There are few more likeable figures in the history of science than Alfred Russel Wallace. A warm-hearted and generous man, he won the admiration of virtually all who knew him for what one contemporary called ‘the charm of his personality’. Typical of this charm was his behaviour over the potentially sensitive question of his co-authorship with Darwin of the theory of natural selection. Ignoring all the disputes which might so easily have followed the events of 1858, Wallace never ceased to (...) give Darwin all the credit for their theory. In 1864, the author of theOriginchided the younger man for his deference, writing, ‘you ought not … to speak of the theory as mine; it is just as much yours as mine. One correspondent has already noticed to me your “high-minded” conduct on this head’. But Wallace's reply was equally firm, ‘As to the theory of Natural Selection itself, I shall always maintain it to be actually yours and yours only’. If anyone is responsible for the comparative neglect from which the ‘other man’ of Darwinism has suffered, it is the other man himself. (shrink)

Historians of the Victorian period have begun to re-evaluate the general background and impact of Darwin's theory of the origin of species by means of natural selection. An emerging picture suggests that the Darwinian theory of evolution was only one aspect of a more general change in intellectual positions. It is possible to summarize two correlated developments in the second half of the nineteenth century: the seculariszation of majors areas of thought, and the increasing breakdown of a common intellectual milieu. (...) Studies in linguistics, historical criticism, socio-political theory, theologys, and anthropology, besides evolutionary theory, contributed to these developments. It has also been argued that the background of evolutionary thought lay within a relatively unified early Victorian intellectual context with shared religious, moral, and scientific concepts. Evolutionary theory contributed to the disintegration of this shared context, but it did not intrinsically assume a clear demarcation between value-laden ideas and scientific ideas. On the one hand, in the later Victorian period, religious and scientific intellectuals found it increasingly hard to share common ground. On the other hand, they did sometimes share an enthusiasm for applying biological models to social and ethical theory. It is necessary to look closely before ascribing any increased differentiation of positions to the impact of evolutionary biology. (shrink)