the nature of species and varieties - independently, until their paths converged very dramatically in 1858.
Sally Le Page: Yeah, and very famously, if people have heard of Wallace at all, it's probably Darwin receives a letter from this plucky up and coming naturalist saying, "Hey, I've got this idea!" - and Darwin goes, oh shoot. Better write mine all down in a book. I think it's really interesting because thinking, obviously from an evolution perspective, you think about convergent evolution and two adaptations evolve independently and separately - partly because both species are in the same sort of environment - so it's almost inevitable that they'll come to the same solution to solving this problem.
Sally Le Page: And you've got these two people in this time period both solving, as you put it, the mystery of mysteries. This was a tricky problem that no one had solved up until the 19th century, and yet within one lifetime, you've got two dudes from England or Wales, depending on how you want to call Wallace- you've got two dudes from the British Isles coming up with the same answer.
Sally Le Page: Were Darwin not to have been born, were Wallace not to have been born - do you think it was just inevitable that someone would have come up with this theory in this time period?
Jim Costa: That's a good question and I think it's fair to say that as with so many great scientific insights, this would've been discovered, if not by them, by someone else.
Jim Costa: And of course, others have certainly pointed out that there were others, contemporaries, of Darwin and Wallace who had themselves articulated processes that essentially are very much natural selection. They didn't necessarily see the big picture, they didn't run with that ball, they didn't connect dots or publish papers or books specifically drawing attention to this idea and its potential for explaining so much - but nonetheless, the idea in some measure was out there. Maybe most conspicuously Patrick Matthew comes to mind as one individual who clearly did articulate this process that we call natural selection. Maybe the idea was of the time, you know, thinking about population pressure, thinking about the role of differential survival, reproduction, competition, those sorts of things.
Jim Costa: There's almost a kind of mechanistic aspect to that thinking that one might say - and of course this is not original with me, but it has been pointed out - can be seen as very much of the mindset of the industrial age, the industrial revolution. And so pieces of this idea, of the mechanism of natural selection, were out there and very much being discussed in various contexts.
Jim Costa: It's easy to imagine that had it not been for Darwin, or Wallace, that someone else would've connected those dots and seen the significance for the broader philosophical questions about the nature of species, the history of species, and their relationship over earth's history. I think that probably almost certainly would've happened.
Sally Le Page: Wallace is more than just natural selection and this idea. He's also got aposematism, so bright warning colors in animals, and he also starts to go into the biogeographical regions of the world, which helps with plate tectonic theory. He seems to be quite interested in what we would now call environmentalism as well. What do you think is kind of Wallace's most important contribution to the world?
Jim Costa: Oh boy - yeah. Most important, well certainly what his reputation mainly rests on: his multifaceted, scientific contributions are truly monumental. I mean, even Wallace's papers - several of them are widely regarded as landmark works in evolutionary biology.
Jim Costa: Several of his books - for example, his geographical distribution of animals, Island Life - these are considered really again, foundational founding documents of whole disciplines. And his expansive interests in the biological sciences -yes, there are these other really interesting contributions as well - hitting the nail on the head with respect to explaining aposematic coloration.
Jim Costa: For example his longstanding debate with Darwin over whether natural selection could lead to reinforcement of reproductive isolation and speciation - kind of reinforcement theory, which Darwin didn't really agree with, but I think modern biologists would agree with - this is very much Wallace's viewpoint.
Jim Costa: And also thinking about sexual selection - Wallace and Darwin also famously disagreed about the nature of sexual selection. Wallace went from sort of generally accepting it, to waffling acceptance, to eventual rejection - but his view of sexual selection when he was still thinking this could be a real thing differed from that of Darwin's and is closer to what modern biologists would consider to be the main mechanism of female choice, for example.
Jim Costa: That would be female choice maybe based on indicators of various measures of vigor or health or those sorts of things. Whereas Darwin's model was very much based on pure aesthetics, something that Wallace really had a hard time with. And that's interesting - it continues to be discussed and debated today.
