genes and only if there is at least some premating reproductive isolation will they be able to invade on another ' s territory. otherwise a hybrid zone is expected to form. premating isolation may evolve, or be strengthened, in the hybrid zone because heterogametic matings produce unfit offspring - - as first proposed by wallace ( 1889 ) and subsequently incorporated into speciation theory by dobzhansky ( 1940 ). however, this ' reinforcement ' of premating isolating mechanisms is a contentious idea... - - r. k. butlin & g. m. hewitt, november 1985. biological journal of the linnean society 26 ( 3 ) : 269 - 270. in contrast, alfred russel wallace ( 1864 ), the co - discoverer of natural selection, stressed that group selection ( i. e. selection not between individuals, but between groups ) played an important role, at least among human beings. describing the process of human evolution, he wrote : " in proportion as physical characteristics become of less importance, mental and moral qualities will have increasing importance to the well - being of a race. capacity for acting in concern for the protection of food and shelter ; sympathy, which leads all in turn to assist each other ; the sense of right, which checks depredation upon our fellows... are all qualities that from earliest appearance must have been for the benefit of each community, and would therefore have become objects of natural selection. "... - - umberto melotti, summer 1985. the mankind quarterly 25 ( 4 ) : 324. this is not meant to demean darwin. in addition to his genius, darwin was a warm, liberal man for his times : opposed to slavery, in favor of electoral reform, and concerned for the oppressed. but he was, in some areas, of his times and not very far ahead of them. for many scientists of the day, the existent native peoples were virtual " missing links. " it was only through work in wallace ' s tradition that " the negro ' s skull is no longer placed on the lecturer ' s table between that of the gorilla and the caucasian ". at the time, wallace ' s belief in the ultimate intellectual potential of native peoples must have seemed bizarre beyond reason... - - stephen e. glickman, 1985 / 1992. in sigmund koch & david e. leary, eds., a century of psychology as science ( american psychological association ) : 750.... less than a year later he wrote the


stephen e. glickman, 1985 / 1992. in sigmund koch & david e. leary, eds., a century of psychology as science ( american psychological association ) : 750.... less than a year later he wrote the first of two papers that together presented, in brief but complete form, a theory of evolution by natural selection. while the second paper, written three years later, postulated natural selection in variable populations as the mechanism by which species originated, the first paper ( wallace 1855 ) analyzed the significance of extinction within evolving lineages in producing all of the known patterns of organic distribution in time and space. it must be emphasized that this paper was the first published statement to appreciate the importance of the extinction of intermediates in a species lineage in creating the oft - observed gaps in taxonomic affinities, as well as those in distribution in both space and time. this meant that the observed placement of organisms in the regions of the globe was not the result of supernatural forces and divine objectives, but of the natural phenomena of extinction and species transmutation ( or evolution. )... - - john l. brooks, 1985. earth sciences history 4 ( 2 ) : 115. in his discussion of the debate between darwin and wallace, mayr has claimed, " they used the term ' sterility ' where we would use the term ' isolating mechanisms '. " if this were the case, then darwin advocated the incidental origin of reproductive isolation mechanisms, wallace their origin by natural selection. grant has gone on to suggest that it would be " fitting and desirable " to call the selective origin of reproductive isolation mechanisms the " wallace effect ". there can be no question that some late nineteenth - century naturalists did use the word " sterility " where evolutionists now use " reproductive isolation mechanisms ". but i would argue that in their debate darwin and wallace meant what we do by " sterility ". the distinction wallace drew in point 6 of his 1 march 1868 letter between " disinclination to cross - unions " and " sterility " certainly supports his view. consequently wallace was not proposing the selective origin of reproductive isolation mechanisms in general, but rather the selective origin of the particular post - mating mechanisms of cross - and hybrid sterility. since, according to current theory, these forms of sterility are precisely the types of reproductive isolation that cannot be produced by selection, the darwin - wallace debate provides little historical justification for the term " wallace effect ". the present view on


hypothesis to account for female - biased polymorphisms in butterflies. he suggested that female butterflies might be more vulnerable to predators because they are laden with eggs and fly more slowly. recently, it has been shown that birds do preferentially select female cicadas, which are less vagile and more nutritious than males. even if birds did not discriminate between the sexes in prey species, selection on females might still be more intense if avian predators encountered or noticed more females than males. female - biased encounter rates could result if the sex ratios of adult prey were heavily skewed towards females, if females occurred more often in microhabitats frequented by predators, or if females engaged in behaviors that made them more conspicuous than males. the differential predation hypothesis would be supported if birds ate females more frequently than males ; it can be refuted if males completely lack protective patterns but are still eaten by birds... - - j. a. stamps & s. m. gon iii, 1983. annual review of ecology & systematics 14 : 233 - 234. after collecting briefly near singapore, wallace went to sarawak to meet its celebrated white rajah, sir james brooke. st. john, brooke ' s secretary and biographer, has written : " we had at this time the famous naturalist, traveller and philosopher, alfred russel wallace, who was then elaborating in his mind the theory that was simultaneously worked out by darwin - - the theory of the origin of species ; if he could not convince us that our ugly neighbours, the orang - utans, were our ancestors, he pleased, instructed and delighted us by his clever and inexhaustible flow of talk - - really good talk " ( life of sir james brooke, 1890 ). so much for the quiet, shy man... - - ralph e. bernstein, 3 june 1982. new scientist 94 : 653. i believe that study of specimens and field observations in new guinea presently warrant two conclusions. first, orioles are indeed mimics of friarbirds, as wallace postulated over a century ago. the case for mimicry is much stronger than wallace realized : he had seen only two of the eight sets of populations that we now know... - - jared m. diamond, april 1982. the auk 99 ( 2 ) : 193.... spencer, wrote wallace, was misconceiving natural selection. it does not work by favouring ' any special bone, or muscle, or limb..


diamond, april 1982. the auk 99 ( 2 ) : 193.... spencer, wrote wallace, was misconceiving natural selection. it does not work by favouring ' any special bone, or muscle, or limb... but by the selection of the capacities or qualities. ' by ' capacities or qualities ' wallace meant things like strength or speed. wallace maintained that artificial selection works in the same way. the breeder selects for qualities such as quickness, not for particular variations of bones. ' the two modes of selection are thus strictly analogous and strictly comparable. ' he further insisted that natural selection is not limited by the supply of variation because ' as a matter of fact, there is a sufficiency of useful variation always present in each succeeding generation to increase any required life - preserving quality, all theoretical objections to the contrary notwithstanding. ' artificial selection is not the ' point after point ' improvement of organs ; both modes of selection transform structures as a whole, by selecting for a capacity. each step in the selection of a capacity would produce an improvement so romanes ' and spencer ' s criticism would not apply... - - mark ridley, march 1982. british journal for the history of science 15 ( 1 ) : 61. careful consideration of both theories shows quite readily their differences in emphasis. darwin was theorizing as to why males were brightly coloured. all wallace ( 1891 ) could offer that pertained directly to this point was the vitalistic argument that male colour was due to " great vigour and health and generally higher vitality ". wallace in his theory of bird ' s nests, had a perfectly reasonable hypothesis as to why females are dull - - not the same question darwin was trying to answer... - - r. b. aiken, 1982. quaestiones entomologicae 18 ( 1 - 4 ) : 8.... but what of wallace? he was not as involved in the question of aesthetic taste of females as he was in the question of animal colouration. interestingly enough, criticisms from wallace focused on ambiguity in the argument about female aesthetic sense. the process by which female choice was effected was not made clear. most discussion revolved around the issue of whether females were exercising some conscious choice or were being excited by and yielding to a male. was it selecting or succumbing? darwin ( 1871 ) originally thought it was selection. he states : " no doubt this implies powers of discrimination and taste on the part of the female.


or were being excited by and yielding to a male. was it selecting or succumbing? darwin ( 1871 ) originally thought it was selection. he states : " no doubt this implies powers of discrimination and taste on the part of the female... " wallace ( 1891, 1901 ) objected to this notion of conscious choice, returning again and again to the admonition that female choice could not be shown in nature. wallace stated that while female birds may be excited by a display of decorative plumage, there was no reason to suppose that this conferred a mating advantage. it is difficult to understand wallace ' s reasoning in the light of his own ideas. he stated that colour and ornament are concomitant with vigour and general health and that it is the most healthy, persistent males that will mate. differences between darwin and wallace seem to be a matter of mechanism rather than basic principles... - - r. b. aiken, 1982. quaestiones entomologicae 18 ( 1 - 4 ) : 10. to wallace, victorian scientists ' failure to consider the implications their work held for moral behavior indicated severely misplaced priorities. in spiritualism ' s demonstration of the reality of the soul, he himself found a basis for belief in moral as well as material evolution. scientists ' refusal to address so important a matter, wallace believed, revealed an amoral materialism and, as such, outright dereliction of scientific duty... - - john j. cerullo, 1982. in his the secularization of the soul ; psychical research in modern britain ( institute for the study of human issues ) : 28. wallace states his thesis with extraordinary clarity : " there is a general principle in nature which will cause many varieties to survive the parent species, and to give rise to successive variations, departing further and further from the original type. the language in which this observation is presented is rather typological ; wallace ' s conclusion, however, clearly contradicts lyell ' s claim that " varieties have strict limits, and can never vary more than a small amount away from the original type. " the most important aspect of wallace ' s analysis is that he carefully stayed away from the quagmire of the morphological controversy on species and varieties but based his conclusion on a rather strictly ecological argument. he concluded that population size of a species is not at all determined by fertility but by natural checks on potential population increase. an enormous number of animals must die each year to keep the number constant


