Revision of Was Alfred Russel Wallace's Sarawak Law' Essay an Argument for Evolution or Not? from Thu, 2020-01-16 15:59

"...the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.." Thomas Henry Huxley, 1870

Historian John van Wyhe argued in his long and complex 1996 paper "The impact of A. R. Wallace’s Sarawak Law paper reassessed" that Wallace's famous 'Sarawak Law' essay of 1855 was not an argument in favor of the idea of evolutionary change, and that Charles Lyell was not heavily influenced by it when he first read it soon after it's publication. If van Wyhe is correct it would mean that virtually all Wallace scholars have misinterpreted the historical evidence and have reached false conclusions, so can they all be wrong?

van Wyhe believes that Lyell did not even realise that Wallace's essay was an argument in favor of evolution. He states that "...contrary to the traditional story, Lyell was not aware that Wallace actually believed that descent from ancestors explained the coincident pattern of new species appearing in the same place as similar predecessors..." The 'traditional story' he refers to was summarised by myself as follows in a 2013 article:

"In Sarawak, Borneo, in February 1855, Wallace produced one of the most important papers written about evolution up until that time. In it he proposed a ‘law’ which stated that "Every species has come into existence coincident both in time and space with a pre-existing closely allied species". He described the affinities (relationships) between species as being “...as intricate as the twigs of a gnarled oak or the vascular system of the human body” with “...the stem and main branches being represented by extinct species...” and the “...vast mass of limbs and boughs and minute twigs and scattered leaves...” living species. The eminent geologist and creationist Charles Lyell was so struck by Wallace’s paper that in November 1855, soon after reading it, he began a ‘species notebook’ in which he started to contemplate the possibility of evolution for the first time."

So is this all wrong and was Lyell oblivious to the evolutionary ideas in Wallace's essay as van Wyhe argues? No indeed. van Wyhe fails to cite an important statment that Lyell made to Wallace in a letter dated 19 November 1868. In it Lyell wrote "...when I first read your Paper [the 'Sarawak Law'] declaring that each new species had come into the world coincident in time & space with a closely allied species, it struck me as true though not capable of geological demonstration, and it shook my confidence together with other arguments in the same paper in the Independent Creation theory more than anything I have read before, for I never respected the "Vestiges" enough to be influenced by it, seeing that its author was not a naturalist". It seems that van Wyhe missed reading Bartholomew's 1973 paper "Lyell and evolution" in which this very quote form Lyell's letter to Wallace was cited.