Sally Le Page: Do you think he understood the importance of the work that he was doing and the breakthroughs that he made?
Jim Costa: I think that he did, at least in some measure. In his own day, his major works such as The geographical distribution of animals, which was published in 1876, or his Island Life, I think that came out in 1880 - his contemporaries, they had the highest of praise for these works. I think he was truly recognised as having just genius in his ability to really synthesise as no one else could, to really see big picture patterns, to pull together seemingly disparate lines of evidence and observation and even innovate in interesting ways.
Jim Costa: For example, the beautiful maps that he developed for The geographical distribution of animals are just aesthetically beautiful, but they're also really quite innovative. The way that he was both statistically and graphically representing the distribution of species was hailed as quite innovative.
Jim Costa: I think that he appreciated that his friends and colleagues in the scientific community who he admired were also so admiring of him for those contributions, and I think he was aware that this was very, very important work that he was doing.
Jim Costa: There were probably other areas where it was an open debate, you know, the nature of sexual selection, maybe this phenomenon that we call reinforcement in speciation. He probably had no idea how these ideas would be regarded a century hence, or whether he would be seen as one who really laid down some important first principles of when it came to the big ideas, natural selection, which to his dying day, he thought this was tremendously important.
Jim Costa: And then his contributions to biogeography. I do think he had a good sense that these were extremely important advances in science, that he made a contribution to.
Sally Le Page: It's interesting you use the word genius, because one of the thoughts I often have when learning about these historical scientific figures - so you've got your Einsteins, your Newtons, your Darwins, your Wallaces - they're all lauded as geniuses.
Sally Le Page: And I mean, it's one of the big criticisms of the Nobel Prize right now - its that science is kind of moving away from this idea of "the discovery of one lone genius" , and that it's more collaborative now and the problems are much bigger and, and so it's very much a team process rather than the idea of a genius.
Sally Le Page: Do you think there is still a role for geniuses in modern science? Or do you think is it in any way dangerous to be thinking of these historical figures as these kind of standalone geniuses in how it reflects our own view of current science.
Jim Costa: Hmm. Yeah. Well, two thoughts about that.
Jim Costa: So part one here - I do think that there are some truly exceptional individuals who are incredible in their ability to really see very deeply into phenomena of nature and use the tools at hand, whether they're mathematical or empirical to figure these things out. Really exceptional individuals. Are they geniuses? I mean, this is a relative thing.
Jim Costa: I mean, what is a genius exactly? Which leads me to part two of my answer - and that is I've long believed, although yes, there are such remarkable, truly exceptional individuals, it's probably also fair to say that the myth of the lone genius is just that. You know, probably none of them, even the much lauded geniuses among us in history and the most creative minds truly work utterly in isolation.
Jim Costa: I mean, some, certainly they're just irritable like idea factories, with their insight or creatively just astounding in what they're able to create - a Mozart perhaps. But I do think that it's mainly - you used the word collaborative - that's absolutely true.
Jim Costa: And even though I have used the word genius in connection with a Darwin or a Wallace, I think they would be among the first to acknowledge that they did not work in a vacuum. They did not work individually very much. Science has always been largely, if not entirely a collaborative process. And I think that you're right, there is a danger of sort of maybe elevating certain individuals to a certain status, putting them on a pedestal as if they single-handedly now created a new field or took us in a new direction when in fact everyone is standing on the shoulders of others.
Jim Costa: But even in their mode of work and investigation, they are often very much relying on others. Think about Darwin and the reliance he had on his shipmates on the Beagle voyage. Think about later, his reliance on his extensive network of correspondents around the world, sending him specimens, making observations. Think about the assistance of his own family, his kids, Emma his wife, family friends lending a hand to run his curious experiments, and help him collect data, and sending him specimens - very much it's a collaborative endeavor. Darwin's correspondence alone is testament to that - you look at that amazingly voluminous correspondence.
Jim Costa: Look at Wallace. Same thing. Wallace, unlike Darwin, did travel maybe more on the rough, right? But he's living among locals. He's hiring a team to work with him. He had very trusted assistants like his assistant Ali, in The Malay Archipelago, very much relying on them.
