Book Description
In Darwin's Shadow is the gripping story of the heretical British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace who co-discovered natural selection independently of his more well-known contemporary Charles Darwin. Utilizing a number of never-before-used archival sources that bring to bear new interpretations of this most fascinating scientists, best-selling author Michael Shermer applies his training in both the history of science and psychology to reveal the life, science, and personality of Wallace to unravel the mystery of his scientific, quasi-scientific, and non-scientific ideas. Shermer's unique approach goes beyond narrative story-telling to analyse the science, culture, and ideas that lie beneath the life story, in a path-breaking approach to biography. Shermer presents the two major points of intersection and conflict between Wallace and Darwin, one so radical that Darwin accused his younger colleague of intellectual murder! Wallace has always appealed to lovers of travel and adventure stories, because that is the life he led: In Darwin's Shadow will also appeal to historians of science, readers of popular science, and fans of Shermer's previous books.
Customer Reviews:
Darwin forever under a cloud...........2003-11-30
After reading a review in NY review of books of Shermer's book I snapped out of my previous opinion and decided to revise my previous review here. Distracted by the issues raised in A. Brackman's book, A Delicate Arrangement, 'rebutted' by Shermer, I wavered wrongly in my original view at what appears now as a clever whitewash of Darwin.
Putting Brackman's arguments to one side for the nonce, the plain fact of the matter is that Darwin was, and has been ever since, engineered by Big Science propaganda into the exclusive icon for the discovery of evolution. And is Shermer just the fellow for this displacement job on Wallace. Wallace confuses people because they think that Darwin on the descent of man is established science, when the reality is that an immense con job has always finessed the fact that science has no conclusive theory here, and Wallace honestly pointed it out. Period.
As to the rest of Shermer's arguments in his book, viz. on the 'science' of history, they are without merit and constitute another of the 'bilge and balderdash' necessary to cover up the fact that there is no science of history, also.
The whole Darwin field is addicted to a pack of lies and it seems all parties have lost the ability to distinguish truth from distortion. Reviewing the details of the Ternate affair, we seem to see the ambitious Darwin concerned to rescue his priority, after years of so doubting his theory he couldn't publish it, and getting his priority by rigging the priority list and rushing into print. We have spent over a century beholden to this farce. Time for a little skepticism.
In the shadow no longer.......2003-11-17
Alfred Russel Wallace seems to rate hardly more than a footnote in the history of the theory of evolution. Like most who have studied this subject, I knew of Wallace's mutual discovery of the theory and evidence in support of it. I knew too of Darwin's generous introduction of the man as a co-discoverer, and even of the theory that that introduction might have been more premeditated and less generous that it appears. In some of my reading I had even learned of Wallace's "defection" to spiritualism. However, where Darwin's life is everywhere paraphrased and his thoughts on the subject of evolution almost subject to canonization, Wallace's life and thoughts seemed just to have "fallen out" of the picture. Michael Shermer's book, In Darwin's Shadow, The Life and Science of Alfred Russel Wallace, provides a more detailed look at Wallace the man and scientist. It also looks at the subject of how history and biography reflects the psychology of their time-in some ways, he does so unintentionally.
In many ways A. R. Wallace, though not a formally educated man, was more of a research scientist than Darwin. He apparently plunged into the pursuit of regional studies with a vengeance for most of his youth, some twelve years abroad, studying natural subjects in their native habitat. Whether it was beetles in the tropics, indigenous people in their native and in their European dominated settings, the communities of animals characteristic of different regions in Southeast Asia, or the geology of various regions, etc, his studies were extensive and detailed. According to Shermer, he logged in over 20,000 miles on various collecting trips, and just on his Malay trip collected almost 125,000 specimens, over a thousand of which were new species (p. 14).
His reputation for openness and exposure to new experiences was amazing, especially for the day, and recognized even by those who did not necessarily agree with his opinions. His written output was prolific and varied, with topics ranging from ancient history, animal behavior, botany, ethics, history of science, linguistics, plurality of worlds, phrenology, spirtualism, taxonomy, womens rights, agricultural economics, literature and poetry, poor laws, and trade regulation (p. 15). Shermer indicates that even into old age Wallace wrote on a variety of subjects and had a life-time average output that ranks high, even when compared to modern writers like Gould, Sagan, and Ernst Mayr.
