Darwin's colleague broke away from him, why?

[Beggar for the Spirit]

Sometimes we encounter people who believe in evolution and who glorify Charles Darwin. But yet they may be unaware that Darwin had "co-discovered" the theory of natural selection with a colleague named Alfred Russel Wallace. But yet this colleague broke away from Darwin soon after, because while their theories were similar, there was a major difference!

 

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Alfred Russel Wallace: a Heretic’s Heretic

If anything at all is ever mentioned about Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) it is that he co-discovered the theory of natural selection. The letter he sent to Darwin from the island of Ternate in the spring of 1858, “On the Tendency of Varieties to depart Indefinitely from the Original Type,” shocked its recipient into publishing On the Origin of Species that following year. Darwin became both noteworthy and notorious, for while his theory was hailed by many as heralding in a new scientific era, it also suggested that all the wondrous diversity of life could be explained without recourse to a divine Creator, raising the cry of “heresy!” from many more. The English clergy particularly decried that William Paley’s watchmaker had been replaced with chance and necessity. “The old argument from design in Nature, as given by Paley,” Darwin declared, “which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. . . . There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings, and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows.” Thus Darwin became the era’s leading heretic.

 

But notice is seldom given to Darwin’s colleague, Alfred Russel Wallace. He is credited for co-discovering natural selection but then quickly recedes into the mists of history rarely to appear again. What is seldom mentioned is that Wallace became the heretic’s heretic when he boldly reintroduced purpose and design back into nature.

Wallace’s break with Darwin was inevitable.

It came in the 1869 April issue of the Quarterly Review. Writing an essay review of the tenth edition of Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology, Wallace declared that “an Overruling Intelligence has watched over the action of those [natural] laws, so directing variations and so determining their accumulation, as finally to produce an organization sufficiently perfect to admit of, and even to aid in, the indefinite advancement of our mental and moral nature.” Darwin was appalled. Scratching an emphatic “NO!!!” in the margin of his copy of the Quarterly, he couldn’t believe that Wallace was the author.

 

https://publicdomainreview.org/2013/10/30/alfred-russel-wallace-a-heretics-heretic/

And 1 author wrote this interesting statement,

"Wallace broke with Darwin and became, arguably, the founding father of modern intelligent design theory."

Edited July 26, 2018 by Shawnster
shortened title.

[digital_dreamer]

Great find!

Some snippets I really like:

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His cosmology, discussed at length in Man’s Place in the Universe (1903), argued explicitly against the Copernican Principle. Far from a mere speck in the universe the earth was unique. The exacting tolerances of the solar system, of mass along with gravity, atmosphere, temperature, light, and many other requisites for complex life suggested that the universe was fine-tuned for uniquely human existence.

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Insisting that natural selection operated strictly by the principle of utility, he held that intellectual capacities of Homo sapiens were far too developed to be explained as adaptations to mere survival.

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But as Wallace’s life reveals, it is not about evolution or common descent or even natural selection, but about the explanatory power of blind natural laws. The problems of the human mind, of sentience, of the origin of life remain as intractable as ever.

 

Where did you find that quote by one author regarding Wallace becoming, “arguably, the founding father of modern intelligent design theory”?

 

Edit: I see there’s a difference between his theory of Intelligent Evolution and Intelligent Design.

Edited July 26, 2018 by digital_dreamer

[bohemian]

There is a new biography of Wallace:

 

It's expensive, though. i am waiting for the Kindle version to become cheaper before I consider purchase.

More information here:

https://evolutionnews.org/2018/07/alfred-russel-wallace-new-biography-is-a-defeater-for-arguments-for-theistic-evolution/

 

[Beggar for the Spirit]

8 hours ago, digital_dreamer said:

Great find!

Some snippets I really like:

Where did you find that quote by one author regarding Wallace becoming, “arguably, the founding father of modern intelligent design theory”?

Hi Michael,

Thanks for those quotes. 

The other quote I had about Wallace is found on the link that Christopher posted .

[Friends just call me Ross]

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In particular, I have stressed that science would not have acquired, and perhaps cannot continue to sustain, its “view from nowhere” sense of objectivity towards all of reality —and not merely to what is relevant to our species’ survival — without faith in the idea that we have been specially designed to make sense of it all.

https://evolutionnews.org/2018/07/sociologist-how-id-foxes-can-beat-the-darwinian-lions/

Great find, Brother Neil.

At the bottom of this site, https://publicdomainreview.org/2013/10/30/alfred-russel-wallace-a-heretics-heretic/

there is a link to another interesting article by Sociologist Steven Fuller.  Mr. Fuller discusses how Intelligent Design 'foxes' are forced to deal with Evolution ' lions'.

 

I especially love the above quote from him.  Kind of sums it all up.