varieties but based his conclusion on a rather strictly ecological argument. he concluded that population size of a species is not at all determined by fertility but by natural checks on potential population increase. an enormous number of animals must die each year to keep the number constant, and " those that die must be the weakest - - the very young, the aged, and the diseased - - while those that prolong their existence can only be the most perfect in health and vigour - - those who are best able to obtain food regularly and avoid their numerous enemies. "... - - ernst mayr, 1982. in his the growth of biological thought : diversity, evolution, and inheritance ( the belknap press of harvard university press ) : 495. wallace couched his new argument about evolution and man in 1869 not in terms of spiritualism, in which he was unable to interest seriously the majority of his fellow evolutionists, but in terms of utility. he used the essential principle of evolution to deny the evolution of man. to recapitulate, natural selection is a theory of usefulness - - traits are selected in individuals because they confer some use to the individual in the struggle for survival. wallace rejected sexual selection in the name of this principle. but applying now the same principle to man, wallace argued that many of the traits characteristic of man were in fact of no use when they first arose, and therefore could not have been developed by natural selection... - - nancy stepan, 1982. in her the idea of race in science : great britain 1800 - 1960 ( archon books ) : 71. interestingly, issues like these must have been a preoccupation of alfred russel wallace a century ago. wallace, the coauthor of the theory of evolution, reneged on the theory in excluding man from his rightful place on the evolutionary tree. he did so because he could not reconcile ( see especially wallace 1891 ) the incredible capacity for humans to process information ( as evidenced by the accomplishments of a learned man of society in victorian times ) with the fact that such capacity went largely unused throughout the entire period of human evolution ( extrapolation based on his observations of " primitive " peoples in what is today eastern indonesia. ) wallace ' s dilemma has never been completely resolved... - - david f. lancy & andrew j. strathern, december 1981. american anthropologist 83 ( 4 ) : 790. lowell ' s books about life on mars provoked alfred r. wallace, with darwin the


completely resolved... - - david f. lancy & andrew j. strathern, december 1981. american anthropologist 83 ( 4 ) : 790. lowell ' s books about life on mars provoked alfred r. wallace, with darwin the discoverer of the theory of evolution by natural selection, into analysing the likelihood of the evolution of an intelligent species elsewhere in the universe. he concluded that it was essentially zero, and thus we are alone in the universe. his arguments are worth repeating in detail, because although published in 1905 they are exactly the same as those given by modern evolutionists such as dobzhansky, simpson, and mayr. thus the biological arguments against the evolution of intelligence have not changed in 75 years. the great evolutionists have always been united against eti. the biologists who have supported eti have generally been biologists with the viewpoint of a physicist, and lacking the historical sense of the evolutionist. such men often err in questions about evolutionary biology ; in particular they err about questions concerning the probability of the evolution of a species with specified properties, as the recent recombinant dna debate shows... - - frank j. tipler, june 1981. quarterly journal of the royal astronomical society 22 ( 2 ) : 140. wallace does not show a concern for darwin ' s problem with the ' swamping effect ', i. e., the dilution and loss of variants from crossing back into the unvaried population. accordingly we don ' t find in wallace ' s writings darwin ' s attempt to explain speciation by isolation. possibly wallace concluded swamping could be ignored because by observation permanent varieties / species exist in nature. thus he might have concluded backcrossing is in fact not significant in nature. also, as he viewed the line between species as something other than a barrier preventing intermixing, he would not have felt the need to explain how such barriers are effective. another consideration that subsequently supports wallace ' s attitude is implicit in his approach to the theory of natural selection. unlike darwin, wallace used the knowledge of domestic animals against the claim that species are permanent and not to support evolution, as did darwin. in domestic animals, natural selection tends to favor reversion to original unvaried forms... - - scott a. kleiner, april 1981. synthese 47 ( 1 ) : 146 - 147.... to consider now the main problem of concern to darwin and wallace, the origin problem, not only is there lacking a


.. - - scott a. kleiner, april 1981. synthese 47 ( 1 ) : 146 - 147.... to consider now the main problem of concern to darwin and wallace, the origin problem, not only is there lacking a decision procedure for determining whether the goal state is reached, but also, as we have argued above, the goal state for why - questions cannot be fully described in advance without actually answering the question. although darwin cannot and does not specify in advance the kind of explanatory mechanism he is seeking he is able to say what kind of causal process he does not want, viz., the agent - - teleological process of the creationist theories. his goal state can be described only in terms of a few desiderata, viz., a theory consisting of universal laws applicable to all organisms including humans and bringing together a wide variety of previously unconnected facts, and one in which the process of evolution is " gradual " in the sense that it is in conformity with lyellian uniformitarianism applied to living organisms. specifically, all large evolutionary changes are to be explained in terms of persistant small incremental changes occurring over a long time, and the law governing these changes are the same throughout geological time even though varying local conditions may produce happenings in the past that are not presently occurring or rather sudden and calamitous effects on local biota... - - scott a. kleiner, april 1981. synthese 47 ( 1 ) : 154. a key process in speciation among sexual organisms is the evolution of reproductive isolation. there are essentially two views on the origin of isolating mechanisms... the first view, championed by darwin ( 1872 ), holds that isolating mechanisms originate as an incidental by - product of genetic divergence in geographically isolated populations. the second view, argued by wallace ( 1889 ), holds that isolating mechanisms are established by means of natural selection in zones of overlap between incipient species... the contemporary view, which holds that premating reproductive barriers ( often behavioral ) are built up by natural selection in areas of sympatry in order to supercede postmating barriers that arose allopatrically, has come to be known as the wallace effect. the plausibility of the wallace effect has been demonstrated by knight et al. ( 1956 ) and by kessler ( 1966 ), who showed that artificial selection could be successful in enhancing premating reproductive isolation in drosophila. in light of the


the plausibility of the wallace effect has been demonstrated by knight et al. ( 1956 ) and by kessler ( 1966 ), who showed that artificial selection could be successful in enhancing premating reproductive isolation in drosophila. in light of the important role of the wallace effect in modern speciation theory, it is surprising that the phenomenon has not been studied quantitatively... - - stanley sawyer & daniel hartl, april 1981. theoretical population biology 19 ( 2 ) : 261 - 262. some zoologists, like raven in 1935, considered the validity of wallace ' s line on the basis of the proportion of mammals that had crossed the line going east compared with those that had not and came to the conclusion that wallace ' s line marked a boundary which was the eastern limit of the great majority of east indian mammals, like rhinoceroses and elephants. others made their assessment on the proportion of western and eastern elements to be found on each island in wallacea. thus, rensch in 1935, following mertens ( 1934 ), calculated that 88 per cent of the butterflies were of western origin which was a similar proportion to that found on lombok and more than twice as high as for the kai islands. following the same line of argument for austral - malayan birds, ernst mayr calculated that 67. 6 per cent of the passerines were from the west and decided that ' there is no doubt, celebes must be included with the oriental region ' ( mayr, 1944 )... - - wilma george, 1981. in t. c. whitmore, ed., wallace ' s line and plate tectonics ( oxford university press ) : 5. the notion that islands are somehow different stems from the concerns of naturalists. the observations by darwin and others that the existence of islands permitted the development of significant variations in plant and animal life formed an important part of the intellectual underpinning of theories of evolution. thus wallace, in his study of island life ( 1880 ), points out that ' some of the most remarkable and interesting facts in the distribution and affinities of organic forms are presented by islands in relation to each other and to the surrounding continents '. he refers to ' the unexpected relations or singular anomalies which are so often found to characterize the fauna and flora of islands '. more recently, there has been a growing interest in the total ecological balance of islands ( already hinted at in wallace ' s work )... - - percy selwyn, december 1980


often found to characterize the fauna and flora of islands '. more recently, there has been a growing interest in the total ecological balance of islands ( already hinted at in wallace ' s work )... - - percy selwyn, december 1980. world development 8 ( 12 ) : 945.... it is interesting to note that in this disagreement there are faint echoes of the other matter which separated darwin and wallace at this time : sexual selection through female choice. darwin wanted to argue that the beauty of, say, the peacock as opposed to the peahen, is a function of the females choosing beautiful males. wallace argued that the difference is essentially a function of the females being more drab than the males, this drabness coming through the female ' s need for camouflage from predators as they incubate their eggs and care for their young. in arguing this way, wallace was certainly not invoking group selection. however, unlike darwin, who was emphasizing the individual nature of selection by seeing the main competition ( at this point ) as coming from within the species, wallace was deemphasizing competition within the group by seeing the threat coming from without... - - michael ruse, november 1980. annals of science 37 ( 6 ) : 625.... let us offer solace to the opponents of human sociobiology. if one uncomfortable with a rather extreme individual selectionism, particularly as applied to man, and if one yet wants historical precedent to legitimize one ' s yearnings, then no less than the sociobiologists can one find the most respectable of intellectual ancestors. one may not be able to claim one of the fathers of evolutionism, but one can claim the other : alfred russel wallace. he was a group selectionist, and moreover he was not prepared to see man treated on a par with other organisms. i certainly do not want to pretend that today ' s biologists would find convincing the details of wallace ' s doubts about the all - sufficiency of individual selection, or that those who criticize human sociobiology grind the same metaphysical axe as did wallace ( although interestingly, politically wallace was fairly left - wing, as are many of today ' s critics ). but, given wallace ' s conclusions, it does seem true to say that the critics of human sociobiology are no less part of the evolutionary tradition than those they criticize!... - - michael ruse, november 1980. annals of science 37 ( 6 ) : 630.... this letter.


