A Visionary Iconoclast for all Seasons

	Book review on The heretic in Darwin's court; The life of Alfred Russel Wallace by Ross A. Slotten (2006) Reviewed by Martin Lockley , 2010 published in Network Review No 102
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A comparison between Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, co-founders of the natural selection theory of evolution, is a fascinating study in contrasts. Although both were affable Victorian Englishmen with profound knowledge and love of natural history, this is almost where the similarities end.   Darwin achieved extraordinary fame, while Wallace, according to standard accounts, is largely forgotten. Darwin was a cautious, reclusive and sickly man of means with a Cambridge degree in theology and an inclination to hunt and be a stolid country gent. He rarely travelled, except for his famous Beagle voyage (recently and splendidly retold, from a new slant, in Evolution's Captain by Peter Nichols). He was selected, as a captain's companion, and accepted almost reluctantly, as a result of other's decisions. He ultimately explored little beyond the southern half of the South American continent. Wallace by contrast was an extraordinarily energetic man of humble background with no formal education beyond age 13, who nevertheless had a voracious, lifelong appetite for innovative learning and exploration. He learned practical surveying skills as a teenager and roamed Britain, the Swiss Alps, the Amazon basin, the Malay Archipelago and North America from adolescence to old age, all the while eagerly embracing natural history, social justice causes and spiritual exploration.   

Unlike Darwin who, despite broad biological interests (climbing plants, orchids, barnacles, earthworms and human emotions and origins) avoided controversy and public debate, Wallace, despite being purportedly shy, threw himself into one controversial maelstrom after another with an endearing intellectual mischievousness that showed little regard for the consequences. Apart from prompting Darwin to co-author the seminal paper on natural selection, which crystallised in his mind during a feverish bout with malaria, Wallace confidently tackled serious study of anthropology, astronomy, linguistics, sociology, political reform, public health and, above all, spirituality (or as his critics usually say 'spiritualism'). His contributions and innovations in these fields, nearly always insightful and imaginative, were accomplished against a backdrop of challenging if not almost insurmountable obstacles. In the Amazon and Indonesia he suffered, shipwreck, malaria, other debilitating infirmities, and the devastating loss of close friends and family. On the home front he was always impecunious and forced to work for a living by financing his expeditions and researches through sale of specimens and bargaining for favourable book deals. In Wallace's day many of the gentry still regarded working for pay as rather suspect, but he had no choice.

The life story of this extraordinarily energetic and sometimes enigmatic genius is thoroughly and adroitly told by Ross Slotten (Chicago M.D., and Wallace enthusiast) in this comprehensive 600-page biography.  Slotten strikes a cautious balance between his latent, but guarded, admiration for Wallace and his objective synthesis of pertinent and fascinating excerpts from the extensive writings (correspondence, editorials, reviews and books) generated by and about Wallace.  Unlike Slotten, I have taken the liberty of emphasising the comparison with Darwin, but make no apology for perhaps catching rather more of Wallace's infectious enthusiasm.  Nevertheless, the book is very-well crafted around a fascinating subject.

There was never a dull moment in Wallace's ever-active life. When not writing or debating with Darwin and other famous contemporaries (Huxley, Hooker, Spencer, Lyell, Owen) he was visiting William James in Boston, challenging and overturning Percival Lowell's  outlandish claims of canals and civilisation on Mars, presenting copious statistics to Parliament on the dangers of vaccination  or exercising his keen social conscience  with outspoken, but penetrating writings and speeches on land and prison reform, redistribution of wealth, the dangers of militarism and the spiritual nature of man. Unlike Darwin who was basically a pessimist, Wallace was optimistic about humankind's spiritual evolution.  His active mind also manifest in a strong, creative restlessness on the domestic front.  He and his family moved house many times,  from the home counties to Wales and Dorset and back, mostly building new houses and gardens from scratch, and still surveying his own property at age 78. Active to his final day - when his doctor laughed uproariously with him and declared him a 'wonderful man'- he died, in 1913, at age 90.   

His voracious appetite for all life had to offer was manifest in the 125,000 specimens he collected - not counting a shipload that went up in flames on the high seas. Barely escaping with his life and little to show, for four years in the Amazon, but experience, he soon embarked on 8 years of travels in the Malay Archipelago, thus trebling the duration of his previous field experience (and that of Darwin). But his biological expeditions were only one facet of his true nature as an irrepressible 'explorer' of all possible dimensions human experience. 

Network members would surely be fascinated by Wallace's profound interest in spiritualism, and his efforts to investigate it seriously, and avoid the pitfalls of both charlatanism and narrow-minded skepticism. Intellectually and philosophically, he would have been very much at home with, and likely much cherished by, the present Network.  Wallace believed that 'the laws of chemistry and biology and physics determined how the body was constructed, grew and reproduced, but they failed to explain how an assemblage of insentient atoms could give rise to consciousness.' He held that a belief in 'spiritual agencies' was nearly universal and put faith in the testimony of intelligent and highly credentialed men 'who reported phenomena that defied all known laws of modern science.'     He knew that 'strange and subtle influences' surround us. After 11 years of study of psychic phenomena, his creed was to keep an open mind and trust the evidence of his own senses.

Late 1800s spiritualism reacted against contemporary materialism. Many, like Darwin, who never took it seriously,  were surrounded by friends and family who did. Famous and infamous mediums were subjected to ignominious tests - such as conducting séances with hands tied to prevent trickery. Although some even ending up on trail, facing vociferous critics, at the same time they found distinguished supporters like Wallace, the Nobel laureate Lord Rayleigh and the famous anthropologist General Pitt Rivers who objected to making spiritualism taboo,  and limiting investigations to 'old mounds' and the 'relative position of people's toes.'   The London Dialectical Society's 400-page report claimed 'irresistible evidence and verifiable facts' regarding 'the motion... produced in solid bodies without material contact by some hitherto unrecognised force.'     Science could not lay claim to the domains of will and consciousness of which it had no experience by rejecting the investigations of mediums with experience in such matters. Wallace sympathised with one defendant, whose lawyer 'thundered' 'From Galileo downwards the pioneers of every new movement which clashed with the prejudices of the day have been subject to persecution.'  Wallace was a fervent advocate for the right to 'promulgate new ideas without ridicule.' Indeed his life was devoted to such endeavours in diverse fields. Not only did his biological pioneering help produce the standard 'Darwinian' theory of evolution, but it evolved into an untiring and life-affirming advocacy for open minded, even visionary, investigation of all facets of the human spirit, which he himself embodied with remarkable passion and verve.

Slotten's book would be a very readable companion to Natural Selection and Beyond: celebrating the intellectual legacy of Alfred Russel Wallace,  the Oxford University Press volume arising from the November 2008, SMN-organised conference of the same title. 

Martin Lockley teaches palaentology and consciousness studies at the University of Colorado and is the author of The Evolution of Consciousness.

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