| Title |
Alfred Russel Wallace and the Road to Natural Selection, 1844–1858
|
|---|---|
| Published in |
Journal of the History of Biology, November 2014
|
| DOI | 10.1007/s10739-014-9397-9 |
| Pubmed ID | |
| Authors |
Charles H. Smith |
| Abstract |
Conventional wisdom has had it that the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace and his colleague Henry Walter Bates journeyed to the Amazon in 1848 with two intentions in mind: to collect natural history specimens, and to consider evidential materials that might reveal the causal basis of organic evolution. This understanding has been questioned recently by the historian John van Wyhe, who points out that with regard to the second matter, at least, there appears to be no evidence of a "smoking gun" variety proving it so. In the present essay the circumstances of Wallace's interest in the matter are reviewed, and van Wyhe is taken to task with alternate explanations for the facts he introduces in his argument. The conclusion is that Wallace almost certainly did have the second objective in mind when he left for both the Amazon, and the Far East. Keywords: Alfred Russel Wallace, Henry Walter Bates, evolution, natural selection. |
X Demographics
The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 4 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Sweden | 1 | 25% |
| United Kingdom | 1 | 25% |
| Unknown | 2 | 50% |
Demographic breakdown
| Type | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Members of the public | 3 | 75% |
| Science communicators (journalists, bloggers, editors) | 1 | 25% |
Mendeley readers
The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 11 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | 1 | 9% |
| Argentina | 1 | 9% |
| Unknown | 9 | 82% |
Demographic breakdown
| Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Student > Ph. D. Student | 3 | 27% |
| Researcher | 3 | 27% |
| Student > Master | 2 | 18% |
| Professor | 1 | 9% |
| Lecturer > Senior Lecturer | 1 | 9% |
| Other | 1 | 9% |
| Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Agricultural and Biological Sciences | 7 | 64% |
| Environmental Science | 3 | 27% |
| Philosophy | 1 | 9% |
Attention Score in Context
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 3. 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 13 May 2015.
All research outputs
#13,921,991
of 24,280,456 outputs
Outputs from Journal of the History of Biology
#378
of 507 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#179,806
of 371,102 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Journal of the History of Biology
#4
of 4 outputs
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So far Altmetric has tracked 507 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a little more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 5.9. This one is in the 24th percentile – i.e., 24% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
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