Alfred Russel Wallace's Theory of Intelligent Evolution [Paperback]

Michael A. Flannery (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 16, 2009

Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913), co-discoverer of natural selection, was second only to Charles Darwin as the 19th century's most noted English naturalist. Yet his belief in spiritualism caused him to be ridiculed and dismissed by many, leaving him a comparatively obscure and misunderstood figure. In this volume Wallace is finally allowed to speak in his own defense through his grand evolutionary synthesis The World of Life published nearly a century ago in 1910. More than just a reprinting of a near-forgotten work, Michael A. Flannery places Wallace in historical context. Flannery exposes Charles Darwin's now-famous theory of evolution as little more than a naturalistic cover for an extreme philosophical materialism borrowed as a youth from Edinburgh radicals. This is juxtaposed by his sympathetic account of what he calls Wallace's intelligent evolution, a thoroughly telcological alternative to Darwin's stochastic processes. Though based upon very different formulations of natural selection, the Wallace/Darwin dispute as presented by Flannery shows a metaphysical clash of worldviews coextensive with modern evolutionary theory itself - design and purpose versus randomness and chance. This book will be of value to scholars and students alike seeking to understand the historical and philosophical roots of a controversy that still rages today.

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Erasmus Press (February 16, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0981520413
• ISBN-13: 978-0981520414
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,849,829 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wallace's Challenge to Darwinism, July 10, 2009

By 

Darwin Researcher (London) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Alfred Russel Wallace's Theory of Intelligent Evolution (Paperback)

This reprinting of sections of Wallace's 1910 publication The World of Life documents the fact that Charles Darwin's theory was not so much an attempt to understand nature as it was an attempt to replace theism with a materialistic, atheistic worldview as documented in The Darwin Myth: The Life and Lies of Charles Darwin by Benjamin Wiker (available on Amazon). In other words, Darwin's purpose was not science but theological. Russel recognized that Darwin's theory explained much, but did not, and could not, explain everything in the natural world. As anyone who has read Darwin's Origin of Species can plainly see, Darwin was not interested in understanding reality but in proving a worldview, a worldview that served both as a lens and blinders in his work. In his excellent introduction to the book, the editor, Professor Flannery, documents the conclusion that Wallace today would be most comfortable in the Intelligent Design camp. Darwin knew of Wallace's heresy, and it upset Darwin greatly. I am thankful that this now rare book is again back in print because it allows us to better understand, not only Darwin's motive in defending his theory but also the major problems the co-founder of evolution had with Darwin's conclusions. Indeed, the book The World of Life effectively challenged Darwinism, a challenge still very much alive today.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars THE ALTERNATIVE THEORY OF EVOLUTION, August 12, 2009

By 

Michael JR Jose (the UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Alfred Russel Wallace's Theory of Intelligent Evolution (Paperback)

There are two types of theory of evolution, the first is that Life is spelt with a capital `L' and is not by chance but by design, and it is purposeful and meaningful. The second is that life with a small `l' is by chance and not by design, and it has no purpose and no meaning, it is really just an existence. I begin here as these are philosophical positions, not scientific theories, as is so often pretended. This excellent book, which I recommend without reserve, is about Wallace's theory of evolution, which is about Life capitalised, versus Darwin's, which is a life less than ordinary.

Professor Flannery takes a historical approach with a fifty-five page analytical introductory essay, packed with good insights and references of all sources, and not too hard to read. It is followed by an acutely edited 150-page Reader's Digest version of Wallace's summary of his work and thought, his book `The World of Life', which originally ran to 400 pages. Although Wallace is now generally cited as the co-originator of the theory of evolution, Flannery demonstrates beyond question that Wallace was in his day a formidable proponent of scientific Intelligent Design and the Anthropic Principle, though not a young earth creationist. In contrast, Charles Darwin's theory is shown to be of the other type, that life is by chance and ultimately meaningless, we came up from the mud and go back to the dust.

Flannery's calm style and painstaking research achieves what many popular science books fail to do, he delivers a relatively easy read, straight from the shoulder, and making many direct hits on Darwin the person, his theory, his political-philosophical cartel of supporters (from then till now), but most importantly he nails the fact that this is all really a philosophy-war, science is just the weapon, not the aim of the debate. Wallace is herein rehabilitated from being the also-ran Darwinist: he comes out as the better scientist, the better theorist, and the better philosopher. This book is of considerable interest to biologists, historians of science and ideas, and to philosophers - of the realist-objectivist school, or the closet nihilist alike. The interested layman may gain a lot but has to be prepared to turn on and strap in with graduate reading level concentration.

CONTENTS
Foreword by William A. Dembski

Introductory essay - Shedding light on Darwin's shadow: Alfred Russel Wallace and Intelligent Evolution

`The World of Life' (1910) by Alfred Russel Wallace [abbreviated]
- Chapter 1: What Life Is, and Whence It Comes
- Chapter 2: Some Extensions of Darwin's Theory
- Chapter 3: Birds and Insects as Proofs of an Organising and Directive Life-Principle
- Chapter 4: General Adaptation of Plants, Animals, and Man
- Chapter 5: The Vegetable Kingdom in its Special Relation to Man
- Chapter 6: The Mystery of the Cell
- Chapter 7: The Elements and Water in Relation to the Life-World
- Chapter 8: Is Nature Cruel? The Purpose and Limitations of Pain
- Chapter 9: Infinite Variety and the Law of the Universe - Conclusion

Appendix - review excepts of the `The World of Life'

Editor's Postscript

Index


SUMMARY
The chapter on pain as biologically necessary and only extending as far as has biological utility was, as Wallace remarked, original and unique in its day. CS Lewis made some of the same points in his book `The Problem of Pain'.