to say that the critics of human sociobiology are no less part of the evolutionary tradition than those they criticize!... - - michael ruse, november 1980. annals of science 37 ( 6 ) : 630.... this letter... reveals in clearer outline the professional relationship between spruce and wallace and their mutual but competitive interests in the palmae : their meeting in the amazon, the discovery that they had made similar collections in this important family, spruce ' s offer to collaborate on the book and wallace ' s subsequent refusal. it appears that spruce was discouraged on learning that wallace had discovered and intended to name and describe the same palms, primarily those along the rio negro, that he had studied. he writes of " relaxing " his study of the palms, in view of the fact that wallace would return to england and publish his results before spruce left south america. clearly, in this instance, spruce felt botanically somewhat overshadowed by wallace, whom he considered a distinguished zoologist and friend... - - michael j. balick, september 1980. botanical museum leaflets 28 ( 3 ) : 265. a major misconception about this debate has become fairly widespread. according to this misconception, darwin was for sexual selection, while wallace was against it and for natural selection instead. it is true that from 1876 on, wallace gave up sexual selection - - he rejected female choice completely and interpreted male combat as just a form of natural selection. but the debate between darwin and wallace took place in 1867 and 1868, with a brief resumption in 1871 after publication of the descent of man. during this earlier period, wallace fully accepted female choice and male choice, at least in birds. wherever darwin invoked female choice or male choice in birds, wallace invoked it too. in other words, darwin and wallace agreed that, in birds, sexual selection was the cause of the coloration of the more brilliantly colored sex. thus the debate did not come down to all sexual selection on one side and all natural selection on the other. the disagreement with respect to birds centered on the cause of the coloration of the less conspicuous sex... - - malcolm jay kottler, june 1980. proceedings of the american philosophical society 124 ( 3 ) : 203 - 204.... the basic reason for their divergence was darwin ' s belief that, although the most common form of inheritance was equal inheritance by both sexes, variations first appearing in one sex were fairly often sex - limited in inheritance from the first. thus female choice alone, in conjunction


for their divergence was darwin ' s belief that, although the most common form of inheritance was equal inheritance by both sexes, variations first appearing in one sex were fairly often sex - limited in inheritance from the first. thus female choice alone, in conjunction with sex - limited inheritance from the first of the variations sexually selected in the male, would produce a conspicuous male and an inconspicuous female ; in such cases, natural selection for the sake of protection of the sex in greater danger was unnecessary... - - malcolm jay kottler, june 1980. proceedings of the american philosophical society 124 ( 3 ) : 204. i cannot analyze wallace ' s psyche and will not comment on his deeper motives for hewing to the unbridgeable gap between human intellect and the behavior of mere animals. but i can assess the logic of his argument and recognize that the traditional account is not only incorrect, but precisely backward. wallace did not abandon natural selection at the human threshold. rather, it was his peculiarly rigid view of natural selection that led him, quite consistently, to reject it for the human mind. his position never varied - - natural selection is the only cause of major evolutionary change. his two major debates with darwin - - sexual selection and the origin of human intellect - - represent the same argument, not an inconsistent wallace championing selection in one case and running from it in the other... - - stephen jay gould, january 1980. natural history 89 ( 1 ) : 35 - 36.... wallace ' s anthropology closely paralleled his interest in natural ecology. he asked very similar questions about the peoples he encountered to those he asked about other organic forms. these were questions on how well a region could support a population ; what were the natural checks on its expansion ; the relationship between subsistence and size of population. his other preoccupation was with the geographical distribution of peoples. he put much greater emphasis than darwin upon the role of geographical isolation in the evolution of species and varieties. similarly he attributed many of the human racial differences in the malay area to geographical isolation. wallace was also interested in the effect on human evolution of that other major plank of natural ecology - - migration. he spent some time in the classification of the languages of the malay region partly for the clues they might reveal about the migration patterns of the peoples in the area... - - greta jones, 1980. in her social darwinism and english thought ; the interaction between biological and social theory ( humanities press ) : 26 - 27. [ william ] james


reveal about the migration patterns of the peoples in the area... - - greta jones, 1980. in her social darwinism and english thought ; the interaction between biological and social theory ( humanities press ) : 26 - 27. [ william ] james first anticipated some of his mature opinions on race and nationality in an 1865 review of a. r. wallace ' s article, " the origins of the human race. " agreeing with wallace, james held that the races of humanity developed from a common ancestor through natural selection. race differentiation antedated all but the most rudimentary forms of social organization. but soon every race evolved more elaborate social systems. natural selection then became more complicated. the environment supported whichever groups acted together ; each group protected whichever individuals it valued. such social selection allowed physically weak people to survive and reproduce so long as they served community ideals. survival of the weak checked physical evolution. further progress then had to be mental and moral... - - larry c. miller, fall 1979. american quarterly 31 ( 4 ) : 539. a widely held generalization about tropical tree species is that most occur at very low adult densities and are of relatively uniform dispersion, such that adult individuals of the tree species are thinly and evenly distributed in space. if true, this generalization has potentially profound consequences for the reproductive biology, population structure, and evolution of tropical tree species. in this article the adequacy of this generalization is judged with respect to a particular tropical forest, a large tract of which has been mapped in detail. the origins of this generalization can be traced back at least to wallace... - - stephen p. hubbell, 30 march 1979. science 203 ( 4387 ) : 1299. this distinction reflected a general tendency of spencer and his contemporaries to distinguish higher and lower stages in all development : barbarism and civilization, status and contract, militarism and industrialism. in this instance, he also joined the controversy that developed in the late sixties between darwin and a. russel wallace as to whether natural selection altered bodily structure at all stages of evolution. darwin believed it did. wallace maintained that, with the attainment of a certain level of intelligence, mental changes superceded physical ones. spencer preferred the thrust of wallace ' s view. he himself had earlier identified the importance of cerebral development among the races of man. but he rejected wallace ' s view that such cerebral development within societies resulted from the natural selection of spontaneous variations in the brain..


the thrust of wallace ' s view. he himself had earlier identified the importance of cerebral development among the races of man. but he rejected wallace ' s view that such cerebral development within societies resulted from the natural selection of spontaneous variations in the brain... - - robert c. bannister, 1979. in his social darwinism : science and myth in anglo - american social thought ( temple university press ) : 47.... fiske ' s philosophy was inherently conservative in that he stressed the slowness of change, which he neither wanted nor urged. however, the context was also usually religious. his system would bring no religious revolution, no attacks on existing churches, he assured readers in the conclusion of the cosmic philosophy. in the one section in which he discussed social evolution - - published earlier in the north american review under the title " from brute to man " - - fiske differed little from the speculations of a. r. wallace, whose work he described as " one of the most brilliant contributions ever yet made to the doctrine of evolution. " like wallace, he believed that natural selection ceased operating on bodily factors with the appearance of the human brain. " and hence in the future as in the recent past, " he told readers of the north american review, " the dominant fact in the career of humanity is not physical modification but civilization. "... - - robert c. bannister, 1979. in his social darwinism : science and myth in anglo - american social thought ( temple university press ) : 65.... darwinism upset such happy assumptions. throughout his career [ henry ] george harbored suspicion of the theory, a suspicion that colored his thought no less than carey ' s and bowen ' s. in progress and poverty he attempted to evade the issue. how men had originated was not his concern : " all we know of him is as man. " but his hostility was plain. during the 1880s he mellowed somewhat, comforted by the views of the british biologist a. r. wallace ( who early preached the " limits of evolution as applied to man, " and who also befriended george during his english crusade ), and of st. george mivart, a leading christian evolutionist who, more firmly than wallace, denied that natural selection has shaped human faculties. by the 1890s george could manage grudging acceptance... - - robert c. bannister, 1979. in his social darwinism : science and myth in anglo - american social thought ( temple university press )


selection has shaped human faculties. by the 1890s george could manage grudging acceptance... - - robert c. bannister, 1979. in his social darwinism : science and myth in anglo - american social thought ( temple university press ) : 120.... his view of " mental and moral progress " ( which sociologists would later call cultural evolution ) also led to the conclusion " that the higher - - the more intellectual and moral - - must displace the lower and degraded races. " but his process was again not analogous to struggle and selection in nature. certain that improvement would come, wallace would not attribute it to survival of the fittest. following a popular usage of the day, he equated such survival with the success of " the mediocre, if not the low, both as regards morality and intelligence. " rather, as with mind itself, mysterious forces were at work. the " glorious qualities " of men were the " surest proof " of " higher existences than ourselves. " the goal was not racial imperialism but the brotherhood of man : " a single nearly homogeneous race, no individual of which will be inferior to the noblest specimens of existing humanity. "... - - robert c. bannister, 1979. in his social darwinism : science and myth in anglo - american social thought ( temple university press ) : 185 - 186. but, of course, it does matter who starts the trend. if it had been wallace instead of darwin, we would have had a very different theory of evolution today. the whole cybernetics movement might have occurred 100 years earlier as a result of wallace ' s comparison between the steam engine with a governor and the process of natural selection... - - gregory bateson, 1979. in his mind and nature : a necessary unity ( e. p. dutton ) : 43.... it was alfred russel wallace who remarked in 1866 that the principle of natural selection is like that of the steam engine with a governor. i shall assume that this is indeed so and that both the process of individual learning and the process of population shift under natural selection can exhibit the pathologies of all cybernetic circuits : excessive oscillation and runaway. in sum, i shall assume that evolutionary change and somatic change ( including learning and thought ) are fundamentally similar, that both are stochastic in nature, although surely the ideas ( injunctions, descriptive propositions, and so on ) on which each process works are of totally different