While I found Shermer's historical matrix model interesting, I felt that I learned more about how history and biography are created in our own time and what it says about us than I did about Wallace or his contemporaries. The matrix model seems to smack of psychobabble and Oprah "awarenesses" and introduces a lot of introspection into the possible effects of birth order, etc. on behavior. It tries to hard to get at the "whys?" of human behavior and motivation for which there is little proof for or against. It was only once the author got into the life and times of the man himself that I could more easily settle into Wallace's world. For one thing, I understood better what the flap about the man's delving into spiritualism was all about. I also learned where Wallace and Darwin differed, even from the beginning, in their own individual approach to evolution, and why Darwinian evolution is the model that gained the greatest respect and serves as the foundation of modern theories.
I think more than anything, the book introduces the reader to the fact that science is a communal thing, a human thing, and is subject to the vicissitudes of other human endeavors: chance, political and social prejudices, personalities and egos, readiness for new ideas, plain old mistakes, etc. I learned again that scientific discoveries occur in tandem, when the world is ready to receive them, that they're sort of "in the air." I learned that more than one person can come up with the same or similar idea, putting their own personal stamp on the concept, thereby forwarding human knowledge just a little bit more. I learned that scientists can be wrong or partly wrong about their topic and can be wrong or partly wrong about topics outside their expertise, and most importantly, that reputation should not be given total credence without proper thought. Because a person is famous does not mean that their opinions are any more valid than anyone else's.
An enlightening biography of an interesting man. While I think that Darwin's is the more carefully thought out and supported theory of evolution, I think that Wallace was the more interesting and happier person. I suspect it would have been more fun to have known him than to have known Darwin.
Interesting biography.......2003-06-09
A nice story of the scientist who came to a similar conclusion about natural history as his elder and more famous colleague, Darwin. I enjoyed reading about Wallace's background (quite different than Darwin's), his world travels, and the ways in which his theories differed from Darwin's. The author uses multivariate analysis on personality traits to attempt to explain some of these differences; I'm not fully convinced of the validity of that (for every statistical rule there are exceptions, and as Mark Twain colorfully observed, "there are lies ..."), but it's an interesting possibility.
The new phrenologists?.......2003-05-25
I bought this book rather in spite of than because of the other Amazon reviews, and lugged it with me on a flight out to the West Coast. The book lasted from Boston to Atlanta, and when it was over I closed it with a sigh of relief. While Shermer is certainly at times an engaging writer here he indulges in a rather peculiar form of quantitative psycho-history mixed in with the equally peculiar allocation of behavioural traits to birth order. There MAY be something in this somewhere, but at the same time it smacks of the 19th century Victorian fetish about cranial measurments that Shermer's evident hero-mentor Stephen Gould took to task in THE MISMEASURE OF MAN. That Shermer is so obsessed with his methodologies (he devotes a substantial portion of the book to 'how he did it") is a shame because it lessens and weakens his focus on his putative topic, the fascinating Alfred Wallace. Instead of really delving intoWallace's background and early experiences we get a few pages of quick gloss intertwined with what frankly struck me as mumbo-jumbo about what it means to be a Younger Child. This may be all very new Age & Hip right now, but I strongly doubt it will prove to have much in the way of scholarly legs. Then there is the tedious re-hashing of Gould's speculations which other reviewers have already re-hashed. Yup, they are old, they are trite, and can we please now move on? Perhaps the most interesting part of the book is the discussion of Wallace's involvement with various "Spiritualist" frauds during the second half of his career. Here the writing really picks up & one has the sense that "aha, now we are going to get somewhere". Alas, the excitement soon fades & the book itself fades out to a gentle glow at the end. i really don't know how to categorize this text. It is far too incomplete for someone unfamiliar with Wallace's life & work to get a real sense of the man and it offers such an odd view on Wallace's relationships with friends, family, colleagues & rivals that one is left wondering just what was intended. A footnote to a more general study? Maybe, but i agree with the reviewer who calls for the need of a REAL biography that puts Wallace AND his science in proper context.
