03.28.09
should be Wallaceism not Darwinianism
It should be Wallaceism not Darwinianism
On 1st July 1858 the Linnaean Society of London announced the Darwin/Wallace Theory of Evolution thus giving precedence [on reasons of class? Or plagiarism?] to Darwin on the hearsay of Darwin’s influential Botanist friend Dr Joseph Hooker and the equally influential Geologist Sir Charles Lyell, Darwin’s patron, despite the fact that Alfred Russel Wallace’s Theory of Evolution – The Ternate Law was published in August 1858 and Darwin’s “derivative?” Origin of Species was not published until November 1859.
Much academic research over the last 50 years – summarised in Roy Davies The Darwin Conspiracy – Origins of a Scientific Crime Golden Square Books, London pp204 2008 – tends to the conclusion that not only did Wallace, who had already established The Wallace Line, discover evolution first, but that Darwin actively plagiarized the three letters Wallace sent him from the jungles of Indonesia.
Had Alfred Russel Wallace sent his third letter of March 1858– with its succinct 4000 words essay on evolution The Ternate Law – not to Charles Darwin but to the Annals and Magazine of Natural History, it is likely that today we would talk about Wallaceism rather than Darwinism.