evolutionary change and somatic change ( including learning and thought ) are fundamentally similar, that both are stochastic in nature, although surely the ideas ( injunctions, descriptive propositions, and so on ) on which each process works are of totally different logical typing from the typing of ideas in the other process... - - gregory bateson, 1979. in his mind and nature : a necessary unity ( e. p. dutton ) : 148.... [ w. r. ] greg represented those who saw competitive individualism as the logical outcome of the operation in society of the law of natural selection ; for him, naturalism in sociology was equivalent to the hobbesian vision of a continual ' war of all against all '. but equally, wallace was representative of a considerable number of people who claimed that man was unique in nature precisely because of his ability to transcend this state of affairs ; by stressing the biological advantages of intelligent cooperation, he attempted to reconcile darwinian principles with a very different moral and political vision. thus, the dispute involved a fundamental conflict of ideologies, even though it was fought out almost wholly within a naturalistic framework. this conflict was to be a recurrent feature of wallace ' s thought ; and indeed it is still with us today in ' sociobiological ' discussions of the legitimacy of the theory of ' group selection. '... - - john r. durant, 1979. british journal for the history of science 12 ( 40 ) : 45. wallace, who unfortunately never wrote a book on the subject, probed deeper into the nature of man than any of the circle immediately around darwin. because in the end science has so thoroughly accepted them, we have not only forgotten their source but also forgotten how heretical some of his views were at the time they were uttered. first wallace postulated an erect, small - brained bipedal stage of human development, followed by a second phase in which the human brain and cranium assumed their present size and form. only with the present - day discovery of the australopithecine man - apes is the early stage beginning to be documented. second, he quickly saw that the complete fossil history of man might well be prolonged far beyond pleistocene times, and that the big - brained men of the upper pleistocene, who were at that time troubling the evolutionists, need not be regarded as an effective argument against the reality of the human transformation. rather, the scientists must cease confusing living races with grades or levels


- brained men of the upper pleistocene, who were at that time troubling the evolutionists, need not be regarded as an effective argument against the reality of the human transformation. rather, the scientists must cease confusing living races with grades or levels on the evolutionary scale of the past - - something which was at that time exceedingly common... - - loren eiseley, 1979. in his darwin and the mysterious mr. x ; new light on the evolutionists ( e. p. dutton ) : 197. wallace and many later biogeographers have proposed that tropical areas support more species than temperate zones simply because they have not been glaciated and are thus ecologically older. although evidence is very scant, under this interpretation the observed high tropical diversity is a result of long - term undisturbed speciation. if so, the latitudinal trend in species numbers is partially attributable to a strictly geographic factor ( latitude )... - - joseph j. schall & eric r. pianka, 25 august 1978. science 201 ( 4357 ) : 681. it is likely, for instance, that wilde would have sympathized with grant allen ' s and a. r. wallace ' s eugenic plans. allen argued in his essays for free love as part of a eugenic proposal which encouraged women to choose for child - bearing purposes temporary mates from among the finest, healthiest, and most intelligent men. wallace, in an essay which appeared in the fortnightly review, four months before " the soul of man under socialism, " also outlined a nonauthoritarian socialist scheme for human improvement through sexual selection. stating that education could not lead to permanent cultural improvement, wallace suggested that once removed from economic competition, and totally free to choose a mate, women would be attracted to men who embodied what victorians called " the higher qualities, " and the cumulative hereditary impact of that sexual selection would therefore improve the culture of the race. in february 1891, when wilde published " the soul of man under socialism, " in the fortnightly review, he argued that marriage and family should be abolished in favor of a freer and more beautiful love relationship between man and woman. his suggestion can be understood as one of his proposals for a socialist utopia and, indeed, as his contribution to the debate among socialists and cultural critics over the eugenic role of sexual selection in cultural improvement... - - michael s. helfand & philip e. smith ii,


his proposals for a socialist utopia and, indeed, as his contribution to the debate among socialists and cultural critics over the eugenic role of sexual selection in cultural improvement... - - michael s. helfand & philip e. smith ii, summer 1978. texas studies in literature and language 20 ( 2 ) : 211. must fantasy inevitably accompany speculation on the plurality of worlds? fortunately not, for even the history of the question contains a few indications of sober deliberation. in this respect, two nineteenth - century dissenters on plurality, william whewell and alfred russel wallace, stand out as the first post - copernican thinkers to rein in imagination by proposing sensible rules for thinking about such a provocative but thorny issue. when whewell ' s of the plurality of worlds was published in 1853, it challenged what had become, since the sixteenth century, a traditional belief in the existence of life elsewhere. fifty years later, alfred russel wallace, co - discoverer of the theory of natural selection and later percival lowell ' s most tenacious opponent, extended the dissenting tradition by writing the first study that successfully synthesized biological and astronomical perspectives on life in a plurality of worlds... - - william c. heffernan, january - march 1978. journal of the history of ideas 39 ( 1 ) : 82 - 83.... however unkind it became, most criticism of man ' s place in the universe was kept within the confines of the dissenters ' strictures on reasoning. there was a gratifying irony in this, for while most of wallace ' s peers found fault with the book, they unwittingly based their comments on the rules which whewell and wallace considered necessary for careful speculation on plurality. for instance, h. h. turner, the savilian professor of astronomy at oxford, captured the thrust of the many unfavorable reviews of man ' s place when he insisted that the universe is probably not bounded in the sense of having an edge ; that even if it were, there would be no center ; and that even if the sun were at the center, such a position would not be uniquely stable. like other critics, turner was able to seize on the flaws in the argument of life beyond the solar system and thus ignore the strengths of wallace ' s overall position - - the banishment of theology when considerations of probability were at stake, the introduction of an explicitly evolutionary perspective, and the low likelihood of life within the solar system. wallace had created a


system and thus ignore the strengths of wallace ' s overall position - - the banishment of theology when considerations of probability were at stake, the introduction of an explicitly evolutionary perspective, and the low likelihood of life within the solar system. wallace had created a grand and only somewhat flawed synthesis, although few people remarked on this... - - william c. heffernan, january - march 1978. journal of the history of ideas 39 ( 1 ) : 92 - 93.... and what about the climate itself? lowell had claimed that although mars receives only half the earth ' s heat, the absence of an atmosphere would actually mean that the sun ' s radiation would have a more direct effect on it than on the earth. wallace was appalled that a respected scientist could be responsible for such an hypothesis. the opposite would have to be the case, as wallace showed : because of its lack of sufficient atmosphere, mars must retain heat more poorly than the earth. there would also have to be greater variations in temperature between the ground and the air a few feet above it, and wallace pointed out that these would impede the development of advanced organisms... - - william c. heffernan, january - march 1978. journal of the history of ideas 39 ( 1 ) : 95.... since both the dissenters and their " majoritarian " opponents were moved by extra - scientific convictions, could it be said that the two traditions were methodologically indistinguishable? certainly not. precisely because they were dissenters, whewell and wallace had been forced to articulate their position with a degree of care that no pluralist had ever shown. because they were inspired by different and unusual convictions about man ' s status, the dissenters had to take the scientific road to plurality ; for their case would not otherwise have been heard. in this way, discussion of the possibility of life in other worlds was transformed ; for in later years, the metaphysical context of the debate would fall away, leaving a core of scientifically grounded speculation for which whewell and wallace had prepared the way... - - william c. heffernan, january - march 1978. journal of the history of ideas 39 ( 1 ) : 100. the idea of surplusage seems most directly traceable to alfred russel wallace ( 1870 ). his belief that savages possessed brains far in excess of their requirements was the germinal idea of surplusage ; consider, he would argue, that civilized humans use the same brain as that of


traceable to alfred russel wallace ( 1870 ). his belief that savages possessed brains far in excess of their requirements was the germinal idea of surplusage ; consider, he would argue, that civilized humans use the same brain as that of savages to accomplish higher mental feats such as mathematical reasoning, a kind of reasoning never required of our primitive ancestors. if the potential for higher mental processes appeared before it was evolutionarily adaptive, what caused its presence? this is the dilemma posed by the notion of surplusage. as naive as the arguments about savages might seem today, surplusage remains an interesting consideration for psychologists studying animal intelligence in the laboratory... - - robert boice, june 1977. bulletin of the psychonomic society 9 ( 6 ) : 452. crolls ' work played a critical role in the biologists ' attempts to obviate the threats posed to evolutionary theory by kelvin ' s argument for a shortened history of the earth. but croll ' s ideas had an even broader significance for wallace : they functioned as a catalyst for his magisterial formulation of zoogeography. the explanatory potential of glacial theory with respect to the question of the migration and distribution of animals and plants was considerably enhanced by croll ' s speculations, and wallace was alert to their implications for his work on geographical distribution... - - martin fichman, spring 1977. journal of the history of biology 10 ( 1 ) : 60 - 61.... wallace and huxley disagreed about how humans evolved because they had different perceptions of non - western people and the working class. those perceptions were informed by different social experiences. wallace ' s was an unusual experience in the nineteenth century, and it led him to an interpretation of human development with which modern anthropologists generally agree, that the artifice of culture informs our perceptions. how our opinions and experiences can remain unaffected or uninvolved in a holistic theory like human evolution remains a mystery. yet that is the working assumption of most scientists and bureaucrats of science... - - michael s. helfand, winter 1977. victorian studies, 20 ( 2 ) : 176 - 177. a. r. wallace ' s hypothesis that visual stimuli provided by the insect become a conditioned signal for predatory animals through association with its noxious taste was formulated 24 years before i. p. pavlov was elected professor of pharmacology at the military medical academy of st. petersburg. several years later, pavlov was to


