Just how similar were Wallaces and Darwins ideas on evolution, as distinct from natural selection?
Probably not nearly as similar as many observers seem to think. Darwin looked at evolution in purely material terms, effectively restricting the concept to the irreversible changes that have occurred in life over significant periods of time. Natural selection, he felt, was the main process driving this change, but admitted that other forces (for example, the inheritance of acquired characters) might well be influencing its direction in addition. Wallace, by contrast, regarded natural selection not as a process, but as a law akin to Newtonian gravitation: tellingly, in The Wonderful Century (S726) he says: “. . . the establishment of the general theory of evolution, by means of the special theory of the development of the organic world through the struggle for existence and its necessary outcome, Natural Selection.” Thus, we have the notion that the removal of the unfit was the necessary result of the struggle for existence. Unlike Darwin, Wallace believed that the biological aspect of
