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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
More Wallace, August 4, 2004
This review is from: The Heretic in Darwin's Court: The Life of Alfred Russel Wallace (Hardcover)
Ross Slotten's new biography of Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) continues where others have left off. There has now been at least one full-length biographical study of Wallace published each year since 2000, plus several anthologies and other works. Clearly, Wallace is starting to "get his due." But there is yet much to do, and this latest biography demonstrates this point well.
Slotten is an amateur investigator, and this work was obviously a labor of love. But he's put a good deal of effort into his study, along the way uncovering new archival sources that shed further light on Wallace's many contacts over his long life. So, the reader will find further new things here, even if he or she has already digested the recent excellent studies by Peter Raby, Michael Shermer, and Martin Fichman. Slotten writes well, provides enough historical context to keep things interesting, and only occasionally is factually inaccurate (for example, in some of the chronology he offers for the period of Wallace's adoption of spiritualism, circa 1865-1866).
On the other hand, his efforts sometimes cross over into ill-advised opinion and elaboration. One thing he plays a bit too much on is Wallace's status as an outsider to the intellectual community of his time: the "poor Wallace" line (in relation to his dealings with Darwin, and everyone else). Actually, though Wallace was in fact an outsider, the real story of his life is how little such matters seemed to affect his thought process: when it came to the world of ideas, he was just about as fearless a thinker as we have had. Slotten does a rather poor job of exposing this side--the really important one--of Wallace, and to this extent does just about nothing to expand our knowledge of his world view past the status quo.
But for someone as unusual as Wallace, one cannot ask for everything at once. We should be happy for a well-written, well-researched, and admirably detailed accounting of a very interesting man's life, and continue to hope that future treatments will reach more and more into just what made Wallace tic, and how we in our time can make use of that information.
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The "Indiana Jones" of Evolution, July 2, 2004
This review is from: The Heretic in Darwin's Court: The Life of Alfred Russel Wallace (Hardcover)
This book was recommended by a friend. It's a great read, and would make a great action movie. I dimly remembered someone simultaneously developing a theory of evolution with Darwin. After reading this book, I don't know why Wallace isn't more famous than Darwin. He was certainly more interesting. He was self-made, from London's lower classes; trecked around the jungles of South America and the Pacific islands; was involved in a shipwreck; was recognized by England's most prestigious scientific societies; got involved in unpopular social causes and ended up going to seances and visiting mediums. This cost him him his hard-won scientific standing in Victorian London, but that didn't seem to phase him; he had moved on intellectually. He is a fascinating and colorful character. The author doesn't try to explain away the contradictions, but lets Wallace emerge as what he is -- a complexs and enigmatic, and ultimately very sympathetic figure. The book is also a fascinating study of Victorian England. It also contains a very lucid discussion of the thought process that led to the theory of evolution, which becomes almost a sub-plot, with its own heros and villains. This author writes in a clear, lucid prose, and lets his opinion occasionally show through, but generally plays it straight. The scholarship is impressive, but you aren't overwhelmed by it. The author keeps a critical distance from the character, so the portrayal feels ultimately balanced. If you are looking for a good biography, this is a book you should relish.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A very useful study of the great evolutionist, October 7, 2008
Ross Slotten, an American family doctor, has written a fine biography of Alfred Wallace, the 19th century's greatest explorer-naturalist and the co-discoverer of evolution.
Wallace's 1858 essay `On the tendency of varieties to depart indefinitely from the original type' outlined the theory of evolution and pushed Darwin into publishing his The origin of species by means of natural selection in 1859. They "had discovered a true natural system, one without a predetermined balance, teleology, or divine plan." Natural selection made a creator unnecessary: developments were not due to some prior purpose or design. Mind had evolved from matter, not matter from a Mind.
Darwin and Wallace united two ideas - the survival of the fittest, and the common origin and divergence of species. Natural selection was like the human practice of selecting among domestic animals and plants.
Wallace spent 12 years in the western and eastern tropics collecting and studying insects, birds, fish, plants and mammals. He wrote up his experiences in A narrative of travels on the Amazon (1853) and The Malay Archipelago (1869). He pioneered the study of biogeography, writing the classics The geographical distribution of animals (1876) and Island life (1880).
He later turned to spiritualism because of the death of his first-born son. As Slotten writes, "Wallace tried to do the impossible in attempting to reconcile religion and science."
Wallace also wrote, Bad times: an essay on the present depression of trade, tracing it to its sources in enormous foreign loans, excessive war expenditure, the increase of speculation and of millionaires, and the depopulation of the rural districts, with suggested remedies (1885), which sounds quite up-to-date!
He had abounding intellectual curiosity and tirelessly sought truth and justice. The Times wrote of his `restless, always creative, and original intelligence'.
Wallace said that Darwin's Origin of species was the greatest book since Isaac Newton's Principia, writing that Darwin's name "should, in my opinion, stand above that of every philosopher of ancient or modern times." Together, Darwin and Wallace had overthrown creationism and, as Slotten writes, "This was arguably the greatest intellectual revolution in modern Western history."
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