• Welcome to BirdForum, the internet's largest birding community with thousands of members from all over the world. The forums are dedicated to wild birds, birding, binoculars and equipment and all that goes with it.

    Please register for an account to take part in the discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.
ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Darwin didn’t plagiarize Wallace (1 Viewer)

A

Acrocephalus

Well-known member
Morocco
Darwin Didn’t Plagiarize Wallace: a summary reporting on the following paper

van Wyhe, J. & Rookmaaker, K. (2012). A new theory to explain the receipt of Wallace's Ternate Essay by Darwin in 1858. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 105: 249–252. doi: 10.1111/j.1095-8312.2011.01808.x [PDF]

Philip Ball reported this in Nature, News section: Shipping timetables debunk Darwin plagiarism accusations

Thanks to Steve Dudley for posting in the BOU_birdtalk
 
Last edited:
chowchilla said:
I thought it was well known that he didn't plagiarise Wallace. Did I miss something?
Click to expand...


Indeed. I know there have been mutterings to that effect from time to time but I wasn't aware that anybody took them seriously. Unfortunately, the link doesn't work for me so all I have to go on is the title of the thread. . .

In any case, more food for the science deniers: not only is "evolution" just a "theory" but Darwin stole the idea from someone else!
 
fugl said:
Indeed. I know there have been mutterings to that effect from time to time but I wasn't aware that anybody took them seriously. Unfortunately, the link doesn't work for me so all I have to go on is the title of the thread. . .

In any case, more food for the science deniers: not only is "evolution" just a "theory" but Darwin stole the idea from someone else!
Click to expand...

"fugl, only the summary that doesn't work, both other papers (the original paper in Biological Journal of the Linnean Society and Nature reporting) are working:

Acrocephalus said:
van Wyhe, J. & Rookmaaker, K. (2012). A new theory to explain the receipt of Wallace's Ternate Essay by Darwin in 1858. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 105: 249–252. doi: 10.1111/j.1095-8312.2011.01808.x [PDF]

Philip Ball reported this in Nature, News section: Shipping timetables debunk Darwin plagiarism accusations
Click to expand...

There is some kind of ongoing debate about this subject. For example, there are 15 papers citing van Wyhe & Rookmaaker (2012) in Google Scholar, and one of them is a direct reply:

Davies, R. (2012). How Charles Darwin received Wallace's Ternate paper 15 days earlier than he claimed: a comment on van Wyhe and Rookmaaker (2012). Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 105: 472–477. doi: 10.1111/j.1095-8312.2011.01858.x
full text
 
Acrocephalus said:
"fugl, only the summary that doesn't work, both other papers (the original paper in Biological Journal of the Linnean Society and Nature reporting) are working:

There is some kind of ongoing debate about this subject. For example, there are 15 papers citing van Wyhe & Rookmaaker (2012) in Google Scholar, and one of them is a direct reply:

Davies, R. (2012). How Charles Darwin received Wallace's Ternate paper 15 days earlier than he claimed: a comment on van Wyhe and Rookmaaker (2012). Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 105: 472–477. doi: 10.1111/j.1095-8312.2011.01858.x
full text
Click to expand...

Thanks for the link. Very interesting indeed. I've been an admirer of Darwin since I first encountered the Origin at age 14, back in the paleolithic, and have since read other of his major writings--Voyage of the Beagle, Descent of Man, Formation of Vegetable Mould etc--always with pleasure and profit, and most of the biographies. I must say, it's going to take a lot more than boat schedules to make me seriously entertain the notion that this great scientist (and good man & fine writer) was a plagiarist!
 
fugl said:
In any case, more food for the science deniers: not only is "evolution" just a "theory" but Darwin stole the idea from someone else!
Click to expand...
But of course! And Shakespeare didn't write anything either - he was just a front for [insert Elizabethan gentleman of the hour here].
 
Peter C. said:
But of course! And Shakespeare didn't write anything either - he was just a front for [insert Elizabethan gentleman of the hour here].
Click to expand...

Particularly those gentlemen who were alive for only a fraction of Shakespeare's life (Bill Bryson's The World as a Stage is a useful debunking source), yet were championed by academics (?) as co-authors or eminences grises who secretly wrote the plays, but got Shakespeare to 'pretend' to be the author....

Paraphrasing the Bard slightly, " The 'plot's' the thing to uncover the conscience of the 'sting' ".
MJB:t:
 
Regarding Darwin, I thoroughly recommend the two volume biography by Janet Browne which is as good an account of the great man's life as you will find. The pivotal moment of receiving Wallace's paper and seeing that Wallace had come to similar conclusions sent Darwin into a tail spin. People sometimes forget that Darwin wrote and received letters endlessly. He put his thoughts about the whole thing to close friends and colleagues. In part, as a consequence of their musings on the whole thing, he did the decent thing and made sure that Wallace's paper also got a hearing at the Royal Society. Any plagiarism would have been spotted straight away, not least by his close confidants Joseph Hooker and Thomas Huxley who knew exactly what was at stake. Huxley especially wanted Darwin to get the credit, but he knew nonetheless what had to be done.

Wallace on discovering all of this was delighted his paper got an airing at all. He came from a much more humble background than Darwin and may have never got his own thoughts on evolution taken as seriously by the people that mattered. The two became good friends, even if Wallace did test Darwin's patience at times with his belief in mediums and the spirit world. Darwin was in reality far closer to being an atheist than Wallace. Darwin even campaigned to secure Wallace a pension in his old age as he fell on hard times and one of the pallbearers at Darwin's funeral was Wallace. They were friends to the end.

Re, Shakespeare, the whole 'Francis Bacon wrote some/all of Shakespeare's plays' nonsense arose from a mad woman (whose name escapes me) who lived in the 19th century who first popularised the idea. When I say she was mad I mean literally that, as she had a mental illness involving various bizarre delusions about being the Holy Spirit for example.

It's a measure of how conspiracy theories take hold that so many people were and still are taken in by it despite there not being a shred of evidence that this was the case.
 
Warning! This thread is more than 10 years ago old.
It's likely that no further discussion is required, in which case we recommend starting a new thread. If however you feel your response is required you can still do so.

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 2 (members: 0, guests: 2)
Back
Top