Cursing the darkness.......2003-04-27
Restoring Albert Russell Wallace's reputation is an occasional occupation with historians. Some wish to elevate him over Darwin, usually on the question of "priority" - who first thought up evolution by natural selection? Others portray him as the victim of Britain's class structure - doomed to obscurity because of his humble background. Shermer, although the title implies otherwise, makes an attempt to reconcile Darwin and Wallace, at least over natural selection. From that point, Shermer follows Wallace through a complex life. This readable, if somewhat shallow, biography does Wallace justice, but at the cost of shedding the broader context. In support of his programme, he relies heavily on Frank Sulloway's research on "birth-order" and creativity. This innovative study has had a rocky career, but Shermer finds it useful. For him, the findings have meaning, but their validity remains unclear. Especially when comparing but two subjects.
Wallace was a complicated personality, perhaps even more so than Darwin himself. In order to build a coherent image of his subject, Shermer creates a "historical matrix model". This is a three-dimensional visual aid of the elements he's utilising in erecting Wallace's biography. Mixing time, Wallace's various excursions and interests, Shermer ties the whole structure to his subject's views on evolution of humanity and the mind. Whether this method works may depend on your attitude about applying mathematical structures to a man's life. Fortunately for readability, Shermer keeps the application of this device at a low key, saving his analytical summation to the end of the book - where it falls flat.
Shermer traces the voyages Wallace was virtually forced to undertake. Financial woes dogged the naturalist throughout his life, although it's hard to see that from Shermer's portrayal. Although Shermer puts Wallace "in Darwin's shadow" he was easily as fluent a correspondent as his more famous counterpart. Yet few of the cited letters contain appeals for employment. Instead, Shermer takes us through Wallace's views on social questions, spiritualism and variations on natural selection. He also shows how Wallace traveled and dealt with a broad spectrum of issues and the people associated with them. Darwin, of course, maintained almost a hermit's life at Down. It's strange that Shermer makes little note of the contrast of the two since much of Darwin's information leading to natural selection came from a global correspondence. Wallace, ever the field researcher, relied more on his own collections for evidence.
Although providing us with a highly readable biography of the man, Shermer is virtually silent on the general social scene of Victorian Britain. In pursuing his subject's life, we are given quirky events and some questionable people. There's an excuse for avoiding the tumultuous politics of the era, but Shermer follows Wallace in his admiration for socialist Robert Owen and the role of Mechanics' Institutes to educate the workers. Both schemes were designed to generate worker contentment at minimal cost - Britain retained a horror of worker rebellion after the Napoleonic era. No mention is made of the Luddite or Chartist movements, which should have elicited comments from socialist Wallace.
A more bizarre oversight is Shermer's failure to impart Wallace's feeling on some of natural selection's sharper criticisms. One in particular, Lord Kelvin's assessment that the age of the solar system was too short to allow the needed time frame for evolution. Fleeming Jenkin's point that changes in organisms would be blended back, a point that Darwin, ignorant of Mendelian genetics, agonised over, is also overlooked by Shermer. Since any biography of Darwin will deal with these issues at length, it's only logical that Shermer should have addressed them. Either that or Wallace ignored them - we remain in the dark either way.
Shermer's sins of omission may be forgiven as retaining clarity and brevity. His committed sins, however, cannot be condoned. His long career as an acolyte of the Pope of Paleontology leads Shermer to peck at Darwin's image. The worst examples are intrusions of "punctuated speciation" in a variety of disguises. Shermer's attempt to promote his mentor's outdated thesis borders on the pathetic. He aggravates it later in the book with other Gouldian pronouncements. Gould makes the index six times, with "punk eek" scoring another ten. In a biography of Wallace, this ploy is simply an outrageous non sequitor. He puts Wallace in "Darwin's dark shadow" [what other kind is there?], implying some sinister agenda. Wallace is "eclipsed" by Darwin - as if Darwin so intended. Darwin's opposition to spiritualism is a "secret war". The position is misleading. The shadow is cast by the long-lived eminence of Darwin's contributions, but Shermer makes no mention of that. It's history's verdict, not Darwin's.