Jim Costa: And then as he's thinking about these big, big questions - he's reading the literature, he's reading the work of others and making sense of that. His very livelihood and his ability to travel to investigate the big questions is made possible by a network, the network of collectors and museums and others back home.
Jim Costa: His ability to travel, especially in the Malay Archipelago, is very much context dependent upon a very extensive colonial network of mail boats and trade ships and those sorts of things. And so it's important to recognise, I think, that these personalities are not working alone certainly, and at the same time, I might incidentally add, it's certainly important to acknowledge the colonial context of their work in the 19th century, something that they would certainly acknowledge as well.
Sally Le Page: You can't mention Wallace without mentioning Darwin, and it's time to ask the elephant in the room question. I mean, the fact that we started a Genetics podcast and I asked you, who is Alfred Russell Wallace? You cannot imagine a world in which I would have to ask someone who is Charles Darwin, and they both had extraordinary contributions, very similar contributions.
Sally Le Page: Why do you think that Wallace hasn't been such a mainstay in popular culture, or why isn't he as well known as Darwin?
Jim Costa: Yeah, I've thought a great deal about that myself over the years, and I do think that the answer is multifaceted. I think that certainly the most famous of discoveries for the two of them certainly had to be the mechanism of evolution.
Jim Costa: They knew this as transmutation. We call it evolution today, natural selection. And Darwin certainly was there first, right? And Darwin had thought about this very deeply for about 20 years before he received this kind of bombshell of a letter from Wallace, announcing Wallace's own independent discovery, and about 18 months after the monumental reading of their respective writings on the subject at the Linnean Society on July 1st, 1858, Darwin - he was under pressure to really come out already with his ideas. In essence, sort of demonstrate he had been working on this on the Origin of Species as published in November of 1859.
Jim Costa: This is rightly recognised as an absolutely landmark work in the history of science. If not the history of humanity really in terms of our understanding of the nature of the world and our place in it. And it's a book that Darwin, rightly is very, you know, this is his baby, like this is his thing he'd been working on.
Jim Costa: Wallace for his part also recognises the brilliance. For Wallace, who's a very generous spirit - he sees that Darwin has been working on this and he actually claims that he himself, Wallace himself, could not have sort of propounded this idea nearly as eloquently as Darwin, because after all, Darwin had been pulling together evidence for this for some 20 years.
Jim Costa: So he had the highest of praise for that book and then started maybe practically a lifetime of deferring to Darwin. Darwin himself, in private letters to Wallace would often say, oh, you know, you share credit too. But really in public it was really kind of all about Darwin, and I get that, it's understandable - but this kind of set up a dynamic that reinforced something that is true about the both of them, and that is that at this time, it's fair to say that the Darwin name is already a famous name, right? Darwin's paternal grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, in the late 18th century was already quite famous. He was a famous best-selling poet. He was a very well-known physician. The Darwin name was out there.
Jim Costa: In 1839, but then in the second edition of 1845, The Voyage of the Beagle is published. It was originally called Darwin's Journal and Remarks of the Voyage, but you know, this was quite a bestseller, especially the 1845 edition. So we can say that Wallace is essentially a nobody. Darwin is already quite famous. And then this discovery, maybe the most famous of famous discoveries further just launches that name.
Jim Costa: Wallace's bump is sort of attached in a way. He's almost like on Darwin's coattails at that point, because Darwin's fame is already very much out there. So there's the dynamic. I think that you have a situation where Darwin is already a known, very well regarded naturalist, becomes even more famous, and combine that with Wallace's tendency to constantly defer to Darwin in terms of priority for this really epic making idea.
Jim Costa: And then finally, add one more kind of piece to this little puzzle of sealing Wallace's fate in a way, as always, a kind of secondary light to Darwin's would be that in the eyes of scientists, his contemporaries, but even into the 20th century - Wallace's broad interests in social issues, and especially what they consider to be nonsensical movements like spiritualism, which led Wallace, by the way, to sort of break with Darwin over the question of human evolution. I mean, this is a big deal, right?