signal for predatory animals through association with its noxious taste was formulated 24 years before i. p. pavlov was elected professor of pharmacology at the military medical academy of st. petersburg. several years later, pavlov was to begin his studies there on " psychic " reflexes, employing visual and auditory stimuli to signal the taste of acid or meat powder in the mouth of dogs. poulton ' s summary of two decades of comparative animal research upon the positive effects of satisfying foods and the negative effects of annoying tastes was presented eleven years before e. l. thorndike ' s ( 1897 ) doctoral thesis on animal intelligence and the law of effect. pavlov and thorndike went on to investigate conditioned responses more rigorously, and ultimately their students operationally defined a series of methodological " laws "... - - john garcia & walter g. hankins, 1977. in lewis m. barker et al., eds., learning mechanisms in food selection ( baylor university press ) : 6.... i want to suggest that the first step in any study of his contribution must be a careful analysis of how he actually presented his idea in the 1858 paper, concentrating especially on the kind of variation that was the basis of natural selection. strangely enough, such a detailed analysis is provided neither by beddall nor mckinney, both of whom simply assume that what wallace eventually discovered was a straightforward equivalent of the darwinian theory. this assumption is common to most general accounts of the history of evolutionism, and was shared by darwin himself. but there are good reasons for suggesting that wallace ' s initial concept of selection differed considerably from darwin ' s, or at least was expressed in very different terms... - - peter j. bowler, january 1976. journal of the history of medicine and allied sciences 31 ( 1 ) : 18.... it was only at a later stage in his thought - - after he had discovered the principle of divergence - - that darwin actually came to realize that varieties would at some stage have to compete with one another. the essence of wallace ' s mechanism was for darwin a secondary insight gained some time after he had worked out the primary mechanism of selection acting on individual differences. furthermore, when darwin discussed varieties coming into conflict, he pictured this as a geographical effect caused by one form ' s invading and conquering the territory of the other. wallace on the other hand, simply wrote of species splitting into varieties as though this occurred across the whole geographical range, with members


conflict, he pictured this as a geographical effect caused by one form ' s invading and conquering the territory of the other. wallace on the other hand, simply wrote of species splitting into varieties as though this occurred across the whole geographical range, with members of each variety in face - to - face conflict at all points. wallace ' s failure to appreciate the role of geographical factors in the formation of varieties again suggests that he may not at first have recognized natural selection as the agency that created the varieties out of individual differences. or, if he did recognize the action of natural selection on individual differences, he had certainly failed to work out its full implications for his own theory of selection acting among the varieties... - - peter j. bowler, january 1976. journal of the history of medicine and allied sciences 31 ( 1 ) : 22 - 23.... it is clear that in the later stages of his career wallace was fully aware of the importance of individual variation to selection. he was able to exploit both modes of representation employed by darwin, using especially the range concept to make a notable contribution to the measurement of variation among wild populations. but all of this occurred after he had read the origin of species, with its clear descriptions of darwin ' s primary conception of selection ' s acting on the individual differences first to form varieties and then species. his own first paper on natural selection had side - stepped this level of the mechanism and developed a theory of competition among the varieties after they had been formed. this was a valid darwinian mechanism, but one which to darwin himself represented a second level of selection which utilized the varieties formed from the selection of individual variations. it may be that from the beginning wallace also recognized the primary action of selection upon individual differences, and simply preferred to describe the mechanism acting at the second level because he was more familiar with what he called permanent varieties. but even if this were so, there are certain points in the 1858 paper which suggest that he had at least failed to work out the consequences of the first level of selection for his own theory... - - peter j. bowler, january 1976. journal of the history of medicine and allied sciences 31 ( 1 ) : 28. at one point wallace reasoned logically and with telling effect that even if martians existed they could not have the high intelligence with which lowell credited them. for the " canals " they were supposed to have built in many instances ran for thousands of miles across arid deserts and beneath clear cloudless skies, thus " losing enormously from evaporation,


not have the high intelligence with which lowell credited them. for the " canals " they were supposed to have built in many instances ran for thousands of miles across arid deserts and beneath clear cloudless skies, thus " losing enormously from evaporation, if we assume them to contain water. the mere attempt to use open canals for irrigation purposes would argue ignorance and stupidity. long before half of them were completed, their failure to be of any use would have led any rational being to cease constructing them. "... - - william graves hoyt, 1976. in his lowell and mars ( university of arizona press ) : 215. many suggestions have been formulated over the years to explain the evolution of vertebrate color vision. most have dealt with possible modifications of photoreceptors and neuronal layers of the retina ( see especially edridge - green, 1920 ; ladd - franklin, 1929 ; willmer, 1949 ; pickford, 1951 ) and have hardly considered function. only wallace ( 1891, p. 411 ) and walls ( 1942, p. 463 ) appear to have seriously asked the question, " why color vision? " each suggested that color detection originated to provide for the strongest contrast and, therefore, to enhance the visibility of objects against the background. we believe that this simple and prescient suggestion is correct... - - w. n. mcfarland & f. w. munz, october 1975. vision research 15 : 1071.... a major aim of vestiges is to show that as good newtonians we much accept a biological evolutionary theory. wallace, i think, whilst rejecting as inadequate chambers ' own evolutionary theory, entirely accepted chambers ' research programme, to find the biological analogue of newtonian astronomy. thus i would suggest that wallace like darwin, may have reacted favourably to malthus ' ideas because he could then start to see his way towards a biological equivalent of newtonian astronomy. hence, i think that darwin and wallace quite possibly started from similar philosophical positions, although i have no reason to believe that they drew on exactly the same immediate sources for the philosophies... - - michael ruse, june 1975. studies in history and philosophy of science 6 ( 2 ) : 172 - 173.... by combining what he considered to be the reliable features of both the calculations, the more recent date for the ice age and a consequently accelerated rate of species change, wallace arrived at a figure of 24 million years for the time since the beginning of


.. by combining what he considered to be the reliable features of both the calculations, the more recent date for the ice age and a consequently accelerated rate of species change, wallace arrived at a figure of 24 million years for the time since the beginning of the cambrian. this estimate, he concluded happily, would fit easily within kelvin ' s limits and still leave a period three times as long for the slow operation of natural selection during the precambrian. wallace was not finished, however, for it was in the application of croll ' s hypothesis to biology that he showed the true measure of his ingenuity. neither he nor darwin had ever completely escaped from the lamarckian dependence upon environment as a causal factor in species change. and now he saw in the radical changes of climate a mechanism whereby the continuously " altered physical conditions would induce variation. " furthermore, in alternating from one hemisphere to the other, the successive cycles of glaciation would stimulate a constant migration of plant and animal types, thus continually bringing allied species into competition and accelerating the process of extinction... - - joe d. burchfield, september 1974. isis 65 ( 228 ) : 317.... as early as 1876, the naturalist and zoogeographer alfred wallace noted that " we live in a zoologically impoverished world, from which all of the hugest, and fiercest, and strangest forms have recently disappeared. " he remarked especially on the " sudden dying out of so many large mammalia, not in only one place but over half the land surface of the globe " ( wallace 1876 ). at the end of the pleistocene in north america, there was a loss of 33 genera of large mammals ( > 50 kg ), while only 13 genera had become extinct in the preceding 1 or 2 million years. smaller mammals ( < 50 kg ) were not similarly affected, nor were marine mammals, which we might also expect to show high extinction rates if the cause were environmental catastrophes. wallace ( 1911 ) observed that these sudden extinctions were not correlated with major environmental changes, such as those responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs, but seemed to coincide with the arrival, on different continents at different times, of stone age man... - - richard s. miller & daniel b. botkin, march - april 1974. american scientist 62 ( 2 ) : 172. this concept of the separation of the human personality from the human body meant that wallace considered man and the relation of science to man in a context wholly different from that of the advocates


, march - april 1974. american scientist 62 ( 2 ) : 172. this concept of the separation of the human personality from the human body meant that wallace considered man and the relation of science to man in a context wholly different from that of the advocates of scientific naturalism. as william irvine once described the evolution of huxley ' s mind, " he became interested in man as a physical mechanism, as an anthropoid ape, as a social unit and a citizen, as a delicate machine for the discovery of scientific truth, but never to any appreciable extent in man as a personality and a human being. " wallace ' s development was exactly the reverse. he was originally interested in the physical mechanism of man for the sake of the moral personality encased therein. he studied the anthropoid ape because it resembled man. he wrote on social questions in the hope that society might be so organized as to allow the moral faculties to flourish. throughout his long and varied scientific career, wallace was primarily concerned with what koestler has dubbed " the ghost in the machine " rather than with the machine itself... - - frank m. turner, 1974. in his between science and religion ; the reaction to scientific naturalism in late victorian england ( yale university press ) : 82.... in the london anthropological society address of march 1864, wallace continued to discuss, though in a very different kind of forum, matters that had weighted upon his mind for over twenty years. he brought into the professional scientific sphere the scientific concepts and goals that he had learned in the provincial mechanics institutes. the address was his single most important comment on man and contained the latent seeds for all his later departures from scientific naturalism. the american evolutionist john fiske recalled that the address " seemed to open up an entirely new world of speculation. " such speculation was indeed new to men who had known little or nothing of " physical puritanism " or the " belated rationalism " of the working - class culture in which wallace had come to maturity. for wallace the paper was simply a continuation of his earlier thought... - - frank m. turner, 1974. in his between science and religion ; the reaction to scientific naturalism in late victorian england ( yale university press ) : 83 - 84.... spiritualism furnished wallace with a scientific explanation for the development of man ' s moral nature and brought man ' s total being under the rule of rational cosmic law. in a curious manner, the theory of spiritual


