Alfred Russel Wallace, the Victorian Outsider

Over at Evolution News and Science Today , an Intelligent Design site operated by the Discovery Institute, Alfred Russel Wallace is receiving a great deal of attention in his bicentennial year. Professor Michael A. Flannery has written a book and several articles about Wallace. A spell back, I wrote about whether or not we would have evolutionary theory if Charles Darwin had never been born . Since evolution is ancient, it would have been assembled and popularized in a "scientific" format. Alfie almost did that, but Charlie got to the publisher first. Alfred Russel Wallace, ca. 1865 A.F. Wallace did quite a bit of science, but he was eclipsed by Darwin . A problem for him both then and now is that he dabbled in many areas, some of which seemed frivolous. Wallace seemed like an interesting individual. But the Bearded Buddha focused on his own specific areas, which was apparently applauded instead of the multi-faceted aspects of Alfred. Also, Wallace was a kind of forerunner of