Shermer's use of Sulloway is bewildering. Parallels between Darwin and Wallace are inevitable, but the author's are flimsy. "Birth order" as an issue with these two men is misleading. If he wanted to compare the two as personalities, why does Shermer ignore the similarity of Wallace's losing his first love, Marion Leslie and Darwin's loss of Fanny Owen? That Wallace delved into a wider list of topics than Darwin keeps the former's public life more interesting, but doesn't move the latter into a "shadow." Wallace wasn't dogged by illness throughout his life - his long life certainly suggests good health. He shed whatever Christianity he had at an early age, while Darwin was driven to abandon it from his studies and the loss of children. Shermer doesn't need to shatter Darwin's image to restore Wallace's, but that intent is broadcast in his title. It was a mistake. If Shermer is intent on restoring Wallace's reputation, he should have hired somebody to do it for him. Janet Browne would be a good first choice. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
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Darwin's Metaphor
R. M. Young
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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ASIN: 0521317428 |
Book Description
In this collection of closely interrelated essays, Robert Young emphasizes the scope of the nineteenth-century debate on â€~man’s place in nature’ at the same time as he engages with the approaches of scholars who write about it. He is critical of the separation of the writing of history from writing about history, historiography, and of the separation of history from politics and ideology, then or now. Dr Young challenges fellow historians for reimposing the very disciplinary boundaries that the nineteenth-century debate showed were in the service of ideological forces in that culture. Rather, he proposes that the full weight of the contending forces should be made apparent and debated openly so that neither nineteenth-century nor current issues about the role of science in culture should be treated in a narrow perspective.
Customer Reviews:
Biological Malthusianism.......2003-01-31
This book discusses the origins of Darwin's ideas of competition, natural selection and adaptation in the context of Malthus's socio-economic ideas. See also 'Origins of Mendelism' by R. Olby and 'The Mendellian Revolution' by P. J. Bowler for the contrast with Mendel's ideas. Darwin was influenced by vague ideas from economics, whereas Mendel, who independently laid the groundwork for understanding evolution at the cellular level, started with a foundation in physics.
Amazon.com
Scholars in the age of Charles Darwin, writes feminist scholar Barbara Gates, were of two minds about women: on one hand, they embodied "the restful responsiveness of nature" and were somehow closer to living in a state of nature than were men; on the other hand, by the very virtue of this naturalness, they were less capable of being truly civilized and educated. Despite this, generations of women labored to speak on nature's behalf and to study its ways; "denied formal higher education," Gates writes, "they also constituted large portions of the audience at public lectures on science and read whatever was available to them on the subject," including a large literature in popular science written by women. Gates recounts the lives of many important naturalists of the age, among them traveler and Africanist Mary Kingsley, independent scholar Arabella Buckley (who served as secretary to the eminent English geologist Sir Charles Lyell and was acquainted with many of the leading scientists of her time), eminent illustrator Jemima Blackburn, and antivivisectionist Frances Power Cobbe. Although these women are not well represented in standard histories of science, Gates demonstrates that their contributions to their contemporaries' understanding of the natural world were estimable indeed. --Gregory McNamee
Book Description
In Kindred Nature, Barbara T. Gates highlights the contributions of Victorian and Edwardian women to the study, protection, and writing of nature. Recovering their works from the misrepresentation they often faced at the time of their composition, Gates discusses not just well-known women like Beatrix Potter but also others—scientists, writers, gardeners, and illustrators—who are little known today.
Some of these women discovered previously unknown species, others wrote and illustrated natural histories or animal stories, and still others educated women, the working classes, and children about recent scientific advances. A number of women also played pivotal roles in the defense of animal rights by protesting overhunting, vivisection, and habitat destruction, even as they demanded their own rights to vote, work, and enter universities.
Kindred Nature shows the enormous impact Victorian and Edwardian women had on the natural sciences and the environmental movement, and on our own attitudes toward nature and human nature.