) : 83 - 84.... spiritualism furnished wallace with a scientific explanation for the development of man ' s moral nature and brought man ' s total being under the rule of rational cosmic law. in a curious manner, the theory of spiritualism provided a law for the moral world analogous to that provided by natural selection for the organic world. natural selection removed the necessity for an arbitrary and interfering god of special creation. spiritualism banished the arbitrary god of predestination and replaced him with a uniform law of individual moral progress and of personal moral responsibility... - - frank m. turner, 1974. in his between science and religion ; the reaction to scientific naturalism in late victorian england ( yale university press ) : 88.... " consistency, " the tract by robert dale owen, robert owen ' s son, particularly interested wallace. the younger owen, who himself also later converted to spiritualism, argued that the doctrine of predestination led to immoral living because it rendered one ' s eternal reward a matter of chance rather than a function of the virtue of one ' s life. concurring in these arguments, wallace moved very quietly and painlessly from faith to skepticism. his loss of faith grew directly out of a situation succinctly described by a writer later in the century : " god, and immortality, and the bible have been so taught as to make scepticism the only refuge for morality to flee to. " wallace later identified this rational skepticism with agnosticism. his skepticism, however, more nearly resembled deism. he did not deny the possibility of religious knowledge or of pure religion but rather the validity and morality of the christian religion. most important, wallace and the owenites did not dismiss the moral significance of the questions that christianity had addressed. the questions of religion remained valid even if the christian answers were false. the owenite criticism of christianity made wallace, as well as genuine owenites, highly susceptible to a rational religion, such as spiritualism, that was based on empirical evidence and that emphasized social cooperation and benevolent individualism... - - frank m. turner, 1974. in his between science and religion ; the reaction to scientific naturalism in late victorian england ( yale university press ) : 89 - 90. the notion that man ' s first language was primarily gestural, carried on with hand and arm signals rather than vocal sounds, has been supported by a distinguished line of scholars : condillac ( 1746 ), tylor ( 1868, 1871 )


notion that man ' s first language was primarily gestural, carried on with hand and arm signals rather than vocal sounds, has been supported by a distinguished line of scholars : condillac ( 1746 ), tylor ( 1868, 1871 ), morgan ( 1877 ), wallace ( 1881, 1895 ), romanes ( 1888 ), wundt ( 1912 ), paget ( 1944, 1963 ), and johannesson ( 1949, 1950 ). the gestural theory seems to be the most attractive of the many glottogonic hypotheses advanced so far, and receives support from recent studies of chimpanzees and other primates, such as gardner and gardner ( 1969, 1971 ), premack ( 1970a, b, 1971 ), and menzel ( 1971 ), as well as from other sources. the fact that this evidence was unavailable to earlier proponents of the gestural theory explains some of the weaknesses in its former formulations... - - gordon w. hewes, february - april 1973. current anthropology 14 ( 1 - 2 ) : 5. alfred russel wallace was the co - founder of the theory of natural selection and one of its most tenacious defenders. it is therefore of great interest that wallace emphatically opposed a demarcation between ethical and scientific ideas and that he also resisted the breakdown of the common intellectual milieu with his own unified world - view. he endeavoured to combine notions of value with his scientific theory of evolution, particularly in relation to man. british biologists in the first half of the nineteenth century characteristically analysed their data in terms of the teleological framework of natural theology. evolutionary theory supposedly demolished this framework. nevertheless, wallace incorporated a fundamental teleology into all his theories. he considered that he had thereby reconciled the tensions of scientific and ethical demands in his contribution to the evolutionary debate on man ' s place in nature... - - roger smith, december 1972. british journal for the history of science 6 ( 22 ) : 177 - 178.... wallace traced the ' action of some unknown higher law ' in the evolution of man and also in the origin of consciousness. as he commented, ' no physiologist or philosopher has yet ventured to propound an intelligible theory of how sensation may possibly be a product of organization ; while many have declared the passage from matter to mind to be inconceivable '. while other biologists tended to avoid this question, wallace believed in a


carries the proclamation of a prophet ' s faith... - - john l. brooks, december 1972. transactions of the connecticut academy of arts and sciences 44 : 45. " what think you of wallace ' s paper in the ann. n. hist.? good! upon the whole! but how about such forms as the giraffe, which has typical representatives in the siwalik tertiary deposits? or the true elk ( = moose )? can we suppose a lost series of gradations connecting these general with the deer type, & ramifying off to them paulatim [ gradually ]? wallace has, i think, put the matter well ; and according to his theory, the various domestic races of animals have been fairly developed into species " [ quotation from edward blyth letter to darwin ]... - - barbara g. beddall, spring 1972. journal of the history of biology 5 ( 1 ) : 155. wallace, in fact, proposed the first cybernetic model. nowadays cybernetics deals with much more complex systems of the general kind ; and we know that when we talk about the processes of civilization, or evaluate human behavior, human organization, or any biological system, we are concerned with self - corrective systems. basically these systems are always conservative of something. as in the engine with a governor, the fuel supply is changed to conserve - - to keep constant - - the speed of the flywheel, so always in such systems changes occur to conserve the truth of some descriptive statement, some component of the status quo. wallace saw the matter correctly, and natural selection acts primarily to keep the species unvarying ; but it may act at higher levels to keep constant that complex variable which we call " survival. "... - - gregory bateson, 1972. in his steps to an ecology of mind ( chandler publishing company ) : 435. the importance of larval dispersal was already recognized by alfred russel wallace in his work on the geographical distribution of animals ( 1876 ). wallace knew that the univalve and bivalve mollusca have free - swimming larval stages and recognized that " they thus have a powerful means of dispersal, and are carried by tides and currents so as ultimately to spread over every shore and shoal that offers conditions favorable for development. "... - - rudolf s. scheltema, april 1971. biological bulletin 140 : 285.... darwin ( 1859 ) and later evolutionists ( especially muller 1940, 1942 )


shoal that offers conditions favorable for development. "... - - rudolf s. scheltema, april 1971. biological bulletin 140 : 285.... darwin ( 1859 ) and later evolutionists ( especially muller 1940, 1942 ) proposed that reproductive isolating mechanisms develop as by - products of divergent evolution and are purely incidental features of adaptive differentiation which confer no advantage to populations at the time they develop. conversely, wallace ( 1889 ), fisher ( 1930 ), and dobzhansky ( 1941, 1951 ) contended that isolating mechanisms could arise from selection against hybrids and hybridizers. selection for reproductive isolation in areas of sympatry would reinforce previously existing barriers and thereby reduce gametic wastage, hybridization, and disruptive gene flow. grant ( 1966 ) has suggested the term " wallace effect " for this process... - - donald a. levin, november - december 1970. the american naturalist 104 ( 940 ) : 571. the basic answer to the question - - " why does man occupy this worldwide and universally dominant niche? " - - also given by wallace, is that by the use of his greatly superior mind, man has continually modified the environment to meet his needs, so that " he would cease to be influenced by natural selection in his physical form and structure. " as dobzhansky ( 1962, 1967 ) has pointed out, this statement is an exaggeration. nevertheless, the general conclusion of wallace, that in early man the action of natural selection was largely transferred from the bodily structure to the mind, is still valid... - - george ledyard stebbins, march - april 1970. the american naturalist 104 ( 936 ) : 112. the next questioner said the lecturer had termed mr. [ henry ] george a poet. he then called attention to the fact that mr. george advocated nationalisation of the land as a remedy for poverty, and asked how it was that mr. a. wallace, an able man, came to the same conclusion. professor marshall said that mr. wallace ' s proposal was much more reasonable than that of mr. george. he did not call mr. george a poet because he said erroneous things. he was a poet because he was poetic, and he was not a man of science because he said erroneous things [ report on a lecture by alfred marshall ]... - - ronald h. coase, april 1969. journal of law and economics 12 ( 1 ) :


poetic, and he was not a man of science because he said erroneous things [ report on a lecture by alfred marshall ]... - - ronald h. coase, april 1969. journal of law and economics 12 ( 1 ) : 199.... we next come to mr. wallace ' s plan. it proposed that the inherent value of the soil should become the property of the state, but that the buildings and other improvements on it should remain private property. he would give to the landowner an annuity equal to that part of the rent which corresponds to its present inherent value, for his life and the life of any descendants born in his lifetime, or in failure of such, for the life of anyone nominated by the landlord. he calls this full compensation, but of course it is only partial compensation ; the state would confiscate, independently of any rise in its inherent value, the reversion of this inherent value some years hence. if we put the probable duration of the lives at forty years, this is equal to an immediate confiscation of 30 per cent of the inherent value, if we take interest at 3 per cent, or a confiscation of 20 percent if we take interest at 4 per cent. the question whether this is just or not must be looked at straight in the face [ from the words of alfred marshall ]... - - ronald h. coase, april 1969. journal of law and economics 12 ( 1 ) : 206.... the principle may be extended to the generalization that a proportionately small percentage of any fauna will be fit as invaders, since any intervening barrier, however slight, will act as a kind of " filter " to at least some of them. simpson has developed and supplemented this argument, demonstrating that wallace ' s interpretation was essentially correct. the precise differences in approach between darwin and wallace need some additional study, but it would seem that darwin tended to concentrate on the effects of different dispersal mechanisms on patterns of distribution, wallace more on the influence of barriers in restricting faunas conceived of as units. thus, wallace was more orientated toward historical explanation for classes of phenomena, darwin toward reasoning from the effects of the properties of individuals upon the overall pattern of distribution... - - michael t. ghiselin, 1969. in his the triumph of the darwinian method ( university of california press ) : 41.... darwin and wallace merit particular respect for having developed the theory of natural selection through a process of " retroduction


