Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Things to thnk about on Alfred Wallace's Birthday

Mike Dunford has an excellent article summing up the life and scientific accomplishments of Alfred Wallace, the yong naturalist who independently conceived of evolution at about the same time Darwin was doing so, and prompted Darwin to write Origin of the Species.

The stark point made by the history of Wallace and Darwin is how, with scientific enterprises that focus on evidence, we will often see people drawing independent, but identical conclusions, even if they are looking at the problem from markedly different persectives. This stands in stark contrast to poorer epistemological methods like revelation, or instinct, which vary dramatically whereever they are used.

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