Sally Le Page: Yeah. He seems to go back on his own views.
Jim Costa: He seems to, yeah, yeah.
Sally Le Page: It's like he says, oh, isn't it amazing? Humans are another animal species. We've evolved.
Jim Costa: Yes.
Sally Le Page: And then he becomes much more spiritual and he says, oh no, wait- maybe our brains are a little exceptional, and didn't go through the same process.
Jim Costa: Yes, yes. And you can imagine that did not sit well, right, with Darwin and, and his circle. That was probably the single biggest issue that strained the relationship of Darwin and Wallace, although, you know, it never broke their friendship completely.
Jim Costa: But that absolutely plays a role in then undermining his reputation among naturalists in his day, and then carrying forward into ours.
Sally Le Page: Your book, Radical By Nature - this is the fourth book you've written about Alfred Russell Wallace. What makes you keep coming back to Wallace time and time again? Is it his ideas, his personality? What is it that you just can't get enough of?
Jim Costa: Yeah, Wallace, he truly is just, he's endlessly fascinating. Again, as I mentioned earlier, the magnitude of his scientific contributions, where he came from, what he did to make those achievements. That in itself makes him quite remarkable, right?
Jim Costa: Coming from growing up in sort of a life of relative poverty, leaving school very early on. So his formal education ends in his mid-teens - really being an autodidact, a self-taught naturalist who has the audacity to think that he could investigate grand philosophical, scientific questions. And doing it, you know, against all odds.
Jim Costa: Like how in the world with someone with his lack of means, lack of money, lack of formal education, lack of social connections, lack of institutional support of any great museum or university managed to do what he did. I mean that in itself, wow. You know, he's truly remarkable.
Jim Costa: But then you sort of think about his extensive interests in these social issues, his deeply generous response to Darwin and the realisation that Darwin had gotten there first with this great discovery, but then these other interests with respect to social justice. I just think, you know, he is a singular personality in all of the history of science.
Jim Costa: I just can't think of a more multifaceted, fascinating, admirable individual. And so I think that partly as an educator, I mean, I teach evolutionary biology. I teach history of evolutionary thinking. I teach biogeography. I became keenly interested in teaching Wallace, of course, along those lines, and I became dissatisfied with narratives I sometimes came across where - these are pro Wallace narratives out there - where some seem to feel that, to elevate Wallace's profile, we must tear down Darwin. And there's all sorts of, over the years, books and papers and all these suggestions that Darwin was dishonest, that he ripped Wallace off, that he suppressed Wallace and he did this and of course, I would like to know if that's true. I delved into that documentary literature myself. I mean, I'm keenly interested. Is that true? The conclusion I came to is that no, there's not a shred of evidence for that, and I became rather dissatisfied that among some of my fellow Wallace fans, there were some that seem to feel like we have to undermine Darwin to honor Wallace.
Jim Costa: I've also written about Darwin and his intellectual trajectory, and I find him utterly fascinating as well. And I make the case that these are both remarkable individuals that we need to honor, maybe jointly, as our kind of first guides, let's say, to these evolutionary insights.
Jim Costa: And so I think part of the reason I keep coming back to Wallace: I want to elevate him for my fellow scientists, audience of scientists, my students and my colleagues, but also the broader reading public interested in intellectual history. We need to do better by Wallace, and I'd like to also help correct the record. I feared that this narrative of a dishonest Darwin doing Wallace wrong kind of thing was really doing a disservice to everybody.
Jim Costa: Certainly it doesn't help Wallace any, and it's just dishonest. It doesn't really help the cause of understanding the history of ideas. And so that's partly my motivation as well. I guess it's always the educator in me wanting to share my insights in these various ways and so that's what keeps me coming back, you know, to Wallace and also to Darwin.
Thanks to Professor Jim Costa from Western Carolina University, and his book, Radical by Nature, is available from your book retailer of choice.