t. ghiselin, 1969. in his the triumph of the darwinian method ( university of california press ) : 41.... darwin and wallace merit particular respect for having developed the theory of natural selection through a process of " retroduction " : that is, they were aware of a phenomenon, and successfully sought out an explanation in superficially unconnected processes. the method through which this insight was obtained would seem to have been orderly and rational... - - michael t. ghiselin, 1969. in his the triumph of the darwinian method ( university of california press ) : 77. in a modification of the quinarian system of william sharpe macleay, swainson divided the earth into five regions according to what he believed to be the five major races of mankind ; animal groups were likewise divided into fives. the divisions were mathematical, the reasons not only unknown but unknowable. but wallace questioned swainson from the first, noting that " there appears not to be the slightest reason for believing a priori that all groups of animals are divided into the same number of types of forms or divisions "... - - barbara g. beddall, september 1968. journal of the history of biology 1 ( 2 ) : 270.... lamarck had interpreted them in his own light, believing them to be the result of " the permanent disuse of an organ, arising from a change of habits, [ which caused ] a gradual shrinkage of ultimately the disappearance and even extinction of that organ. " wallace, like chambers, thought that rudimentary organs showed relationships, but he misinterpreted them, confusing vestigial with nascent organs. he did, however, ask the right question : " if each species has been created independently, and without any necessary relations with pre - existing species, what do these rudiments, these apparent imperfections mean? "... - - barbara g. beddall, september 1968. journal of the history of biology 1 ( 2 ) : 280.... the argument from design was teleological, presuming that a contrivance existed in accordance with a preconceived plan. adaptation between structure and function was recognized, but it was thought that a structure was provided simply because a function required it. wallace wondered, however, how an animal could have necessities before it came into existence? and how could it " continue to exist unless its structure enabled it to obtain food?


was thought that a structure was provided simply because a function required it. wallace wondered, however, how an animal could have necessities before it came into existence? and how could it " continue to exist unless its structure enabled it to obtain food? he thought that the arguments brought forward as proofs of design were absurd ; not only were they insulting to the intelligence of a supreme being, but they also placed narrow limits on his power... barbara g. beddall, september 1968. journal of the history of biology 1 ( 2 ) : 282.... looking back, it is interesting that wallace, in 1880, thought that enough information was already at hand to make further expeditions and collecting redundant. what was needed, he said, was intensive study of selected islands, and since britain owned most of the world ' s islands, the government should post naturalists on some of them to make such studies. wallace ' s suggestion was good, though naturally nothing came of it, but his major premise was wrong. we still need to know a great deal more than we do about the species that make up island biotas, not merely for the sake of naming and cataloguing them, but because knowledge of the identities, relationships, distribution, behavior, and ecological roles and requirements of the species is essential for understanding both the evolution of the island biotas and the evolution and functioning of the island ecosystems... - - theodore h. hubbell, may 1968. proceedings of the national academy of sciences. 60 ( 1 ) : 22. the hypothesis of a secondary and supplementary process of selection for reproductive isolation, considered as an advantageous situation in its own right for the species concerned, was advanced in the early period of evolutionary biology by wallace ( 1889 ), who tried unsuccessfully to convince darwin. it seems fitting and desirable to designate the process of selection for reproductive isolation as the wallace effect. the wallace hypothesis was proposed again in the modern period by fisher ( 1930 ), dobzhansky ( 1941 ; 1951 ), and huxley ( 1943 ). the subject has been reviewed recently by mayr ( 1963 ) and grant ( 1963 ). it is argued that the individuals of two sympatric species populations which produce inviable or sterile hybrids will contribute fewer offspring to future generations than will sister individuals in the same parental populations which do not hybridize. consequently the genetic factors determining some block or aversion to hybridization will tend to increase in frequency within each species over the course of generations. this process of selection is expected


than will sister individuals in the same parental populations which do not hybridize. consequently the genetic factors determining some block or aversion to hybridization will tend to increase in frequency within each species over the course of generations. this process of selection is expected to lead to a reinforcement of the reproductive isolation which had developed as a by - product of divergence... - - verne grant, march - april 1966. american naturalist 100 ( 911 ) : 99. species of animals living on islands may have morphological characteristics not possessed by their mainland counterparts, a fact which was recognized by wallace ( 1881 ). he remarked that in the celebes : " nearly thirty species of butterflies, belonging to three different families, have a common modification in the shape of their wings by which they can be distinguished at a glance from their allies in any other island or country whatever, and all these are larger than the representative forms inhabiting most of the adjacent islands. "... - - p. r. grant, september 1965. evolution 19 : 355. wallace was one of the first to suggest that birds might build their nests on the basis of their previous experience. although it now seems that nest building in birds is not solely a function of memory, the extent to which experience plays a role has not been determined... - - theodore d. sargent, january 1965. the auk 82 ( 1 ) : 48. wallace ( 1889 ), after summarizing the findings of bates and muller, proposed an extension of mullerian mimicry whereby several members of the same unpalatable genus look alike in the same locality ( e. g., 4 or 5 heliconius having a yellow - banded forewing and radiating red stripes on the hindwing. ) this really is somewhat different from muller ' s case of convergence of widely unrelated species. modern speciation theory predicts that closely related species when sympatric will diverge in appearance, habits, and season due to rigorous selection for the two main speciation sequelae : anti - hybridization mechanisms and niche diversification ( anti - competition ). wallace ' s mullerian extension explains an important deviant. he also suggested the possibility of a still different sort of mimicry, in which a scarce edible species can mingle with and closely resemble an abundant edible species and thus gain some freedom from predation... - - charles l. remington, 1963. in proceedings of the xvi international congress of zoology ( the congress ), volume 4 : 148. the general patterns of the distribution


resemble an abundant edible species and thus gain some freedom from predation... - - charles l. remington, 1963. in proceedings of the xvi international congress of zoology ( the congress ), volume 4 : 148. the general patterns of the distribution of mollusks in the pacific, particularly those of the terrestrial forms, aroused attention because of the difficulties involved in transporting such forms to small and widely scattered islands. suggested dispersal agents have included land connections, drifting vegetation, typhoons and migratory birds. the use of islands as stepping stones, including those now buried beneath the sea, was suggested by wallace in 1881. in wallace ' s time there was little geological evidence to support the idea of submerged islands. as late as 1950 it was pointed out that complete proof for island distribution was " hopelessly buried in the geological past. "... - - harry s. ladd, 1960. american journal of science 258 - a : 140. the occurrence of a number of river - like channels running across the group and dividing it into islands is beyond doubt the most remarkable geomorphic phenomenon of the aru islands. numerous branch channels are also encountered. there are several theories concerning the genesis of these channels. wallace ( 1857, 1869 ) tried to explain them as the remainders of the pleistocene lower courses of new guinea rivers preserved here by subsequent uparching of the aru region, whereas elsewhere the river courses gradually disappeared during the transgression of the shelf associated with the postglacial rise in sea level... - - herman verstappen, summer 1959. american journal of science 257 ( 7 ) : 493. the difficulty inherent in attempting to rid biology of normative concepts incapable of definition in purely biological terms became even more evident when darwin and others tried to find a substitute for the term natural selection. asa gray and alfred russel wallace objected to the expression because it seemed to imply an intelligent agent selecting according to pre - established standards... - - john c. greene, 1959. in his the death of adam ( iowa state university press ) : 300. alfred russel wallace had lived for many years in tropical regions, first in the amazon basin and later in the east indies, where he had been especially impressed by the phenomena of animal distribution. he thus had a broader and more direct and intimate acquaintance with the subject than any other naturalist traveller of his century. he was continually at work on this subject from 1860 until 1876, the date of publication of his two volumes on the geographical distribution of animals. he somewhat modestly


and more direct and intimate acquaintance with the subject than any other naturalist traveller of his century. he was continually at work on this subject from 1860 until 1876, the date of publication of his two volumes on the geographical distribution of animals. he somewhat modestly refers to this work as an extension and amplification of the two chapters on the subject in the origin of species, comparing it with darwin ' s own two - volume expansion of the chapters on animals and plants under domestication. the two principal sections of wallace ' s work on contrasted as " zoological geography, " a descriptive discussion of the land animals of the different zoogeographic regions, and " geographical zoology, " a review of the distribution of vertebrates and certain invertebrates, group by group. whatever their fate in a reclassification of regions and subregions, wallace ' s scheme and nomenclature are the ones that appear most widely in zoological literature... - - karl patterson schmidt, december 1954. the quarterly review of biology 29 ( 4 ) : 323. after dr j. rae, the most notable contribution to the gesture theory came from charles darwin ' s rival, dr alfred russel wallace, who in 1895 pointed out, in fortnightly review, that, in english speech, it is common to produce words by an appropriate gesture of the tongue, lips or jaw, so as ' to bring sense and sound into unison '. thus, in up, the jaw makes an upward movement, while in down, the jaw moves down. continuing consonants, such as f, l, m, n, etc., symbolize continuing motions, such as fly, run, swim, move. on the other hand, words for abrupt motions end with a stopped consonant - - e. g., b, d, g, k, p, t, in stop, hop, pat, stab, kick, etc. dr wallace considered it in the highest degree probable that the pantomimic use of the various parts of the mouth constitute ' a fundamental principle which has always been at work, both in the origin and in the successive modifications of human speech '. dr wallace did not recognize dickens ' observation of hand and mouth as exemplified by sam weller ; but he was, i believe, the first to point out that the pantomimic principle may be still active in man ' s unconscious development of his spoken language, and that modern languages may be just as gestural as the older ones... - - r. a. s. paget, 1951