Average customer rating:
- Nature and Nonsense
- Interesting Reading.
- The Big Issue
- Thank God the world isn't run by professors
- Well done!
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Linnaeus: Nature and Nation
Lisbet Koerner
Manufacturer: Harvard University Press
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Linnaeus
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Sex, Botany and Empire
ASIN: 0674097459 |
Book Description
Drawing on letters, poems, notebooks, and secret diaries, Lisbet Koerner tells the moving story of one of the most famous naturalists who ever lived, the Swedish-born botanist and systematizer, Carl Linnaeus. The first scholarly biography of this great Enlightenment scientist in almost one hundred years, Linnaeus also recounts for the first time Linnaeus' grand and bizarre economic projects: to "teach" tea, saffron, and rice to grow on the Arctic tundra and to domesticate buffaloes, guinea pigs, and elks as Swedish farm animals.
Linnaeus hoped to reproduce the economy of empire and colony within the borders of his family home by growing cash crops in Northern Europe. Koerner shows us the often surprising ways he embarked on this project. Her narrative goes against the grain of Linnaean scholarship old and new by analyzing not how modern Linnaeus was, but how he understood science in his time. At the same time, his attempts to organize a state economy according to principles of science prefigured an idea that has become one of the defining features of modernity. Meticulously researched, and based on archival data, Linnaeus will be of compelling interest to historians of the Enlightenment, historians of economics, and historians of science. But this engaging, often funny, and sometimes tragic portrait of a great man will be valued by general readers as well.
Customer Reviews:
Nature and Nonsense.......2002-01-08
It has become axiomatic that historians of science know little about either. This revisionist treatment of the foibles of 18th century Swedish life paints poor Linnaeus as a whacko. However, he really wasn't too far removed from the contemporary members of the Royal Society of London in credulity, self promotion and ignorance and was certainly typical of Swedish Professors of that and more recent times.
This is really a silly book first produced under the tuterage of Simon Schama and reissued from HUP. The author does not acknowledge the intellectual ferment of the time when the Enlightenment was being crushed under the heels of van Herder and by the Romantic curse (that we still enjoy as political correctness). The greatest contribution of the Linne's systematics was the "taxonomic key" that allows some order out of biology, not his fatuous attempts to make booze out of lichens or grow pineapples in Bothnia.
I suppose other historians of "science" will someday mock Aristotle for his ignorance of DNA and not knowing how many teeth women have, but really, this is a silly book.
Interesting Reading........2001-11-27
Linnaeus : Nature and Nation
by Lisbet Koerner
Reviewed by Thomas Leo Ogren, author of Allergy-Free Gardening, Ten Speed Press.
Honestly I have mixed feelings about this book. One, I love it and really did enjoy reading it. I learned quite a bit from it too.
But I do wish it had been written in a more reader-friendly manner. It is a good bit too scholarly for my tastes, a trifle too text-bookishly written.
One of the important things about Linnaeus himself is that he always tried to reach the common man, tried to make his work popular and easily understood. I feel this book could have emulated some of that flavor.
But I don't mean to be too critical by any means because I did like this book very much. There is a real wealth of research here, many things about Linnaeus here that I'd never read before. Karl Linnaeus was THE botanist--of his time, and of our own time as well. His system of binomial nomenclature, Genus species, was pretty much right on the money. He was the first to realize that plants' sexual characteristics were what largely either grouped them together or set them apart. His system is often criticized today, but to me it still makes great sense.
Linnaeus : Nature and Nation, is not for everyone, but serious gardeners will enjoy it, as will historians, especially those with an interest in botany, horticulture, science. Well worth reading.
The Big Issue.......2001-07-25
‘Gazing at a flower by the grass-roofed cottage where he was born [...] Linnaeus was quintessentially a local man.’ (187). But as Lisbet Koerner explains, he also linked the ‘universal with the local [...] nature with nation.’ In this fascinating account, Koerner demonstrates that the father of modern taxonomy was also a political economist. Unlike Adam Smith, his interest was no so much in international trade or colonial conquest, but the substitution of imports (a cameralist program).
