In Darwin’s Shadow (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Michael Shermer
- First Published: 2002
- Type of Work: Biography and science
- Time of Work: 1823-1913
- Setting: England, the Amazon, and the Malay Archipelago
- Principal Characters: Alfred Russel Wallace, Charles Darwin, Joseph Hooker, Charles Lyell
- Genres: Nonfiction, History, Biography, Science and technology
- Subjects: Nature, Authors or writers, Nineteenth century, Science or scientists, Religion, Genius, Letter writing, Equality, Spiritualism, Great Britain, Experiments, Wales or Welsh people, Victorian era or Victorianism, Evolution, Biology or biologists, Life sciences
- Locales: England, Malay Archipelago, Amazon
Michael Shermer gives his book the sub-subtitle A Biographical Study on the Psychology of History, and he organizes it around these five “schemata”: Wallace the Man, including an analysis of his ideas; Wallace and Darwin, focusing on the priority of the discovery of natural selection and on Darwin’s rejection of Wallace’s conviction that some higher intelligence beyond natural selection must account for man’s intelligence; Wallace the Heretic, arguing that Wallace’s “heretic personality” and his science influenced his spiritualism; Wallace and the Psychology of...
[The entire page is 1911 words long]
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