Alfred Russel Wallace: IDer?

SezMe

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SezMe
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This site is flogging a book about Wallace that claims he was an advocate of Intelligent Design. It is from the Discovery Institute so of course I'm skeptical. But I know so little about Wallace that I cannot evaluate the presented claims. I'm interested in your views.
 
Seems somewhat ID-istic to me, which is unsuprising at that point in history.
Shortly afterwards, Wallace became a spiritualist. At about the same time, he began to maintain that natural selection cannot account for mathematical, artistic, or musical genius, as well as metaphysical musings, and wit and humour. He eventually said that something in "the unseen universe of Spirit" had interceded at least three times in history. The first was the creation of life from inorganic matter. The second was the introduction of consciousness in the higher animals. And the third was the generation of the higher mental faculties in mankind. He also believed that the raison d'être of the universe was the development of the human spirit.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred..._to_man.2C_and_role_of_teleology_in_evolution
 
SezMe said:
This site is flogging a book about Wallace that claims he was an advocate of Intelligent Design.
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Is it important?

I am sure it is of historical value, but the reason I ask is that creationists often try discredit evolution by claiming that Darwin recanted on his death bed, he was a racist, Einstein believed in God, and so on. Evolution or any other scientific theory is not based on the character or opinion of the founders, but on the scientific merit of the theory itself.

You know this, of course, but any creationists reading this thread should know it too!
 
I raise the issue because the author is scheduled to be a guest on a local talk radio show tomorrow and if I could garner some rebuttal information I could call in and challenge him...but I don't want to wade in without knowing the depth of the water. The host is an absolute right-wing nutter and I try to challenge him on his pseudo-facts whenever I can. But if his guest is on solid ground then I want to be careful.

But your point that Wallace's views don't affect the validity of evolution is a good one and if I call in I may take that perspective.
 
SezMe said:
This site is flogging a book about Wallace that claims he was an advocate of Intelligent Design. It is from the Discovery Institute so of course I'm skeptical. But I know so little about Wallace that I cannot evaluate the presented claims. I'm interested in your views.
Click to expand...
Hmmmm. Wallace was a spiritualist for most of his life, though this did not appear to effect his views on evolution; he certainly didn't[SIZE=-1] abandon natural selection in his later years, in fact he continues to aggressively defend the theory right up to his death at ninety.
This acceptance of evolution didn't effect his religious views:
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Alfred Russel Wallace 1900 said:
The point especially to be noted here is, that evolution, even if it is essentially a true and complete theory of the universe, can only explain the existing conditions of nature by showing that it has been derived from some preexisting condition through the action of known forces and laws. It may also show the high probability of a similar derivation from a still earlier condition; but the farther back we go the more uncertain must be our conclusions, while we can never make any real approach to the absolute beginnings of things. Herbert Spencer, and many other thinkers before him, have shown that if we try to realize the absolute nature of the simplest phenomena, we are inevitably landed either in a contradiction or in some unthinkable proposition. Thus, suppose we ask--is matter infinitely divisible or is it not? If we say it is, we cannot think it out, since all infinity, however it may be stated in words, is really unthinkable. If we say there is a limit--the ultimate atom--then, as all size is comparative, we can imagine a being to whom this atom seems as large as an apple or even a house does to us; and we then find it quite unthinkable that this mass of matter should be in its nature absolutely indivisible even by an infinite force. It follows that all explanations of phenomena can only be partial explanations. They can inform us of the last change or the last series of changes which brought about the actual conditions now existing, and they can often enable us to predict future changes to a limited extent; but both the infinite past and the remote future are alike beyond our powers. Yet the explanations that the theory of evolution gives us are none the less real and none the less important, especially when we compare its teachings with the wild guesses or the total ignorance of the thinkers of earlier ages."
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This is not much help, but it so happens that I am listening to David Attenborough's autobiography and Wallace was mentioned in the third CD because of the association with Indonesia.
 
It's worth noting that the "gaps" that Wallace filled with god (for instance, the existence of art in humans, without any understanding of how this could arise through natural selection), were certainly to be expected in a young theory.

Since his time a great deal of work has been done in evolutionary theory. At the time, we didn't even understand where the variation that selection acts on came from, or how it worked. Now the science of genetics is very advanced.

The theory has advanced in many ways, not least of which is the filling of those gaps. This speaks to the success of evolutionary science, not any inherent weakness. That creationists continue to argue with a 150 year old version of the theory is quite telling. It's as though someone were to suggest that there's a problem with the theory of gravity because of the precession of the perihelion of Mercury. There is a problem, and it's been solved.

Another example is that Darwin couldn't understand the social insects (though there's real insight in his discussion of them), but we aren't limited to the word of Darwin on high. We've advanced since then, and kin selection and inclusive fitness do very well to expand the theory and make sense of this aspect of that natural world (while making new prediction that have been and are being tested by biologists in the field.)

But if Wallace couldn't understand the human ability to do math, and Darwin couldn't understand sex lives of ants, perhaps it's best to ignore the progress of the last 150 years and assume that god made the Ants and Euler.
 
rjh01 said:
Of course ID did not exist until long after Wallace died, so the very idea that he was an ID person is a bit silly.
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IDers tend to claim that pretty much any scientist with religious beliefs was an IDer. Newton is the usual example cited.
 
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