Darwin’s Heretic (Alfred Wallace)

Learn about Alfred Russel Wallace’s fascinating journey of discovery starting Saturday, January 21, with the online premiere of the new documentary short Darwin’s Heretic at www.darwinsheretic.com.

Our friend and colleague Michael Flannery notes a fascinating letter written by evolutionary theory’s co-discoverer that anticipates the intelligent-design argument in Metamorphosis.

In a post on July 7th I suggested that Darwinian evolution was a “scientific pip-squeak and a suit of cultural armor”. Here I would like to examine exactly how that cultural armor was historically constructed. In so doing we will see the stuff of which Darwinism is truly made. It was Phillip E. Johnson who made the astute observation that “Darwinist evolution is an imaginative story about who we are and where we came from, which is to say it is a creation myth.” (Darwin on Trial, p. 163) Using this as a starting point for understanding Darwinism as the remarkably powerful and ubiquitous phenomenon that it is in present society, it is instructive to review and assess the history Read More ›

Alfred Russel Wallace Issues Fighting Words to Materialists in 1910: “Nothing in evolution can account for the soul [or mind] of man. The difference between man and the other animals is unbridgeable.” Steven Pinker to the Rescue?

Despite repeated explanations that intelligent design is not
creationism, Lauri

Lebo at Religion Dispatches and others persist in equating the two. There’s a lot of bandying about of terms without defining them. One possible definition of “creationism” is the attempt to make scientific assertions regarding the natural world and/or the origin of life based upon a literal reading of Genesis. Yet with intelligent design, as David Klinghoffer points out, even if the source of the intelligence were identified as a deity, that wouldn’t make it creationism in this sense of
Genesis literalism. In short, when it comes to speaking of “creationism,” there is a need for much greater clarity of thought and expression.

I can think of no better illustration of the point than Alfred Russel Wallace. In a 1910 interview previewing Wallace’s forthcoming book, The World of Life, Harold Begbie asked about his explanation for the origin of life. Wallace said
this:

Precisely thirty years ago this month the late Stephen Jay Gould published an article in volume 89 of Natural History purporting to demonstrate Alfred Russel Wallace’s “fatal flaw.” Wallace, who co-discovered natural selection in his now-famous Ternate Letter of 1858, first startled Charles Darwin and then prompted him after years of ponderous delay to finally complete his Origin of Species and rush it to press. By November of the following year his magnum opus was in the hands of the English public. But Wallace would break with Darwin over the source of the human intellect. While Darwin thought man and animal different in degree not kind, Wallace felt that the special attributes of the human mind, its facility for abstract reasoning, mathematics, music, even wit and humor was inexplicable by Darwin’s own principle of utility, namely, the idea that no attribute in any species would arise and be maintained unless it afforded it a functional advantage in its struggle for survival. Admitting that none of these most human of traits promoted survival, Wallace instead suggested that these qualities were explicable only through some “Overruling Intelligence.” Darwin and his disciples have been horrified ever since. Pointing to Wallace’s insistence that natural selection can only “fashion a feature for immediate use,” Gould issued his indictment: Wallace’s so-called “fatal flaw” was his “hyperselectionism.” But does this charge hold up?