pantomimic principle may be still active in man ' s unconscious development of his spoken language, and that modern languages may be just as gestural as the older ones... - - r. a. s. paget, 1951. science news ( england ) 20 : 87. " he [ conrad ] loved old memoirs and travels - - and i think wallace ' s malay archipelago was his favorite bedside book. " again mr. curle wrote that conrad read the malay archipelago " over and over again... it was his favorite bedside companion. he had an intense admiration for those pioneer explorers - - ' profoundly inspired men ' as he called them - - who have left us a record of their work ; and of wallace, above all, he never ceased to speak in terms of enthusiasm. even in conversation he would amplify some remark by observing, ' wallace says so - and - so, ' and the malay archipelago had been his intimate friend for many years. " [ comments by richard curle ]... - - florence clemens, july 1939. south atlantic quarterly 38 : 305. though born and bred in england, no snobbishness had ever touched him, he felt that the peasant ' s life, being richer in experience, was more interesting than the lord ' s. yet he was of the finest courtesy, kindness and generosity ; he loved to relieve any want or alleviate any misery ; he said once : " the sole value of riches is the joy of giving. " i knew him for more than a quarter of a century and can recall no fault in him - - no flaw even. his temper was as patient and quiet and fair as his mind, and his health was almost perfect even in extreme age. in writing thus of him, i feel as if i were ladling out treacle to my readers ; but i can ' t help it ; i can ' t go outside the truth. looking back, i ' m inclined to think he was the wisest and best man i ' ve ever known. fortunately this word may be added, i ' ve met dozens of bad men who were incomparably more interesting... - - frank harris, 1920. in his contemporary portraits ( third series ) ( published by the author ) : 105.... the illustrious names of myers, sidgwick, gurney, wallace, crookes, zoellner and many other prominent men, are associated with the rebirth and the rehabilitation of the ancient belief in spirits. even if the


underwater mountain of cordell bank national marine sanctuary is haven for sea life published : saturday, february 9, 2013 at 3 : 05 p. m. last modified : saturday, february 9, 2013 at 3 : 29 p. m. about 25 miles southwest of bodega bay, just beyond the horizon on a clear day, a huge rocky mountain rises from the muddy ocean floor to within 120 feet of the blue pacific surface. the 93 million - year - old formation, once a chunk of the southern sierra nevada, sheared off and slowly edged along the san andreas fault to the north coast. it lay undiscovered until the 1850s and wasn ' t seen by human eyes until 1978. but the 26 - square - mile granite mass known as cordell bank is a smorgasbord for scores of species of seabirds and whales that fly and swim thousands of miles to feast on an abundance of food procured by the wind, the earth ' s rotation and a southbound current that sweeps along the california coast. nutrients drawn from the ocean ' s frigid depths provide the base of a food chain that sustains life forms ranging from microscopic plankton to the world ' s largest creature, the blue whale, with a profusion of finned, feathered and furred animals in between. on cordell bank ' s rocky ridges and pinnacles closest to the surface, a dazzling array of sponges, corals, sea squirts and sea stars are layered one on top of the other, while vast schools of groundfish swim close by. the organisms at cordell bank are served by one of the world ' s most productive ecosystems, known as an upwelling system, that literally manufactures food and delivers it all year long. “ they just sit there and gobble as the food floats by, ” said john largier, an oceanographer at the bodega marine laboratory who describes the upwelling as “ a perennial fountain of youth. ” bob schmieder of walnut creek, who says he is the first person to see cordell bank through a scuba diver ' s mask, said “ the place just grows like a sunset magazine garden... complicated, colorful and alive. ” cordell bank, a place unknown to most people who aren ' t fishermen or scientists, is in the news because of the 529 - square mile marine sanctuary that surrounds and protects it from harm, such as overfishing and energy development. ( on google earth, the bank is labeled and its underwater contour


t fishermen or scientists, is in the news because of the 529 - square mile marine sanctuary that surrounds and protects it from harm, such as overfishing and energy development. ( on google earth, the bank is labeled and its underwater contours are visible, with depth below the surface shown wherever the cursor rests. ) when the national oceanic and atmospheric administration announced plans in december to more than double the size of the cordell bank and adjacent gulf of the farallones national marine sanctuaries, north coast environmentalists and public officials hailed it as the long - sought salvation from the threat of offshore oil drilling. moving the sanctuaries ' boundary from bodega bay about 60 miles north to just beyond point arena in southern mendocino county will protect the entire marine food system that makes cordell bank — and the area stretching south to the farallon islands — a natural wonder. less than half of the system currently is protected, and an oil spill at point arena — an area targeted for drilling as recently as 2009 — would ride the upwelling system south to foul rather than feed the cordell bank coastal region. such a prospect provides a “ strong scientific justification ” for expanding the sanctuaries to point arena, said dan howard, superintendent of the cordell bank national marine sanctuary. upwellings occur in thin bands along the west coast of four continents — north and south america, europe and africa — where wind drives what ' s known as a boundary current. the upwellings cover only 5 percent of the world ' s oceans, but account for about one - fourth of the global fish harvest. the california current, which extends south from british columbia to the tip of baja california, provides the locomotion for the point arena upwelling. persistent north winds, strongest along the north coast in may and june but prevailing year - round, catch the top 100 feet of the ocean ' s water, largier said. the earth ' s rotation contributes a force — the coriolis effect — that pushes the water out to sea, drawing an upwelling of cold, clear water from depths up to 1, 000 feet to replace it. the upwelling carries nutrients, primarily nitrate and phosphate, that are the product of natural composting of dead organic material at depth and on the ocean floor. “ as it comes to the surface, the ocean is being fertilized, ” largier said. sunlight strikes the nutrients about 100 feet down, igniting a massive bloom of phyt


dead organic material at depth and on the ocean floor. “ as it comes to the surface, the ocean is being fertilized, ” largier said. sunlight strikes the nutrients about 100 feet down, igniting a massive bloom of phytoplankton, microscopic plants that turn the water green, like “ grass in a springtime meadow, ” he said. tiny animals, mostly copepods and krill, devour the plants, filling the ocean with a moveable feast. the headlands at point arena accelerate the wind and current, the coast range of mountains channels the wind and the point reyes peninsula bounces the current over cordell bank. it takes five days for the upwelling waters to get there, the same time it takes phytoplankton to bloom, resulting in a blast of food - rich water over cordell bank. continuing south, the upwelling eddies off the marin coast, washing over the farallon islands, another important feeding and breeding ground. point arena ' s system is the “ strongest, most persistent ” upwelling in north america, largier said. like tourists flocking to the north coast for fine food and wine, birds, mammals and at least one reptile make fantastic voyages to cordell bank. humpback whales swim 1, 380 miles from from baja ; gigantic blue whales more than 3, 000 miles from costa rica. sooty shearwaters fly by the thousands from new zealand, 6, 600 miles away, while leatherback sea turtles swim 8, 670 miles from indonesia to dine on jellyfish. from their nests in the sand on tiny atolls in the northwestern hawaiian islands, black - footed albatross fly 2, 400 miles to eat and immediately return, regurgitating food for the chicks. harbor seals, elephant seals, sea lions, porpoises and dolphins are among the more than 20 marine mammal species that frequent cordell bank. it is a limited feeding ground for humans, however. most of the cordell bank sanctuary is closed to commercial and recreational groundfish catching, a rule implemented by the national marine fisheries service to help rebuild a diminished fish population. salmon, crab and albacore fishing are allowed in the sanctuary. but chris lawson, a bodega bay commercial fisherman, said the distance from shore to the bank is a disincentive, adding time and fuel costs to a trip. “ you want to keep as close to the shore as possible, ” he said. cordell bank is “ a


from identifying osama bin laden to proving someone guilty of rape or murder, dna analysis has become an essential scientific tool for police and criminal justice. unique genetic markers could play a crucial role in the trial of ex - imf chief dominique strauss - kahn, accused of sexually assaulting a hotel maid in new york. various media reports, citing sources close to the investigation, have said that dna from strauss - kahn - - believed to be traces of semen - - was found on the shirt of the 32 - year - old woman, who has alleged that the french political heavyweight tried to rape her in his hotel suite on may 14. " the dna technique, the nuclear dna, is the one and only technique, if properly conducted, that has an extraordinarily high odds against a misidentification, " said university of arizona professor of chemistry and geoscience bonner denton. " it ' s very close to 100 percent... it ' s a much better technique than many other forensic identification techniques, even finger prints. " thanks to dna analysis and other tests, us officials were able to say they were certain bin laden was dead, with just a one in 11. 8 quadrillion chance of mistaken identity. cia specialists first compared photographs of the al - qaeda leader ' s corpse to photographs of bin laden and then reviewed a dna sample against a " comprehensive profile " derived from some of his many family members. as a result, an intelligence official said there was no doubt that a team of us navy seals that raided a compound in pakistan on may 1 had killed the al - qaeda founder. denton was part of a national research council team that wrote a key report about dna analysis in 2009 for the us congress. " nuclear dna analysis has been subjected to more scrutiny than any other forensic discipline, with extensive experimentation and validation performed prior to its use in investigations, " the report said. it concluded that the us medical - legal system needed to be revamped because forensics labs were backlogged and understaffed. more than half of the first 250 people released from prison thanks to a dna test exonerating them had been initially found guilty based on erroneous medical analysis. dna analysis entered the us criminal system in 1987 when a serial rapist in florida became the first person whose guilt was proven using the technique. federal authorities, including the us military and all 50 states, now archive dna samples. the fbi has developed the powerful combined dna index system ( codis ), which catalogs millions of samples. every monday