Alfred Russel Wallace
Charles Darwin was not the only person – nor the first – to promote a theory of organic evolution. Best-known of the others was Alfred Russel Wallace, whose letter to Darwin in 1858 showed that he had arrived at essentially the same conclusion as Darwin, resulting in the joint presentation of their work to the Linnaean Society.
Previously, Darwin’s own grandfather Erasmus had suggested in his Zoonomia (1770) that all living things are ultimately descended from a single microscopic ancestor.
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829) had also described a mechanism by which evolutionary change could occur. Widely known as the theory of evolution “by the inheritance of acquired characteristics”, Lamarck mistakenly argued that an animal such as an elephant which stretched its trunk more and more to reach food and water would pass on the characteristic of a longer trunk to its offspring.
Less well-known is a Scot called Patrick Matthew (1790—1874), who published writing on the principle of natural selection as a mechanism for evolution in 1831. Unfortunately, the book in which Matthew developed his theory was titled On Naval Timber and Arboriculture, and it remained obscure and overlooked. In 1860 Matthew read a review of On the Origin of Species in the Gardener’s Chronicle and he then drew the editor’s attention to his earlier work. In all further published editions of the Origin, Darwin acknowledged Matthew’s work stating that Matthew “clearly saw … the full force of the principle of natural selection”.
page from Cuvier’s Le règne animal
distribué d’après son organisation
What sets Darwin apart is the extent to which he was able to synthesise a cogent theory of evolution supported by vast numbers of observations and facts derived from natural history, ecology, animal behaviour, geology and palaeontology. To some extent the theory of evolution was “an idea whose time had come”, because by the nineteenth century humans increasingly saw themselves as part of the living world rather than above it. Darwin undoubtedly owed a great deal to other naturalists and thinkers whose observations and theoretical ideas set the stage for his own.
page from Cuvier’s Le règne animal
distribué d’après son organisation
Dedication from Darwin’s Journal of researches
into the geology and natural history of
the various countries visited by HMS Beagle
© 2010 Jeremy W Bowman