The lack of mention of genetics and Mendel's (and others coming later) work is striking: even Wallace could not read everything.

Wallace's spiritualism in its analysis of angels and spiritual powers is biblical as far as it goes in his final summary work, `The World of Life'. But it actually goes less far than the bible. He astonishingly criticises what he supposes to be bible's position on angels as God's mere messengers as absurdly restrictive. He apparently knows nothing of (or forgets), the angel of death in Egypt, the encircling honour-guard of angels with drawn swords around one of the prophets, or the earth-shaking release from jail for Peter, and the history-changing impact of angels in the NT. After all, knowledge is power. Wallace followed spiritualism on two grounds: first, reaction to the complacent clergy of his day; second, he explicitly sought meaning in his life, unlike Darwin, who sought unmeaning and wondered why it killed his pleasure in music and the arts, and worried him into self-doubt.

Wallace is revealed as the inductive Baconian scientist that Darwin was not. Darwin began with a philosophical hypothesis and tried to justify it in `one long argument'. Wallace's convictions and theories grew with his accumulation of facts and clearly intuitive contemplation of his field work observations (which considerably surpassed Darwin's in original field work).

The excellent Flannery appears surprisingly to have missed a fourth reason why Wallace was content to remain in Darwin's shadow [qv Editor's Postscript, p.211]. Wallace was younger than Darwin by fourteen years and followed Darwin by some distance as a published scientist, especially as Wallace's first four-year trip to Brazil with Henry Bates (1848-52), was bringing back a cornucopia of specimens and notes when it was lost at sea on the return voyage. His Malay trip (1854-62) established him as the `father of biogeography' with his discovery of the Wallace line in Indonesia, and his observations of the orang-utan which pointed to the differences of the ape to Man as surely as Darwin pointed to the similarities.

FURTHER READING
1. Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, `Acquiring Genomes', (2002) [symbiogenesis theory, similar to Wallace in places, who would have loved it, varies strangely between very easy and very hard to read in different chapters]
2. Jan Christian Smuts, `Holism and Evolution', (1926). [politician, many similar notions to Wallace of the integratedness of `the Force' and the continuity of the spiritual life and the biological life]
3. Robert Broom, various. [fossil expert, he knew J.C. Smuts well, he held the same theory of guided evolution by spiritual agencies as Wallace, but he believed in `good angels and bad angels', which would cover the seeming malevolent unnecessity of poisonous snakes, etc, interesting twist on the theory of pain]
4. Eugene G. Windchy, `The End of Darwinism' (2009). [popular level easy-read, successfully attacks Darwin as a person, his `Club X' cartel of political promoters, the forgeries of the German Darwin Haeckel, the Scopes trial fantasy trial, and others]

19 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars What does *Wallace* say?, August 8, 2009

By 

C. H Smith (Bowling Green, Kentucky United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Alfred Russel Wallace's Theory of Intelligent Evolution (Paperback)

I will not directly comment on this attempt to make Wallace into an intelligent design advocate, except to reproduce his own words on the matter (from another of his books, Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection, 2d ed.):

-----"Some of my critics seem quite to have misunderstood my meaning in this part of the argument. They have accused me of unnecessarily and unphilosophically appealing to "first causes" in order to get over a difficulty--of believing that "our brains are made by God and our lungs by natural selection;" and that, in point of fact, "man is God's domestic animal." An eminent French critic, M. Claparède, makes me continually call in the aid of--"une Force supérieure," the capital F, meaning I imagine that this "higher Force" is the Deity. I can only explain this misconception by the incapacity of the modern cultivated mind to realise the existence of any higher intelligence between itself and Deity. Angels and archangels, spirits and demons, have been so long banished from our belief as to have become actually unthinkable as actual existences, and nothing in modern philosophy takes their place. Yet the grand law of "continuity," the last outcome of modern science, which seems absolute throughout the realms of matter, force, and mind, so far as we can explore them, cannot surely fail to be true beyond the narrow sphere of our vision, and leave an infinite chasm between man and the Great Mind of the universe. Such a supposition seems to me in the highest degree improbable.

Now, in referring to the origin of man, and its possible determining causes, I have used the words "some other power"--"some intelligent power"--"a superior intelligence"--"a controlling intelligence," and only in reference to the origin of universal forces and laws have I spoken of the will or power of "one Supreme Intelligence." These are the only expressions I have used in alluding to the power [[p. 372A]] which I believe has acted in the case of man, and they were purposely chosen to show, that I reject the hypothesis of "first causes" for any and every special effect in the universe, except in the same sense that the action of man or of any other intelligent being is a first cause. In using such terms I wished to show plainly, that I contemplated the possibility that the development of the essentially human portions of man's structure and intellect may have been determined by the directing influence of some higher intelligent beings, acting through natural and universal laws. A belief of this nature may or may not have a foundation, but it is an intelligible theory, and is not, in its nature, incapable of proof; and it rests on facts and arguments of an exactly similar kind to those, which would enable a sufficiently powerful intellect to deduce, from the existence on the earth of cultivated plants and domestic animals, the presence of some intelligent being of a higher nature than themselves."

Wallace was a spiritualist, but spiritualists believe that existence, though in part nonphysical, is understandable on the basis of law, not intervention. Thus Wallace was neither entirely a Darwinian, nor at all an I.D. advocate.