The Heretic in Darwin’s Court
eBook - ePub
Available until 27 Jan |Learn more

The Heretic in Darwin’s Court

The Life of Alfred Russel Wallace

  1. English
  2. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub
Available until 27 Jan |Learn more

The Heretic in Darwin’s Court

The Life of Alfred Russel Wallace

About this book

During their lifetimes, Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin shared credit and fame for the independent and near-simultaneous discovery of natural selection. Together, the two men spearheaded one of the greatest intellectual revolutions in modern history, and their rivalry, usually amicable but occasionally acrimonious, forged modern evolutionary theory. Yet today, few people today know much about Wallace.

The Heretic in Darwin's Court explores the controversial life and scientific contributions of Alfred Russel Wallace—Victorian traveler, scientist, spiritualist, and co-discoverer with Charles Darwin of natural selection. After examining his early years, the biography turns to Wallace's twelve years of often harrowing travels in the western and eastern tropics, which place him in the pantheon of the greatest explorer-naturalists of the nineteenth century. Tracing step-by-step his discovery of natural selection—a piece of scientific detective work as revolutionary in its implications as the discovery of the structure of DNA—the book then follows the remaining fifty years of Wallace's eccentric and entertaining life. In addition to his divergence from Darwin on two fundamental issues—sexual selection and the origin of the human mind—he pursued topics that most scientific figures of his day conspicuously avoided, including spiritualism, phrenology, mesmerism, environmentalism, and life on Mars.

Although there may be disagreement about his conclusions, Wallace's intellectual investigations into the origins of life, consciousness, and the universe itself remain some of the most inspired scientific accomplishments in history. This authoritative biography casts new light on the life and work of Alfred Russel Wallace and the importance of his twenty-five-year relationship with Charles Darwin.

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Yes, you can access The Heretic in Darwin’s Court by Ross A. Slotten in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & Social Science Biographies. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover 
  2. Half title
  3. Title
  4. Copyright
  5. Contents 
  6. Acknowledgments
  7. Introduction
  8. Chapter 1. Origins of a Heretic
  9. Chapter 2. The Struggle for Existence
  10. Chapter 3. A Daring Plan
  11. Chapter 4. Travels on the Amazon …
  12. Chapter 5. … And the Rio Negro
  13. Chapter 6. Disaster at Sea … and a Civilized Interlude
  14. Chapter 7. The Malay Archipelago
  15. Chapter 8. The Mechanism Revealed
  16. Chapter 9. Beautiful Dreamer
  17. Chapter 10. A Turn Toward the Unknowable
  18. Illustrations
  19. Chapter 11. The Olympian Heights and the Beginnings of the Fall
  20. Chapter 12. Wallace and The Descent of Man
  21. Chapter 13. The Descent of Wallace
  22. Chapter 14. The War on Spiritualism
  23. Chapter 15. Phoenix from the Ashes
  24. Chapter 16. To the Land of Epidemic Delusions
  25. Chapter 17. The New Nemesis
  26. Chapter 18. Thoroughly Unpopular Causes
  27. Chapter 19. Satisfaction, Retrospection, and Work
  28. Chapter 20. A National Treasure Celebrated
  29. Genealogy of the Wallace Family
  30. Notes
  31. Biographical Index
  32. Select Bibliography
  33. Index