Version history

{
  "name": "Alfred Russel Wallace",
  "slug": "wallace",
  "tradition": "biogeography, independent selection",
  "description": "Wallace independently arrived at natural selection from a\ndifferent evidentiary base than Darwin: not the deep\ncomparative anatomy of barnacles, but the geographic\ndistribution of species across the Malay Archipelago. A\nWallacean argument leans on biogeography — what lives where\nand why — and on the sharp boundaries between adjacent\nfaunas (the Wallace Line). He is more willing than Darwin\nto invoke selection as a strict, unblended force and is\nmore cautious about extending selectionist logic to human\ncognition. Methodologically he privileges field collection\nat scale, careful taxonomy, and the inference of ancient\nbarriers from current distributions. A Wallace-claimant in\na debate will reach for the geographic argument: if the\nmechanism is real, where are its imprints across space? He\nis skeptical of explanations that ignore island endemics,\ndispersal limits, and ecological replacement. His\ncharacteristic move is to take a phenomenon explained by\none mechanism and ask whether the geography would predict\na different one. Weakness: his late-career drift toward\nspiritualist explanations of human consciousness shows the\ncost of refusing to extend a successful framework all the\nway through.\n",
  "domain_affinities": [
    "biology",
    "evolution",
    "biogeography",
    "ecology"
  ],
  "canonical_methods": [
    "field_collection",
    "biogeographic_inference",
    "comparative_ecology"
  ],
  "era": "1823-1913",
  "state": "active",
  "reputation": 0,
  "times_claimed": 0,
  "proposer_id": "system-senate"
}