Alfred Russel Wallace

Real human Evolutioneer

"Perceptions" holds that Wallace, who unselfishly agreed to let Darwin upstage him, discovered the real secret of Evolution.

Note - Darwin rushed into print only after Wallace wrote with news of his - Wallace's - emerging thoughts on Evolution

Wallace had independently developed a theory of Evolution which included two vital concepts, superceding Darwin's primitive mechanism of natural selection

1 ... Wallace considered real natural selection to be holistic - natural interaction ^{01 & 02} rather than insulated mechanical process. ^{03 & 04 & 05}

2 ... He further opined that, so soon as human intellect rose above a certain minimum level, then a higher law ⁰⁶ overrides even that `natural selection'.

[Stephen Jay Gould seems to agree - "Evolution might be labelled `the transformation of the possible'" postulated in "Hen's Teeeth and Horse's Toes" - Penguin
ISBN 0-14-013481-6]

Note: - Even Darwin seems to have eventually come to appreciate that second concept. Late in life Darwin wrote "the human race is improving morally"

That is, due to some higher evolutionary interaction ⁰⁷

Wallace

on discovery of new truths -

"Truth is born into this world only with pangs and tribulations, and every fresh truth is received unwillingly"

on ecology -

"The separate species of which the organic world consists being parts of a whole, we must suppose some dependence of each upon all" ⁰⁸

on women, and on women's rights in the future -

"The position of woman in the not too distant future will be far higher and more important than any which has been claimed for or by her in the past.

While she will be conceded full political and social rights on an equality with man, she will be placed in a position of responsibility and power which will render her his superior" ⁰⁹

on establishment science -

"so surely can we trace the action of some unknown higher law, beyond and independent of all those laws of which we have any knowledge"

on paranormal -

"people can only believe new and extraordinary facts if there is a place for them in their existing `fabric of thought'" ^{11 & 12}

"there is no law of nature yet known to us but may be apparently contravened by the action of more recondite laws or forces"

"My opinions on the subject have been modified solely by the consideration of a series of remarkable phenomena, physical and mental, which I have now had every opportunity of fully testing, and which demonstrate the existence of forces and influences not yet recognised by science" ¹³

on advanced beings -

"we must therefore admit the possibility that, if we are not the highest intelligences in the universe, some higher intelligence may have directed the process by which the human race was developed, by means of more subtle agencies than we are acquainted with" ¹⁴

on alien life -

"We do not say that organic life could not exist under altogether diverse conditions from those which we know or can conceive, conditions which may prevail in other universes constructed quite differently from ours, where other substances replace the matter and ether of our universe, and where other laws prevail."

on inbred & xenophobic groups (and on instinct used as science explanation) -

"when a people have been long isolated from surrounding races, and prevented from acquiring those new ideas which contact with them would induce, all progress has been arrested, and generation has succeeded generation with almost the same uniformity of habits and monotony of ideas as obtains in the animal world, where we impute it to that imaginary power which we designate by the term instinct" ¹⁵

on imperialism (& morals of English elite) -

"we are sanctimonious. We profess religion. We claim to be more moral than other nations, and to conquer and govern and tax and plunder weaker peoples for their good! While robbing them we actually claim to be benefactors!" ^{16 & 17}

[those thieving, sanctimonious habits still practised by corrupt UK elite ¹⁸]

on social injustice & money ^{19 & 20}

"We often hear the threat that if workmen strike for higher wages capital will go out of the country. That is an idle threat. True capital--railroads, factories, mills, &c., will not pay to carry away; and as for rich people taking money out of the country, that would hurt no one even now, and if we had possession of the land it would be an absolute benefit to us" ²¹

on social conditions -

"our present phase of social development is not only extremely imperfect but vicious and rotten at the core" ^{22 & 23}

on society -

"at the back of every great social evil will be found a great political wrong" ^{24 & 25 & 26}

Wallace's ethos -

"whether we have an immortal soul or not, or whatever may be our state after death, I can have no fear of having to suffer for the study of nature and the search for truth"

[Bravo! - ed.]

Alfred Russel Wallace died in 1913, greatly honored by thinkers who knew him.

Seems that Wallace was both a genius and fearlessly straight-talking.
Reasons for the establishment to suppress his discoveries,
in favor of Darwin's primitive and chauvinistic theories

Acknowledgements to:
"Wallace Pages " of Charles H. Smith, B.A., M.A., M.L.S., Ph.D.
and to
Western Kentucky University

Feedback from Professor Smith.