| Title |
A Delicate Adjustment: Wallace and Bates on the Amazon and “The Problem of the Origin of Species”
|
|---|---|
| Published in |
Journal of the History of Biology, March 2014
|
| DOI | 10.1007/s10739-014-9378-z |
| Pubmed ID | |
| Authors |
John van Wyhe |
| Abstract |
For over a century it has been believed that Alfred Russel Wallace and Henry Walter Bates set out for the Amazon in 1848 with the aim of "solving the problem of the origin of species". Yet this enticing story is based on only one sentence. Bates claimed in the preface to his 1863 book that Wallace stated this was the aim of their expedition in an 1847 letter. Bates gave a quotation from the letter. But Wallace himself never endorsed or repeated this story. Many writers have acknowledged that this letter still survives. Yet the wording is different from that quoted by Bates and the letter says nothing of an expedition. It is argued that the sentence given by Bates is not a genuine quotation from this or any other Wallace letter but was modified by Bates to promote his own reputation. More significantly, this leads to the conclusion that there was a very sudden and dramatic shift in the way species were thought of and discussed after Darwin's Origin of species appeared. Something called "the problem of the origin of species" (and similar variants) never occurred before Darwin's book but exploded in frequency immediately after it. A profound change in how species origins were discussed happened which no one seemed to notice. |
Mendeley readers
The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 8 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | 1 | 13% |
| Portugal | 1 | 13% |
| Unknown | 6 | 75% |
Demographic breakdown
| Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Researcher | 3 | 38% |
| Student > Ph. D. Student | 3 | 38% |
| Student > Bachelor | 2 | 25% |
| Lecturer > Senior Lecturer | 1 | 13% |
| Student > Doctoral Student | 1 | 13% |
| Other | 0 | 0% |
| Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Agricultural and Biological Sciences | 5 | 63% |
| Environmental Science | 2 | 25% |
| Neuroscience | 1 | 13% |
Attention Score in Context
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 1. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 12 March 2014.
All research outputs
#21,757,796
of 24,280,456 outputs
Outputs from Journal of the History of Biology
#488
of 507 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#196,983
of 225,912 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Journal of the History of Biology
#2
of 2 outputs
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