Because Wallace's idea was a mirror image to Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection, I can safely say that the bullet point "In order for traits to evolve and change, they MUST be heritable" easily gave Darwin and Wallace a negative effect to their theory. Unless they where able to explain this point, it allowed many scientist like Jean-Baptiste Lamark to to argue Wallace and Darwin's theory was incorrect or lacked more explanation
Although, I believe Wallace was positively influential to Darwin's theory of evolution, I can safely say that Darwin would have still developed his theory of evolution without him. Mainly because Charles had his theory well backed up before Wallace sent over his findings. Wallace findings of natural selection only pressure Darwin to reveal his findings sooner then later.
The attitude of the church was not in favored toward the publication of Darwin's book "On the Origin of Species". The church felt as if Darwin was ruling out to even consider religion and god as part of any contribution to evolution. Darwin in fact was more concerned with his fellow
http://anthro.palomar.edu/evolve/evolve_2.htm
http://anthro.palomar.edu/evolve/evolve_2.htm
Wallace is a little tricky to cover, since he lived and worked during Darwin's time, but you did a good job of covering his contribution.
ReplyDeleteWhile I agree with your selected bullet point, isn't it true that perhaps ALL the bullet points also apply to Wallace, since he developed the theory independently?
Absolutely, Darwin had developed the theory already, but the key positive influence of Wallace was the "kick in the pants" to finally publish his work.
It looks like you stopped in the middle of a thought in your final paragraph, which is too bad since you seemed to be on the right track. What fears kept Darwin from publishing his work for more than two decades?
Other than this final paragraph, good first post. Keep in mind this is a paper, so more information is nearly always better. Don't be afraid to expand and explain thoroughly. Show me what you know.
Hi, awesome first paragraph, I found it real nice to know that Wallace and Darwin we're friends. Instead of ripping ideas off each other, they collaborated and found that they had similar findings, interesting!
ReplyDeleteYour bullet point didn't really match Wallace in my opinion, I think the bullet point: "If the environment changes, the traits that are helpful or adaptive to that environment will be
different" because he proposed the idea that the environment is a key factor of changing traits between different animals.
I also believed that he kept hesitating to release his book because what reaction his family would receive as well.