Natural selection’s co-discover, Alfred Russel Wallace, is coming up to the hundred-year anniversary of his death, and meanwhile his correspondence has just been put online. I told you earlier: “As we approach the Wallace death centennial, you will hear a lot about how he ‘pre-empted,’ but very little about he ultimately came to reject, Darwin.”
So far I’m being proven absolutely correct. New Scientist has an “interview” with Wallace, drawing on actual letters that he wrote. Cute idea, but it’s predictably pale stuff, including a memory of a fire aboard the ship that took him to Brazil to collect specimens, and reflections on the coincidence that Wallace and Darwin were both “ardent beetle-hunters.”
Wow, controversial!
But any mention of the fact that Wallace came to embrace, over strict Darwinism, a proto-intelligent design view, as Michael Flannery has emphasized many times here? Not a word.