Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 2
Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 2
These are the private letters of a man who changed how we understand life on Earth, and Volume 2 pulls back the curtain on the human being behind the theory. Here, in his own words, Wallace emerges not as the austere figure of history books but as a passionate, sometimes tortured, always curious explorer writing from the frontiers of scientific discovery. The correspondence with Darwin reveals a relationship of mutual respect and tension, two men circling the same truths from different angles. But the letters to family, to fellow naturalists, and to curious amateurs worldwide paint a richer portrait: a man wrestling with the implications of his discoveries, struggling with fame, and chasing specimens through the deadly forests of the Malay Archipelago. Volume 2 captures Wallace in his middle years, when his greatest expeditions had concluded but his scientific mind remained restless, questioning, and unapologetically philosophical. For anyone who has ever wondered what scientists actually think about when they're not publishing, these letters offer something rare: admission to the workshop where ideas are forged, with all its mess and electricity.
Editions
X-Ray
“FEW PLACES ARE MORE INTERESTING to a traveller from Europe than the town and island of Singapore, furnishing, as it does, examples of a variety of Eastern races, and of many different religions and modes of life. The government, the garrison, and the chief merchants are English; but the great mass of the population is Chinese, including some of the wealthiest merchants, the agriculturists of the interior, and most of the mechanics and labourers. The native Malays are usually fishermen and boatmen, and they form the main body of the police. The Portuguese of Malacca supply a large number of the clerks and smaller merchants. The Klings of Western India are a numerous body of Muslims, and, with many Arabs, are petty merchants and shopkeepers. The grooms and washermen are all Bengalis, and there is a small but highly respectable class of Parsee merchants. Besides these, there are numbers of Javanese sailors and domestic servants, as well as traders from Sulawesi, Bali, and many other islands of the archipelago.””
— Alfred Russel Wallace
“And if we continue to devote our chief energies to the utilizing of our knowledge of the laws of nature with the view of still further extending our commerce and our wealth, the evils which necessarily accompany these when too eagerly pursued, may increase to such gigantic dimensions as to be beyond our power to alleviate.””
— Alfred Russel Wallace
“By your letter and even still more by your paper in Annals, a year or more ago, I can plainly see that we have thought much alike and to a certain extent have come to similar conclusions. In regard to the Paper in Annals, I agree to the truth of almost every word of your paper; and I daresay that you will agree with me that it is very rare to find oneself agreeing pretty closely with any theoretical paper; for it is lamentable how each man draws his own different conclusions from the very same fact.””
— Alfred Russel Wallace
“Trigonometrical Survey of England.””
— Alfred Russel Wallace