Although Linnaeus had travelled in Holland, France, and Engalnd (1735-48) there were nineteen ‘first-generation’ students who undertook ‘voyages of discover’ between 1745 and 1792. Koerner asserts that their travels ‘were part of their larger strategy to create a miniature mercantile empire within a European state’ (114). Linnaeus sensed that ‘explorers fostered strategies of national improvement based on ecological diversification rather than on territoral expansion.’ (114).
Linnaeus, it is argued was essentially a civil servant who turned his students into an efffective and efficient support staff. Chapter 3 deals with the Lapland journey. In line with economic and political priorities the area was to be colonized as a kind of Scandinavian “West Indies”. As a committed Lutheran, its is fascinating to deconstruct the theology at work in Linnaeus’s thought. Nature was a prelapsarian Paradise, but it must be exploited within each country. Accordingly, Linnaesus was concerned by the luxury and excess of products that trade supplied from the cornucopia of the New World. As this book notes, ‘He even urged Scandinavians to return to the old “Gothic foods,” such as acorns, pork, and mead.’ (95) At the same time he was keen to cultivate at home (to acclimatize) what was normally cultivated abroad. We even find him thinking, theorizing, and cultivating ‘an art to Make Mussles bring forth pearls.’ (141) He professed an an axiety that the pearl plantaions ‘could not long remain secret before our neighbours in Norway, Russia, and Siberia, who own more stores of Pearl mussels, could thus intirely triumph over us in quantity.’ (143)
Yet as Linnaeus’s stock rose in Europe among the Romantics, at home it fell as he failed to deliver economic adavantage and superiority through import substitution. Ernst Moritz Arndt attacked Linnaeus’s cameralist projects in 1783, wondering how ‘On e was supposed to believe that Sweden suddenly had become Asia Minor and Sicily.’ (168) His enterprising schemes turned out to be ‘fantastic and chimerical’; it was left to his taxonomic system to enrich the world. Nonetheless, in light of recent global protests and persistent underdevelopment, the larger issues which the book eloquently discusses, seem to me as relevant now as then. ‘Linnaeus: Nature and Nation’ concludes by stating that it ‘memorializes a local attempt at a local modernity, a now-forgotten future of the past’ (193), but the other issue it raises is timely:
‘Or can native subjects, using only local means of production, build a complex and complete local economy, incorporating contemporary technologies, and functioning as a microcosm of the global economy.’ (192)
Thank God the world isn't run by professors.......2000-05-26
A fascinating account of what a strange place the 18th century was. The age of confusion more than the age of reason. Who would have thought that Linnaeus had so much in common with today's new age cranks.
Well done!.......2000-02-08
A biography filled with wonderful detail, even though centering on Linnaeus' economic program. At times the author appears to be making fun of Linnaeus' odder ideas rather than attempting serious historical analysis, but in all a good job and an interesting argument.
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The Naturalist in Britain
David Elliston Allen
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
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ASIN: 0691036322 |
Book Description
The author traces the evolution of natural history from the seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries, from the 'herbalizings' of apprentice apothecaries to the establishment of national reserves and international societies to the emergence of natural history as an organized discipline.
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Richard Owen: Victorian Naturalist
Nicolaas A. Rupke
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0300058209 |
Book Description
Richard Owen (1804-92), one of the leading naturalists of nineteenth-century Britain, is best remembered as a renowned opponent of the Darwinian principle of natural selection. In this first intellectual biography of Owen, Nicolaas Rupke looks beyond the evolution dispute and presents the complete range of Owen`s scientific and intellectual achievements, portraying him as the founder of London`s monumental Natural History Museum, a leader in Victorian scientific reform, and, after Darwin, the leading naturalist of 19th-century Britain.
Customer Reviews:
Not really a biography.......1999-03-06
If you are expecting the usual biography you will be disappointed. It is a compilation of Owens roles and efforts in regard to various movements in Britain's scientific world. It also reads slowly and ina very convoluted and "Germanic" style. Probably not worth the $50 for most of us.
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